Just FYI for the weekend - Mother's Day was started as a day for PEACE.

[Lex]

In case it comes up this weekend . . .

Mother’s Day was originally designated as a day to inspire people to work for peace.

It was conceived after wars at home and abroad by American abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe. Besides initiating the tradition of Mother’s Day, Howe is best known as the author of the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

As a pacifist during the Civil War, she witnessed the devastating effects of the conflict through her work with widows and orphans.

In 1870 she wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a call to women to oppose war and to convene to promote peace and be the architects of their family’s — and their own — political futures.

She presented it at international peace conferences in London and Paris , where she lamented the atrocities of not only the American Civil War, but also the Franco-Prussian War.

Howe envisioned the first “Mother’s Day” as a time for women to gather, grieve and determine a peaceful solution to war.

http://www.rediscovermothersday.org/history.asp

The text of her Proclamation, 1870, still moving & relevant today:

Mother's Day Proclamation
penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

[bobbolink]

1. Absolutely! Thanks for posting her Proclamation!

I thought it was only us old hippies who remembered.... :hi:

[bonito]

2. K&R n/t

[Lex]

3. kicking for peace

and for Moms.

[Apinionated]

4. Thanks Lex.

nt

[Lex]

5. You're quite welcome.

:hi: