We’re just back from our daily walk to watch the sunrise from the beach in Kaaawa. It was a beautiful morning, just an edge of cool when we left the house, but that quickly faded as the sun appeared. After a cup or two of coffee, I’ll have to shift into gear and proceed with preparations for our special day. My mother’s 98th birthday is on Tuesday, and we’re celebrating it in conjunction with Mother’s Day, with a Honey-Glazed Ham, a nice birthday cake (I asked the Safeway clerk if she see’s many #98 cakes), my homemade potato salad, some flowers picked from our yard, a bottle of nice New Zealand white wine, and sundry additional yummies added by my sister, Bonnie. We’ll pack up our car and head over to my mom’s house mid-morning. Lot’s to do, and the cats aren’t going to be any help at all!

Mother’s Day begins in Kaaawa:

More for Mother’s Day…I’m sure most of you probably saw Laura Kacere’s column, “Radical History of Mother’s Day” that’s be flying around the past couple of days.

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

The Feminist Peace Network has posted the original Mother’s Day Proclamation. And there’s more history here (“The Founder of Mother’s Day Later Fought to Have It Abolished“).

From the Huffington Post, there’s something special about Mother’s Day this year:

In a state of shared disbelief, this nation learned that the leader of the free world had publicly announced his full support for the signature civil rights issue of our time: full recognition of the freedom to marry for all Americans, gay and straight alike. As the son of a same-sex couple from Iowa, and one of the first children born to an openly lesbian parent in the Midwest, it is with a sense of awestruck bewilderment that I realize I am now represented by a sitting U.S. president who publicly supports the marriage shared by my two moms, Jackie and Terry.

And, in case you missed it, from the Washington Post, “Obama is his mother’s son.”