Yesterday, Judy and I went to the local United Methodist Church where they were holding a regional women's social justice conference. One of the focus groups was about Women in Black. The leader of the group was a wonderful woman who is way more knowledgeable about Women in Black than I am, even though she never stood in a WIB vigil before now.

Fifteen Methodists, plus Judy and me, stood on a corner near the church. We were in an area of town that is not as new and suburban as the area of our weekly vigil. What a difference less than 4 miles makes! The response was chaotic - horns and yells of support - 99% positive. How fun!

I was a little tempted to suggest that we move our weekly vigil to this other intersection, since the drivers are so much more ALIVE.

But I think that the sleeping drivers need us more.

I really believe that most Americans want an end to this war.

And Methodist women are great!


OneGoodMove has a great clip of Bill Maher. "New Rule: America must stop bragging that its the greatest country on earth and start acting like it."

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Carve your own pumpkin here.

(Thanks to Barbara)

Marshall Thompson is getting near the end of his 500 mile walk across Utah. I hadn't read his journal for a few days, so just now caught up. The entry below meant a lot to me. Go to A Soldier's Peace to read more about him and his walk.

DAY 16
October 19, 2006

I thought the walk might be over today. Yesterday, my wife found a lump on our 13-month-old daughter’s neck. She took her to the doctor and they thought it might be cancer. An ultrasound today made it seem even more like cancer, so Kristen took Eliza to a specialist this evening. Thankfully, he said her blood count doesn’t look like cancer. She’ll be treated with an antibiotic for tens days. If there’s no improvement, the doctors will remove the lump and do a biopsy. Although it now appears that she will be fine, all day I couldn't help but contemplate the worst.

I called Kristen and told her I thought I should come home. But Kristen is stronger and smarter than I am and she said I should keep walking until we know for sure what’s going on. I agreed, but I still felt guilty. I wasn’t there for Eliza’s first 11 months of life. Now I’m not home to comfort and help my wife during this trial.

According to some statistics Kristen found, only one out of three infants survive leukemia, the kind of cancer we were worried Eliza might have. As I walked today, I contemplated the real possibility of losing my daughter. I couldn’t help but make some comparisons.

For instance, although there is a slight possibility that Kristen and I might have had to say goodbye to our daughter this year, there have already been over 70 couples who have had to say goodbye to their children this month because of the war in Iraq. As I worried about my child, I knew that there were, on average, three families who lost a son or daughter in Iraq today. Who knows how many thousands of Iraqi parents have lost their children?

Another observation struck me. When someone dies from cancer, or a car wreck, or a farm accident, or anything else, we mourn them, we eulogize them, we honor them. But we don’t assume that they died for us or for our freedoms. When soldiers and civilians die in Iraq, some feel they must attach meaning and purpose to the loss of life or else they will not have honored the fallen properly. But the truth is we can honor those who have died without honoring the war that took them.

I’ve received a few e-mails saying that I am disgracing those who have died in Iraq because I’m saying the Iraq war is wrong. The e-mails conclude that if the war wasn't for freedom, then the fallen soldiers must have died for nothing. To those who want to believe in this war, this is an extremely offensive idea. However, good people die everyday in a thousand different ways. They don’t die for any cause or for glory, they just die because it’s the fate of all mortality. There is no dishonor in this.

I’m praying with all the energy of my heart that the antibiotics will stop the growth on my little daughter’s neck. But if my daughter died, I would still love her and honor her, even though her passing would not protect or save me from anything. I’ve begun to think that it’s offensive that we feel we can’t love and honor fallen soldiers unless we attach a personal value to their death. “They died for our freedoms. They died to protect us.”

It’s been a long day, and I wanted to go home so much. I’m going to take my wife’s advice, however, and keep walking. I'm so thankful that Eliza's lump doesn't appear to be cancerous. When I think of the painful emotions that Kristen and I contemplated today, my heart breaks for those who must face them in reality. If we all felt the loss of life in Iraq like the parents of the fallen, we would demand peace. We would have peace.

