Thinking in Peaces

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

In honor of the original Peace Mama...

Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe*, 1870

The First Mother's Day proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe
was a passionate demand for disarmament and peace.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Biography of Julia Ward Howe

US feminist, reformer, and writer Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819 in New York City. She married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston, a physician and social reformer. After the Civil War, she campaigned for women rights, anti-slavery, equality, and for world peace. She published several volumes of poetry, travel books, and a play. She became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She was an ardent antislavery activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1862, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. She wrote a biography in 1883 of Margaret Fuller, who was a prominent literary figure and a member of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalists. She died in 1910.

Oh Baby Baby....

2011-05-07T15:30:00.002-05:00

...it's a wild world.
It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

It's an old Cat Stevens song, and I cried today when it came on the radio.

I have no idea, really, what Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam) was writing about in the early 70s - but I know the dagger his words drove into my heart today...

My niece is studying in Jerusalem until mid-June. Last weekend, while the eyes of the world turned happy/sad/congratulatory/angry toward the US for the killing of Osama bin Laden - this 20-year old world citizen was vacationing in Egypt with no awareness of the world news and no cell phone handy for her parents to contact her.

To say my sister had a sleepless night or two this week would be a gross understatement. Many of us want this brilliant and beautiful young woman to come home. As soon as possible.

Of course she is resistant. She doesn't feel in danger or threatened in any way. She is treated with great respect, she reports - everywhere she goes. I don't want to put words in her mouth, because I haven't spoken with her, but I don't think I'd be stretching the story by saying she has told her parents:

"It's no big deal."

In fact, she talks like she might be writing for the Tour Egypt website:

Certainly, there are countries that actually are unsafe for Americans to visit under the current political climate, such as Iraq, Sudan and Algiers. But other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria are completely safe, as well as extraordinary tourist destinations.

BUT there is no denying the US State Department has issued a Worldwide Travel Alert:

The U.S. Department of State alerts U.S. citizens traveling and residing abroad to the enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.

And there's no avoiding the fact that a CBS reporter who was in Egypt in February to cover the celebratory occasion of regime change was brutally attacked - after being dragged from a team of people who were paid to protect her. (Don't watch Lara Logan's interview on 60 Minutes if you have a loved one in the Middle East.)

And I challenge you to find something encouraging to read on the State Department's travel information site specific to Israel:

U.S. citizens, including tourists, students, residents, and U.S. Government personnel, have been injured or killed by terrorists while in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Attacks have occurred in highly frequented shopping and pedestrian areas and on public buses. American employees of the U.S. Embassy and Consulate General and their families are prohibited from using public buses and their associated terminals in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel. (My niece is also prohibited - by her parents - from using buses since the March 23 bus stop bombing in Jerusalem).

I don't think I'm an alarmist. I'm one of those people who believes if we plan our lives fearfully around the potential for danger, then terrorists win. But I am a realist. Sometimes it is best for Americans to lay low. I think this might be one of those times.

Dear Taylor,

Listen to Cat Stevens: A lot of nice things turn bad out there. Oh, baby baby....It's a wild world.

Come home.

Ding Dong the....I'm Confused

2011-05-02T18:35:00.003-05:00

I am longing for a circle of wisdom tonight to help me sort through the questions that have distracted me all day. I open the conversation with this...

Are we the good guys or the bad guys?

Are images of Americans cheering a political assassination something to be proud of as those photos fly from twitter to facebook to blog around the world?

Are comments like...

"A Victory for America" - George W. Bush
"Justice has been done." - House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
"Welcome to Hell bin Laden." - Mike Huckabee

...really appropriate today?

Are the Christians in this "Christian nation" wondering, like I am, what Jesus would do? He is, after all, the reported author/Divine speaker of these words:

You have heard it said, 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. (Matt. 5:38-40)

And these:

Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke6:31)

Has anyone who declared today, "Justice has finally been served!" ever quoted Mahatma Gandhi?

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Is there a better way to fight evil in the world than shooting it in the head twice and dumping it in the sea?

Here's what a pastor friend of mine in College Station put on his church's sign today:

HATE CANNOT DRIVE OUT HATE

ONLY LOVE CAN DO THAT

-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr

And I'm wondering what that would look like in the real world...would Navy SEALS be involved?

Anyone?

A Letter This Morning

2011-03-25T10:10:00.001-05:00

...to the President and Vice President.

Dear President Obama/Vice President Biden,

It is time to end the war in Afghanistan.

The violence and unrest there is making healing and rebuilding for the good of the Afghan people almost impossible. They are turning, again, to the Taliban for their needs.

Hope for something good to come of our presence is waning at an exponential rate - among US ranks and in the entire geographical/political region.

The quagmire that is our war has become distracting to our image as a compassionate people on the world stage.

Most importantly, people in the US are turning their backs on this war. Nothing now or in our future can turn to good when an entire people begin to treat war like a casual political snafu.

Please, please, please. Keep your pledge to begin troop withdrawal in July of 2011. Let's leave with some haste, determination, and honor.

Peace.

Did We Forget Something?

2011-03-24T19:11:00.001-05:00

March 20, 2003...remember that day? It's the Thursday US troops swooped into the capital of Iraq on a mission best known for its shock and awe...less known for its effectiveness.

The stated objective of that pre-emptive invasion?
Find and destroy weapons of mass destruction.
Find and destroy the bellicose tyrant Sadaam Hussein.
As history painfully reminds us, there were no WMDs in Iraq. And while toppling a statue of Sadaam proved relatively easy (20 days post initial invasion), capturing the evasive and politically fallen Hussein actually took nine months.

Even so, our troops stayed in Iraq in a military posture until August 18, 2010. During that seven and a half years, 751-billion US dollars were spent, 4,424 American troops were killed, and an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi civilians died. In our war.

How is it, then, that this date in our nation's story has become so - apparently - forgettable?

I missed the mention of it in my daily newspaper last weekend. I saw no headline about it on my iGoogle news page. I checked the nation's front pages on Newseum and found nothing. Then I went about my Sunday, remembering only to mention the significance of the date once over dinner with friends.

Ummm. Hmmmm. A glance at our plates and into our drinking glasses. That was it.

In the four days that have followed I have spent a potentially unhealthy amount of time on the Washington Post website Faces of the Fallen. I find it compelling to look at the faces and names and ages and hometowns of those who went into that mess and never came back to their families.

I have also reviewed pictures in my archives to remind me what war actually leaves in its wake...

Because I have never lived in a land where guns and bombs and buried explosive devices and military checkpoints were part of the everyday experience.

How quickly and easily and happily we forget.

In case you missed mention of the anniversary in your newspaper last weekend, here's the latest from Iraq:

Since the last of our combat units pulled out of Baghdad seven months ago, 22 Americans have died. Thirteen of those deaths were "in combat." The rest are labeled "non-combat related," but I don't think it's a stretch to say there's probably not an American soldier in Iraq undergoing some type of advanced medical treatment for a terminal illness.

War is a terminal illness. And we are all dying from it these days.

How, in the name of heaven, could we forget March 20, 2003?

If we don't remember, we just keep repeating*** (see comments).

Peace.

Silence is....Amazing

2011-03-13T22:57:00.002-05:00

When it came time to think about church today, instead of pouring myself another cup of coffee and diving into the back sections of the newspaper as I often do these days, I decided to try something new.

A Friends Meeting.

For those of you who've stuck with Mainstream Religion your entire lives, with nary a thought of betraying the tradition of your particular practice, let me enlighten you: Friends in this context are Quakers. Really, who wouldn't be drawn to a people who throw this disclaimer onto their national website's homepage:

Quakers are not: Amish, Anabaptists, Shakers or Puritans--we come from a separate tradition than these other groups. We mostly don't dress like the man on the box of oats anymore, and today we hardly ever call people "thee."

No one called me "thee" this morning. In fact I arrived and found a seat in a large, four row circle of silence. That's what Quakers do on Sunday mornings. They sit, unless someone in the group feels called to speak, in silence. For an hour. There is no call to worship, no responsive reading, no scripture recitation, no singing, no confession of faith, no assurance of pardon, no prayers of the people, no sermon. You are totally on your own to make connection with The Holy.

What a contrast - I thought, as I first settled into the quiet - to church last week. Last week I sat among old friends and, well, gossiped a bit as we gathered for worship. Then I downloaded a Bible app to my phone during announcements...and, okay, I might have checked my email too. I probably added one or two items to my phone app shopping list while I was at it. Then I numbly stood and sat and sang and bowed my head and did it again another two to three times before listening with almost undivided attention to the words someone else had decided I needed to hear.

Today, I was on my own. Once I found my breath and some focus, I heard my call to worship. It was a songbird - I kid you not - singing ever so sweetly just outside the door of the worship center. When she flew to a branch a little farther out of earshot I began to hear the responsive reading - the long breaths of over 50 people gathered, the sighs, the coughs, the whispers, the quiet tip-toeing in of late comers...assurances that I was not alone. Scripture came easily into my head when I went looking in that unreliable old vault that is my memory: Be still and know that I am God. I examined the text at length - word by word:

Be - it is not time to DO, it is time to BE

Still - all that makes your heart race, your blood boil, your mind tilt...let it go

And - there is more I must tell you

Know - you have wisdom from many sources...your intellect, your life experiences, your heart...know

That - an elliptical imperative, of sorts...a "pay attention" conjunction. I was paying attention...

I - not YOU

am - active verb...not was, not will be...AM

God - Creator, Inspirer, Celebrator, Griever, Father, Mother, Gift Giver, Holy Holy Holy - God.

Then I became aware of the busyness of the street outside the building, and I turned my thoughts to intercession on behalf of all those who could not find stillness in the morning. Perhaps the man sitting next to me? Maybe someone in my family. Certainly the people of Japan. Most likely many people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. The President? The Governor? The Grieved? The Sick? The Poor? The Lost? The Lonely? I have never found so many names and faces in my prayers.

And then, much to my surprise, a rustle and a mumble began and I opened my eyes to find an extended hand and a smile on the face of the young man sitting in front of me. "God's peace be with you," he said. The hour was finished. I had sat my multi-tasking, media-loving, blurt-style-talking self down for a full hour of silence.

And I have spent the balance of the day quietly wondering this: What if we all spent an hour a week being instead of doing, listening instead of talking? What if knowing came from the heart and hearing included the songs of birds? What if the presence of the Divine was something very real for one full hour every week?

What kind of world would that be?

Peace.

On God

2011-03-10T13:42:00.004-06:00

I met a friend for lunch yesterday. We sat outside on a glorious Texas spring afternoon, ate vegetables with chopsticks and talked about life. Usually that conversation involves career explorations (hers) and fashion faux pas (mine) and husbands (ours). We have the kind of friendship that is soulful but generally filled with laughter and fun.

Yesterday was different. My friend began our time together by showing me the photo of a strikingly handsome young man who she described as "the kind of guy who does nothing but good in the world - everybody's friend" ...

And of course he had been killed in an accident two days before while crossing a street in Vail, CO.

"This is a faith crisis for me," she said.

"I guess so," I said.

"Why do such good people get taken so young?" she asked. And I remembered that this was the second wonderful young person "taken" from her circle in the last few years.

"I don't believe they are taken, if you mean taken by God," I said. "I believe shit happens."

Then I told her this is one of the most frequently revisited topics of theological debate among my circle of churched friends - some of whom are giants of the faith. The question is usually expressed this way: Do you believe in a God who can intervene in our circumstances but doesn't, or do you believe in a God who can't intervene in our circumstances?

I choose the latter. I would live in a constant crisis of faith if I didn't. Who can believe in a Loving God who can but won't stop the tragic deaths of good people or wars or famines or tsunamis or murders or bullying or hate crimes or...well, fill in your own blanks.

I should say here that my own husband and I disagree on this piece of critical thinking about God. It is a complicated bit of pondering.

In an unrelated, but eventually related matter...I grabbed a Bible from the bookshelf this morning to look up a Psalm about being hard-headed (Psalm 32:9, if you need to read it too). Two pages of lined paper fell out of the front of the book. In my handwriting was a document titled Faith Statement. It was dated March 20, 2004...the 1st anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. I imagine I was having a faith crisis that day. And I am guessing I struggled to cover the rough terrain of my soul as it ached for Americans and Iraqis in the middle of that quagmire. Here's the result:

I believe in God - Father, Mother, Creator.
When I see a sunrise or a sunset or a new baby...when I feel someone's touch in a moment that I didn't even realize I needed to be touched...when I eat an amazing piece of fruit or arrange an armful of flowers...when something grows in my yard...
It is so obvious to me that God exists, creates, enjoys creation and delights in us.
I believe in that God. I cling to that God.

I believe in prayer.
Not so much in prayer that manipulates the Universe, but in a focused acknowledgment of the powerful lingering of all that is Divine and Holy. A significant part of prayer is remembering and refreshing this good and active place in my consciousness.

I believe shit happens.
Certain cells mutate in a body and specific diseases wage war and win. Certain distractions arise in human theater and specific deadly consequences result. Certain laws of physics prevail when hot air meets cold air and specific monumental disasters, called natural, occur. Certain people are elected/appointed/seize positions of power and specific political nightmares, called war, unfold.

I DO NOT believe God is in the business of dropping in and changing the course of Creation and its inevitable messiness.
But I do believe God cries. He/She is crying with me over our war and our dead young people.

...the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan...and the ones in Vail, Colorado.

Some days, belief in a God who cries is my strongest statement of faith.

Shit happens. God cries.

And we all grab beauty in this life when and where we can: On a patio with a friend and veggies and chopsticks...talking about things that matter.

Peace.

On Women and Sleds

2011-03-08T19:51:00.000-06:00

One of my earliest memories is of my mother tying the strings of a knit hat underneath my chin and telling me, "You can do anything those boys can do."

The occasion was a snowy day in Nashville, Tennessee. My father was taking me sledding with his friends and their children - all boys. I remember very little about the rest of the day, except not having as many turns on the sled as I wanted. I was not quite five years old, and I suppose it had never occurred to me to think I couldn't do everything a boy could do...if I had my own sled.

And isn't that what it's all about, really? Who owns the sled?

On this 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I awoke to a list of statistics that made me feel like I've done nothing more spectacular than a man in the last 50 years than live in denial. Keeping up with the boys...where has it left us? Take a look:

2/3 of the work done in the world is done by women
10% of the world's income is earned by women
1% of the world's property is owned by women
70-million girls in the world are denied access to basic education because they are girls
1 in 4 women in the world are victims of domestic violence
3 women a day are killed in the United States by intimate partners

Let's not even begin the conversation about what a pregnancy does to a woman's career...or sexual harassment...or an affair. Honestly, when has one of these things compromised the power of a man?

I have found a bit of solace today in the words of the late, great Ann Richards:

If you give us the chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.

Still, I'm betting Ginger had a joint banking account with Fred and that he called the shots. Dancing backwards, I'm thinking, is not going to change the ways of world.

Stepping up, marching forward, and standing firm...that, my Sisters, changes the world.

So let's begin...high heels in the back of the closet where they belong, resolve on our minds, a better future for the next generation of women in our hearts:

Step 1: Acknowledge the truth. We are not considered equals in this world.

Step 2: Fight for yourself and for others.

Step 3: Call on the Sisterhood...which is strong and smart and steady and sane...when you need help.

Step 4: Be ready to help.

The US constitution still does not have an Equal Rights Amendment. I can't believe the fact of that doesn't disappointment my mother - a strong woman who raised four capable daughters to live in the world with a lie.

We cannot do everything the boys can do, Mom.

They still own the sleds.

Peace.

And So It Begins

2011-01-18T13:16:00.001-06:00

I lit a candle yesterday for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And I really meant it this time.

It wasn't a candle of general hope for world peace or intellectual political despair or religious commitment to a Jew or a Muslim. It was a desperate prayer for no conflict on the ground in the region - for at least six months.

My niece flew to Tel Aviv yesterday. She will be studying at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem until June. I am now personally invested in the longing for peace in the Middle East.

Taylor is a brilliant and beautiful and industrious student of life. This opportunity to live and learn in a culture so distant, yet so familiar via the context of the stories she's heard about Jesus, was just too good to miss. I'm thrilled about her being there. I know both Taylor and the world will be better for this adventure. I believe she will come back to us a generous world citizen with new and compassionate views. She will, likewise, leave her unique mark on everyone who crosses her world-explorer path.

I am also terrified. There is just no way to feel completely at ease with a loved one living in Jerusalem these days. The sword rattling absolutely never ends over there. The missile launchers and the bomb planters and the politicians all stay so completely on edge over who lives where and with what rights, you never really know when one poorly timed comment or bully faced military shift or diplomatic posturing will loose the hair that sits on the trigger of violent reaction.

So I pray a desperate prayer for at least six months of peace.

And while I do that, I feel certain Taylor will seize every moment of her Great Explore:

Within old Jerusalem’s walled city is the site of Abraham’s would-be sacrifice of his son, Isaac or Ishmael (depending on the religion). The Islamic shrine known as the Dome of the Rock, built in 691, stands on the location today. In ancient times both the original and rebuilt Jewish Temples were situated there. Jews still call it the Temple Mount. Taylor will see these things and understand the conundrum of a divided Jerusalem like none of us who have never traveled there really can.

The Western Wall is what remains of the stone perimeter that once surrounded the grounds of the Jewish Temple. Taylor will likely touch that wall and feel the presence of all the saints - both Jew and Arab.

Jerusalem’s old walled city also holds what is thought to be the site of Christ’s Crucifixion, where today stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Taylor will, no doubt, pause and pray a Christian's prayer at that spot.

Meanwhile, the rippling effect of her adventure begins with this reality: The educational journey of one young woman from a suburban setting in the red state of Texas leaves a family of 19 aunts and uncles and grandmother and cousins - typically at odds over religion and politics - united in one grand wish for peace.

And so it begins with us. Peace.

Apologize

2011-01-12T12:45:00.001-06:00

A couple of days ago, my husband hurt my feelings. He didn't mean to, but he did. I pouted. He tried to defend himself. I pouted some more. What I wanted was not to be told how I misinterpreted his actions. What I wanted was to hear from him that he was sorry I was hurt. Once I knew that, I could begin to hear his line of reasoning.

But not before the apology.

And so it is with Sarah Palin.

Have you seen her video response to Saturday's melee in Tucson, posted this morning on her facebook page? Nothing reconciling, bridge building, or even almost resembling an "I'm sorry" approach to people in America who are in a fizz over her political rhetoric.

It is, instead, 7-minutes and 43 seconds of, "don't blame me."

And I don't blame her. Clearly the majority of people in this country do not believe targets on maps or "reload" references or the sic 'em attitude that Ms. Palin is so famous for actually mean the woman wants anyone to become a murderer. Surely, surely, surely we would have called that out as utter insanity months ago if we'd really believed she meant for us to take a literal view of her metaphoric presentations.

Even so, we are hurting. We Americans don't want to believe things like what happened last weekend are really possible in our cities. These are stories we expect out of Baghdad or Kabul, not Tucson, Arizona.

So I don't believe it would have been too much to ask Ms. Palin for something like: "I'm sorry for anything I have said or done that would lead people to believe I am a fan of violence." Followed perhaps by a clearly stated, "I am not."

It's what loving people do. They feel sorry when there's a misunderstanding that has boiled over into blaming and outrage. They long for a field of compromise that will allow for gentle words and new feelings.

It's not just what loving people do. It's what smart people do.

And once again, Sarah Palin misses the boat. Here's some of what she said:

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions...When we "take up our arms," we're talking about our vote.

So, I believe I will continue to turn my back on her reasoning.

Apologize first.

Peace.

The Signs...Are They a' Changin'?

2011-01-10T16:42:00.004-06:00

It sounds like the tragic Saturday killing spree involving Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords has put our national leadership on alert.

Finally.

Incendiary rhetoric mixed with politics is being called out for what it is: insane, uncivilized, anti-democracy, and just plain dangerous. May those who have ears hear.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers had a rare bipartisan conference call Sunday to discuss Rep. Giffords' condition and security concerns for members of Congress.

Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, said he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a member of Congress or a federal official. (from today's Washington Post)

Language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence? I wonder if any of these would qualify as criminal under such a law?

Criminal? Or just terribly tasteless expressions of free speech?

How might a symbol like this fare under a law like Rep. Brady envisions?

What about this? Criminal?

This one? Could this man be perceived as threatening or inciting violence?

A pity we need a law to tell us how to be civilized. A bigger pity that we Americans have sopped up the snarly references to guns and violence and hit lists like they were sweet barbeque sauce instead of the vicious poison they are.

Do we need a need a law? Could we decide to be the privileged and fed and educated people we are and begin to be the POSITIVE change we want to see in this world? Remember what those signs looked like?

We like the hopeful message. We proved that over two years ago. What in the name of everything decent has happened since then?

Peace.

A Mother's Broken Heart

2011-01-09T20:10:00.005-06:00

I have looked at this photo all day long.

It's Christina Taylor Green... The 9-year old who died in a crazy man's shooting spree yesterday in Arizona.

Her mother talked to someone at ABC news this morning and called her daughter, "a beautiful girl, inside and out." I started to cry. I have ached for Christina's parents all day long. I had 9-year olds once. I never imagined they would not be safe at a public event with an adult friend along.

I have also looked at this photo quite a bit today.

It's Gabriel Zimmerman... The 30-year old legislative aide to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He also died yesterday at the event in Tucson that he reportedly had planned. I have a 26-year old in my life who is like a son to me. He is the chief of staff for a Texas legislator and likely will be attending many events like this with his boss in the upcoming days of the Texas legislative session. I cannot let myself believe that a young man interested in making the world a better place, one piece of legislation at a time, could die doing this job.

I have also studied this face today.

It's Jared Lee Loughner... The 22-year old suspected shooter in the terrifying incident that left six dead yesterday morning at a US Congressional representative's meeting with constituents on that street corner in Tucson, Arizona.

My sons are in their 20s. A determined search of the web could probably turn up photos of them making goofy faces into a camera. Some of their friends wear hats like this, and glasses like this, and attend community college, and wander around a bit trying to find their way(s) in this world. And while I am not even hinting at linking any sane young person I know with the psychoses that now frame the person who is reported to be Jared Lee Loughner - I am saying the man...who is really still just a boy...has a mother. I hope she loves him. Can you imagine what her day has been like today?

I will let others ponder the dysfunctional landscape of fear and trembling that political pundits and crazy preachers and poorly informed rally goers have created in this country. There will be many over the next few weeks who lament the implications of lax gun laws and crosshairs on maps and the social psychology behind group support of statements like "if ballots don't work, bullets will."

I am going to cry for mothers.

Peace. Please.

Top Speed 40 MPH?

2011-01-08T16:40:00.002-06:00

That's the fastest you can drive on the 88-square mile island of Martha's Vineyard. I'm not kidding.

There are also no traffic lights. And nothing but smooth and curvy two-lane roads.

For a girl from a bustling city in a state where wide roads and big cars rule - it was a bit of an adjustment. But after a few days in my rented econo-box, I felt my pulse slow and my peripheral vision expand. I was breathing, not fuming. I was meandering not maniacally swerving. I was catching a glimpse of the world outside my personal high-speed space.

And here's what I saw...

Behind a tall wire fence, in the bright light of noon, was a square-mile of this. It was breathtaking.

The next day I decided I needed one or two more shots of Creation's Crayola box, this time taken in the longer shadows of an afternoon. I drove the same road - even slower than 40 mph. I drove it four times.

The flowers were not there.

The next morning, I took the same route. I went 20 mph this time. My field of Springtime in September had vanished. I thought I'd lost my mind.

By the following day I realized the flowers had been harvested. Every single stem had been cut to the ground. I had seen those blooms just hours before they went from planted-in-the-earth to arranged-in-a-vase.

And I could not help wondering...what if I'd been going 60?

I ran across the photo, taken almost four months ago, this week as I rushed through the pile that was 2010 on my desk . If digital images have a voice, this one was shouting: Slow down! I swear I actually heard it.

Meander a bit on the journey, it said.
Watch for beauty along the way.
Stop and take a picture or write a poem or whistle.

Or plan to miss a lot of what is good about this world.

Peace.

Cheers!

2011-01-06T10:54:00.001-06:00

A friend emailed Tuesday:

Happy New Year! Time is arbitrary, and still, this marker seems to have some potency - might as well tap into it!

I appreciated his honesty. Time is arbitrary.

The fact is, January 1 is just another day on the calendar. As we toasted it in with friends at midnight last Friday, I have to admit I did not feel the potency. Is this day a finer gift than yesterday was? That's what I was thinking. Why the clinking and kissing and horn blowing and firecrackers? If we do it for this day, why not the next?

And so I began the year...wondering why I don't celebrate every day like a fresh, new beginning.

In this first week of 2011, I have picked through the works of some of my favorite inspired writers and poets, I have reviewed old calendars, I have lit candles, I have made lists. And still, I feel nothing but longing for a kind of hopeful spirit that greets every single day with a raised glass and a joyful heart and a determined resolve to make things new.

Every single day.

I have landed on this question: Why the struggle to find celebration within me?

Me - the woman who has no unmet personal need and rarely an unanswered whim.
Me - the person who grew in the safety of a loving home in the middle of a land full of freedom and choice.
Me - the human whose only physical complaints are tied directly to personal decisions.
Me - the being who knows real suffering mostly through the observed experiences of others.

Me.

If I can't celebrate every single day of life and breath and being on this planet, then who?

If I cannot joyfully wave big, flashy banners of hope and kindness and peace and love, I am not sure why I have been given so much to celebrate.

And so I am leaving the champagne flute on the window sill in 2011. There will be clean water in it every morning as I greet the day. If there seems to be nothing more fitting to celebrate on any given day, I will celebrate the clean water and remember that one in eight people in this world do not have it.

Time is arbitrary.
Our decision to fill it with hope and joy is not.

Happy New Year.
Peace.

On The Red Eye to Bethlehem

2010-12-24T09:55:00.004-06:00

The following is an account of the first fight I had with my husband. Really. A shorter version with me reading the story aired Christmas Eve on our local NPR station - KUT, 90.5, in Austin.

December 1974. Our first Christmas together. We are young, in love, and mostly broke. There are no presents under the tree. In fact, there is no tree, just a hand-me-down creche that I pull from a tattered Sears box stuffed in the back of the closet. My sweetie plays a Dylan-esque version of Silent Night on his guitar, and I sing along while unwrapping Joseph and Mary and the smiling baby Jesus with the golden halo circling above his blond curls.

Silent Night, Holy Night. All is calm. All is bright.

I carefully shred a brown paper bag to give the manger scene a hay-filled barn look, then place the cattle who are lowing, the sheep who are following the shepherds, and the star that is guiding all to the beautiful babe in their proper places. Next – the wise men, who I line up, of course, in order of their gifts: guy with the treasure box first - gold... funny lantern looking carrier next – frankincense...black guy with the perfume bottle last – myrrh.

Holy infant so tender and mild…

The guitar tempo slows as I go for the heavenly peace high note. My sweet serenader stops playing.

“The wise men weren't there, you know.” he says, looking at me with a touch of smugness that does NOT make him attractive to me at all.

"Ha Ha," I say. "They followed the star and found the babe lying in a manger and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh." I try my best to mimic the smug look.

“Actually, the wise men were sent out by Herod after the buzz about a new Savior hit the streets...remember? 'Go and find the child so I can worship him too?’” The words are familiar…his mocking tone is not. “You don't think they flew on red-eyes to get to Bethlehem, do you?”

I glare at my beautiful, boy-faced sweetheart. And I tell him to shut up. “The wise men are always there,” I say. “Every church in America lines up the wise men on front lawns and altars. Surely you are not suggesting the church – God's Holy Church – has been misrepresenting the story for all of history.”

“Yes,” he says with confidence. “That is precisely what I'm suggesting.” And then he goes on to announce that the Holy family’s lodging was more like a cave than a barn so I can probably toss the paper shreds and sprinkle some gravel from the driveway around instead.

A huge fight ensues. There is swearing and a bit of name-calling. There is a frustrated swing at Wise Man Number 2, which renders him giftless. There is pouting and re-packing the creche and no good-night kiss.

I feel quite betrayed.

35 Christmases have come and gone...

We have found an honest group of people who find their way to God through the stories of Jesus. As a community of faith, we have worked hard together to turn away from the lies churches tell. We do not believe there is only one path to the heart of the Holy. We do not believe a church should make decisions on behalf of pregnant women in crisis or people who come to this country in crisis or registered voters. We do not think God hates gay people or Muslim people or even the people who hate us because of our inclusive views.

But, come Christmas eve, danged if we don't find the church altar flanked by those wise men standing in the queue with their gifts, ready to gaze into the face of our sweet little Anglo baby Jesus with the gold-painted halo.

It's not a lie, I whisper to my husband every year over the first measures of Silent Night...it's tradition.

Peace all. And Merry Christmas.

A Baby Changes Everything

2010-12-23T09:38:00.000-06:00

While the entire Christian world turns its attention this week to a sweet and quiet baby glowing in the light of a star, surrounded by adoring parents and calm animals, I hear a voice in my head saying, "Who missed the part about this being a baby?"

The story seems to be retold year after year as a reminder to us that God was willing to be tender and vulnerable and well, so easy, arriving among us as the most innocent form of life. Just review the words to Away in a Manger for evidence that the baby we've uncovered in a livestock pen in Bethlehem all these years turns out to be something of a non-human phenom.

If this is a real baby...the kind of human who won't let you sit down to dinner until it is cold, keeps you up all night and day with needs you can't quite decipher, delights in one moment with a smile and terrifies in the next with a howl...then what's the deal with all the references to silent nights and no crying and let nothing you dismay?

Babies change everything. The way we sleep and eat and talk and dream. The way we view the world, our family, and even the electrical outlets we stopped thinking about the minute after we plugged in the TV. They are the ultimate show-stoppers, heart-stealers, and home wreckers. They turn our worlds upside down. Nothing is ever the same.

What parent doesn't know this?

I must confess, I have no time for the demands of a baby this week. I mean, it's Christmas the day after tomorrow. There is no room on the schedule for sickness or sadness or a broken heart or a wounded spirit. Please...no baby behavior. I have too much to do.

Unfortunately, this is not a Christmas condition of mine - it is the way of my days. Don't let me see that needy person on the corner or that hungry child on TV or the tears gathering in a friend's eyes. I don't want to hear how many people died in Afghanistan today or how difficult it is to find clean water in Sudan or that the soup kitchen 8 miles from my front door needs volunteers.

Please world...stop being a baby.

As I ponder my Christian tradition on this Christmas Eve Eve, I cannot get past the clear image of God as a crying, hungry, 100% needy baby. Oh my. And even when God was all grown up, the story tells us these words were spoken: When you do something for the least of these among you, you have done it for me.

In other words, it seems, pay attention to the baby.

Could it be that peace really was born on Christmas?

The baby is crying.

Why haven't we picked him up?

Peace.

War Does THIS to Your Mind

2010-10-24T16:05:00.000-05:00

A Sunday ponderable for a "Christian" nation:

Imagine what "this" might be. What might war do to your mind?

Not the mind of a soldier or a president or political operative. Your mind.

What if this sentence described your life?

In her 40 years of life, Khamad Jan's mother has experienced 30 years of war.

What might a lifetime of war have done to your mind?

And what happens when you think about this possibility?

Neither she nor her daughters had ever heard of the 9/11 attack in the US. Nor were they aware that the US had invaded their country in October of 2001.

What would a seemingly arbitrary invasion of your homeland have done to your mind?

Please read this short article. War Does This to Your Mind

Then think about what war has done to your mind.

Has it made you more inclined toward hate or love? Fear or hope?

War or peace?

Thinking About Water

2010-10-15T15:56:00.001-05:00

Perhaps you've endured some kind of breakdown in infrastructure in your city or neighborhood that has cut off easy access to clean running water temporarily. But a lifetime without clean water within arm's reach? Is there a citizen in the United States who can imagine such a thing?

Just today I threw out two half-full glasses of water left overnight on the bedside tables. Then I poured fresh water into those glasses to drink with breakfast. I hope I actually drank mine. I boiled eggs in clean water, which I threw down the drain as soon as the eggs were cooked. I made coffee with the bottled spring water I keep in my pantry. I ran the dishwasher, flushed a couple of toilets, watered the lawn. I ran untold gallons of fresh water down the driveway in the bi-weekly pool filter backwash. I came inside and drank a full glass of clean water. Next is a 5-minute shower, which means I'll consume more water washing than a person living in a developing country slum has access to over an entire day.

Meanwhile, 884-million people lack access to safe water supplies...approximately one in eight people in the world.

In September of 2000, the world's leaders got together and made a list of hopeful promises to people around the globe who live in extreme poverty. These promises have come to be called the Millennium Development Goals. Within these goals is a pledge to make sure at least one in FOUR people in the world has access to clean water by the year 2015.

Our world is in chaos. People with plenty on this planet seem to be in a world of worry to keep what they have. I fear the least of these among us are about to be completely forgotten.

Will you join other blog readers from across the globe today and sign this petition to the United Nations, reminding the powers that be that we want to be people who keep our promises?

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Thank you. Peace.

Why There Will Never Be Peace on Earth

2010-10-11T17:38:00.004-05:00

Everything I needed to know about why we can't have peace on the planet I learned at a music festival.

Not just a music festival...the Austin City Limits music festival. This is no fly by night event...this is 70,000 people savoring 3 days of deliriously premier rock and roll, and meandering through the most magnificent consecutive October days anyone planning to be outside in Texas could imagine. ACL 2010.

My weekend began in the spirit of Texas tradition with Asleep at the Wheel at noon on day one...was driven to the edge of fainting joy with Balmorhea opening day two...and ended with none other than The Eagles sending us out the exit almost airborne on day three. It was...to borrow a phrase from a generation one or two behind me...epic.

This kind of thing works in my city because we are cool. My favorite piece of evidence to support that statement is the unwritten rule of Living in Harmony that allows the spreading of a blanket on the ground to represent a reserved seat. This happens wherever you go in Austin. If it's an outside event that begins at 8 PM, a blanket can be placed at 8 AM and it will be where you left it when you return at 7:55 PM. It's the Law of the Live Music Woods around here.

I told you we were cool.

So yesterday, knowing we would want a decent spot to see our beloved Eagles at the end of the day, on the festival's biggest stage, the Peace Papa and I arrived an hour before the gates opened to dash for a spot under a tree to spread our blanket. The plan actually served two purposes. It gave us shade to rest in when the day started to wear on us, and eased our worries about pushing through the human stew to try to catch a glimpse of Don Henley & Co. at 8 pm, when every festival stage but the headliner stage went dark.

We were not the only old folks with this idea. In fact, by the time we got to the sprawling oak at 11:02 AM, it was almost packed. But we got a spot. A good one. Within 5 minutes, even more 50-something music fans showed up and began spreading out in front of us. The security guard on duty let them know they'd be the front row of the chair and blanket bunch. We were all pleased.

Except the people who'd been designated "front row" apparently spent their day enforcing the status they worked so hard to earn (?) while the rest of us went about our business enjoying a day of music. Everyone who tried to sit in front of them heard this: "We got here at 11 this morning. This is the front row." And if folks didn't move, as commanded...these entitled grumps got security to help them out. I'm not kidding.

It gets better.

We were all in our places at 8 PM...and of course the area had, um, filled in. (see above mention of 70,000 people)

Did I also mention our coveted tree spot was right in front of a long wall of porta-potties? Needless to say, a few of the music fans who had worked hard to stay hydrated under the Texas sun all day (thank you Budweiser) decided it was time to visit the potties. But the music had begun, and our friends on the front row would have NONE. OF. IT. Seriously. Imagine a sea of people and camping chairs and blankets and coolers and backpacks and water bottles - and three nasty bermuda-shorted seniors standing with their arms straight out in front of them to block the path to the bathroom. When arms out didn't work...they wagged their fingers in kids' faces and said, "Go back. You can't go through here. WE'VE BEEN HERE SINCE 11." I was sure someone was going to get slugged.

These people chose this approach instead of taking one step forward to get out of the traffic flow. They did this instead of enjoying the music. They did this until they finally packed up their gear and left. Really. While The Eagles were on stage. While the music they had spent the whole day planning to hear was playing.

Apparently someone forgot to tell these music lovers that - yes - a blanket and a couple of chairs holds your space. But - no - it does not give you any rights beyond your 4' x 4' square. And, honestly old timers...it's a music FESTIVAL, not the ballet. There are no reserved front rows at a music festival. I'd venture a guess that even if these folks had held their noses on the floor of the stage all day long, someone with a little more spring in their step and a few less inhibitions about propriety would have managed to wiggle in.

It was a music festival!

So, there it is. We humans are ridiculous. Even at a music festival, where everyone shares a common interest in what's going on, and there are no obvious philosophical, political, or religious differences between us...

Even under these circumstances we feel a need to protect what we believe we're entitled to. And we'll fight with someone to do that if we have to.

I give up.

And as much as I love The Eagles, I have to tell you, I was longing for just one sweet song from The Youngbloods.

