Time Lapse/ flash back/flash forward the future of our past lives is always now.
"It is the worst of times. It is the best of times.
It is a far, far greater thing I do than I have ever done before."
(the first and last sentence of man authored Tale of Two Cities.)
A Tale of Two Mothers Days follows . .. . excerpted from the Woman Authored Tale
entitled This River of Courage, Generations of Women's Resistance and Action by
worldly wisewoman Pam McAllister.
Recalling Two Mother's Days
"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?" - Julie Ward Howe, 1870
Most histories of Mother's Day credit Philadelphia's devoted daughter Anna Jarvis
for its conception. In 1907, she proposed that the second Syunday of May be set
aside to honor mothers, reasoning that "The common possession of the living world
is a mother. Everyone has - or has had - a mother." . ..
There was, however, another Mother's Day, an earlier celebration based on an entirely
different premise. The day was the brainchild of Julia Ward Howe, who lived rather
unhappily in the shadow of her famour abolitionist-reformer husband, Samuel Gridley
Howe. In February, 1862, the Atlantic Monthly published her poem, The Battle
Hymn of the Republic" which, when set to a popular folk tune, became the semi-official song of the Union army during the Civil War and made Howe famous
overnight. After the Civil War, Howe became increasingly involved in the women's
suffrage movement.
In 1870 her life took a new turn. She was, that year, overcome by grief because
of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussion war. In her reminesences she wrote:
As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress,
I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cvruel and unnecessary character of the
contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one that
might easily have been settled without bloodshed.
The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere
in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they along
bear and know the cost?"
I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its
terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of
no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal
to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed.
Sitting at her desk in September 1870, Julia Ward Howe once again picked up her pen,
as she had so often in the past, but this time she wrote for an audience she had
never before addressed: the women of the western world (specifically, at first,
Christian women, though she would later modify her call to address women of all
religions). Because it has been lost to us these many years, it is included here
in its entirety:
AN APPEAL TO WOMANHOOD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
. . .. . from Page 76, This River of Courage by Pam McAllister, published by
New Society Publisherrs, Philadelphia, PA, and Gabriola Island, BC.
A Vocal Reading of this vitally world significant revised and amplified
URGENT APPEAL TO WOMANHOOD WORLDWIDE, as urgently relevant today at the dawning
of the 21st Century and New Millenium as when it was when it emerged as the
20th century "brainchild" of it's . .. . mental Mother, Julia Ward Howe, is
forthcoming and will replace this written excerpt as one in a series of . . .
Reclaiming Women's Voices, Women's Wisdom projects of Wisewomyn . . . Diva
Melody h'Art Rhapsody, Herself, Live and in person, a researcher of humanity's
too long lost Wisewoman archetype, personna and legacy.
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