This Week:

Quote of the Week

The Complex History of Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day Rally For Peace

Nygaard-Recommended Book Wins Prize

Greetings,

I worry that readers will think that I have “forgotten” the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq. Ha Ha Ha. I’m putting together some small case studies on the subject right now, and will present them when ready. Besides the fact that I don’t have them finished, I also think it is a good idea to back off for a bit and reflect before saying more. There is plenty more to say, and I’ll get to it as the weeks go on.

In the meantime, this week I offer a discussion of the history and meaning of the holiday that United Statesians call Mother’s Day. Thanks to Bill B for sending along the website that reminded me of this holiday. Since my mother died many years ago, I sometimes forget about this particular event.

I am rushing to get out this edition of the Notes before I go to “work” this morning (as if producing this weekly newsletter isn’t work!). Since it’s all about Mother’s Day, I want people to see it before they leave town to visit their mothers. So please forgive me if there are more than the usual number of typos and odd errors. The facts are all correct, it’s just the writing it all down that may have suffered. Or, maybe there aren’t any errors. I don’t even have time to look!

Well, the donations to Nygaard Notes are starting to come in via the internet. Thanks to all who have contributed through cyberspace! I am enjoying the novelty of these electronic contributions but, of course, they are no more important and valued than the many “old-fashioned” contributions that have been sent through the U.S. mail. Thank you, thank you, thank you! to all of you who have put your alternative media money where your mouths are.

Even though the spring 2003 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive is formally over, your contributions are always welcome. Who knows? If I get enough donations, maybe in the future I won’t have to rush production in order to make time to go to “work.”

‘Til next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

“The 19th century forerunners of our modern holiday were called mothers' days, not Mother's Day. The plural is significant: They celebrated the extension of women's moral concerns beyond the home... [The holiday] became trivialized and commercialized only after it became confined to ‘special’ nuclear family relations. The people who inspired Mother's Day had quite a different idea about what made mothers special. They believed that motherhood was a political force. They wished to celebrate mothers' social roles as community organizers, honoring women who acted on behalf of the entire future generation rather than simply putting their own children first.”

-- This is a composite quotation from two different sources, both written by teacher, historian, and author Stephanie Coontz. The first two sentences are from an editorial in the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of May 10, 1992, entitled “Mothers in Arms.” The rest of the quotation comes from Ms. Coontz’ wonderful book of the same year “The Way We Never Were: American Families & The Nostalgia Trap.”

The Complex History of Mother’s Day

On this occasion of the U.S. holiday called Mother’s Day, I’d like to encourage Nygaard Notes readers to gather with their mothers—or with anyone who’s ever had a mother—and read aloud one of the early Mothers’ Day proclamations. I recommend the one issued in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, which was a call to women around the world to gather in a “general congress...without limit of nationality...to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” Howe’s proclamation can be found all over the internet. Perhaps the most easily-printed version (with a thoughtful commentary attached) is at http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm.

Howe the Abolitionist

Julia Ward Howe is best known for writing the words to the song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” which, like millions of other children, I learned by heart in the public schools of the USA in the early 1960s. I never learned the lyrics which preceded the ones penned by Ms. Howe. Indeed, I don’t recall being told that there had been an earlier version of the song. That earlier version, with many variations, was known as “John Brown’s Body,” and was a popular song commemorating the raid by the radical white abolitionist John Brown and his band of 19 black and white men on the U.S. arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia in 1859. The raid ended with Brown being captured by Robert E. Lee’s troops and executed for treason.

Brown’s death came to be understood by many slaves and freedom-loving whites alike as martyrdom to the cause of abolition, and his life of service to the cause continues to inspire anti-racists around the globe. His near-success at Harper’s Ferry sowed terror in the hearts of many Southern slaveholders. His final speech during his trial is inspiring to read. Find it at http://www.nationalcenter.org/JohnBrown'sSpeech.html.

I’m glad I learned the Battle Hymn; it’s a stirring song that no doubt inspired the troops of the Union Army as they fought in the Civil War. But I can only speculate what difference it might have made in the life of a politically-minded white kid from rural Minnesota to learn a song glorifying—using poetic Christian images—a white martyr to the abolitionist cause, as the predecessor to the Battle Hymn did with lyrics like these:

“He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened ‘Old Virginny’ till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His soul is marching on!”

I connected the Battle Hymn with the Civil War—I’m sure I was told to do so—but I don’t recall being told that Julia Ward Howe was active in the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Free Soil Party (slogan: “Free soil, Free speech, Free labour, and Free men”), nor that she edited, with her husband Samuel Gridley Howe, the anti-slavery journal “Commonwealth.” It’s somewhat ironic that the poetic but arguably pro-war lyrics of this abolitionist poet came to completely supplant the overtly abolitionist lyrics of one of America’s best-known songs (it's ironic if you consider that the North's motivation for waging war was only secondarily about slavery, and primarily about preserving the Union). Without considerable help, a kid like me could never see this irony, and, like so many, I had no help in this regard.