C'mon people now...

Peace.

The Inalienable Right to Hate

2010-10-06T20:57:00.004-05:00

I was absolutely going to stay out of the discussion about Fred Phelps and his band of relatives who call themselves Christian while they run all over the country carrying signs that read: Thank God for Dead Soldiers and God Hates Obama and Fags Die, God Laughs.

I do not like Fred Phelps. I will borrow an evocative phrase my mother uses from time to time: I wish God would just pinch his head off.

And so it didn't seem right for me to comment on the Supreme Court wrangling over the rights of Fred Phelps, et al. to crash a funeral for an Army Lance Corporal who died in Iraq in 2006. Seems members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas stalk military funerals so they can see and be seen by people who might disagree with their ideas about Sin in America. Here's how the faithful followers of Rev. Phelps like to show up for these military services:

Freedom of speech is protected in this country - even if it's tasteless and cruel and full of lies and hate.

So...I was going to stay out of it.

But then I saw this photo:

And now I really don't know what to say, except I'd like to find these children and tell them that the person who pulled these shirts over their heads and took their picture is wrong. I'd like to ask them what kind of house they live in...because if it's one in which God and Hate are used in the same sentence, I'm betting they've been horribly abused - if not physically, certainly emotionally. I'd like to ask them if I could pick them up for ice cream this Friday night...

Because that's the night I'm asking God to pinch off some heads...

and I'm hoping they don't have to see that, too.

Sigh.

You Couldn't Live On It

2010-10-06T19:46:00.002-05:00

That's my message to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele tonight.
Perhaps it's all he needs to know about minimum wage.

In case you didn't know, your local Tea Party movement is backing candidates running for spots on the national policy-making stage who favor eliminating federally mandated minimum wage. (FYI: 90% of the world's countries have minimum wage law).

So, last night MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell tried to find out if the GOP Chairman is on board with candidates who think that way. Here's what happened:

Of course Michael Steele doesn't know minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

He makes $107.21 an hour! And this is just his base pay for heading up the Republican National Committee. He reportedly earns another $8K-$20K whenever he makes an appearance or delivers a speech.

That hourly rate adds up to $223,000 a year.

On the other hand, a person making minimum wage who is lucky enough to work 40 hours a week makes $15,000 a year. The minimum wage earner who is only scheduled for 30 hours a week (so his/her employer doesn't have to offer benefits) makes just $11,300 a year.

Do you know anyone trying to live on $7.25 an hour, Mr. Steele? I'm betting not.

Same for this guy...

Tonight, Newt Gingrich declared the GOP is the "party of paychecks"...(which seems funny since GOP leadership has no idea how much pay to put in checks). Even so, Gingrich is stumping for Republican candidates with this good guy/bad guy mantra: Republicans are the party of paychecks. Democrats are the party of food stamps.

And this is supposed to make people run away from Democrats?

The case could be made that Democrats at least seem to know that $15K a year is not enough income to put food on a table.

I won't even bother to pitch the case that the GOP is the party that made the economic mess we're in right now. But I would like to suggest that people who don't have a clue what they're paying their housekeepers, their gardeners, the guy making their coffee, the woman ironing their shirts...

These are not the people who should be allowed to decide whether or not minimum wage legislation is important.

I hope Main Street is paying attention.

And Jesus said...Stop the Barking?

2010-09-08T17:54:00.005-05:00

Since posting late yesterday, the Dove World Outreach Center website has - it seems - gone belly up. The links to the site below do not work. Pastor Terry Jones has also suspended his plan to burn the holy books of Islam on his Gainesville, FL church lawn Saturday night.

For today, then...mark one for sanity.

I attend a small church in Austin. On any given Sunday morning, there are a few dozen of us gathered to sing, pray, study, and share a bit of our broken lives with like-minded friends. You might say there are "around 50" of us. Much like the membership being reported from Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida - home of "International Burn the Qur'an Day" and Pastor Terry Jones.

Really. I completely understand the mind that drives past a half dozen full-to-capacity stadium churches and pulls into a weedy parking lot with 30 cars every Sunday morning. I think it more often than not: "Man, we need some advertising."

But for the love of Jesus...A nationwide call to burn holy books of Islam? On September 11?

Whatever else is to be said of Terry Jones...he definitely got his little church some publicity.

From Vienna, Austria...

to Tampa Bay, Florida...

...the Dove World Outreach Center has officially gotten the word out. (Check out today's front pages around the world on Newseum). I'm betting the parking lot at Dove World Outreach Center will be full this week. Of news vans.

Google "burn the qur'an." Over 7-million entries will pop up. I now know the history of DWOC, have read the Ten Reasons to Burn A Koran, as well as the well done counter-piece, Ten Reasons Not to Call Yourself the Dove World Outreach Center.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so venomous. It would be forgettable if it hadn't already required a special meeting between our war general in Afghanistan and that country's president. It would be just another bunch of crazy Christians if this "Christian nation" of ours didn't spend so much time pointing fingers at outlier lunatics from other walks of faith.

What would Jesus say? Maybe more importantly, what did he forget to say? Love your neighbor...he said it. Do good to those who persecute you...he said it. Treat others as you want to be treated...he said it. Blessed are the peacemakers...he said it.

Maybe Jesus would understand this sign from a news clip on YouTube today. The man is part of a significant group of angry Muslims in Kabul protesting Pastor Jones' plan for a Qu'ran bonfire.

It has become, for me, the clearest message on the subject. Stop Barking of Your Popy.

I know it makes no sense. None of it does.

Peace.

Marking Time

2010-08-19T17:24:00.001-05:00

A lot has happened since March 19, 2003:

7 years and 5 months have passed.

2,710 days have followed dawn's early light to the setting sun.

4,419 American lives have been lost on the soil of Iraq.

1 incredibly awful war has stolen the futures of many innocents who are not our enemies, ratcheted our national debt up $745 billion, and sullied our reputation on the world stage. Still - somehow this war managed to make it to our "not very important" list of things to think about in 2010.

I just happened to turn on MSNBC last night, and cried as I watched the unexpected live coverage of our last combat unit in Iraq crossing the border into Kuwait with unloaded rifles. The war in Iraq - if war is to be defined as open and declared armed hostile combat between nations - is over. As of about 8 PM on my clock last night. Just like that.

If life was fair, most Americans would not have missed that moment. There would have been a parade in every town, confetti flying from high rises, flags waving, people cheering. But war, it seems, is not the Superbowl or an NBA championship or even a presidential motorcade.

War, it seems, is just hell. And really, who wants to follow that too closely?

It has been so easy to keep our backs to this one. There have been too few protests and too many domestic distractions. The pundits and the politicians who dish our daily dose of priorities traded the urgency of Operation Iraqi Freedom for ponzi schemes and tea parties and popularity surveys months and months ago. Most of us have had very little interest and certainly no skin in this game.

But it has been a human tragedy.

I invite you to stop right now. Spend some time scrolling through the names (below) of Americans who have died in Iraq since March of 2003. Ponder the enormous absurdity of 106,000 peace loving Iraqi citizens - people with hopes and dreams just like you and me - who have been killed in this war. Find some photos on the internet that give you a look at the ways this war has physically scarred Iraq.

Let it sink in. Let it be real.

Because if we don't care, we will certainly do it again.

And again.

And again.

Peace.

