I just got an email from my dear Mother.

She was reminiscing about Moratorium Day, 1969.

For those of you here too young to remember, Moratorium Day was a National Day of Reflection on the war in Southeast Asia.

My Sister was going to High School in a little town on the Coastal Bend of Texas, Bay City, a miserable place if ever there was one.

My Mother and Sister made up a bunch of black crepe armbands and my Sister took them to school on Moratorium Day and handed them out to her antiwar friends and anyone else who would wear them.

Every one of them got suspended for a few days.

The chickenshit little Principal phoned my mother to express shock at the fact that a family such as ours would support some commie antiwar effort such as Moratorium Day. Asked my Mother to come up to the school so they could talk about it.

Keep in mind that my Mother is something else, my friends always had mad crushes on her - beautiful, size 0, fiery red hair, the whole package. Just about everyone in that town knew who she was.

Later, I heard that the entire administration of the school was there when my Mother walked in wearing a black dress, black hose, and black shoes, bag, and veil.

Wearing a black crepe armband on her left arm.

My Mother always has been and always will be the coolest person I have ever known.

:hi:

She was the Terror of Silicon Valley Suburbia. lol

To our moms. :toast:

ginbarn and I love your mom already. :loveya:

I was squatting in a bunker on the southern perimeter of Long Binh Post ... my M16 locked and loaded ... wondering if I really wanted to live.

An existential time. :crazy:

Little did I suspect that exactly one month later I'd be "back on the block." :crazy: :crazy:

Would say thank you but not sure how you feel about your time in service and battle. Dumb ass wars....

I think that is the one where the mom shocked them all? My mother was one of those that didn't fit the mold of the Cleaver family, to say the least. I was raised in Calif., there must be something in the water.

My kids and their kids tend to be strong minded. This trait seemed to skip me but showed up in the next generations. Good kids, just don't go along with the crowd. They are also Democrats!! That I did accomplish.

My dad adored that song.

I'm a couple of years too young to recall Moratorium Day. But having grown up in Palo Alto, I can say that it was nothing one would have been expelled over.

No surprise :hi:

Give her hugs from DU when next you meet.

But she was always extremely supportive of me.

The drug addiction part bothered her, however. But she never gave me any grief about it.

Her attitude was, All in Good Time.

In fact here's to all our moms.

My mom served as a nurse in WWII and later taught us all to ride horses. She was a free thinker for her time, more than my dad, an Oklahoma farm boy was sometimes prepared for.

My mother was an unapologetic opponent of the Vietnam war and the year my brother (her youngest) spent in Vietnam destroyed her. Her hair went completely white in the span of a year.

She became very cynical after we pulled out of Vietnam and spent the rest of her life as a libertarian in complete opposition to government policies of any kind.

My sister's death after being thrown from a horse in 1987 further embittered her.

My mom never suffered fools gladly and I believe she passed her attitude along to me. For that, more than anything else, I thank her and I miss her to this day.

to the sounds of Jefferson Airplane, or just renamed Starship.

unless of course that was the second moratorium a year later. who can remember after all the afghani green stuff?