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I Contracted Slave Labor for Mothers' Day

My daughter, Boo (Becca) and I have a good relationship. She is almost 27 years-old, married 2-1/2 years. Her husband appears to be a gem (not in the rough). So the other day I was thinking, "do I want them to buy me something or could we do something else?"...

I called her up (is a that a mid-western US colloquialism?) and proposed that I needed help to put my backyard pond into a working pond. (I'm a long time pondkeeper). I asked if she and the superman Tom could come over and help me work for three or four hours. She said, "Sure!"

Tomorrow, I'll have a waterfall back working outside my bedroom window, and a pond where I can hopefully have plants and fish in a week.


Lovely Koi...

But it's Mothers' Day that's on my mind. Particularly the original impetus for the day which seems to come from a call by the poet Julia Ward Howe in 1870. Her call was not for a Hallmark or telecom moment. Her call was for a general strike by mothers against future carnage like what had just "happened" in the US "Civil War".


Geov Parrish wrote a very poignant essay on the subject with the entire text of Howe's call to "arms".

Working for Change has it In the Name of Womanhood and Humanity

Here is an excerpt:
"Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water of of tears
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of 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."

I think it's a must read, but then I've been saying the same thing for more than thirty years.

How many mothers and wives really want to send sons and husbands into the mess the US government is now in?

Happy Mothers' Day!