Domestic day yesterday: changed our bed, went to the laundromat to wash the quilt (I'm always afraid I'll overload the washer with the king-sized bedding), and got more things assembled to donate to the thrift store.
Niece Eileen, wife of nephew Tim, sent an e-mail noting that Mothers' Day was originally promoted by Julia Ward Howe to rally women for peace. Her hope for that failed, but later, Anna Jarvis picked up the idea to recruit women to improve sanitary conditions. It was her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, who finally got Mothers' Day into law in 1907. (It's remarkable to me that my mother was 5 years old then.) By that time, the day was meant to simply honor deceased mothers. Of course, it evolved into a day for all mothers, but mainly to add to the profits of florists, candy-makers, and restaurant owners.
Julia's poem urging women to stand for peace can be found on About: Women's History and is pretty grandiose, in the spirit of the day. It starts "Arise then...women of this day," and goes on to ask wives to reject "our husbands reeking with carnage" (after they've been at war) and to strive for "the means...whereby the great human family can live in peace." Of course, J.W.H. wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which soldiers sang marching into war, but if I remember correctly, she wrote that as a hymn and its meaning was good versus evil in an abstract, not a concrete sense. Will check on this.
Now here's something interesting about the "Dissent...patriotism" quote I mentioned yesterday: I assumed it was from a founding father--Jefferson or Franklin or somebody--but discovered that it's been regularly misattributed in that direction. According to information I found, it was actually coined either by the president of the ACLU in 1991 or by a historian named Howard Zinn in 2004! Wow, interesting.
Now, here's a quote of which I do know the source: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." That's a dynamite assertion and was written by Sinclair Lewis, probably in the twenties or thirties.