Today was Mother's Day and although I procrastinated, just under the wire I emailed Mom a free e-card and even stepped it up a notch by forwarding also the picture of a lovely virtual bouquet I found online! The roses were beauteous, if I do say so myself. Nothing's too good for my mom! Something I didn't know, though (perhaps I'm just historically retarded), was that Mother's Day began in part as the result of an 1800s anti-war peace movement. I've never heard of Julia Ward Howe in my life, but I did some googling (are we to still capitalize now that Google is both noun and verb? I'm not sure.) Anyway, she apparently worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers for both the North and the South during the Civil War (ultimate oxymoron, that) and witnessed first-hand some of the worst the war had to offer: the death and disease which killed and mutilated the soldiers, also recognizing the economic devastation and crises of war. [We now know, of course, in ...