April as Earth Month

Looking back over any period of time there's lots of ways to evaluate it. But any way we look at it April has been a pretty glorious month for us. The biggest news of the month I'm not ready to reveal yet. But the rest I'll tell....




Mid-April brought the return of Saturday farmers markets in downtown Corvallis, along the riverfront. Courtney worked the HOUR Exchange booth at the Earth Fair, which was happening alongside the first market. Our dear dear buddies, Margot and Allen, were visiting from Pacific Grove. Luckily they had already been in Bend, OR, for a couple of weeks and toughened up. Because this was not the weather of the Monterey farmers market.




As soon as we got there it started to rain, then rain harder, then hail, then hail harder and the wind started blowing....and then the sun came out. That weather pattern continued for a while, and I was sure Margot and Allen would be ready to flee, but no! They were game for ducking under canopies and waiting out the storm and then strolling some more.




About the time we were thinking it was time to go, here came the Procession of the Species. Since the 90's I've heard of different towns having a Procession of the Species around Earth Day, but this is the first one I've ever seen.





I remember that there's three rules: no live pets, no motorized vehicles, and no amplified sound, but other than that it's pretty free-wheeling and so darned cute.

















Meanwhile Courtney attended a Sustainability Town Hall meeting that drew 600+ people. You gotta love a town where more than 600 people show up to give their input about how the community can move towards sustainability. People divided up into groups around specific topics--energy, transportation, water, neighborhood organizing, economic vitality. Lo and behold, Courtney joined up with the economic vitality committee and is now immersed in a whole new topic of study.

At Aaron's school in Eugene they had both Green Week and Walk & Roll Week. Instead of just celebrating Earth Day, they had a three day mini green festival, which included human-powered smoothies (bike blended!), workshops, info tables and discussions, a bicycle obstacle course, skateboard clinic and a helmet fitting booth with low-cost helmets! In the school paper they reminded the kids that "you get more miles per burrito (MPB) by choosing human power. So as the gas prices go up, remember to keep your carbon footprint low and come to school under your own steam." God bless 'em! (And I'm happy to say that Aaron gets to school by skateboard and home by city bus.)

I'll end with something that Courtney's brother Steve sent us. It pretty much says it all.

In celebration of Earth Day week: If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a field somewhere, people would come from everywhere to marvel at it. People would walk around it, marveling at its big pools of water, or little pools and the water flowing between the pools. People would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and they would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at the creatures walking around the surface of the ball, and at the creatures in the water.

The people would declare it as sacred because it was the only one, and they would protect it so that it would not be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come to pray to it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love it, and defend it with their lives because they would somehow know that their lives, their own roundness, could be nothing without it. If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter.

Let's all take that little bit of Earth worship with us wherever we go--keep it in our hearts and try to live by it.

Happy Earth Month, and may Spring bring you a renewed joy of life,

Valori

Grandpa meets Ruby Alice face-to-face

OK, you can go ahead and say it...she's the cutest darned baby! How could she not be? She's got a couple of very cute parents, and of course the cutest Grandpa.



Courtney headed south to Berkeley to check her out in person. To make sure she was as adorable as her dad (Jer, aka Spudde) says she is. And sure enough, the rumors were true!




Of course Courtney fell madly in love right away. Before he knew it he'd volunteered to take care of Ruby while Jer and Pamela went out for a much-deserved new-parent break together. Off they went to the beach, to run the dogs, without their little bundle of love to distract them.
Everyone survived, even Grandpa.





Ruby is definitely a baby girl who won't lack for love and attention. Looks like she's already got a fully-entertaining and engaged life.




And a great connection with her dad. There's no shots here of Pamela and Ruby because they all contained more breasts-full-of-milk exposure than Pamela may feel comfortable showing our blog readers, but suffice to say, she and Ruby are connected--literally and lovingly.





And hereeeeeeee's Grandpa! Doing his let's-take-a-nap thing very well.




I see more trips to Berkeley in the future. And hopefully the Berkeley family will make it north to see us while Ruby is still in that easy-to-contain stage.




And here's another reason for Courtney to travel to CA. Kentaro is the son of his nephew Kevin and his wife Emi, so he is the grandson of Courtney's brother Steve. They live is San Mateo, and this was the first time that Courtney got to meet Kentaro, who unfortunately had a bad cold, and so the two of them didn't spend any cozy time together. But at least they got to meet and check each other out. That's a start.