Jay Thomas Aubin • Ryan Anthony Beaupre • Therrel S. Childers • Jose Gutierrez • Brian Matthew Kennedy • Kendall Damon Waters-Bey • Thomas Mullen Adams • Nicolas M. Hodson • Eric J. Orlowski • Christopher Scott Seifert • Brandon S. Tobler • Jamaal R. Addison • Edward J. Anguiano • Michael E. Bitz • Brian Rory Buesing • George Edward Buggs • Tamario D. Burkett • Kemaphoom A. Chanawongse • Donald J. Cline Jr.• Robert J. Dowdy • Ruben Estrella-Soto • David K. Fribley • Jose A. Garibay • Jonathan L. Gifford • Jorge A. Gonzalez • Nolen R. Hutchings • Howard Johnson II • Phillip A. Jordan • James Kiehl • Johnny Villareal Mata • Patrick R. Nixon • Lori Piestewa • Frederick E. Pokorney Jr.• Brendon Reiss • Randal Kent Rosacker • Brandon Sloan • Thomas J. Slocum • Donald R. Walters • Michael J. Williams • Thomas A. Blair • Evan T. James • Bradley S. Korthaus • Gregory P. Sanders • Michael Vann Johnson Jr.• Francisco A. Martinez Flores • Donald C. May Jr.• Patrick T. O'Day • Robert M. Rodriguez • Gregory Stone • Kevin G. Nave • Joseph Menusa • Fernando Padilla-Ramirez • Roderic A. Solomon • James W. Cawley • Michael Russell Creighton-Weldon • Michael Edward Curtin • Diego Fernando Rincon • Jesus A. Suarez del Solar • William W. White • Eugene Williams • Aaron J. Contreras • Michael V. Lalush • Brian D. McGinnis • William A. Jeffries • Brandon J. Rowe • Jacob L. Butler • Joseph B. Maglione • James F. Adamouski • Brian E. Anderson • Mathew G. Boule • George A. Fernandez • Christian D. Gurtner • Erik A. Halvorsen • Scott Jamar • Michael F. Pedersen • Eric A. Smith • Nathan D. White • Chad E. Bales • Wilbert Davis • Mark A. Evnin • Edward J. Korn • Nino D. Livaudais • Ryan P. Long • Donald S. Oaks Jr.• Randall S. Rehn • Russell B. Rippetoe • Todd J. Robbins • Erik H. Silva • Tristan N. Aitken • Wilfred D. Bellard • Daniel Francis J. Cunningham • Travis A. Ford • Bernard G. Gooden • Devon D. Jones • Brian M. McPhillips • Duane R. Rios • Benjamin W. Sammis • Paul R. Smith • Stevon A. Booker • Larry K. Brown • Edward Smith • Gregory P. Huxley Jr.• Kelley S. Prewitt • Andrew Julian Aviles • Eric B. Das • Lincoln D. Hollinsaid • Jeffrey J. Kaylor • Jesus Martin Antonio Medellin • Anthony S. Miller • George A. Mitchell • William R. Watkins III• Henry L. Brown • Juan Guadelupe Garza Jr.• John W. Marshall • Jason M. Meyer • Scott D. Sather • Robert A. Stever • Jeffrey E. Bohr Jr.• Terry W. Hemingway • Riayan A. Tejeda • Jesus A. Gonzalez • David Edward Owens Jr.• Joseph Acevedo • Gil Mercado • John E. Brown • Thomas A. Foley III• Armando Ariel Gonzalez • Richard A. Goward • Joseph P. Mayek • Jason David Mileo • John T. Rivero • Andrew Todd Arnold • Roy Russell Buckley • Robert William Channell Jr.• Alan Dinh Lam • Troy Jenkins • Osbaldo Orozco • Narson B. Sullivan • Joe J. Garza • Jesse A. Givens • Sean C. Reynolds • Jason L. Deibler • Marlin T. Rockhold • Cedric E. Bruns • Richard P. Carl • Hans N. Gukeisen • Brian K. Van Dusen • Matthew R. Smith • Jakub Henryk Kowalik • Jose Franci Gonzalez Rodriguez • Patrick Lee Griffin Jr.• Nicholas Brian Kleiboeker • David T. Nutt • William L. Payne • Douglas Jose Marencoreyes • Rasheed Sahib • Dominic R. Baragona • Andrew David La Mont • Jason William Moore • Timothy Louis Ryan • Kirk Allen Straseskie • Aaron Dean White • Nathaniel A. Caldwell • David Evans Jr.• Keman L. Mitchell • Kenneth A. Nalley • Brett J. Petriken • Mathew E. Schram • Jeremiah D. Smith • Thomas F. Broomhead • Michael B. Quinn • Kenneth R. Bradley • Jose A. Perez III• Michael T. Gleason • Kyle A. Griffin • Zachariah W. Long • Jonathan W. Lambert • Atanacio Haro Marin Jr.• Branden F. Oberleitner • Doyle W. Bollinger Jr.• Travis Lee Burkhardt • David Sisung • Jesse M. Halling • Michael E. Dooley • Gavin L. Neighbor • John K. Klinesmith Jr.• Andrew R. Pokorny • Ryan R. Cox • Shawn D. Pahnke • Joseph D. Suell • Robert L. Frantz • Michael L. Tosto • Michael R. Deuel • William T. Latham • Paul T. Nakamura • Orenthial J. Smith • Cedric L. Lennon • Andrew F. Chris • Gregory E. MacDonald • Kevin C. Ott • Gladimir Philippe • Corey A. Hubbell • Joshua McIntosh • Richard P. Orengo • Tomas Sotelo Jr.• Timothy M. Conneway • Christopher D. Coffin • Travis J. Bradach-Nall • Edward J. Herrgott • Corey L. Small • James C. Coons • David B. Parson • Jeffrey Wershow • Chad L. Keith • Barry Sanford Sr.• Craig A. Boling • Robert L. McKinley • Dan H. Gabrielson • Roger D. Rowe • Jason Andrew Tetrault • Melissa Valles • Christian C. Schulz • Joshua M. Neusche • Paul J. Cassidy • Jaror C. Puello-Coronado • Michael T. Crockett • Cory Ryan Geurin • Ramon Reyes Torres • David J. Moreno • Mason Douglas Whetstone • Joel L. Bertoldie • Jonathan D. Rozier • Justin W. Garvey • Jason D. Jordan • David A. Scott • Christopher R. Willoughby • Mark A. Bibby • Jon P. Fettig • Joshua T. Byers • Brett T. Christian • Evan Asa Ashcraft • Raheen Tyson Heighter • Hector R. Perez • Juan M. Serrano • Jonathan P. Barnes • Jonathan M. Cheatham • Daniel K. Methvin • Wilfredo Perez Jr.• Heath A. McMillin • Nathaniel Hart Jr.• William J. Maher III• Leif E. Nott • Michael J. Deutsch • James I. Lambert II • Justin W. Hebert • Farao K. Letufuga • David L. Loyd • Zeferino E. Colunga • Kyle C. Gilbert • Brian R. Hellermann • Leonard D. Simmons • Duane E. Longstreth • Matthew D. Bush • Brandon Ramsey • Levi B. Kinchen • Floyd G. Knighten Jr.• David S. Perry • Timothy R. Brown Jr.• Richard S. Eaton Jr.• Daniel R. Parker • Taft V. Williams • Steven W. White • David Kirchhoff • Craig S. Ivory • Eric R. Hull • Bobby C. Franklin • Kenneth W. Harris Jr.• Michael S. Adams • Kylan A. Jones-Huffman • Vorn J. Mack • Stephen M. Scott • Ronald D. Allen Jr.• Pablo Manzano • Darryl T. Dent • Gregory A. Belanger • Rafael L. Navea • Anthony L. Sherman • Mark A. Lawton • Sean K. Cataudella • Charles T. Caldwell • Joseph Camara • Cameron B. Sarno • Christopher A. Sisson • Bruce E. Brown • Jarrett B. Thompson • Ryan G. Carlock • Joseph E. Robsky Jr.• Henry Ybarra III • William M. Bennett • Kevin N. Morehead • Trevor A. Blumberg • Kevin C. Kimmerly • Alyssa R. Peterson • Richard Arriaga • Brian Faunce • Anthony O. Thompson • James C. Wright • Lunsford Brown II• David Travis Friedrich • Frederick L. Miller Jr.• Paul J. Sturino • Michael Andrade • Robert L. Lucero • Robert E. Rooney • Kyle G. Thomas • Andrew Joseph Baddick • Christopher E. Cutchall • Darrin K. Potter • Dustin K. McGaugh • James D. Blankenbecler • Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez • Simeon Hunte • Tamarra J. Ramos • Charles M. Sims • James H. Pirtle • Spencer T. Karol • Kerry D. Scott • Richard Torres • Joseph C. Norquist • Sean A. Silva • Christopher W. Swisher • James Powell • Jose Casanova • Benjamin L. Freeman • Douglas J. Weismantle • Donald L. Wheeler • Stephen E. Wyatt • Joseph P. Bellavia • Sean R. Grilley • Kim S. Orlando • Michael L. Williams • David R. Bernstein • John D. Hart • Paul J. Johnson • Paul J. Bueche • John P. Johnson • Jason M. Ward • John R. Teal • Artimus D. Brassfield • Michael S. Hancock • Jose L. Mora • Jakia Sheree Cannon • Steven Acosta • Rachel Bosveld • Charles H. Buehring • Joseph R. Guerrera • Jamie L. Huggins • Aubrey D. Bell • Jonathan I. Falaniko • Algernon Adams • Michael Paul Barrera • Isaac Campoy • Todd J. Bryant •
Benjamin J. Colgan • Joshua C. Hurley • Maurice J. Johnson • Daniel A. Bader • Ernest G. Bucklew • Steven D. Conover • Anthony D. D'Agostino • Darius T. Jennings • Karina S. Lau • Keelan L. Moss • Brian H. Penisten • Ross A. Pennanen • Joel Perez • Brian D. Slavenas • Bruce A. Smith • Frances M. Vega • Paul A. Velazquez • Joe N. Wilson • Rayshawn Johnson • Robert T. Benson • Francisco Martinez • Jose A. Rivera • James A. Chance III• Paul F. Fisher • James R. Wolf • Cornell W. Gilmore I • Kyran E. Kennedy • Morgan D. Kennon • Paul M. Neff • Scott C. Rose • Benedict J. Smith • Sharon T. Swartworth • Gary L. Collins • Kurt R. Frosheiser • Linda C. Jimenez • Mark D. Vasquez • Nicholas A. Tomko • Genaro Acosta • Marlon P. Jackson • Nathan J. Bailey • Robert A. Wise • Jacob S. Fletcher • Joseph Minucci II• Irving Medina • Michael D. Acklin II• Ryan Travis Baker • Kelly Bolor • Jeremy DiGiovanni • William David Dusenbery • Richard W. Hafer • Warren S. Hansen • Sheldon R. 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Hendrickson • Randy S. Rosenberg • Keith L. Smette • William R. Sturges Jr. • Christopher Bunda • Adam G. Mooney • Matthew August • James T. Hoffman • Luke S. James • Lester O. Kinney II• Travis A. Moothart • Cory R. Mracek • Patrick Dorff • Sean G. Landrus • Luis A. Moreno • Juan C. Cabral Banuelos Cabral • Holly J. McGeogh • Eliu A. Miersandoval • Armando Soriano • Roger C. Turner Jr.• Seth J. Dvorin • Joshua L. Knowles • Richard P. Ramey • Thomas D. Robbins • Elijah Tai Wah Wong • Jude C. Mariano • William C. Ramirez • Patrick S. Tainsh • Eric Ulysses Ramirez • Bryan N. Spry • Nichole M. Frye • Michael M. Merila • Christopher Taylor • Jeffrey C. Graham • Roger C. Ling • Henry A. Bacon • Matthew C. Laskowski • Stephen M. Wells • Michael R. Woodliff • Michael J. Gray • Gussie M. Jones • Matthew G. Milczark • Edward W. Brabazon • Richard S. Gottfried • Fern L. Holland • Robert J. Zangas • Bert E. Hoyer • Joe L. Dunigan Jr.• Christopher K. Hill • Joel K. Brattain • Jocelyn L. 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Vandayburg • Michelle M. Witmer • Adolf C. Carballo • William C. Eckhart • Antoine J. Holt • Justin W. Johnson • John T. Sims Jr.• Daniel R. Amaya • Nathan P. Brown • Lawrence S. Colton • Wesley C. Fortenberry • Oscar Jimenez • Michael B. Stack • Torrey L. Stoffel-Gray • George D. Torres • Brad S. Shuder • Robert P. Zurheide Jr.• Noah L. Boye • Kevin T. Kolm • Victor A. Rosales Lomeli • Christopher Ramirez • Frank K. Rivers • Richard K. Trevithick • Jimmy J. Arroyave • Brian M. Wood • Marvin A. Camposiles • Edward W. Carman • Richard J. Gannon II• Jonathan N. Hartman • Robert Henderson II • Clayton W. Henson • Michael A. McGlothin • Dennis Morgan • Michael J. Smith Jr.• Ruben Valdez Jr.• Gary F. Van Leuven • Christopher A. Gibson • Bradley C. Fox • Christopher D. Gelineau • Leroy Harris-Kelly • Jason L. Dunham • Shawn C. Edwards • Elmer C. Krause • Stacey C. Brandon • Cory W. Brooks • Nathan B. Bruckenthal • Arthur L. Felder • Patrick W. Kordsmeier • Billy J. Orton • Michael J. 