Happy Mother's Day

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6358737.post-76590116772240829772008-05-11T06:54:00.000-07:002008-05-20T04:07:51.458-07:002008-05-20T04:07:51.458-07:00Happy Mother's Day** <a href="http://www.btselem.org/english/testimonies/20080507_killing_of_wafa_a_a_daghameh.asp">Samira's testimony to B'Tselem </a> <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9523.shtml">Three small kids bury their mother today in Gaza. </a> They spent the better part of last night locked into a room together, just after they saw the explosion of their front door that killed their mother, and observing soldiers cover her body with a rug. At 11 pm, after six and a half hours of taking care of her younger siblings in a locked room, the 12-year-old daughter Samira was let out and ran next door for help. Ironically, I read Julia Ward Howe's "Mother's Day Proclamation" immediately after reading about Samira and her mother, Majdi Abd al-Raziq al-Daghma. Mother's Day was meant to be a call for peace, for pacifism and laying down of arms: <blockquote>The "Mother's Day Proclamation" by Julia Ward Howe was one of the early calls to celebrate Mother's Day in the United States. Written in 1870, Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe's feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day Proclamation Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with 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, the 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 plough 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 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 someplace 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. </blockquote>Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09902338848408979253noreply@blogger.com