Tomorrow

Quoth wikipedia: "In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British version of Mother's Day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war...Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors...Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States."

That last bit is no joke. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to work at the Family Feedbag, too, which means that I'll spend the live-long day watching various mothers and their supporters file through the buffet lines in their Sunday best, while the Muzak machine churns out instrumental versions of "I Want Your Sex" and "Candle In The Wind." By the way, who knew that Mother's Day originally began as an anti-war effort? The apple's fallen far from that tree.