And Courtney got to see his San Mateo family which includes Steve's other son Matt and his girlfriend Melissa. The three generations all live in the same house ( a very cool thing, in my opinion).

Courtney was gone for a week altogether, which included a trip that he and Steve took down to Morro Bay and Arroyo Grande to see their dad's wife Kay and then stay the night with their sister Nancy. Being a home boy, this was alot of traveling for Courtney, but as you can imagine, well worth it. He's got lots of heart connections down there in CA, not to mention friends in Monterey, but that's another story.

Meanwhile, here on the home front, there's BIG changes, but that's another story too.

Stay tuned, for more....and happy springtime, and thanks for reading this,

Valori

a follow-up to the previous posting

The local paper's total lack of coverage on our march and rally on March 22nd has lead to a seemingly endless mix of pro-peace vs not-so-peaceful letters to the editor.  It's actually quite telling about how the two sides in this community (and maybe, by extension, the whole country) view one another.

Anyway, the mother of the singing girls (the young stars of the rally) wrote the letter below in response to an earlier letter accusing the anti-war/pro-peace community of being a bunch of whiners that want attention.  I declare Tara's letter to be the definitive word in the whole matter because of all that she and her family have been through.

That's all for now, folks!  Valori 


TARA PUCKETT'S letter to the editor published in the Corvallis
Gazette Times on April 7, 2008:

We Owe Thanks to Anti-War Activists

I am unable to understand what benefit a person could believe is derived by anti-war activists from the selfless giving of their time in defense of our troops.

America's military men and women are being forced to serve repeatedly in an illegal occupation of Iraq.

One does not need to be a liberal to recognize that we were lied to by our own elected leaders and our media. Saddam Hussein had no connection to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, nor to al-Qaida. Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

The perpetrators of those lies have mostly acknowledged the truth, yet five years and 4,000 dead Americans later we maintain our presence in Iraq.

My husband is an Oregon National Guardsman. He has already served and been injured in one 15-month-long tour in Iraq, yet he faces the prospect of another.

I appreciate Dianne Safford ("Ignored Marchers Insulted by Column," As I See It, March 28) and her fellow activists.  Our military family has felt great support and generosity from the Corvallis anti-war community.  We value the time and sacrifice that has been made in their effort to keep my husband home and safe.

We would like to extend our thanks to Corvallis Alternatives to War, Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and to all of the Dianne Saffords within this community.

Tara Puckett
Corvallis

Five Years Too Many

Corvallis Alternatives To War, Veterans For Peace Chapter 132, Albany Peaceseekers, and assorted social concerns committees from the progressive churches in town came together for our Five Years Too Many march and rally on Saturday, March 22nd. It was the first sunny, non-rainy day in goodness knows how long. We figured right then and there that the universe is on our side. How wonderful to be getting ready for the rally--setting up the stage, hauling tables and folding chairs, putting out literature, starting up the soup--all on a beautiful day, rather than in a deluge of rain. Of course I had my handy sidekick Aaron there to help--being paid in cash and promises of desserts makes him willing to do whatever.

Our (the planning committee's) vision was to have the march start at the park by the river, march through downtown, end up at the rally in front of the courthouse, and serve food and drinks to keep the crowd from drifting away. On all fronts we were successful.





Joe brought from home this beautifully self-contained set-up, fired it up, got the water boiling and the veggies all cut up and voila! Fifteen gallons of vegan lentil and split pea soup! Since Joe was the one who planned the route and was to lead the march with his drum (along with about 50 other drummers), he put me in charge of stirring the soup and off he went.

To go with the soup we had about 12-14 loaves of bread donated by Big River, assorted chips, dips and roll-ups brought by community members, along with homemade brownies and cookies, and a big jug of water. We served everything Food Not Bombs style (no charge)--it felt really good to give away food, much more fun than selling it. People were so appreciative and readily dropped money in the donation jars. (The Co-op donated sugarcane, compostable soup bowls and we set up recycling buckets, compost buckets and garbage cans. When we cleaned up at the end of the day it was gratifying to see how little garbage 450 people had made. Joe took home the compost, and we took home the plastic to wash and re-use. Hooray! We're learning how to have a lower impact on our environment even when we gather in large numbers.)





No, Aaron is not that short. Trevor (on the left) is just that tall. Trevor, Joe, Leah and Bart are heading off to the riverside park to greet the marchers and start the march to the Courthouse.

