Heroes Not Zombies

I’m currently reading Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant “Orwell’s Roses”, and, in that book she describes the origin of the phrase “Bread and Roses”. This isn’t a phrase I was familiar with but it seems to have originated with Helen Todd, the early 20th Century campaigner for Womens’ Suffrage in the USA. Helen Todd wrote that women’s votes would ……

go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child….

Rebecca’s chapter on this phrase outlines its history from that time, and how it spread to other countries and languages right up to the present day, including “Pan y Rosas”, a feminist-socialist organisation which originated in Argentina.

I love this phrase and the idea which underpins it. I love how it captures the human needs for, on the one hand material security and nurture, and, on the other hand, for the unquantifiable….beauty, joy, pleasure and learning.

The photo I’m sharing with you today is from a fountain in Zurich. I was there last March. Starting during the pandemic, I believe, people started to fill the fountains with roses in Zurich in the run up to Easter, as a symbol of hope. They’ve carried on that tradition every year since. Here’s another photo I took when I was there.