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Brown • James J. Holmes • Isela Rubalcava • Chase R. Whitham • Rodney A. Murray • Andrew L. Tuazon • Kyle A. Brinlee • Jeremiah E. Savage • Jeffrey R. Shaver • Brian K. Cutter • Brandon C. Sturdy • Edward C. Barnhill • Brud J. Cronkrite • James W. Harlan • Michelangelo Mora • Philip I. Spakosky • Pedro I. Espaillat Jr.• Rene Ledesma • Leonard M. Cowherd • Carl F. Curran • Mark J. Kasecky • Bob W. Roberts • Michael M. Carey • William D. Chaney • Joseph P. Garyantes • Marcos O. Nolasco • Michael C. Campbell • Leslie D. Jackson • Troy L. Miranda • Rudy Salas • Jeremy R. Horton • Andrew J. Zabierek • Jorge A. Molinabautista • Jeremy L. Ridlen • Beau R. Beaulieu • Owen D. Witt • Alan N. Bean Jr.• James P. Lambert • Richard H. Rosas • Kevin F. Sheehan • Daniel P. Unger • Kyle W. Codner • Matthew C. Henderson • Dominique J. Nicolas • Cody S. Calavan • Benjamin R. Gonzalez • Rafael Reynosa Suarez • Michael J. Wiesemann • Kenneth Michael Ballard • Bradli N. Coleman • Aaron C. 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Dixon • Armando Hernandez • Juan Calderon Jr.• Justin B. Onwordi • Dean P. Pratt • Tommy L. Gray • Gregory A. Ratzlaff • Harry N. Shondee Jr.• Elia P. Fontecchio • Joseph L. Nice • Raymond J. Faulstich Jr.• Donald R. McCune • Yadir G. Reynoso • Moses D. Rocha • Roberto Abad • Joshua I. Bunch • Larry L. Wells • David L. Potter • Jonathan W. Collins • Rick A. Ulbright • Andrew R. Houghton • John R. Howard • Tavon L. Hubbard • Michael Yury Tarlavsky • Kane M. Funke • Nicholas B. Morrison • Neil Anthony Santoriello • James Michael Goins • Fernando B. Hannon • Geoffrey Perez • Brandon R. Sapp • Daniel Michael Shepherd • Mark Anthony Zapata • David M. Heath • Caleb J. Powers • Brandon T. Titus • Dustin R. Fitzgerald • Richard M. Lord • Jacob D. Martir • Harvey E. Parkerson III• Henry C. Risner • Brad P. McCormick • Ryan A. Martin • Charles L. Wilkins III• Nicanor Alvarez • Jason Cook • Kevin A. Cuming • Seth Huston • Edward T. Reeder • Nachez Washalanta • Christopher Belchik • Matthew R. Stovall • Robert C. Thornton Jr.• Donald N. Davis • Jacob R. Lugo • Alexander S. Arredondo • Charles L. Neeley • Marco D. Ross • Barton R. Humlhanz • Nicholas M. Skinner • Nickalous N. Aldrich • Luis A. Perez • Omead Razani • Edgar E. Lopez • Carl L. Anderson Jr.• Aaron N. Holleyman • Joseph C. Thibodeaux III• Nicholas Perez • Alan Rowe • Nicholas Wilt • Ronald Winchester • Eric L. Knott • Charles R. Lamb • Ryan M. McCauley • Shawna M. Morrison • Gary A. Vaillant • Michael Allred • John J. Boria • Elvis Bourdon • David P. Burridge • Tomas Garces • Derek L. Gardner • Devin J. Grella • Quinn A. Keith • Joseph C. McCarthy • Mick R. Nygard Bekowsky • Brandon M. Read • Lamont N. Wilson • Clarence Adams III• Yoe M. Aneiros • Chad H. Drake • Timothy E. Price • Lauro G. DeLeon Jr.• James D. Faulkner • Michael A. Martinez • Jason L. Sparks • Edgar P. Daclan Jr.• David A. Cedergren • Jason T. Poindexter • Alexander E. Wetherbee • Dominic C. Brown • Guy S. Hagy Jr.• Michael J. 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Evans II• Andrew K. Farrar Jr.• Charles S. Jones • Christopher J. Ramsey • Jonathan R. Reed • Joseph E. Rodriguez • Lyle W. Rymer II• Mickey E. Zaun • Barbara Heald • Edward E. Jack • Lindsey T. James • Keith E. Taylor • James H. Miller IV• Nazario Serrano • Jason C. Redifer • Harry R. Swain IV• Mark C. Warren • Christopher E. Zimny • Robert T. Hendrickson • Sean L. Brock • Sean P. Maher • Richard C. Clifton • Sean M. Cooley • Stephen R. Sherman • Steven G. Bayow • Daniel Torres • Travis M. Wichlacz • Jeremy O. Allmon • Zachary R. Wobler • Jeffrey S. Henthorn • Jessica Housby • Richard A. Perez Jr.• William T. Robbins • Robert A. McNail • Kristopher L. Shepherd • David J. Brangman • Dakotah L. Gooding • Rene Knox Jr.• Chad W. Lake • Ray Rangel • David J. Salie • Michael A. Arciola • Katrina L. Bell-Johnson • Justin B. Carter • Jason R. Hendrix • Timothy R. Osbey • Adam J. Plumondore • Christopher M. Pusateri • Joseph A. Rahaim • Frank B. Hernandez • Carlos J. Gil • Kevin M. Clarke • Clinton R. Gertson • Adam Malson • Seth R. Trahan • David F. Day • Jesse M. Lhotka • John T. Olson • Jason G. Timmerman • Trevor D. Aston • Nicholas J. Olivier • Eric M. Steffeney • Alexander B. Crackel • Michael S. Deem • Daniel G. Gresham • Jacob C. Palmatier • Adam N. Brewer • Colby M. Farnan • Chassan S. Henry • Jason L. Moski • Min S. Choi • Landon S. Giles • Andrew W. Nowacki • Danny L. Anderson • Richard B. Gienau • Julio E. Negron • Lizbeth Robles • Azhar Ali • Wai P. Lwin • Robert S. Pugh • Donald W. Eacho • Seth Garceau • Sean Grimes • Stephen M. McGowan • Adriana N. Salem • Juan M. Solorio • Wade Michael Twyman • Andrew L. Bossert • Michael W. Franklin • Matthew A. Koch • Donald D. Griffith Jr.• Nicholas E. Wilson • Joshua L. Torrence • Paul M. Heltzel • Ricky A. Kieffer • Rocky D. Payne • Lee A. Lewis Jr.• Jonathan A. Hughes • Francisco G. Martinez • Paul W. Thomason III• Kevin S. Smith • Travis R. Bruce • Bryan J. Richardson • Lee M. Godbolt • Isiah J. Sinclair • Samuel S. Lee • Kelly S. Morris • Kenneth L. Ridgley • Eric L. Toth • Charles G. Wells Jr.• Robbie D. McNary • Garry Wesley T. Rimes • Tenzin Dengkhim • Ioasa F. Tavae Jr.• William D. Richardson • James A. Sherrill • Christopher W. Dill • Stephen C. Kennedy • Jeremiah C. Kinchen • Javier J. Garcia • Glenn J. Watkins • Juan C. Venegas • Kevin D. Davis • Casey M. LaWare • Tyler J. Dickens • Manuel Lopez III• John W. Miller • Michael B. Lindemuth • James C. Edge • Aleina Ramirez Gonzalez • Aaron M. Hudson • Angelo L. Lozada Jr.• Randy L. Stevens • Tromaine K. Toy Sr.• Joseph L. Knott • Steven F. Sirko • Sam W. Huff • Steven W. Thornton • Jacob M. Pfister • Kevin S.K. Wessel • Kelly M. Cannan • Marty G. Mortenson • Robert A. Guy • Gavin J. Colburn • Anthony J. Davis Jr.• Aaron A. Kent • Kevin W. Prince • Gary W. Walters Jr.• Timmy J. Millsap • David L. Rice • Joseph S. Tremblay • William A. Edens • Timothy C. Kiser • Eric W. Morris • Robert W. Murray Jr.• Ricky W. Rockholt Jr.• Charles S. Cooper Jr.• Darren A. Deblanc • Stephen W. Frank • Clifford V. Gadsden • Ralph J. Harting III• Juan De Dios Garcia-Arana • Kenya A. Parker • Derrick J. Lutters • Kelly C. Hinz • Tommy S. Little • John E. McGee • John C. Spahr • William J. Brooks • Stephen P. Saxton • Aaron N. Cepeda Sr.• Lance T. Graham • Michael A. Marzano • Michael V. Postal • Jeffrey L. Wiener • Dustin A. Derga • Gary A. Eckert Jr.• Steven R. Givens • Thor H. Ingraham • Nicolas E. Messmer • Lawrence R. Philippon • Stephen P. Baldwyn • Anthony L. Goodwin • Marcus Mahdee • Taylor B. Prazynski • Michael J. Bordelon • Samuel T. Castle • Wesley G. Davids • Christopher R. Dixon • Nicholas B. Erdy • Jonathan W. Grant • Jourdan L. Grez • Kendall H. Ivy II• John T. Schmidt III• Andrew R. Jodon • John M. Smith • Kenneth E. Zeigler II• Travis W. Anderson • Charles C. Gillican III• Jacob M. Simpson • Wesley R. Riggs • Antwan L. Walker • Wyatt D. Eisenhauer • Robin V. Fell • Bernard L. Sembly Jr.• Kurt D. Schamberg • Brad A. Wentz • Tyler L. Creamean • Carl J. Morgain • Benjamin C. Morton • John B. Ogburn III• Kenneth J. Schall • Aaron N. Seesan • Charles T. Wilkerson • Bryan Edward Barron • Joshua T. Brazee • Audrey Daron Lunsford • Saburant Parker • Christopher S. Perez • Daniel Ryan Varnado • Russell J. Verdugo • Randy D. Collins • Charles A. Drier • Dustin C. Fisher • Peter J. Hahn • Jeffrey R. Wallace • Alfred B. Siler • David N. Wimberg • Ricardo A. Crocker • Matthew Scott Lourey • Mark A. Maida • Joshua Michael Scott • Michael S. Barnhill • Phillip N. Sayles • Albert E. Smart II• Victor M. Cortes III• Derek Argel • Casey Crate • William Downs • Jeremy Fresques • Jeffrey B. Starr • Steven M. Langmack • Miguel A. Ramos • Virgil R. Case • Phillip C. Edmundson • Louis E. Niedermeier • Antonio Mendoza • Linda J. Villar • Carrie L. French • Eric J. Poelman • Brian S. Ulbrich • Justin L. Vasquez • Theodore S. Westhusing • Robert T. Mininger • Brian M. Romines • Jonathan L. Smith • Eric T. Burri • Terrence K. Crowe • Louis E. Allen • Roberto Arizola Jr.• Phillip T. Esposito • Michael J. Fasnacht • Douglas E. Kashmer • Marc L. Tucker • Dustin V. Birch • Daniel Chavez • Mark O. Edwards • Thomas O. Keeling • David J. Murray • Devon P. Seymour • Brad D. Squires • Mario A. Castillo • Andrew J. Kilpela • Larry R. Arnold Sr.• Casey Byers • Stanley J. Lapinski • Terrance D. Lee Sr.• Neil A. Prince • Anthony D. Kinslow • Larry R. Kuhns Jr.• John J. Mattek Jr.• Nathan Clemons • Michael R. Hayes • Anthony G. Jones • Joshua P. Klinger • Cesar O. Baez • Jonathan R. Flores • Jesse Jaime • Chad B. Maynard • Tyler S. Trovillion • Dion M. Whitley • Anthony S. Cometa • Erik R. Heldt • John W. Maloney • Robert M. Horrigan • Michael L. McNulty • Adam J. Crumpler • Noah Harris • William A. Long • Christopher R. Kilpatrick • Christopher L. Hoskins • Nicholas R. Idalski • James D. Stewart • Brian A. Vaughn • Arnold Duplantier II• Holly A. Charette • Regina R. Clark • Veashna Muy • Christopher W. Phelps • Chad W. Powell • Joseph M. Tackett • Ramona M. Valdez • Carlos Pineda • Charles A. Kaufman • Matthew S. Coutu • Keith R. Mariotti • Steven E. Shephard • Rafael A. Carrillo Jr.• Robert E. Hall Jr.• Manny Hornedo • Chad M. Mercer • Jeremy a. Brown • Ryan J. Montgomery • Scottie L. Bright • Lyle J. Cambridge • Deyson K. Cariaga • Christopher W. Dickison • Anthony M. Mazzarella • Hoby F. Bradfield Jr.• Eric P. Woods • Joseph P. Goodrich • Ryan J. Kovacicek • Timothy J. Sutton • Benyahmin B. Yahudah • Timothy J. Hines Jr.• Tricia L. Jameson • Clifton B. Mounce • Christopher D. Winchester • Jared D. Hartley • Travis S. Cooper • Jorge L. Pena-Romero • Ronald T. Wood • Efrain Sanchez Jr.• Frank Tiai • Ronnie D. Williams • Jefferey J. Farrow • LaVena L. Johnson • Arthur R. McGill • Steven P. Gill • Travis L. Youngblood • Bryan J. Opskar • Jacques E. Brunson • Ernest W. Dallas Jr.• Carl R. Fuller • James O. Kinlow • Jason W. Montefering • Milton M. Monzon Jr.• Christopher J. Taylor • John F. Thomas • Ramon A. Villatoro Jr.• Adam J. Harting • Adrian J. Butler • Benjamin D. Jansky • Edward L. Myers • John O. Tollefson • Christopher P. Lyons • Andre L. Williams • Ernesto R. Guerra • Victor A. Anderson • Jonathon C. Haggin • David R. Jones Sr.• Jason D. Scheuerman • Ronnie L. Shelley Sr.• Robert A. Swaney • James D. Carroll • Jeffrey A. Boskovitch • Roger D. Castleberry Jr.