The Ranch Report On Mother's Day A Day For Peace
Kaiserin Friedrich is covered in small buds. This is one determined sturdy rose and he has a wonderful strong tea rose fragrance. There's no excuse for roses with weak scent. Why would anyone breed such a flower when you can fulfill the promise of olfactory bliss?
The old striped roses are quite stunning as well. This is Rosa Mundi unfurling herself near my front door. Cousin* to the Apothecary Rose. She will be drenched in perfume just as soon as she unfolds a couple more petals and the sun hits her.
The potatoes got tall enough to mulch them with hay. It's so farmy out here now. From this distance they actually look like strawberry plants. I've got All Blues and German Butterballs in there.
Provided a cat doesn't roll over this succulent seedling, and provided a bird doesn't spy it from the air and come to snatch it up, this will be a pole bean one day. It's a cross of "Kentucky Wonder" and "Blue Lake".
All the pickling cucumbers are finally up. I haven't had time to put up any netting or wire to protect my seedlings so I'm just hoping these get big enough fast enough to withstand the destructive ministrations of my cat and his kitty neighbors.This morning Max used the word "crucial" properly in a sentence also involving Bionicles. Is this normal for six year olds? Apparently he picked up this mature bit of vocabulary from his favorite play station game "Ratchet". That is about the only good thing I can now say of this video game: that it taught my six year old the proper use of the word "crucial".
So, it's mother's day. Philip sent me an interesting bit of history about mother's day that I have never heard before. He read about it in one of his cycling e-mail lists "KOG":
Mother's Day in the United States, the second Sunday of May, was first proclaimed around 1870 by Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, and Howe called for it to be observed each year nationally in 1872. As originally envisioned, Howe's "Mother's Day" was a call for pacifism and disarmament by women. The original Mother's Day Proclamation was as
follows:
follows:
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 another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
This makes mother's day so much more deeply meaningful. Do you think anything similar was originally intended for National Secretary's Day? This proclamation is gorgeous, it reflects exactly how I feel and makes me more proud of my sex than I feel over the women's movement. It embodies how I think all women must ultimately feel if they have ever given birth, and how most women must feel even if they haven't. Perhaps it's old school of me, but I still subscribe to the belief that while men and women are of equal value and should be recognized as such in all societal situations, they are not made the same.
I am not particularly excited to be a womb carrying human being, I mean, I don't get all misty over the "privilege" I enjoy of bleeding every month. Womanhood isn't one giant fuzzy touchy feely baby-cooing experience for me. I think women are fierce, I think they have incredible strengths that they largely ignore. However, I do think that because we are equipped with the means for creating life in our own bodies we tend to be more inclined to protect life than men are.
Go ahead, scream out obscenities...tell me how men and women are exactly the same and women can do whatever men can** and that I betray my sisters to suggest that women want to protect life because they're softer than men. (Not at all what I'm saying, of course, but whatever.)
So many women out there are shouting the company line "Go fight those bastards!" but how many of them deeply wish for their husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, and fathers to return from the war? If the entire country were to rise up and say "Bring our troops home!" what woman would still be waving her flag saying "Let my men stay over there and die for our country so I can weep every memorial day, so I can lay prostrate with sorrow every veterans day, but at least I'll be proud."? Of course we want to support those who are fighting, they're doing what they've been told, they're doing what they think is right (some of them), and no one related to someone who is in the middle east right now is going to withdraw their support, because if they do, what does that say to their loved ones?
But I think deep down, peace is what all fiercely caring women must want. Because what is pride compared to the life of your husband or child? You can't eat dinner with pride. Pride is a poor bed fellow. Pride doesn't feed children. What joy is there in retiring with pride in your Winnebago all alone? What future is there in pride?
Why has Mother's Day degenerated in a holiday for giving gifts when it started off with such an incredible purpose of mind, of spirit, and of passion? What better reason to celebrate Mother's Day than to espouse peace, and disarmament, things that protect life rather than destroy it? What are mother's if not creators and protectors of life? A woman can do just about anything she wants in this world, but there is one thing she can do that a man can never do: give birth. Create life.*** What kind of mother builds a human being in her womb, and through an incredible cost and with considerable violence to herself bring this baby into the world, and then when this life is just mature enough to hold a gun willingly sends it off to kill other people's children?