(The night before some of Aaron's friends had gone straight from school to wait in line to see Obama speak in Eugene. There is a strong feeling of Obama-mania at his school, so somehow I think that makes it easier on him to be seen at things like peace marches. Or maybe it's just resignation after all these years. Whatever it is, he seems more engaged and more comfortable with our friends, who are all politically-involved.)





Courtney took this from the top steps of the Courthouse as the marchers were starting to arrive and fill the space. The count once everyone arrived was 475, which filled the Courthouse lawn quite nicely.





Above in the green t-shirt is Cassandra Robertson, who was our headliner entertainment and playing the banjo is her husband (and sound man) James. Cassandra bills herself as a modern-day troubadour. Her songs are all original--and really great. You can check out her music at www.cassandrarobertson.com and James is Mr. Solar and you can check out his work at www.abundantsolar.com

To the left of them is Aaron, with his 5-gallon bucket/drum. What a danged cute boy.





If you've never heard a Raging Grannies group sing, you've missed something! Ohmygosh, they are soooooooo clever, irreverent, and so right-on. They take songs that everyone knows and change the words around to poke fun at what's going on. I can only remember one right now: to the tune of "When The Saints....Come Marching" they sing their song,"When Everyone....Has Human Rights". All the Raging Grannies groups around the country share their lyrics, so it's really the best of what many uppity, outrageous and talented women have cooked up. Our Corvallis group, I think, is particularly active and well-known. They've performed in Portland, Salem (at state senate hearings), Eugene, and lots of time in Corvallis.





Then a new generation of songwriters and performers took the stage (not scheduled, but they stole the show). These three girls--two sisters and a friend--sang a couple of original songs, very political and very funny. The sisters' dad is a veteran of the Iraq war and the whole family is working actively to end the war. The girls have been to Salem to testify in front of the state legislature. Last summer they were at the Farmers Market every Saturday passing out Kucinich literature. They've held IMPEACH signs with us during football season. I like these kids. They are always on the front lines and full of energy--great family to have in the community.






Leah, the founder of the local Veterans For Peace chapter, spoke about the Winter Soldier hearings she had just returned from. They were held in Silver Springs, MD, on March 13 to 16. I could say lots about Leah's speech--she's passionate and articulate and cares deeply about people--but the most poignant was when she started to cry and had to stop speaking. It felt like we all joined her at that moment, in feeling the suffering and tragedy that we all want to stop.

(Some background: On January 31, 1971, more than 125 Vietnam veterans representing every major combat unit to see action in the war gathered at a Howard Johnson's hotel in Detroit to heal a nation and themselves. They risked everything--their careers, their friendships, their families--to talk about the atrocities they had committed or witnessed in Vietnam. These veterans saw themselves as winter soldiers battling against the wrongs of the war and the brutal training that had made them capable of unthinkable violence.

The Winter Soldier II hearings were organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, but also included veterans from the war in Afghanistan. I tried to listen to some of the hearings as they were happening, but had to turn the radio off because I couldn't hear over the sound of my own sobbing. I couldn't imagine how Leah sat through it for days. When I asked, she said she had to be escorted out at one point because she was hysterical. At least they were better organized this time around and had counselors available for help.)

There was no mainstream media coverage of the hearings. They were streamed live on various websites and could be heard on Pacifica radio stations and on Democracy Now! but most Americans had no idea they were happening. So we were lucky to hear directly from someone who had been there. Thanks, Leah.

All in all we counted the day a big success, even though the poor people of Iraq are still no better off. Nor are the US soldiers caught in the middle of this mire. But it's not just about wanting to stop the war. It's also about creating the kind of community we want, the kind of world we want. That was the message of our keynote speaker, Dr Joseph Orozco, the head of Peace Studies at OSU, and that seemed to strike a note of truth with the crowd. The people who marched in the march and came to the rally were, to my eyes, people engaged in their community and in the world, and working to make both better.

But there was no coverage from the local paper and boy oh boy they are hearing about that. Whenever we complain ("we" meaning peace people) that they aren't covering what's happening in Israel/Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan, they counter that they are a local paper and that's their focus. Well,.........then where the heck were they when 475 local people were marching noisily through downtown and then rallying for hours in front of the County Courthouse, with local performers and speakers?!? Well, that opened up a whole conversation, through letters to the editor and a formal apology from the paper, etc. So....I bet they'll be there next time.

Other exciting things came out of the rally that day, but that's a story for another time.

Thanks for reading this, and keep checking back. There'll be more soon,

Valori