Sunday, May 13, 2007

Mother's Day


A close-up of a gardenia rosette and buds growing in my garden for mum. Enjoy your day all you mums out there .
Interestingly enough, a special mother of 3 shared with me this morning the Fitz Files of today's Sunday paper to whom a missive was sent in by a fellow reader pointing out that the origin of the day were in fact women in the US uniting in the hope of stopping wars. In 1870 Julia Ward Howe, sickened by the Civil War, wrote a poem called the Mother's Day Proclamation, which began:
Arise then... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us,
reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of anothr country
To allow our sons to be trained to
injure theirs."