happy post-mother's day

Just sharing a video Miss M and I made a few weeks ago. What she really wanted to do was shoot a make up tutorial video. On YouTube, what M loves to do most of all is watch the following kinds of videos:

1-Grown ups playing with Barbies and Elsa/Ana FROZEN dolls

2-Something called Seven Super Girls, which I think are kids whose parents have no idea they're filming whole worlds...in the family bathroom.

3-Make up tutorials. By girls who aren't even old enough to have jobs to buy this make up, and so who's giving it to them? And teaching them how to apply it? And helping them film themselves teach other children to apply it? And encouraging these other children to bug their mothers for make up? And throw temper tantrums when told they are too young for make up? And setting  up situations where children end up sneaking into their mother's make up and applying mascara in bizarre and crazy ways, and then attempting to completely deny it even though one entire eye is completely black with mascara because they don't have a frickin' clue what they're doing?

Number 1 is weird, Number 2 has me keeping an eye on all my own camera devices, but Number 3 is the vexation of my life right now. Also, monitoring her YouTube videos does keep me on my toes--I keep meaning to see if there's a way to filter that entire website. But I need to be able to toggle between Child Lock and Adult Free-For-All.

At any rate, here was my compromise--no make up or make up tutorials allowed, but we can shoot a video together, how's that. And since yesterday was Mother's Day, here you go--The Amy and Melissa Show:

And also I'd like to share this, the "Mother's Day Proclamation," because apparently (who knew?? Not THIS mother) Mother's Day was started as a call to unite women against war. You may not be a mother (or a father, for that matter) to a human child...maybe your child(ren) are pets. Or plants. Or you're someone's kick ass aunt or uncle. Or just the really cool neighbor next door with a lot (I mean a LOT) of patience for children (because children, notoriously, have NO boundaries or a sense of: Enough is ENOUGH). But we are all in this together, and we all need to protect one another. This is a hard rock to live on. Here you go, Mothers and Not-Mothers:

“Mother’s Day Proclamation”

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,

Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will 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, the 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 devastated 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 plough 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 solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

- Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe (27 May 1819 – 17 Oct 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet most famous as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Her “Mother’s Day Proclamation” was one of the early calls to celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States. Written in 1870, it was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.

The Proclamation was tied to Howe’s feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level. Today, the proclamation is included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.