I am not particularly excited to be a womb carrying human being, I mean, I don't get all misty over the "privilege" I enjoy of bleeding every month. Womanhood isn't one giant fuzzy touchy feely baby-cooing experience for me. I think women are fierce, I think they have incredible strengths that they largely ignore. However, I do think that because we are equipped with the means for creating life in our own bodies we tend to be more inclined to protect life than men are.
Go ahead, scream out obscenities...tell me how men and women are exactly the same and women can do whatever men can** and that I betray my sisters to suggest that women want to protect life because they're softer than men. (Not at all what I'm saying, of course, but whatever.)
So many women out there are shouting the company line "Go fight those bastards!" but how many of them deeply wish for their husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, and fathers to return from the war? If the entire country were to rise up and say "Bring our troops home!" what woman would still be waving her flag saying "Let my men stay over there and die for our country so I can weep every memorial day, so I can lay prostrate with sorrow every veterans day, but at least I'll be proud."? Of course we want to support those who are fighting, they're doing what they've been told, they're doing what they think is right (some of them), and no one related to someone who is in the middle east right now is going to withdraw their support, because if they do, what does that say to their loved ones?
But I think deep down, peace is what all fiercely caring women must want. Because what is pride compared to the life of your husband or child? You can't eat dinner with pride. Pride is a poor bed fellow. Pride doesn't feed children. What joy is there in retiring with pride in your Winnebago all alone? What future is there in pride?
Why has Mother's Day degenerated in a holiday for giving gifts when it started off with such an incredible purpose of mind, of spirit, and of passion? What better reason to celebrate Mother's Day than to espouse peace, and disarmament, things that protect life rather than destroy it? What are mother's if not creators and protectors of life? A woman can do just about anything she wants in this world, but there is one thing she can do that a man can never do: give birth. Create life.*** What kind of mother builds a human being in her womb, and through an incredible cost and with considerable violence to herself bring this baby into the world, and then when this life is just mature enough to hold a gun willingly sends it off to kill other people's children?
I can speak for myself in this. It would crush me on the deepest level to know that I had created Max so that he could destroy beings that other women have created. It would crush me because I know what all mothers go through to bring their offspring into the world. I know what it takes out of a person to raise a child, to worry every single day over that child, to love that child with parts of yourself that you didn't even know existed before. I also know how I would feel if I was forced to watch my boy go out into the world with a machine gun only to return to me in a flag covered casket.
All of us mothers are connected to each other through our children. We are connected to women who don't have children through the potential to create life that we all share. Some of us are past that time, some of us have yet to reach that time, some of us have no desire to realize that potential, and some of us are unable to realize it through injury or illness...but we are still all connected by that part of us equipped and programmed to make and protect life.
So read Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation and feel the power inherent in women, and especially women who have already brought babies to life. Feel the power possible in women to band together from all over the world in the desire to protect what is more precious to us than oil: our children and our sister's children.
All of us mothers are connected to each other through our children. We are connected to women who don't have children through the potential to create life that we all share. Some of us are past that time, some of us have yet to reach that time, some of us have no desire to realize that potential, and some of us are unable to realize it through injury or illness...but we are still all connected by that part of us equipped and programmed to make and protect life.
So read Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation and feel the power inherent in women, and especially women who have already brought babies to life. Feel the power possible in women to band together from all over the world in the desire to protect what is more precious to us than oil: our children and our sister's children.
Women totally kick ass.
Mothers are why we are all here on earth together.
I love my own mother so much and hope every day that I will lead a life that makes her proud to have put me here on this planet.
Mothers are why we are all here on earth together.
I love my own mother so much and hope every day that I will lead a life that makes her proud to have put me here on this planet.
*Technically she is a "sport" of the Apothecary rose.
**This has always struck me as being a defensive line, also somewhat stupid, I mean, who cares what men can do, shouldn't a true feminist not be concerned with being in a contest with men but concentrate on doing what she can do best-whatever that may be-and be recognized for it without reference to anyone else?
***I have always felt it important to recognize that she can't do this without sperm, which no woman can get without either interaction with a man, or the generosity of one. Men and Women need each other, even if they aren't sleeping with each other.
***I have always felt it important to recognize that she can't do this without sperm, which no woman can get without either interaction with a man, or the generosity of one. Men and Women need each other, even if they aren't sleeping with each other.
Labels: feminism, Julia Ward Howe, Mother's Day, peace