20 May 2006
Post Partum Exultation after Mother’s Day
Nanci Olesen
Thanks for a great day on Mother’s Day. The weather held. It didn’t rain. Over 300 people: women, men and children, attended the MOMbo Mother’s Day Celebration at Lake Harriet’s beautiful Bandshell.
My favorite part was…. EVERYTHING. I loved the pedestal. We had a pedestal provided by MOMbo prop master and visionary Martha Sandberg. A serious pedestal. Mothers stood on it and had their picture taken. Children knelt adoringly, looking up at their mothers.
 The Brass Messengers played the MOMbo theme song. The Twin Cities Women’s Choir sang “A Mother’s Prayer” by Connie Kaldor and “Cradle Me” by someone whose name I can’t remember. We plan to put up the recording of the whole event in the next week or so. EVERYMOM (Amy Finch) showed up, a super heroine, with her son, MEGAKID (Max Finch Raymond), to reward a frazzled mom (Sasha Aslanian) for facing the relentlessness of motherhood.
And The Mother’s Day Proclamation For Peace, written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, was read by Sally Wingert and Isabell Monk O’Connor.
Linda Breitag led us in an anthem she wrote: “We are still marching, and we are strong…” It’s right here: Mother’s Anthem.
Check out some pictures of the day. And put the date on your calendar: next year “A MOMbo Mother’s Day Celebration” will return to the Lake Harriet Bandshell on Sunday, May 13, 2007.
Not to mention that MOMbo aired on 40 stations on that glorious weekend. Check out the “carriage.”
I want to tell you about MOMS RISING. Everyone is highlighting it on their websites and blogs. Sit up straight and read this (excerpted from their press release):
Motherhood in America is at a critical juncture. As women's roles evolve, more women than ever are in the workforce and more children than ever are raised without a stay-at-home parent. At the same time, public and private policies that affect parenting and the workplace remain largely unchanged. The result is that parents, and mothers in particular, struggle to balance the needs of their children with the demands of their jobs. In The Motherhood Manifesto, Joan Blade and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner argue that it's time for broad change in America's attitude towards working mothers. In both public and private sectors, radical shifts are needed to make parenting and the workplace compatible. Blade and Rowe-Finkbeiner identify the key obstacles facing working mothers today, and propose concrete solutions.
MomsRising.org is a new grassroots online organization founded by Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner with the goal of championing core motherhood and family issues in political, social, and economic spheres. The intent of this new organization, modeled on MoveOn.org, is to reach millions of women who have not previously been active, to educate people about the problems facing mothers and families, and to provide avenues for common sense solutions to those problems. MomsRising.org hopes to ignite a major movement that brings real, necessary change to the lives of families.
And now, go check it out.
And like we always say on MOMbo,
Love your kids.
Be good to yourself.
Now let’s get busy changing the world.
—Nanci Olesen
producer and host, MOMbo: 1990-2007
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