--part1_901c7225.2459bd43_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
--part1_901c7225.2459bd43_boundary
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Disposition: inline
Return-Path: <renglish(a)centraltx.net>
Received: from
rly-yc01.mx.aol.com (
rly-yc01.mail.aol.com [172.18.149.33])
by
air-yc04.mail.aol.com (v59.4) with SMTP; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 06:59:45
-0400
Received: from
mail.centraltx.net (
mail.centraltx.net [208.135.247.48])
by
rly-yc01.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
with ESMTP id GAA06962 for <CCCharlie1(a)aol.com>;
Thu, 29 Apr 1999 06:59:44 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from
centraltx.net (
ppp1303.killeen.n-link.com [208.24.237.33])
by
mail.centraltx.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id GAA21343
for <CCCharlie1(a)aol.com>; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 06:00:29 -0500
Message-ID: <37283D7E.3A806B06(a)centraltx.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 06:07:46 -0500
From: Ron English <renglish(a)centraltx.net>
Reply-To: renglish(a)centraltx.net
Organization: Rocking C Ranch
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: "CCCharlie1(a)aol.com" <CCCharlie1(a)aol.com>
Subject: MOTHER'S DAY
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Dear Charlie,
This Mother's day will be just about five months since my own mother
departed this life, and it will be more than difficult.
Hope you find something in this for your own mother and for all the
women of the world...sisters, aunts, cousins, and all the women for whom
we hold a special place in our heart.
Best wishes, Ron.
The Origins Of Mother's Day
Evoke Its True Meaning
"My mother told me stories all the time... And in all of those stories
she told me who I was, who I was supposed to be, whom I came from, and
who would follow me... That's what she said and what she showed me in
the things she did and the way she lives."
- Paula Gunn Allen, in The Sacred Hoop
Back to Mother's Day Card
Mother's Day is celebrated by some as an obligatory observance, or
derided as being too commercial. nonetheless, many people are grateful
for a chance to express to their mothers -- and other women as well --
warm feelings and genuine appreciation.
And, as often as people are ambiguous in their attitudes toward Mother's
Day, they also are uncertain about its origins. Given the following
possibilities, how many of us could pick the right answer?
Mother's Day began:
In 1858, when Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker,
organized"Mother's Work Days" to improve the sanitation and avert deaths
from disease-bearing insects and seepage of polluted water.
In 1872, when Boston poet, pacifist and women's suffragist Julia Ward
Howe established a special day for mothers --and for peace-- not long
after the bloody Franco-Prussian War.
In 1905, when Anna Jarvis died. Her daughter, also named Anna, decided
to memorialize her mother's lifelong activism, and began a campaign that
culminated in 1914 when Congress passed a Mother's Day resolution.
The correct answer: All of the above.
Each of these women and all of these events have contributed to the
present occasion now celebrated on the second Sunday in May.
The cause of world peace was the impetus for Julia Ward Howe's
establishment, over a century ago, of a special day for mothers.
Following unsuccessful efforts to pull together an international
pacifist conference after the FrancoPrussian War, Howe began to think of
a global appeal to women
"While the war was still in progress," she wrote, she keenly felt the
"cruel and unnecessary character of the contest." She believed, as any
woman might, that it could have been settled without bloodshed. And, she
wondered, "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 cost?" Howe's version of Mother's Day, which served as an
occasion for advocating peace, was held successfully in Boston and
elsewhere for several years, but eventually lost popularity and
disappeared from public notice in the years preceding World War I.
For Anna Jarvis, also known as "Mother Jarvis," community improvement by
mothers was only a beginning. Throughout the Civil War she organized
women's brigades, asking her workers to do all they could without regard
for which side their men had chosen. And, in 1868, she took the
initiative to heal the bitter rifts between her Confederate and Union
neighbors.
The younger Anna Jarvis was only twelve years old in 1878 when she
listened to her mother teach a Sunday school lesson on mothers in the
Bible. "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial
mother's day," the senior Jarvis said. "There are many days for men, but
none for mothers."
Following her mother's death, Anna Jarvis embarked on a remarkable
campaign. She poured out a constant stream of letters to men of
prominence --President William Taft and former President Theodore
Roosevelt among them-- and enlisted considerable help from Philadelphia
merchant John Wannamaker.
By May of 1907 a Mother's Day service had been arranged on the second
Sunday in May at the West Virginia church where Mother Jarvis had
taught. That same day a special service was held at the Wannamaker
Auditorium in Philadelphia, which could seat no more than a third of the
15,000 people who showed up.
The custom spread to churches in 45 states and in Puerto Rico, Hawaii,
Mexico and Canada. The Governor of West Virginia proclaimed Mother's Day
in 1912; Pennsylvania's governor in 1913 did the same. The following
year saw the Congressional resolution, which was promptly signed by
President Woodrow Wilson.
Mother's Day has endured. It serves now, as it originally did, to
recognize the contributions of women. And Mother's Day, like the job of
"mothering," is varied and diverse. Perhaps that's only appropriate for
a day honoring the multiple ways women find to nurture their families,
and the ways in which so many have nurtured their communities, their
countries, and the larger world.
Reference: National Women's History Project.
--part1_901c7225.2459bd43_boundary--