Howe and Mothers’ Day

In 1870 Howe found herself horrified not only by the searing memory of the bloody Civil War, but also by stories of the ongoing war between Germany and France, the so-called “Franco-Prussian War.” I won’t go into the details of that war—which was a precursor to World War I, among other things—beyond commenting that it began with a campaign of “shock and awe” by the Germans, followed by unexpected resistance from the French, followed by ultimate victory on the part of the far-stronger German army, with the result that Germany collected immense wealth from France, along with the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. In her book REMINISCENCES, 1819-1899, Ms. Howe recorded her thoughts on that war as follows:

“When to the immense war indemnity the conquerors added the spoliation of two important provinces, indignation added itself to regret. The suspicion at once suggested itself that Germany had very willingly given a pretext for the war, having known enough of the demoralized condition of France to be sure of an easy victory, and intending to make the opportunity serve for the forcible annexation of provinces long coveted.”

It isn’t too hard to take these words from 1899 and imagine them spoken in 2003. Just substitute the nation “United States” for “Germany,” and the word “resources” for the word “provinces.”

“As I was revolving these matters in my mind,” Howe continued, “I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which 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 alone 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...”

Howe then was moved to issue her famous 1870 proclamation, which demanded, among other things, that “Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.” In 1872 Howe went to London to promote an international Woman's Peace Congress, with little success. As she put it, “The ladies who spoke in public in those days mostly confined their labors to the advocacy of woman suffrage, and were not much interested in my scheme of a world-wide protest of women against the cruelties of war.”

Back in the States, Howe initiated a Mothers’ Peace Day observance on the second Sunday in June. It was reportedly celebrated widely in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and other Eastern states until the turn of the century, all without the blessings of the state or federal governments.

Before Julia There Was Anna

It’s inspiring to recall Julia Ward Howe’s stirring call for peace as the origin of our modern “Mother’s Day” holiday, but it’s not the whole story. In 1858, twelve years before Howe published her call, a woman named Anna Reeves Jarvis initiated what she called “Mothers’ Work Days.” Clubs associated with these Mothers’ Days worked to improve sanitary conditions in the cities, raise money to supply medicines, food, and bottled milk to the poor, and to provide domestic services for ill women in her part of the Appalachian mountain region of West Virginia.

After Anna Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, campaigned to have a special day set aside for mothers. I’ll let historian Stephanie Coontz tell the rest of that story:

“[B]y this period, there was already considerable pressure to sever the personal meaning of motherhood from its earlier political associations. The mobilization of women as community organizers was the last thing on the minds of the prominent merchants, racist politicians, and anti-suffragist activists who, sometimes to Jarvis’s dismay, quickly jumped on the bandwagon. In fact, the adoption of Mother's Day by the 63rd Congress on May 8, 1914 represented a reversal of everything the nineteenth-century mothers' days had stood for....

“Politicians found that the day provided as many opportunities for self-promotion as did the Fourth of July. Merchants hung testimonials to their own mothers above the wares they hoped to convince customers to buy for other mothers. A day that had once been linked to controversial causes was reduced to an occasion for platitudes and sales pitches. Its bond with social reform movements broken, Mother's Day immediately drifted into the orbit of the marketing industry. The young Jarvis had proposed that inexpensive carnations be worn to honor one's mother. Outraged when the flowers began to sell for a dollar apiece, she attacked the florists as ‘profiteers’ and began a campaign to protect Mother's Day from such exploitation.”

After years of trying unsuccessfully to honor her mother’s vision, Anna Jarvis died poor and ill in 1948.

2003 Mother’s Day Rally For Peace!

In the spirit of Julia Ward Howe and her Mothers’ Peace Days of the century-before-last, a local group calling itself the Mother’s Day Rally For Peace Committee will be sponsoring—you guessed it!—a Mother’s Day Rally For Peace on Saturday, May 10th, at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis.

For more information, call Women Against Military Madness at 612-827-5364 or visit their website at http://www.worldwidewamm.org/>http://www.worldwidewamm.org/.

Nygaard-Recommended Book Wins Prize

I am very happy to announce that the important book “Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex,” has won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for 2003 in the “Current Interest” category. Readers may recall that I highly recommended this book in Nygaard Notes #196. I pitched it as an antidote to the mad ravings of people like my old pal State Representative Arlon Lindner and his ilk who somehow get elected to office and then attempt to legislate mandatory ignorance as a way to deal with human sexuality.

Minnesota’s current governor, Tim Pawlenty, an ideological ally of Mr. Lindner, harshly criticized the University of Minnesota Press last year for publishing the book, asking them to withdraw it from the market. Typically in the case of attacks like this, he hadn’t read the book. (You’ll find more on Arlon in these pages in the next week or two, and more about Mr. Pawlenty in coming weeks, as well.)

The prize-winning book did not appear by magic, but my failure to mention the author’s name along with my recommendation may have made it seem so. I had the pleasure of hearing author Judith Levine address a group in the Twin Cities a few months ago, and I salute her principled courage in the face of withering, slanderous attacks on her work by many on the religious right and elsewhere. My apologies to this brave writer for not acknowledging her sooner. Thanks to faithful reader and fellow Writers Union member Martha, who pointed out my rather serious oversight.

A paperback edition of “Harmful To Minors” will be published in September by Thunder's Mouth Press, with an afterword by Levine about the attacks and her response to them. That should be a good one.