The unbearable agony of a mother about to have her baby torn from her arms in this detail from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The image has haunted me ever since I saw it on our visit to the chapel nearly twenty years ago. It was painted by Giotto di Bondone and is as relevant today as when he painted it over seven hundred years ago.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” -Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849
thechangingpalette 
This image could have been painted today. There is no word loud enough to express what I am feeling now. At least in those times, we did not have social media and info at our finger prints. What happened in another town happened in another world. But now .. What can we possibly do? I feel that the more we point at Trump’s cruel policy, the more popular he becomes. I read yesterday that he was becoming a reference, a model for some European leaders. There must be a way and I have been wondering what I could do, apart from signing petitions and sending a few bucks to the lawyers of those migrants. What can we do at our little level ?…
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Thanks so much for your moving comment Estelea. I know as a mother of beautiful children you feel it in your soul, like all mothers across the globe. We must protest in whatever way we can and make our anguish known through word, image or deed. This is just the beginning I feel. Take care.
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Powerful and timely.
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We must not sit mute. We must not sit on our hands. However futile whatever we do or say may feel it is the combined force of all our words and all our actions that will bring about the end of this monstrous cruelty. I will not be gagged, I will not be tied and I will continue to speak to whomever cares to listen or not listen that there are some things that absolutely must never ever be allowed to happen. Ripping children from their mothers (and fathers) in the name of anything is unthinkable. That this is a NEW policy is even more appalling. How this abhorrent regime can persist in believing it is part of the ‘First World’ is risible. Third world countries act with more humanity than this barbaric bunch of baboons. I refuse to believe that with the combined will of the masses that there is not a way of reversing not only this policy but this tide of inhumanity that appears to be sweeping many countries and restoring some semblance of civility and human kindness.
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