Baby Dragon, hand-made clay sculpture by Tammy Vitale, Tam’s Originals

Did everyone have a great Mother’s Day?!  I certainly did.  We did our traditional trip to Virginia for wine tasting and strawberry picking, reversed because it looked like a storm was coming.  We never made it to strawberry picking because they weren’t allowing cars down to the fields – you had to do a tractor hayride.  But the sky was looking bad, so we just stayed and played with the petting zoo, which is only goats this year.  We got pictures – Husband wanted picture of him feeding goat for his myspace photo.  He had the one of him and a lamb up for a long time, and then him and a cow from Arizona and right now him and our dog – it’s becoming a theme and he wanted new pictures.   So we got one of him, one of Grandson feeding goat and one of him, me and grandson on the swing – all shared here.    And isn’t that what mother’s day is all about – family? 

The storm did come in and we beat the crowd out because we were paying attention to the weather and ran over to Ingleside Winery.  Within a 10 minute ride the skies opened up and absolutely poured rain.

Inside the winery all was festive.  They hand out roses to moms and moms get complimentary wine tasting.  This year they also had sweets, including a chocolate fountain with strawberries which made daughter happy, pretzels which made husband happy and wine which made me happy.  The atmosphere is lovely  – they have opened a new room which is all dark wood set amidst caskets of wine stacked on top of each other layers thick.  We bought 5 bottles instead of our usual case.  I have to admit they are no longer my favorite but when I started drinking wine their Chesapeake Claret was all I would have.  We came home with one bottle of sweet white (Blue Crab Blush) for Daughter and Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Frank, and 2 bottles of one of their premiums:  Petit Verdot (mmm).

We had dinner dockside at a yact club in Colonial Beach – it was the only thing that had electricity that we could find (the storm again).  Service was sllllooooowwwwww but the food was good when we got it. 

Driving home we got stuck in traffic at (route) 301 bridge over the Potomac into Maryland and the boys went to sleep ( a tradition) and then we got stuck in traffic again on top the Thomas Johnson bridge over the Patuxent (going from St Mary’s County, MD to Calvert County MD – where the Patuxent meet the Chesapeake Bay – that’s the Bay behind the Island and the river in front of it) – the Marine Museum on Solomons was having a concert that we neglected to pay attention to and so we spent a lot of time on top of the bridge.  This could have been boring and frustrating as the second traffic jam of the day but the view from this bridge is amazing and we’re always traveling fast over it.  This time it was slow and I had a camera – a treat! I would never have had the opportunity to get these pictures if we hadn’t been sitting absolutely stock still.  When we finally made it over, we stopped and had ice cream and that was pretty much the end of a wonderful day.

Here’s an interesting article  from the Santa Cruz Sentinel in my inbox about the origin of Mother’s Day – I didn’t know this and will  keep a cc for next year to send out – it is a pertinant now as when it was founded, and the real reason should be out there more – here’s a snip:

Most people associate Mother’s Day with flowers and sentimental Mother’s Day cards. However, Mother’s Day once known as "Mother’s Day for Peace" was created as an anti-war protest by women whose sons were killed by their fellow Americans in the Civil War.

Writer and social-justice activist Julia Ward Howe 1819-1899 was born in New York City. She was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her works include "The Life of Margaret Fuller" 1883, "From Sunset Ridge: Poems Old and New" 1898, and "Reminiscences 1819-1899" 1899. She was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

In 1870, she wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation to inspire the world’s women to protect their sons by ending war.

Howe worked for social justice with her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, who wrote for the Boston Commonwealth, an anti-slavery newspaper. She visited a Union army camp and wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Howe also fought for women’s rights and founded the New England Woman’s Club, the Association for the Advancement of Women, and headed the American branch of the Woman’s International Peace Association.

Below is a history her story of Mother’s Day and some of the accomplishments of Howe and other women activists. Unfortunately, their struggle to promote peace was largely unpublicized by today’s violence and war-obsessed media.

The Creation and Commercialization of Mother’s Day

• 1858 — Social-justice activist Anna Reeves Jarvis organizes "Mother’s Works Days" in West Virginia to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis encourages women to leave their families to care for wounded soldiers on both sides. She organizes meetings to persuade men to stop killing each other.
• 1870 — Julia Ward Howe writes the anti-war Mother’s Day Proclamation.
• 1872 — Howe proposes an annual Mother’s Day for Peace. For the next 30 years, Americans celebrate Mother’s Day for Peace on June 2.
• 1913 — Congress declares the 2nd Sunday in May as Mother’s Day it’s no longer Mother’s Day for Peace. The growing consumer culture redefines women as "consumers." Greedy businessmen and politicians embrace the idea of making money from the sacrifices of mothers. According to the trade journal the Florists’ Review, "This was a holiday that could be exploited."

Thought for the day:  it always pays to know your history.