Mother's Mother

May 13, 2006 6:35 PM

She had been sitting in her arm-chair, telling us a long, beautiful tale; and when it was finished, she said she was tired, and leaned her head back to sleep awhile. We could hear her gentle breathing as she slept; gradually it became quieter and calmer, and on her countenance beamed happiness and peace. It was as if lighted up with a ray of sunshine. She smiled once more, and then people said she was dead. [In honor and memory of our mothers.] Tons of stories by Hans Christian Andersen, from the main site Aesop Fables, and other cool stuff like "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum.
posted by sluglicker (5 comments total)

well, at least one other Mefi-ite has a sentimental streak...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:58 PM on May 13, 2006

Thanks for the link! I used to have a book of Aesop's Fables when I was a kid. I'll enjoy reading these.
posted by meringue at 9:19 AM on May 14, 2006

It's Mother's Day Again and We're Still at War.

Few Americans know that Mother’s Day was initially suggested by two peace-minded mothers, Julia War Howe, a long-forgotten 19th century anti-slavery activist and suffragette who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Anna Reeves Jarvis, mother of eleven, who influenced Howe and once asked her fellow Appalachian townspeople, badly polarized by the Civil War, to remain neutral and help nurse the wounded on both sides.

Howe had lived through the barbarism of the Civil War which led her to ask a question that’s as relevant today as it was in her time: “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the costs?” Mother’s Day, she insisted, “should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines.”...

On Mother’s Day 2006 nearly 2,400 American soldiers have already been killed, and many more have been wounded in body and mind, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis. They all had mothers.

posted by languagehat at 11:17 AM on May 14, 2006

And some of the killed were mothers.
posted by annieb at 2:28 PM on May 14, 2006

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered 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 voice of a 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 our 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 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.


- Julia Ward Howe

posted by brundlefly at 3:57 PM on May 14, 2006