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The hardest part is the mind. It's the little monkey guy living in there that makes things a little difficult.

Leading up to yesterday, the mind was NOT my friend - it was trying to put the fear of death in me over just a short fast.

I haven't eaten yet. What's it been now?... something like 40 hours? Now I feel like I could fast forever. Yesterday, the mind wanted to go to the fridge when I wasn't even hungry. I had to remind that old monkey that eating was not on the agenda for the day. But today, there is no urgency to eat.

I have been contemplating how much time I have spent in fear and anticipation of the future. The lead-up to this fast is only one of thousands of examples. Missing the NOW moment, while living in what I perceive my future will be like. As I write this, I feel a deep sadness at present moments missed. Hmmmm. Sobering.

Four years ago, three nuns were arrested for entering a missile silo and spilling their blood in order to send a message that it is not okay for our country to house over 10,000 nuclear missiles. They each served plus or minus three years in prison for their actions. Now a judge is threatening them with more prison time, because they won't pay fines that the government can use for war-making.

You can read more about what other ploughshare people are doing here.

Thinking about my Muslim friends. Today they celebrate Eid after participating in a month of fasting... EID MUBARAK!


Today I fast for the killers.

The death of our 2800th soldier in Iraq is the motivation for my fast, but I will not eat today so that I might get a taste - the only kind of taste that I'll get today ;-) - of suffering, knowing that there is always some kind of suffering that stimulates the need for one to kill another.

My resistance in the build-up to this fast was due to my fear of feeling uncomfortable from hunger. A funny thing about that: I almost don't need to fast in order to experience a small bite (there I go with another "eating" analogy!) of discomfort - the thought of one day without food was enough to give me two days of suffering as my mind struggled with its aversion to this process.

It's only 9:45 a.m., and this body and mind are already having their little temper tantrums, because they think that emptiness is good for chocolate wrappers, but not for them.

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If only a handful of our "leaders" had kids included in the number above, I wonder if things would be different.

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I can't believe that we are already to the number 2794. That's how many U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Eighty-one have died already this month. I can't believe that Americans and Iraqis are dying every day like this. For what???

I have been fasting for 36 hours each time the number reaches another 100. I find myself resisting the idea of fasting again. I don't want to. It's such a small thing to do - nothing compared to fighting in war. It won't stop the war. But taking a day to suffer a little, and allowing that discomfort to remind me of the violence being done - well, that was my intention when I made this commitment months ago. It's just that my attachment to the comfort of a full belly is really coming up for me now

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Standing with Women in Black yesterday, I witnessed one of those inevitable childhood experiences of life. A restaurant sits directly across the street from where we stand. Evidently a kid got a helium balloon there, because I saw a turquoise balloon take off from the parking lot. I imagined the kid feeling all disappointed that his/her balloon was flying into the sky. If this kid was like a lot of kids, he/she probably asked that his/her parents do something to get the balloon back. I experienced the sadness of having a loved, beautiful balloon flying to a place where no one can get it. The knowledge that there was no going back.

All it takes is one small break in awareness, and we let go of the balloon - NOTHING CAN FIX IT! Done.

I watched the balloon going up and up until I could no longer see it. I wondered how high they go. Do they get to a point where the change in atmosphere pops them and then they fall back to earth? Someone reading this may know the answer. I have never seen a balloon go past the window of a plane I was in. I have never been standing outside when, splat!, a dead balloon fell on my head.

Anyway, as I stood, I pondered impermanence. I thought of all of the lessons we get in impermanence as we grow up. Balloons flying away; the death of pets and loved ones, losing things... Losses can make us hold on tighter or lose trust in the safety of the world. Or they can help us appreciate whatever is before us while it's there and teach us that real freedom (not the kind that is defined by the people around us right now) is not found in holding on.

Okay, I heard myself.

Preparing to let go of my desire for a full belly, I am grateful for the food that I will eat today, and I start to release the tight hold on that balloon.

