Dear World (and by “world” I mean the 14 people out there who still read me),

So. So, so, so.

It is Sunday, January 4th, 2009.

We have a new president moving into the White House pretty soon.

Things are a mess in Gaza. Israel, I would like to ask you: While the rest of us are talking “hope” and “change” and “substance” in the new year, why do you feel the need to kill others? Please stop now. Obama seems to be pretty pro-Israel, pro-hawk, yes? Wanting to hunt down Bin-Laden and all. Maybe Israel is wanting to get in a few punches now, just in case they’re not allowed to later?

Unfortunately, as hopeful as I am about the new American administration, I think Israel is going to continue to be allowed to do whatever the hell they want to do. Israel = bully.

Why is it that while our nation’s schools are focused on policies of no-bullying, no physical violence, no verbal, sexual or mental abuse, no murder, certainly, the grown-ups can’t follow suit? Do as I say not as I do, aiiiiight?

The year my daughter started kindergarten, one of the first-graders wore a button everywhere that said

PUNCHING

with a black line drawn through it.

“Who gave you that, K?” I asked him.

He was all, aw shucks, smiley. “My teacher.”

Smart teacher.

No punching. Just love. And hope for a better world.

I have been meditating, writing in my journal and studying every day. It has helped with the chaos.

After a long, sometimes bumpy winter break (ice, snow, rain, snow, snow, sunshine, flooding, ice), we are heading back to school and work tomorrow. I’m thinking 6 a.m. should be pretty fun, especially since I’ve been sleeping until 9, 10, 10:30 a.m. every day for almost three weeks. Whatever it takes, that’s what I’m saying.

I saw on the news that the Estacada Library underwent a ton of damage (to books, computers, building) during the most recent bout of flooding. If you have a few dollars to spare, I know they would appreciate it.

Estacada Public Library
825 NW Wade
Estacada, OR 97023

peace,

wm

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Hockey God is International Stud.

But you already knew that.

First, the Starbucks bloggers are all abuzz over him. So you knew who had to be next, don’t you?

That’s right. The French, they love my husband. (Or, would you prefer it translated?)

Of course the French love Steve. ?Por que no? Oh, wait. That’s Spanish. But say it out loud and it sounds the same in French.

What’s not to love, for reals? All of this coffee and love and international patter reminds me of the Planet Nomadics, when they visited last summer. They stopped by for my birthday, and Elliot missed the singing (in French and English) and candles.

“They sang en Franzosisch!” I told him.

He looked at me, perplexed, “They sang in German?”

Ba-da-BUMP! Ha ha ha ha heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Happy Monday, y’all.

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that’s all.

wm

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I am not fond of propaganda. I am not fond of people telling me that I should hate and hate some more when you know all I want to do, even in my darkest, saddest moments, is LOVE and LOVE SOME MORE.

I want that love spread around. I want us out of Iraq. I want people to stop hurting each other, killing each other, with our words, bombs and guns. Those of you who are not in the United States, you will please remember that many of us are against America’s war against Iraq. When I first heard the news on Sept. 11th, 2001, my thoughts went in this order:

1) That can’t just have happened.
2) It couldn’t have been an attack, it was an accident. It was a freakish, hideous accident
3) It was an attack.
4) Now America will have to “get back” at someone. Now Bush and his cronies will want to lash out, bomb civilians, kill everyone they can.
5) No, they won’t.
6) They can’t.
7) They’ll learn from this. They’ll turn the other cheek.
8) No, they won’t.

So for the Oregonian, our “paper of record,” to include a hate-mongering DVD in the Sunday paper… this is just as horrible to me as knowing how German-Americans and Japanese-Americans were treated here in the U.S., during the Second World War.

You can tell me a lot of things, but you cannot tell me to hate.

Here is an extremely moving video that Portland, Oregon, radio host Opio Osokoni put together of the protest outside the Oregonian. Portland political activist Anne Trudeau and several others are interviewed. In the words of Portland blogger Terry Olson:

“Any doubt that the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West isn’t an endorsement of McCain should be dispelled by the fact that its newspaper distribution occurred primarily in swing voting states.”

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“It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality.”

– Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

The kids and I have had a great couple of weeks, swimming, celebrating birthdays, staying up ’til midnight. On Thursday we actually made it to the park to play and have free lunch. Yes, free lunch. Oh, free lunch, how I love thee. (more…)

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“There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles
She came
There’s blood on the streets, it’s up to my knee
She came
Blood on the streets in the town of Chicago
She came
Blood on the rise, it’s following me
Think about the break of day
She came and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair
She came
Blood in the streets runs a river of sadness
She came
Blood in the streets it’s up to my thigh
She came
Yeah the river runs down the legs of the city
She came
The women are crying red rivers of weepin’
She came into town and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair
Indians scattered on dawns highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind
Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of phantastic l.a.
Blood streams her brain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it’s up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it’s following me”

“Peace Frog”
The Doors

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Event: Rally and march to Shut Down Guantanamo Bay Prison
Date: Friday, January 11, 2008
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: Pioneer Courthouse Square, SW Broadway & SW Yamhill, downtown Portland

Contacts:
PPRC (503) 344-5078 pprc at riseup.net

Peace and Justice Works (503) 236-3065 pjw at pjw.info

Portlanders to Rally and March to Shut Down Guantanamo Bay Prison Action in Solidarity with International Efforts Friday, January 11, 2008, 5 PM, Pioneer Courthouse Square

Local peace and justice groups are joining an international call to action to shut down the U.S. prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this Friday, January 11, 2008. The local action will take place beginning at the SW corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square, SW Broadway and Yamhill, in downtown Portland, before a march begins at approximately 5:15 PM.

Over 300 people have been held at Guantanamo since 2002, most without access to legal help, and many exposed to harsh conditions that many consider torture. In February, 2006, the National Journal wrote an investigative piece that showed: “Some of … the terrorists, the trainers, the financiers, and the battlefield captures — are indeed at Guantanamo. But National Journal’s
detailed review of government files on 132 prisoners who have asked the courts for help, and a thorough reading of heavily censored transcripts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals conducted in Guantanamo for 314 prisoners, didn’t turn up very many of them. Most of the ‘enemy combatants’ held at Guantanamo — for four years now — are simply not the worst of the worst of the terrorist world.

“Many of them are not accused of hostilities against the United States or its allies. Most, when captured, were innocent of any terrorist activity, were Taliban foot soldiers at worst, and were often far less than that. And some, perhaps many, are guilty only of being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time. And much of the evidence — even the classified evidence —
gathered by the Defense Department against these men is flimsy, second-, third-, fourth- or 12th-hand. It’s based largely on admissions by the detainees themselves or on coerced, or worse, interrogations of their fellow inmates, some of whom have been proved to be liars.”-1

Witness Against Torture has declared January 11, the six years anniversary of the first prisoners arriving at Guantanamo, an International Day of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo. In Washington, DC, they will be holding a demonstration at the National Mall followed by a procession to the Supreme Court. Actions are currently planned in 30 cities, including New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, London, Paris and elsewhere.

Local groups organizing the Friday rally include Peace and Justice Works (PJW), Portland Peaceful Response Coalition (PPRC) and Women in Black. PJW and PPRC echo the national call for participants to wear orange t-shirts, armbands or other orange clothing on January 11th to mark the date.

Endorsers of the national action include Center for Constitutional Rights, Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters League and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Check here for up-to-date details on the international actions.

For local information call Peace and Justice Works at 503-236-3065 or Portland Peaceful Response Coalition at 503-344-5078.

1–”Empty Evidence” By Corine Hegland, National Journal Friday, Feb. 3, 2006

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I dreamt about Benazir Bhutto this morning. National Public Radio got all mixed up in my dreams. Bhutto was with me — we were putting on make-up in the bathroom. In this dream, Steve and I were living where we always live in my dreams — some kind of huge family compound, with lots of rooms and mazes and a huge courtyard with lots of trees and plants.

(Our family friend, A, moved to Amman, Jordan a few years ago, to be with her husband’s family. My “dream home” is how I imagine her family’s home looks, I suppose. I’ve never given it much thought until now, this dream house/compound that always stars in my dreamworld.)

Benazir Bhutto was putting on her eyeliner. She was very beautiful, and very much alive, but she was preparing herself for her funeral. (I thought, You can do that? Why doesn’t everyone do that? How clever she is.)

“Why did this happen this way?” she asked me.

I told her, “I don’t know.”

“It did not have to happen this way,” she said.

I told her, “I know. I’m so sorry.”

And she walked out the door.

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