Pairs in July - marking 100 yrs..

I'm having troubles getting into reading this July as im soo busy blog hoping. Now with more than 26 participants in Paris in July, there's alot to do. However i did start reading "When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends" by Mary McAuliffe PhD and was inspired by this quote to share the anniversary of Dorothy. 

"A t 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, Marie Curie was in her lab, working as usual, when guns sounded over Paris. Not German guns, but French guns. Guns that for the first time in four years were firing without hostile intent. It was an extraordinary moment, signaling that Armistice had come and that the war, that never-ending nightmare of carnage and atrocity, was truly over. Helen Pearl Adam, the British journalist who had remained in Paris for the war’s duration and faithfully recorded her impressions, wrote that “it would have been a strange thing if Paris had kept her head when the Armistice was signed, and accordingly she did not.” For three days Paris and all of France celebrated, as people surged into the streets, popped arcs of champagne into the air, and enthusiastically embraced one another."

While November is still a few months away, this is the 100th year since then. And on July 2nd my family celebrated 100 years since my grandmothers birth. Although she  passed away 13 yrs ago, she was worthy of remembering. 

 I hadn't really thought about this before, but as I started Reading about the Belle Epoch in Paris, I started to think about Granny, and the era that she was born into. During her formative identity forming years, when she was thinking about the world she would be living in, she was enjoying some of the best years of her life.

Also from When Paris Sizzled - In the meantime, L’Oréal continued its rapid growth, aided by the new hairstyle, the bob—the short, cropped hair for women that had begun to appear during the war and that Coco Chanel as well as movie stars such as Clara Bow and Louise Brooks made popular. Instead of leading to a drop in demand for hair dye, as Schueller initially feared, the new style increased demand, as it required frequent cutting and dying. Seeing another new niche, Schueller now produced a bleach, L’Oréal Blanc, that created the rage for blonde and platinum hair that continued for decades.

Yet in the second half of the 1920s, (when Granny was 10 or 11yrs old) the Australian economy suffered from falling wheat and wool prices, and competition from other commodity-producing countries. Australia was also borrowing vast sums of money, which dried up as the economy slowed.

Then (when Granny was just 11yrs)  the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to a worldwide economic depression. The Australian economy collapsed and unemployment reached a peak of 32 per cent in 1932.It took Australia almost a decade to recover from the Great Depression. (From here)

Granny and Grandpa got married after Granny had worked for a couple of years as a receptionist.  After bringing up her own 5 children, my Granny and Grandpa became house parents for homeless or children in need of care. I grew up with these kids, like my cousins. 

In the 1970s, Australia became the new home for many Vietnamese refugees, and again, Granny and Grandpa, became host Grandparents. 

Below is My Granny & Grandpa with me and my cousins. 

I'm so proud of my Grandparents. 

Other interesting facts from 1918

• Women (30 and older) in Great Britain are granted the right to vote, two years prior to suffrage in the United States.
• Architect Jørn Utzon is born in Copenhagen. He would go on to design one of the most iconic buildings on the planet, the Sydney Opera House.
• The Stars and Stripes newspaper begins publishing in France, and The New York Globe begins running Robert Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” cartoon.
• Tsar Nicholas, his wife and their five children are assassinated in Russia, ending the reign of the imperial family.