Are you like me? I find it hard to give people a present unless I love it myself? And then sometimes I buy something for someone else and want to keep it!
This one was sent to another very special cyber friend who also has a birthday today. I wanted her to feel the pleasure in this picture, the warmth, the peace and the relaxation that I get from it. Everyone has loved these two paintings so I have posted them here.
This is me (in my imagination!) wearing my long red skirt and doing what I would have liked to have been doing on this freezing December day. It is an Irish coastline of course and it is midsummer, in West Cork maybe?
I sent this picture to my daughter this morning. Something about it reminded me of her and my youngest granddaughter E, aged six. V doesn't look like the mother in the pic but she holds her head to one side in that manner. I went to see the two youngest girls in their Christmas school play last night, they did Dickens' wonderful story, A Christmas Carol. S was Christmas Present and E was a dancing child. S, aged nine, sang a beautiful solo, I was very proud, (grannies are allowed to brag!).
The artist for these last three is Vladimir Volegov.
I have been watching on TV news those poor soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and thinking that they will never get over their experiences. I have also been thinking of those who were sacrificed and will never come home and feeling so sorry for their poor loved ones.
I found these two quotes recently.
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.
Charles E Hughes
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
John Foster Dulles
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
John Foster Dulles
My daughter sent me this Siegfried Sassoon quotation this morning. She found it while researching for an essay she is writing. Read it and see if it rings any bells with you, it certainly did with me.
"I AM making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.,
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize."
Siegfried L. Sassoon...July 1917
12 comments:
Hello Cait, it is myself, back again in the same evening.
Thinking about peace and war. You take me back to the mid 1970's when I used to write letters to Nixon. I was not as eloquent as Sassoon, but always just poured out my thought that the President could stop some killing. And why not do so.
As always, your thinking and writing are rich, and draw forth lots of comments.
xo
Yes it rang some bells.
And i love your taste in pictures, i too cant give things unless i love them too!
Your refernece to the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan made me think of the Guard of Honour at my neices recent wedding they were all wearing their medals with pride and I ask one young solider what it had been like he replied " I held my best friend is my arms when he died" There is no answer to that. I was a great admirer of John Denver and saw him play several times but the moment that stands out in my mind most was when in almost complete darkness baring a small and pale light he recited this poem.
There's a name for war and killing
there's a name for giving in
when you know another answer
for me the name is sin
but there's still time to turn around
and make all hatred cease
and give another name to living
and we could call it peace
And peace would be the road we walk
each step along the way
and peace would be the way we work
and peace the way we play
And in all we see that's different
and in all the things we know
peace would be the way we look
and peace the way we grow
There's a name for separation
there's a name for first and last
when it's all for us or nothing
for me the name is past
but there's still time to turn around
and make all hatred cease
and give a name to all the future
and we could call it peace
And if peace is what we pray for
and peace is what we give
then peace will be the way we are
and peace the way we live
Yes there still is the time to turn around
and make all hatred cease
and give another name to living
and we can call it peace
Blossom, you have brought tears to my eyes. Firstly with your soldier's quote which on its own speaks volumes and will stay with me forever. So much so that I am tempted to put it into a poem.
For every soldier in the world, especially in an illegal or immoral invasion, is someone's best friend, someone's son. You could add daughters to this list but to me the words women and warfare are not in harmony.
Then I read dear John Denver's piece. I had all his records I thought but have not heard this before. If you don't mind I would like to blog your comment, would you mind?
Lovely posting all round, Cait. Those pictures are wonderful. The lady in the red dress could be in West Cork - or Fuerteventura because the 'spirit' is there. A place we shoulkd all go to, sometime in our lives.
I would be delighted for you to Blog the comment.
Love Blossom x
A very moving blog - and comments.
On putting together material for a village history in the autumn I found my self with photographs of some of the young men on the war memorial - which gave them faces as well as names. They were so young. It breaks my heart. And this needless waste of young and precious lives goes on.
Cait, that indeed was a beautiful picture and I want to thank you once again for your kindness.
As always, a wonderful blog with beautiful words.
Best wishes, Crystal xx
My goal is always to give gifts that I would want to get. Getting crappy gifts is such a bummer and I try never to do that to anyone!
Yes, war is such a dreadful thing and destroys so many lives. You write so thoughtfully, Cait - I always love visiting your diary.
Lovely pics Cait.
A wonderful Blog with beautiful words and pictures Cait.
Camilla.xx
Post a Comment