Watch this video about Marguerite Kearns commenting about butterflies and their important link to women’s suffrage:

This video can also be accessed at https://vimeo.com/20953033. 

by Marguerite Kearns

I didn’t enter into this intimate relationship with my suffrage activist grandmother who had fixed ideas about what might happen in the future. I decided to do the work and allow certain feelings and emotions develop in their own time.

That’s why some of this writing represents off the cuff thinking. It is also a response to these times of transformation and confusion after the Western version of the pandemic. I still hold the point of view that the existence of the suffrage campaign wagon used by Edna Buckman Kearns and others is significant and timely. It certainly introduced me to the idea of “butterfly gardening,” a feature  series on books that is sponsored by Suffrage Wagon News Channel (SuffrageWagon.org).

I decided that butterfly gardening had the potential of being useful when introducing women and girls to the idea of votes for women or “suffrage.” It requires an overview first, of a goal, and then the specifics. It lends itself easily to the idea of a process and long-term recommendation of starting, enjoying, and then benefitting from the idea of butterfly gardening. It’s fun. It’s something to look forward to.

First, there is the potential. Votes for women, or “women’s suffrage” wasn’t easy. Neither is any other potential shift in social change, There’s the potential and the dream. I noticed a butterfly bush in my back yard. That wasn’t the perfect spot for a “butterfly garden,” but it had potential. I could build on this butterfly bush. It supported butterflies. It could be an attractive place some day. It had the potential for something very different.

I ordered a book on the topic and then the planning and imagining started. Butterfly Gardening: Creating a Butterfly Haven in Your Garden by Thomas C. Emmel and published by Friedman/Fairfax Publishers inNew York City during 1997. I linked it to Suffrage Wagon’s book page. Then the action began.

Suffrage Wagon News Channel has been publishing since 2009.