Food, and Roses Too

These highly fragrant roses are transplants from Richard's mom's garden. 

The roses have come into bloom, and with them these thoughts ...

Humans need food and beauty too. All humans, not just those who can afford them. This sentiment was perhaps best captured by early in the 19th century in a speech by the Jewish feminist socialist labor activist, Rose Schneiderman (1882-1972).  She wrote:

"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with."

It was subsequently published as a poem several times between 1911 and 1915 and set to music decades later:

.... Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses! ...
.... No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses! .... 

A passionate, talented labor organizer, Schneiderman ran for the U.S. Senate in 1920 as a candidate of the New York State Labor Party on a platform that called for state-funded health insurance, adequate food markets in poor neighborhoods, publicly-owned power utilities, high-quality neighborhood schools and nonprofit housing for workers. She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the only woman to be appointed to then-President Roosevelt's Labor Advisory Board and later, the NYS Secretary of Labor. 

Over the past decade, we have converted much of the landscape around our home to growing food for humans and animals, along with a rich diversity of flowering plants that support the many pollinators and predators that sustain a healthy ecosystem. They are beautiful in their own right, and feed our hearts as well as our bodies. But I still provide space to roses and peonies, species that feed only our senses. 

The last peonies of the season

The urgency for organizing continues -- even just to reach the goals on Schneiderman's 1920 platform. But today, as the peonies fade and the roses bloom, I offer this tribute to the ongoing work of ensuring that all share life's glories: food and roses too!