• David J. Coullard • Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr.• James R. Graham III• Brian P. Montgomery • Nathaniel S. Rock • Thomas C. Hull • James D. McNaughton • Timothy M. Bell Jr.• Eric J. Bernholtz • Nicholas William B. Bloem • Michael J. Cifuentes • Christopher J. Dyer • Grant B. Fraser • Jerry L. Ganey Jr.• Mathew V. Gibbs • Bradley J. Harper • Justin F. Hoffman • David Kenneth J. Kreuter • Aaron H. Reed • Edward A. Schroeder II• David S. Stewart • Adam J. Strain • Charles H. Warren • Kevin G. Waruinge • William B. Wightman • Chad J. Simon • Nils G. Thompson • Terry W. Ball • Robert V. Derenda • Brett E. Walden • Chase J. Comley • Brahim J. Jeffcoat • Kurt E. Krout • Seferino J. Reyna • Ramon E. Gonzales Cordova • Anthony N. Kalladeen • Hernando Rios • Miguel Carrasquillo • Nathaniel E. DeTample • John Kulick • Ryan S. Ostrom • Gennaro Pellegrini Jr.• Francis J. Straub Jr.• Michael A. Benson • Evenor C. Herrera • Rusty W. Bell • David L. Giaimo • Brian K. Derks • Toccara Green • Asbury F. Hawn II• Gary L. Reese Jr.• Shannon D. Taylor • Joshua P. Dingler • Jose L. Ruiz • Paul A. Saylor • Thomas J. Strickland • Michael J. Stokely • Nathan K. Bouchard • Jeremy W. Doyle • Ray M. Fuhrmann II• Timothy J. Seamans • Willard T. Partridge • Elden D. Arcand • James J. Cathey • Brian L. Morris • Joseph C. Nurre • Joseph D. Hunt • Hatim S. Kathiria • Victoir P. Lieurance • Ramon Romero • Chris S. Chapin • Carlos J. Diaz • Trevor J. Diesing • Ivica Jerak • Timothy M. Shea • Joseph L. Martinez • Obediah J. Kolath • Dennis P. Hay • Charles R. Rubado • Gregory J. Fester • Jason E. Ames • Lowell T. Miller II• Monta S. Ruth • George R. Draughn Jr.• Robert L. Hollar Jr.• Lonnie J. Parson • Matthew C. Bohling • Luke C. Williams • Jeffrey A. Williams • Jude R. Jonaus • Robert N. Martens • Franklin R. Vilorio • Christopher L. Everett • Kurtis D.K. Arcala • Jeremy M. Campbell • Robert D. Macrum • Alfredo B. Silva • Shane C. Swanberg • Matthew L. Deckard • David H. Ford IV• Alan N. Gifford • Regilio E. Nelom • Mark H. Dooley • Michael Egan • William L. Evans • William V. Fernandez • Lawrence E. Morrison • William A. Allers III• Pierre A. Raymond • Travis M. Arndt • Kevin M. Jones • Scott P. McLaughlin • Mike T. Sonoda Jr.• Andrew J. Derrick • Paul C. Neubauer • Brian E. Dunlap • Daniel R. Scheile • Shawn A. Graham • Howard P. Allen • Casey E. Howe • Elijah M. Ortega • Tulsa T. Tuliau • Andrew P. Wallace • Michael J. Wendling • Jason A. Benford • Daniel L. Arnold • Oliver J. Brown • Elizabeth N. Jacobson • Steve Morin Jr.• George A. Pugliese • Eric W. Slebodnik • Lee A. Wiegand • Joshua J. Kynoch • Jens E. Schelbert • Marshall A. Westbrook • Timothy J. Roark • Roberto C. Baez • Sean B. Berry • Bryan W. Large • Larry W. Pankey Jr.• John R. Stalvey • Jacob T. Vanderbosch • Andrew D. Bedard • Brian K. Joplin • Shayne M. Cabino • Nicholas O. Cherava • Jason L. Frye • Patrick B. Kenny • Daniel M. McVicker • Carl L. Raines II• Jeremiah W. Robinson • Eric A. Fifer • Nicholas J. Greer • Sergio H. Escobar • Gary R. Harper Jr.• Jerry L. Bonifacio Jr.• Jeremy M. Hodge • Leon G. James II• Leon M. Johnson • Brandon K. Sneed • Matthew A. Kimmell • Donald D. Furman • James T. Grijalva • Kenneth E. Hunt Jr.• Lorenzo Ponce Ruiz • Howard E. Babcock IV• Robert W. Tucker • Samuel M. Boswell • Bernard L. Ceo • Brian R. Conner • Mark P. Adams • Thomas H. Byrd • Jeffrey W. Corban • Richard A. Hardy • Vincent E. Summers • Timothy D. Watkins • Daniel Scott R. Bubb • Chad R. Hildebrandt • Paul J. Pillen • Christopher M. Poston • Lucas A. Frantz • Norman W. Anderson III• Daniel D. Bartels • Tommy I. Folks Jr.• Kendall K. Frederick • Arthur A. Mora Jr.• Russell H. Nahvi • Jose E. Rosario • Jacob D. Dones • Dennis P. Merck • Richard T. Pummill • Andrew D. Russoli • Steven W. Szwydek • Kenneth J. Butler • Benny G. Cockerham III• Seamus M. Davey • Tyler B. Swisher • Christopher W. Thompson • George T. Alexander Jr.• Jonathan R. Spears • Benjamin D. Hoeffner • Christopher T. Monroe • Michael T. Robertson • Ramon A. Acevedoaponte • Lewis J. Gentry • Evan S. Parker • Thomas A. Wallsmith • James Witkowski • Robert F. Eckfield Jr.• Jared J. Kremm • Daniel R. Lightner Jr.• Michael J. Mackinnon • William W. Wood • Debra A. Banaszak • Dillon M. Jutras • Shaker T. Guy • Raymond D. Hill II• Kenny D. Rojas • Joel P. Dameron • Michael P. Hodshire • William J. Byler • Derence W. Jack • Adam R. Johnson • Matthew R. Kading • Wilgene T. Lieto • David J. Martin • Robert C. Oneto-Sikorski • Jonathan Tessar • Allan M. Cundanga Espiritu • Daniel A. Tsue • Gerald M. Bloomfield II• Dennis J. Ferderer Jr.• Tyler R. MacKenzie • Michael D. Martino • Joshua J. Munger • Mark J. Procopio • Benjamin A. Smith • Darren D. Howe • Daniel J. Pratt • Jeffrey P. Toczylowski • Kyle B. Wehrly • Darrell W. Boatman • Timothy D. Brown • Jason A. Fegler • James M. Gurbisz • Dustin A. Yancey • Thomas A. Wren • Joel E. Cahill • James F. Hayes • Ryan J. Sorensen • Brian L. Freeman • Robert C. Pope II• Mario A. Reyes • Justin S. Smith • Alwyn C. Cashe • Jeremy P. Tamburello • Michael C. Parrott • Daniel F. Swaim • Joshua A. Terando • Tyrone L. Chisholm • Donald E. Fisher II • Antonio Mendezsanchez • David A. Mendez Ruiz • Stephen J. Sutherland • Scott A. Zubowski • John M. Longoria • Christopher M. McCrackin • Ramon J. Mendoza Jr.• James E. Estep • Travis J. Grigg • Matthew J. Holley • Nickolas D. Schiavoni • Roger W. Deeds • John A. Lucente • Donald R. McGlothlin • Jeremy E. Murray • Dylan R. Paytas • Jeffry A. Rogers • Alexis Roman-Cruz • Joshua J. Ware • Ivan V. Alarcon • Vernon R. Widner • Anthony A. Gaunky • Luis R. Reyes • Christopher M. Alcozer • Jonathan F. Blair • Dominic J. Hinton • Michael J. Idanan • Edward Karolasz • Miguel Terrazas • Tyler J. Troyer • Anthony R.C. Yost • Dennis W. Zilinski • Dominic J. Sacco • John W. Dearing • Denis J. Gallardo • Aram J. Bass • Allen J. Knop • William B. Meeuwsen • Ryan D. Christensen • Marc A. Delgado • Eric P. Pearrow • Steven C. Reynolds • Javier A. Villanueva • Gregory L. Tull • Brett E. Angus • Donald J. Hasse • Jerry W. Mills Jr.• Grzegorz Jakoniuk • William D. Richardson • Joshua D. Snyder • William G. Taylor • Brent A. Adams • Daniel J. Clay • John M. Holmason • David A. Huhn • Adam W. Kaiser • Robert A. Martinez • Anthony T. McElveen • Scott T. Modeen • Andrew G. Patten • Andy A. Stevens • Craig N. Watson • Philip A. Dodson Jr.• Marcus S. Futrell • Philip L. Travis • Jimmy L. Shelton • Daniel M. Cuka • Richard L. Schild • Thomas C. Siekert • Brian A. Wright • Joseph P. Bier • Michael C. Taylor • Spencer C. Akers • Milton Rivera-Vargas • Kevin J. Smith • Adrian N. Orosco • Julia V. Atkins • Kenith Casica • Clarence L. Floyd Jr.• Travis L. Nelson • Keith A. Bennett • James S. Moudy • Jared W. Kubasak • Curtis A. Mitchell • Lex S. Nelson • Brian C. Karim • James C. Kesinger • Peter J. Navarro • Michael S. Zyla • Kenneth B. Pospisil • Michael B. Presley • Timothy R. Boyce • Joseph A. Lucas • Adam R. Fales • Samuel Tapia • Johnnie V. Mason • Michael J. Cleary • Richard Junior D. Naputi • Benjamin T. Britt • William Lopez-Feliciano • Regina C. Reali • Cheyenne C. Willey • Joseph J. Andres Jr.• Myla L. Maravillosa • Anthony O. Cardinal • Sergio Gudino • Dane O. Carver • Dominic R. Coles • Richard M. Salter • Isaias E. Santos • Joshua M. Morberg • Lance S. Sage • Aaron M. Forbes • George A. Lutz II• Prince K. Teewia • Shawn C. Dostie • Jonathan R. Pfender • Ayman A. Taha • Marcelino R. Corniel * Jason L. Bishop • Christopher J. Vanderhorn • Adam L. Cann • Albert P. Gettings • William F. Hecker III• Jason Lopez Reyes • Robbie M. Mariano • Ryan S. McCurdy • Michael E. McLaughlin • Johnny J. Peralez • Christopher P. Petty • Ryan D. Walker • Stephen J. White • Stuart M. Anderson • Darren D. Braswell • Kyle W. Brown • Radhames Camilomatos • Jaime L. Campbell • Joseph D. deMoors • Michael I. Edwards • Nathan R. Field • Jeriad P. Jacobs • Robert T. Johnson • Douglas A. La Bouff • Jason T. Little • Brett L. Lundstrom • Michael R. Martinez • Jacob E. Melson • Raul Mercado • Chester W. Troxel • Clinton R. Upchurch • Michael J. McMullen • Mitchell K. Carver Jr.• Kyle E. Jackson • Michael Anthony Jordan • Jonathan K. Price • Justin J. Watts • Kasper A. Dudkiewicz • Dustin L. Kendall • Rex C. Kenyon • Ruel Mamaril Garcia • Adam R. Shepherd • Carlos Arrelanopandura • Brandon Dewey • Dennis J. Flanagan • Matthew C. Frantz • Rickey Scott • Clifton J. Yazzie • Brian McElroy • Jason L. Norton • Lewis T. D. Calapini • Lance M. Chase • Matthew D. Hunter • Joshua A. Scott • Peter D. Wagler • Sean H. Miles • Jerry M. Durbin Jr.• Joshua A. Johnson • Hugo R. Lopezlopez • Felipe C. Barbosa • David L. Herrera • Brian J. Schoff • Garrison C. Avery • Marlon A. Bustamante • Sean T. Cardelli • Anthony C. Owens • Caesar S. Viglienzone • Simon T. Cox Jr.• Walter B. Howard II• Scott A. Messer • Lance S. Cornett • Jesse M. Zamora • Roberto L. Martinez Salazar • Jeremiah J. Boehmer • William S. Hayes III• Sergio A. Mercedes Saez • Christopher R. Morningstar • Orville Gerena • Patrick W. Herried • David S. Parr • Brandon S. Schuck • Jacob D. Spann • Allen D. Kokesh Jr.• Steven L. Phillips • Javier Chavez Jr.• Ross A. Smith • Felipe J. Garcia Villareal • Andrew J. Kemple • Nicholas Wilson • Matthew R. Barnes • Michael S. Probst • Rusty L. Washam • Amos C. Edwards Jr.• Anthony R. Garcia • Matthew D. Conley • Charles E. Matheny IV • Jay T. Collado • Jessie Davila • Daniel J. Kuhlmeier • Almar L. Fitzgerald • Gregson G. Gourley • Curtis T. Howard II• Rickey E. Jones • Christopher L. Marion • Gordon F. Misner II• Allan A. Morr • Thomas J. Wilwerth • Dimitri Muscat • Joshua F. Powers • Benjamin C. Schuster • John J. Thornton • Adam J. Vanalstine • Clay P. Farr • Joshua U. Humble • Joshua M. Pearce • Christopher J. Schornak • Dwayne P. R. Lewis • Christopher S. Merchant • Tina M. Priest • Joshua V. Youmans • Matthew A. Snyder • Kevin P. Jessen • Adam O. Zanutto • Justin R. Martone • Ricky Salas Jr.• John D. Fry • Bunny Long • Amy A. Duerksen • Kristen K. Figueroa • Corey A. Dan • Bryan A. Lewis • Marco A. Silva • Angelo A. Zawaydeh • Carlos M. Gonzalez • Amanda N. Pinson • Nyle Yates III• Ricardo Barraza • Dale G. Brehm • Antoine J. McKinzie • Brock A. Beery • Randy D. McCaulley • Frederick A. Carlson • Robert Hernandez • Michael D. Rowe • Sean D. Tharp • Walter M. Moss Jr.