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Cafe Press

Today as I was driving home on a four-lane street, I watched a van almost cream an SUV in front of me. The van driver wanted to switch lanes, and he didn't see the SUV, so he just... well, he just started changing lanes - toward Mr. SUV. Mr. SUV moved over as far as he could, getting very intimate with the curb, and then skidded to a stop. Fortunately, Mr. Van realized what was going on before he hit Mr. SUV.

I was very interested in finding out what would happen next. Would the SUV driver flip the other guy off? When we all got stopped at the stoplight, would he get out and yell at the other guy?

No.

When we stopped at the stoplight, Mr. SUV hesitated for a moment and looked to see who was driving the van. That was it.

Thank you!

I love men like that!

I had to write this.

I am sure that these things happen every day.

But they never get in the paper.

Keith Olberman says it so well. An oasis in the desert.

Thanks to One Good Move.

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Free Hugs

If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for?

If it doesn't make you smile, write me and 'splain how that could happen.

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I remember that, during my high school years, I would sit in my room on cold snowy days (like today), listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album. Did you know that George died believing that his great album never reached higher than #4 on the charts in Great Britain? Because of a postal strike, the hand-written records of sales were not tabulated and no official album charts were published. Reviewers have now changed the records to show that All Things Must Pass was number one in England for eight weeks in 1971.

Just thought you might like to know that. ;-)

Here's George, singing his very wise song. Maybe I needed this today:
All Things Must Pass

And another beautiful song that we need to hear:
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

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A week ago today, I wrote that the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq had risen from 2748 to 2753 in the previous two days of the Eyes Wide Open exhibit. Today, one week later, the death toll is now at 2782. And W still refuses to attend one funeral, still refuses to allow us to see the coffins of the men and women who have given their life for his dreams of power.

I have no way of knowing how many Iraqis have been killed in the same period of time, but it has been a very violent week. In Balad, during the last five days, 95 people have died in "sectarian slaughter".

Meanwhile, Americans are "anxious and frustrated" over the state of our foreign relations and our policies. And no one in D.C. is listening...

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Certainly not in my hands...

I am having a hard time posting today. I have started a few times, but I just can't get it right. I am pretty much speechless. It is not surprising that W would sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but still, it makes me sick. I am watching our country sink down into what I (and others) perceive as a state of fascism, and I used to never think that this would happen in my lifetime.

There's a child-like part of me that has always believed that the U.S. would do the right thing - eventually, at least. Oh, I am so embarrassed to admit that. We have never owned up to any of the horrible mistakes and things that we have done - Vietnam or any of the coups that we have instigated all over the world - so I have no evidence that we are a country of integrity. A child's wishful thinking???

I know, I know... if you don't like it here, go somewhere else. Actually, that's not a bad idea! As long as the "somewhere else" doesn't have any resources that the U.S. wants to grab.

So all of this is going on in my mind as the first snow of the season falls in Denver; a big, fat, wet snow that is weighing down the leaf-covered branches of the trees. I find myself getting all attached - hoping that the snows don't cause the honkin' big cottonwood trees by my house to lose huge spears of branches all over the place. We need moisture so badly, and I am wanting "just enough moisture to help, but not enough to cause tree limbs to come down and damage my house." Oh, aren't we humans so picky?!?

And my friend had her PET scan and blood-work yesterday, so tomorrow, there is a chance that she will find out just what state her cancer is in. And even though we worry that the news won't be good, we, again with child-like wishes, hold our breath, thinking that maybe this is only a bad dream and things will all work out.

They WILL all work out. But they will work out the way that they work out - not necessarily the way that we would choose them to.

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I wish I had photos.

I left my camera in the car and was too lazy to go back to get it. A young woman took photos, as did six passer-byers - on their cell phone cameras. I hope that young woman will send me some pics of the group.

This past Saturday, a local church (which I will not name, because I want you to believe that it could be any church) held a weekend gathering of teens from across the state. This weekend was dedicated to social justice. The teens divided into groups, and each group went off to do some social justice volunteering. Thirteen young men and women wanted to stand with Women in Black.

Another WIBer and I went to talk with the group before the vigil. I enjoyed hearing of the awareness they had and the opinions they held. They know that the leadership used to lead the troops in war, but now the "leaders" only make the decisions to send the young people of other families to war before said young people are considered to be of the age to make a legal decision about whether or not to drink alcohol. These young men and women would like to see the "leadership" of our country be an example by going to war themselves or sending their sons and daughters with the rest of the youth of our country.

So altogether, we had 20 or so people standing on Saturday - quite a difference from our usual 5 or 6 (or sometimes 3). And the energy! Teens don't stand still for an hour. I loved their fearlessness and innocence. They danced - they connected with people in the cars. Would I look like a joke if I, at my age, played the way they do? Is there an age where, instead of looking joyful, we can look "immature and inappropriate"? Is it a real rule or did we make it up?

Maybe I will have to experiment.

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Word for the day: STUCK

I feel stuck
like a tongue on a pole on a cold winter day
like a tick sucking blood from a mangy mongrel
like a toe in the bathtub faucet
like a sword in a stone
like the ring on the finger of a man who's been married for fifty years and gained two pounds for every one of those years

We walked in the sunshine while dried leaves on the path in front of me reflected light so bright I could barely keep my eyes open and water splashed in the creek next to us and the Buddha dog excitedly read the news of every animal that had passed in the last five days. I normally breathe in life in such surroundings and come out renewed but I only felt the death of summer and all of the pain of this life even while walking among the evidences that life is resilient and all is well in my world.

I don't know why. I see the signs of beauty and love around me every day but some days the mind must enjoy swimming in frustration and hopelessness and anger and fear and death. Enjoy?

So I will wallow in this slime till I'm done
I will swallow this acidic potion of thoughts
I will follow this path till I'm sick of it

Then, tomorrow, I will tell you about the fun time we had at our Women in Black vigil yesterday - with thirteen ALIVE teens. :-)

Terry Liechner, a Vietnam vet writes about his experience at the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit in Denver this week. (thanks, Claire!)

To see if there is an exhibit coming to your city, go to www.afsc.org/eyes

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Some stories from the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit

Two Vietnam vets came to see the display and to give a gift to Army PFC Lori Piestewa, 23, who was the first Native American woman killed by enemy action in this war. One of the vets put a card with Lori's boots. On the back of the card, he wrote that, until Lori died, he had never voted, but her death inspired him to vote for the first time.

A recently disabled vet who was not deployed with the rest of his platoon, because his back went out on the day that they received their orders to deploy. He came to the exhibit, but he couldn't bring himself to actually walk into the park to see the boots. Survivor's guilt.

A young college-aged girl who sat every day by the boots that represented her brother. He died in June. He was her only sibling. Her mother wasn't ready to come see this yet.

A Gulf war vet, missing both legs from the knees down. He came all three days. He sat in the rain for five hours on the first day.

A man and wife who came as we were taking the exhibit down. The wife spoke with me while the husband, a Vietnam vet stood outside the perimeter of the field of boots. She told me that
her 15-year-old grandson asked if he would have to go to war. I apologized for the fact that we had taken down half of the boots, so they missed the complete exhibit. She said that even this much was hard for her husband to see.

A couple who drove here from Burlington, CO to find the boots of their next-door-neighbor's son. Their neighbor couldn't make the trip, so they came to honor and take photos. They are for W and for this war, and they thought that it was right that there is a display to show the deaths and honor the soldiers.

A woman who brought boxes of Buddhist peace flags and put one by each pair of boots.

Mothers of soldiers who were requested by their sons to place flowers on the boots of their fallen friends.

And many, many people who needed to tell their stories.

Thank you, AFSC and all volunteers, for creating a place where people have an excuse to open their hearts to each other.

My apologies, but I had to put the entire article written by Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News:

Boots tell haunting tale of losses in Iraq

October 11, 2006

From a distance, it looks like a lot of nothing, or at least - based on what both papers had said - a little oversold.

Just boots.

Even so, you get out of the car, cross the street and wade in. It took most people, by my totally unscientific study, about five minutes before the first teardrop fell.

I hadn't planned on this, to write of "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War," the display in Civic Center of 2,748 pairs of combat boots, each representing a soldier who has died in the Iraq War.

I was driving past the park when I noticed it. I'd been to the war, knew guys who had fallen.

OK, I figured, let's just see how accurate this is, see if they had every dead soldier's name. I went looking for one in particular.

They envelop you, the boots do. It is an odd thing. The soldiers whose names are attached to each pair never wore them. Yet you stare.

Each pair sits exactly four feet from the next, all of them positioned in long, perfectly aligned rows.

"People say it looks like a cemetery, Arlington National, mostly," said Claire Ryder, the exhibit's volunteer coordinator.

"I say it's worse because it is boots, with names, photos, memories and actual lives attached."

Maybe that accounts for the haunting feeling. The faces of the dead stare out from many of the boots in large, laminated color photographs - many are Army-issue portraits, in which the soldier is unsmiling.

Teddy bears, plastic flowers and American flags adorn some. Sunflowers and Halloween candy are stuffed in one pair, both placed there by the dead soldier's mother, who had flown in from California a day earlier to see the exhibit.

The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, has shown the exhibit in more than 80 U.S. cities. Colorado is its last stop this year.

The committee keeps a large stock of tissues that volunteers, who include ministers and psychologists, keep in hand as they slowly walk the perimeter of the display.

Families of the dead added the mementos to the boots at each of the exhibit's previous stops. Some are quite elaborate and include family photographs of the soldiers holding their young children.

The most haunting is what is attached to the boots of Lt. Col. Mark D. Taylor, a surgeon attached to the 82nd Airborne Division.

In a now-laminated e-mail to friends on Jan. 30, 2004, he wrote:

"It is very hostile over here, and we have done over 170 trauma cases over the last five months. Sometimes the Iraqis shoot mortars or rockets at us, but usually they miss. I probably will be coming home in April, so hopefully we can get together.

"See you soon. Mark."

Scheduled to fly home March 25, Dr. Mark Taylor died March 20, 2004, when an enemy rocket hit the telephone booth he had just entered. He was placing a call home to his parents. He was 41.

"I think what gets you are the ages," Claire Ryder says, barely holding back her own tears. "It gets to everybody here."

Ann Griffin, 20, of Thornton, is softly weeping along with her friend, Zeta Conner, 23, of Denver. She had come to see the boots of her husband's best friend, Lance Cpl. Andrew Riedel, 19, of Northglenn, whom she'd known since childhood. He was killed in a roadside bomb explosion Oct. 30, 2004.

"It's so powerful and moving," Ann Griffin says. "I've never thought they got enough recognition. It's so humbling, so heartbreaking."

They stay for more than a half-hour, searching for Andrew Riedel's name. Although the boots are arranged by state, they could not find his name in the Colorado section.

Jody Luna, 53, of Denver, is slowly making her way through the boots. She had read of the exhibit, never figuring for a second the effect it would have on her once she began walking through it.

"You can actually picture the people the boots represent," she says slowly. "It's so sad, just to see the ages."

American Friends purchased nearly all of the boots. Veterans, too, often show up, run home, grab their old boots and donate them.

The mother of Spc. Thomas I. Sweet II, 23, of North Dakota, who died in a roadside blast on Nov. 27, 2003, purchased all 13 sets of desert combat boots that represent the deaths of North Dakota soldiers in the war.

Off to the side, too, is a collection of hundreds of civilian shoes that surround a circular poster-board display of smiling Iraqis in huge color photographs.

The shoes represent the hundreds of thousands of civilian Iraqis who have died in the war.

On the other side of the color posters are stark, black-and-white photographs of wailing Iraqis cradling or holding their dead. You just stare.

I did, finally, find the name I had come searching for attached to a nearly brand-new pair of boots.

A simple white plastic flower and a small Colorado flag protruded from them. The small white attached card simply gave his rank, name, age, and state of birth.

