With Brother Thomas, the women's guestmaster, occupied, I was welcomed by Judy, a motherly Scot who visits Pluscarden so often she's almost an honorary member of the community.
The "Sneetches", a people obsessed with stars on their bellies, is a tale with a gentle, funny message about racial prejudice; "Yertle the Turtle" is a parable about megalomania and dictatorship; the Lorax has an environmental moral; Horton, a motherly (male) elephant who hatches an egg, stresses "a person's a person no matter how small".
"We've exhausted everything," says Valentina Melnikova, the energetic, motherly chairwoman of the union.
They believe their nominee for Mr Conrad's seat, Heidi Heitkamp a motherly former state attorney-general turned director of Dakota Gas will pull off an upset victory by highlighting the Republicans' plans to shrink government and thin the safety net.
With her motherly demeanour, she has convinced the German public that she is doing the best she can in a bewildering situation, argues Mr Langguth.
She was experienced, able, attractive and reassuring in a motherly sort of way.
Ms Sheehy is a jolly, motherly presence who cares about men, and is worried that most of those she meets in her special focus groups seem to fall apart at 40.
Stern but motherly, she is India's most powerful figure.
Ms Kopacz is a pragmatic centrist, he says, with perhaps a bit more of a natural sensitivity than Mr Tusk.Although she sets out to present a motherly public persona, Ms Kopacz occasionally displays flashes of Thatcherite steel.
The men especially liked Eunice Rivers, a motherly black nurse who made them feel at home in the hospital.
Now she has been nominated for the very different motherly role of Dolores Solitano in "Silver Linings Playbook", a film about love and mental illness in Philadelphia written and directed by David O. Russell.Until a couple of years ago, Ms Weaver was more or less unknown outside Australia.
