I just read a bit about people honoring soldiers today because it is Mothers' Day.
How about if we honor them by not cutting the VA budget by $2.4 billion? How about if we honor them by not putting them into battle shorthanded with an unclear mission? How about honoring them by keeping our promises for benefits (only 16 percent collect GI Bill education benefits even though twice that many have money deducted from their tiny paychecks for that purpose -- the rest lose that money). And more... But now, some words from Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation in 1870. Show of hands, please -- how many of us realized that Mother's Day is an anti-war holiday, inspired by the carnage of the Civil War (or War Between the States, if you prefer). --- Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, "Our husbands shall 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 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 bosom of the devasted 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 out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God. --- God bless JoEllen Canning and every other mother who has lost a son in war. Nick -- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