• Joseph J. Duenas • Jacob W. Beisel • Darrell P. Clay • Israel Devora Garcia • Michael L. Hartwick • Timothy J. Moshier • Andres Aguilar Jr.• David A. Bass • Jeremy W. Ehle • Patrick J. Gallagher • Kun Y. Kim • Eric A. McIntosh • Marcques J. Nettles • Geovani Padilla Aleman • Eric A. Palmisano • Scott J. Procopio • Felipe D. Sandoval-Flores • Brian R. St. Germain • Abraham G. Twitchell • Ty J. Johnson • Chase A. Edwards • Dustin J. Harris • Daniel L. Sesker • Bryan N. Taylor • Richard P. Waller • Shawn R. Creighton • Philip J. Martini • Jody W. Missildine • Juana NavarroArellano • David S. Collins • Randall L. Lamberson • Joseph I. Love • Gregory S. Rogers • James W. Gardner • Joseph A. Blanco • James F. Costello III• Kenneth D. Hess • George R. Roehl Jr.• Scott M. Bandhold • Roland E. Calderon-Ascencio • Marcus S. Glimpse • Salem Bachar • Stephen J. Perez • Andrew K. Waits • Darin T. Settle • Derrick J. Cothran • Pablo V. Mayorga • Mark W. Melcher • Justin D. Sims • Ryan G. Winslow • Clinton W. Cubert • Ian P. Weikel • Robert J. Settle • Patrick A. Tinnell • Jason C. Ramseyer • Jacob H. Allcott • Michael E. Bouthot • Kyle A. Colnot • Eric D. King • Eric R. Lueken • Travis C. Zimmerman • Jason B. Daniel • Robert W. Ehney • Shawn T. Lasswell Jr.• Metodio A. Bandonill • Aaron W. Simons • Raymond L. Henry • Richard J. Herrema • Michael L. Ford • Bobby Mendez • Mark A. Wall • Matthew A. Webber • Edward G. Davis III• Jose Gomez • Brandon M. Hardy • Bryant A. Herlem • Lea R. Mills • Steve M. Sakoda • Robbie G. Light • Robert L. Moscillo • Christopher M. Eckhardt • Brian S. Letendre • Joseph E. Proctor • Benjamin T. Zieske • Stephen R. Bixler • Elisha R. Parker • Bryan L. Quinton • Gavin B. Reinke • Alva L. Gaylord • Carlos N. Saenz • Teodoro Torres • Nathan J. Vacho • Leon B. Deraps • Matthew J. Fenton • Dale J. Kelly Jr.• Cory L. Palmer • David M. Veverka • Emmanuel L. Legaspi • Gregory A. Wagner • Aaron P. Latimer • Alessandro Carbonaro • Armer N. Burkart • Jason K. Burnett • Eric D. Clark • David J. Grames Sanchez • Michael L. Licalzi • Stephen P. Snowberger • Steve Vahaviolos • Adam C. Conboy • Brandon L. Teeters • Ronald W. Gebur • Richard Z. James • John W. Engeman • Jose S. Marin Dominguez Jr.• Jamie D. Weeks • Robert H. West • Matthew W. Worrell • Hatak Yuka Keyu M. Yearby • Grant A. Dampier • Marion Flint Jr.• Shane R. Mahaffee • Santiago M. Halsel • Lee Hamilton Deal • Lonnie C. Allen Jr.• Nicholas R. Cournoyer • William B. Fulks • Daniel E. Holland • Robert A. Seidel III• Benito A. Ramirez • David R. Christoff • William J. Leusink • Steven W. Freund • Michael L. Hermanson • Robert G. Posivio • Robert E. Blair • Douglas A. Dicenzo • Caleb A. Lufkin • Kevin A. Lucas • J. Adan Garcia • James A. Funkhouser • Jeremy M. Loveless • Richard A. Bennett • Nathanael J. Doring • Bobby R. West • Brock L. Bucklin • Alexander J. Kolasa • Benjamin E. Mejia • Ryan J. Cummings • Darren Harmon • Michael D. Stover • Brett L. Tribble • Daniel R. Gionet • Ryan T. Sanders • Jaime S. Jaenke • Issac S. Lawson • Gary T. Rovinski • Andy D. Anderson • Richard A. Blakley • Carlos E. Pernell • Mark T. Smykowski • David N. Crombie • Scott M. Love • John S. Vaughan • Daniel B. Crabtree • Clarence D. McSwain • Luis D. Santos • Zachary M. Alday • Salvador Guerrero • Benjamin J. Slaven • Jose M. Velez • Brent B. Zoucha • Michael A. Estrella • Jeremiah S. Santos • David J. Babineau • Brent W. Koch • Kristian Menchaca • Thomas L. Tucker • Robert L. Jones • Reyes Ramirez • Christopher D. Leon • Brandon J. Webb • Christopher N. White • Benjamin D. Williams • Jason J. Buzzard • Sirlou C. Cuaresma • Nicholas J. Whyte • Riley E. Baker • Paul A. Beyer • Mario J. Bievre • Ryan J. Buckley • Devon J. Gibbons • Channing G. Singletary • Benjamin J. Laymon • Justin D. Norton • Alberto V. Sanchez • Paul N. King • Terry M. Lisk • Raymond J. Plouhar • Michael J. Potocki • Jeremy S. Jones • Jason W. Morrow • Terry O.P. Wallace • Rex A. Page • Ryan J. Clark • Bryan C. Luckey • Kyle R. Miller • James P. Muldoon • Christopher D. Rose • Carl Jerome Ware Jr.• Collin T. Mason • Justin L. Noyes • Paul S. Pabla • Omar D. Flores • Troy C. Linden • Joseph P. Micks • Damien M. Montoya • Duane J. Dreasky • Irving Hernandez Jr.• Jerry A. Tharp • Alkaila T. Floyd • Thomas B. Turner Jr.• Andres J. Contreras • Manuel J. Holguin • Jason M. Evey • Nathaniel S. Baughman • Michael A. Dickinson II• Kenneth I. Pugh • Scott R. Smith • Geofrey R. Cayer • Mark R. Vecchione • Derek J. Plowman • Julian A. Ramon • Christopher T. Pate • Matthew P. Wallace • Adam J. Fargo • Blake H. Russell • Christopher W. Swanson • Stephen W. Castner • Dennis K. Samson Jr.• Jason M. West • Joseph A. Graves • Edward A. Koth • James W. Higgins • Adam R. Murray • Timothy D. Roos • Enrique C. Sanchez • Phillip E. Baucus • Anthony E. Butterfield • Jason Hanson • Christian B. Williams • Joshua A. Ford • Hai Ming Hsia • Ryan D. Jopek • Dustin D. Laird • Marc A. Lee • Joseph A. Tomci • Kurt E. Dechen • George M. Ulloa Jr.• Bradley H. Beste • Leroy Segura Jr.• Clint J. Storey • Brian J. Kubik • Carlton A. Clark • Tracy L. Melvin • Stephen A. Seale • Jose Zamora • Jeffery S. Brown • Steven P. Mennemeyer • Aaron D. Jagger • Ignacio Ramirez • Shane W. Woods • Jeremy Z. Long • Kenneth A. Jenkins • Michael C. Lloyd • Kevin L. Zeigler • Michael D. Glover • Jeffrey S. Loa • John J. McKenna IV• John P. Phillips • James J. Arellano • Ruben J. Villa • Marquees A. Quick • Gabriel G. DeRoo • Adam A. Galvez • Chadwick T. Kenyon • Randy L. Newman • Brad A. Clemmons • Paul J. Darga • Thomas J. Barbieri • James D. Hirlston • Jeremy E. King • Gordon G. Solomon • William E. Thorne • Dwayne E. Williams • Jordan C. Pierson • David G. Weimortz • Edgardo Zayas • David J. Almazan • Darry Benson • Kenneth M. Cross • Daniel G. Dolan • Jeffrey J. Hansen • Seth A. Hildreth • Moises Jazmin • Joshua D. Jones • Qixing Lee • Shaun A. Novak • Tristan C. Smith • Donald E. Champlin • Matthew E. Schneider • Shannon L. Squires • Matthew J. Vosbein • Christopher T. Warndorf • Joshua R. Hanson • Colin J. Wolfe • Michael L. Deason • Cliff K. Golla • Angel D. Mercado-Velazquez • Eugene H.E. Alex • Justin W. Dreese • Ralph N. Porras • Edwin A. Andino • Shane P. Harris • Richard J. Henkes II• Philip A. Johnson • Nicholas A. Madaras • Jason L. Merrill • Ryan E. Miller • Germaine L. Debro • Hannah L. Gunterman • Marshall A. Gutierrez • Jared M. Shoemaker • Eric P. Valdepenas • Christopher G. Walsh • John A. Carroll • Jeremy R. Shank • Vincent M. Frassetto • Luis A. Montes • David J. Ramsey • David W. Gordon • Johnathan L. Benson • Anthony P. Seig • Alexander Jordan • Harley D. Andrews • Emily T. Perez • Matthew C. Mattingly • Jeffrey P. Shaffer • Marcus A. Cain • Jennifer M. Hartman • Russell M. Makowski • Ryan A. Miller • Aaron A. Smith • David T. Weir • Clint E. Williams • Cesar A. Granados • David S. Roddy • David J. Davis • Adam L. Knox • James R. Worster • Bobby T. Callahan • Ashley L. (Henderson) Huff • Jane Elizabeth Lanham • Jared J. Raymond • Charles J. Jones • Eric M. Kavanagh • Robb G. Needham • Yull Estrada Rodriguez • Christopher M. Zimmerman • Allan R. Bevington • Carlos Dominguez • Kenneth E. Kincaid • Velton Locklear III • Windell J. Simmons • Howard S. March Jr.• Rene Martinez • Casey L. Mellen • Jose A. Lanzarin • Henry Paul • Edward C. Reynolds Jr.• Christopher T. Riviere • James N. Lyons • James Chamroeun • Christopher T. Blaney • Michael A. Monsoor • Scott E. Nisely • Kampha B. Sourivong • Luis E. Tejeda • Robert F. Weber • Christopher B. Cosgrove III• Chase A. Haag • Denise A. Lannaman • Mario Nelson • Justin D. Peterson • Aaron L. Seal • Santos Raymond Armijo • James D. Ellis • Satieon V. Greenlee • Justin R. Jarrett • Joe A. Narvaez • Michael K. Oremus • Joseph W. Perry • Kristofer C. Walker • Daniel Isshak • Jonathan Rojas • Dean R. Bright • Timothy R. Burke • Edward M. Garvin • Christopher O. Moudry • George R. Obourn Jr.• Benjamin S. Rosales • Nicholas A. Arvanitis • John E. Hale • Bradford H. Payne • Brandon S. Asbury • Carl W. Johnson II• Roger Allan Napper Jr.• Lawrence L. Parrish • John E. Wood • Shane R. Austin • Timothy A. Fulkerson • Stephen F. Johnson • Derek W. Jones • Jeremy S. Sandvick Monroe • Robert M. Secher • Julian M. Arechaga • Jon E. Bowman • Shelby J. Feniello • Phillip B. Williams • Shane T. Adcock • Nicholas R. Sowinski • Justin T. Walsh • Gene A. Hawkins • Johnny K. Craver • Thomas J. Hewett • Kenny F. Stanton • Leebenard E. Chavis • Joseph M. Kane • Charles M. King • Timothy J. Lauer • Keith J. Moore • Jonathan J. Simpson • Brock A. Babb • Lester D. Baroncini Jr.• Stephen D. Bicknell • Joshua Deese • Joshua M. Hines • Jonathan E. Lootens • Mark C. Paine • Joshua L. Booth • Russell G. Culbertson III• Joseph C. Dumas Jr.• Nathan J. Frigo • Ryan E. Haupt • Christopher E. Loudon • Ronald L. Paulsen • Garth D. Sizemore • Norman R. Taylor III• David M. Unger • Daniel W. Winegeart • Patrick O. Barlow • Daniel A. Brozovich • Jesus M. Montalvo • Jose R. Perez • Edwardo J. Lopez • Kevin M. Witte • Clifford R. Collinsworth • Nathan R. Elrod • Eric W. Herzberg • Tony L. Knier • Nicholas J. Manoukian • Joshua C. Watkins • Nathaniel A. Aguirre • Matthew W. Creed • Willsun M. Mock • Nicholas K. Rogers • David G. Taylor • Amos C. R. Bock • Richard A. Buerstetta • Carl A. Eason • Tyler R. Overstreet • Charles O. Sare • Donald S. Brown • Daniel B. Chaires • Thomas M. Gilbert • Charles V. Komppa • Jonathan B. Thornsberry • Ricky L. McGinnis • Luke J. Zimmerman • Troy D. Nealey • Kenneth E. Bostic • Kraig D. Foyteck • Michael T. Seeley • Jason Franco • Michael R. Weidemann • Kevin J. Ellenburg • Minhee Kim • Gary A. Koehler • Michael P. Bridges • James E. Brown • Paul J. Finken • Joseph A. Gage • Luke B. Holler • Eric J. Kruger • Michael H. Lasky • Jason D. Whitehouse • James L. Bridges • Mark C. Gelina • Kyle W. Powell • Douglas C. Desjardins • Jose A. Galvan • Miles P. Henderson • John R. Priestner • Lucas T. White • Richwell A. Doria • Ryan T. McCaughn • Bryan K. Burgess • Courtland A. Kennard • Gregory W. G. McCoy • Rudy A. Salcido • Kristopher C. Warren • William S. Jackson • Misael Martinez • Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez • Michael A. Cerrone • Harry A. Winkler III • Daniel J. Allman II • Jang H. Kim • Peter E. Winston • Timothy W. Brown • Thomas H. