Stars, Stripes, & Harriet

"So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women." Harriet Beecher Stowe

So, Harriet is best remembered by those who still do as the author of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin,

in the sunny South was not so very sunny for the sons & daughters of Africa who happened to be

enslaved by the denizens of Dixie. It's said that President Lincoln greeted her as "the little lady who

started this great war.'

In any case, today's the anniversary of the day in 1777 when the gents at the Second

Continental Congress adopted an official for a nation still in the making. 34 years later, June 14, 1811,

Harriet was born into the great and influential Beecher family, a family of preachers and educators.

And too, there's a snapshot in my family's album of a cake my mom baked some 60 years ago to

commemorate the blind date she had on this day in 1947. She went out with this skinny Coast Guard

veteran of another great war. Two months + a day later my future mom & dad [hot for each other, big

time] married one another. Anyway, it was probably on this day in 1948, Mom iced and decorated her cake

with the words June 14 The Day We Met. Before they cut into it they took its picture, so proud and happy

they were. A fine day for flying the Flag, for Harriet & the rest of us.