I'll just say here that I saluted the boots and said a little prayer. I'll leave it at that.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-954-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

In the sterilized version of life, which we call living in the USA, the majority of us feel no pain while our country destroys lives. We see nothing ugly, we hear nothing to let us know just how bad it is over there, and we are told not to say anything, lest we be considered unpatriotic - or we're silenced.

The Eyes Wide Open exhibit shows us just how big a field we would need if these thousands of men and women were here to stand with us today. It gives names to statistics.

When my son was born, his twin brother's body was born with him. Things were a little different then, and I never saw my baby's body before it was taken to a place unknown to me. That was partly my fault. I found my baby's grave 15 years later. I bought a marker with his name to place on the grave. That's when I felt the world finally knew that Brian had ever existed - the whole experience of his birth and death wasn't just some bad dream. And that was an important step toward healing for me.

How do we as a nation heal when we don't even acknowledge that we are sick and our people are dying? Listening to people who visited the display yesterday, I experienced a connection of hearts and the beginning of healing for those willing to go there.






Blogger is not allowing me to post my photos of the boots. To see a pro's, go to Kelly Angard's site. I met her yesterday while she was doing her magic of creating these striking photos.

We participated in the candlelight vigil held at the Eyes Wide Open exhibit last night. We walked in silence. First around the 2,748 pairs of boots standing for the U.S. soldiers who have died in this war and occupation (the number has risen to 2753 since set-up on Monday), then around the shoes representing the Iraqis who have died.

We stood for a long time at the end - around the Iraqi shoes. First, a wave of sorrow came over me.

So sorry...

so sorry...

I pay taxes that are used to kill you. So sorry... I am complicit in this. The pain of the mothers... Young children maimed or killed.

So sorry...

Then W came to mind. If I really mean it... If I really mean that I believe in giving love to all creation, then that means W, too. And all of his co-horts. Don't have to like what he does. Don't have to NOT hold him accountable, either. But not adding any more violence to the world means to hold W in the same light and love as the Iraqis who are injured through this war. And the U.S. families who are in pain from the effects of it. And those people who believe that they are killing for a noble cause. Everyone.

So as I stood there last night, in a circle of friends that I may or may not know yet, I tried to put my mind and heart around it all. It was not easy.

The display of shoes representing 100,000 Iraqi people killed in the war.

Yesterday, a study came out with the number 655,000, which to me seems more realistic.

Saddam is on trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

I wonder... why isn't W standing trial for the same crimes?

Richard Meyers has a lot of good photos from the Transform Columbus Day Weekend in Denver at his rebel graphics site. Denver's city government - under control of the people for one night.

I regret not participating. Next year...

Eyes Wide Open

After carrying bags and bags of civilian shoes and containers and containers of soldier's boots yesterday, my biceps are sore and worthless this morning. Maybe this will motivate me to start pushing some arm weights!

2748 pairs of boots. Most of the boots were donated - some are as old as WWII - so they did not belong to the soldiers whose names are attached to them. Each pair of boots is only representing a soldier - giving us something to see when there is nothing left to see.

2748 pairs of boots. The number keeps growing. More pairs of boots have to be tagged and added to the display at every stop of the exhibit.

Some boots have a photo attached, given by the family. One pair that I placed had not only a photo, but also 3 or 4 pages of information on the person and statements about the war. This person was a 20-year-old woman. I was sure to take a lot of time arranging the photo and pages to look nice and so that a passer-by could see the photo first thing. This woman was very pretty - and young.

A few pairs of boots are displayed separately. These are the actual boots of the soldier - donated by his/her family. Casey Sheehan's boots are there.

Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice has some photos taken yesterday during the set-up. I notice that there are no photos of the civilian shoes that represent the 200,000 or so Iraqis who have died in our war and occupation. I'll be taking photos today.

My friend, Gaye, who I traveled with to Camp Casey this past Easter spoke at the press conference yesterday. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News carried stories on it.

If you live in the Denver area, please stop by to see the exhibit. It runs from 7 - 7 today (Tuesday) and from 7 - 2 or 3 tomorrow. Tonight at 7, all are welcome to join us at the exhibit as we stand in a silent candlelight vigil.

It's 5:45 a.m., 38 degrees and wet out there. This morning, I am going downtown to Civic Center Park to help set up the Eyes Wide Open exhibit. It has been very warm so far this month and now this weather - a high of 42 degrees and snow this evening.

The Eyes Wide Open exhibit includes a pair of boots for every U.S. soldier that has died - now 2744 - and hundreds of pairs of shoes representing the hundreds of thousands Iraqi civilians who have died. It's going to be a powerful experience to place those shoes and boots, realizing that they're not just shoes and boots, but that they represent someone who was loved by family and friends. They represent people who died so that the U.S. could occupy a country and position itself in the Middle East.

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In case you are not following Marshall Thompson's walk through Utah, below is his journal entry from yesterday. Marshall is a soldier who has recently returned from Iraq. He is walking to bring about the awareness that we need to bring our soldiers home. He has 21 days and 374 more miles to go in his walk.

From Marshall's journal:

Day 6

October 7, 2006

About 60 people showed up this blustery morning on the capital building steps to start the walk. Aaron Davis and the Veterans for Peace pinned me with a button and declared me an honorary member. It was an honor. I then tried to read a prepared statement, but I didn’t do too well. It was good to get the walking started, I’m better at walking than speaking.

We got a lot of rain, but people just kept coming to walk. We stopped in front of the Salt Lake City office building to look at the Eyes Wide Open display of boots and shoes representing those who have died in Iraq. The Department of Peace set up the exhibit and it was very touching.

On the way, we met a former Army ranger who was in favor of the war, although he admitted to me later that he did think the U.S. should leave at some point. Excellent, I said, let’s start talking about plans for withdrawal. In the end, we agreed more than we disagreed. He walked a long way with us and by the time he left, he was one of the gang. He was even annoyed when a young kid in a uniform told us we were all pieces of crap. (I cleaned it up a bit).

We stopped for lunch at the Grecian Gardens and the proprietor was kind enough to host the large group of wet protesters.

For the rest of the day, people came and went, but there was always a sizable group. About ten stalwarts walked all 18 miles with me. It was amazing. One was a 65-year-old grandma who carried a sign that read, “grandma for peace.” She planned on walking 21 blocks, but stayed with us the whole way. I’ve walked over 100 miles now, and I’ve never walked alone.

After the walk, we went to a potluck dinner organized by our friend LeAnn. There was wonderful food and wonderful company. I returned to our hotel room convinced, now more than ever, that there are tons of good people out there. What a great world.

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Last night we had dinner with another couple who happen to be Muslim. We went to my favorite restaurant - Ali Baba's Grill in Golden. If you live in the Denver area and like Middle Eastern food, you've gotta try it. THE BEST HUMMUS IN DENVER!!!

I got to try a drink that Muslims drink during Ramadan. Too bad I can't tell you the name, since no one knew how to translate it into English. It comes from Egypt, and it is the strangest stuff, but I liked it. When I was taking a drink of it, it didn't have much of a taste, but the after-taste is a gift that keeps on giving. It's good - not very sweet, a little like licorice, but not really. I guess that it comes from some plant. Anyway, someone is missing a marketing opportunity here in the states - I think it could be a hit.

Want to know where the idea of those yellow ribbon magnets come from? Watch the last 5 minutes of Amy Goodman on today's (Friday, October 6th, 2006) Democracy Now! The last half hour of the show has Glenn Morris of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and Glenn Spagnuolo of Progressive Italians Transforming the Columbus Day Holiday speaking about the celebration of colonialism that our annual Columbus Day parades promote.

Regarding the yellow ribbons - from the transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Morris, we only have two more minutes, but when you came into the studio here today at Rocky Mountain PBS, you brought a large photograph of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaking in Fort Carson several years ago. Why?

GLENN MORRIS: To us, that represents this continuing ideology, this hegemony that Chomsk