In honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, I just wanted to take a moment to thank all the moms, grandmas, aunts, and mom-figures out there doing their best.

Today in 1908 was the first celebration of Mother's Day in America in the township of Grafton, West Virginia. (May 10th was a Sunday that year.)  We talked about the founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, on her birthday, May 1st. Jarvis led the charge to get the day recognized on the national level, so that by 1914, Woodrow Wilson made it official. 

By then the day was growing too commercialized in Anna’s opinion. She believed a handwritten letter to one’s mother was the appropriate display of affection, and despised the companies peddling Mother’s Day cards, special flower arrangements, and candy as symbols of love. She was so upset that she protested outside a candy maker’s convention in Philadelphia and at one point was arrested for disturbing the peace.

And today is the birthday of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who discovered what stars are made of. Cecilia was a student at Radcliffe College in Boston studying astronomy and astrophysics. In her doctoral thesis, she purported that stars contain mostly hydrogen and helium. And so really are just “balls of gas burning billions of miles away.” Her advisor dismissed the idea, since it was contrary to the scientific consensus at the time. A few years later, that same advisor ended up discovering that Cecilia was in fact correct about the atomic make-up of the sun and stars. When he published the findings, which he came to by an alternate route, he praised Cecilia’s work, but the scientific community recognized him for the discovery. 

Cecilia continued to study stars. She went on to publish multiple books about her research, sometimes conducting studies with her husband. In the mid-1950s, after working in research for two decades, she was offered a professorship at Harvard, making her the first female professor in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

And today is the birthday of Fred Astaire, dancer, singer, choreographer, and actor. He starred in such musical-films as Flying Down to Rio, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. 

It was Fred’s mother’s idea to get Fred and his sister Adele into dancing and singing, as she desperately wished to get out of Omaha, Nebraska. When Fred’s father unexpectedly lost his job, mom convinced the family to pack up and head to New York. 

Fred and his sister ending up being an adorable duo, and thanks to their father’s intuitive sales sense, they secured a contract to perform on a tour through the States. When Adele shot up 3 inches past her brother in height, the duo looked oddly mismatched, and the family took a break from show business. 

After success dancing on Broadway, Fred was lured to Hollywood. His first screen tests did not go well. Feedback from the studios was that he couldn’t act, his ears were too big, and the balding wasn’t a good look. But he had an undeniable charm, and he sure could dance. 

His success was certainly not luck, rather it was a ton of hard work. Fred rehearsed his steps more than others felt necessary and asked for more takes on set than most producers felt was needed!

Despite his obvious charm, Fred skipped out on the lavish parties of Hollywood, preferring to spend his free time with his beloved wife Phyllis and their two kids Fred, Jr. and Ava. 

 

Christina Rossetti

 

 Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome

      Has many sonnets: so here now shall be

   One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me

To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,

   To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee

I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;

   Whose service is my special dignity,

And she my loadstar while I go and come.

And so because you love me, and because

   I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath

      Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:

      In you not fourscore years can dim the flame

Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws

   Of time and change and mortal life and death.