Asotin Washington 1889
I have had a productive morning. My time has been filled with editing the manuscript of Grass Widow Wives. I am on the final chapter and the excitement grows with each word. Next will come the introduction and credits. I am also waiting for my son Eric Snider to complete the creation of a map outlining the towns and areas reflected in the book. I would be lost without the assistance I am receiving. Jon is editing photos which will be featured at the start of each chapter. I am closer to the finish.
Are my friends ready to get a copy in their hands? I sure do hope so.
Exciting, hope to start reading soon!
ReplyDeleteYou have probably considered this but if not, why don't you take the Webster's Dictionary definition of a Grass Widow and make it a stand-alone statement in the Forward section of your book.
ReplyDeleteSharp man. It is already the page right after the title page.
Deletegrass widow
ReplyDeleten.
1. A woman who is divorced or separated from her husband.
2. A woman whose husband is temporarily absent.
3. An abandoned mistress.
4. The mother of a child born out of wedlock.
[Perhaps in allusion to a bed of grass or hay.]
Word History: Grass widow is first recorded in 1528, and originally referred to an unmarried woman who has lived with one or more men, a discarded mistress, or a woman who has borne a child out of wedlock. The grass in grass widow seems to have originally made reference to the makeshift bed of grass or hay (as opposed to a real bed with a mattress and sheets) on which a woman might lie with her lover before he rises and abandons her—leaving her a widow, so to speak, in the grass. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, grass and the color green in general had sexual connotations, in allusion to the green stains left on clothing after rolling in the grass. (The lyrics of the 16th-century song Greensleeves, for example, give voice to the sufferings of an abandoned lover.) By the middle of the 19th century, however, grass widow had come to refer mainly to a wife whose husband is temporarily absent or one who is living apart from her husband. In colonial India, for example, it was used of British women who, during the hot season, went off to enjoy the cool of the hills while their husbands were stuck at their jobs in the heat of the plains. Although the reason for the change in meaning is not known with any certainty, people may have interpreted the grass in grass widow as equivalent to pasture, as in the expression out to pasture. Nowadays, the term grass widow can also refer to a wife who has separated from her husband and to a divorced woman.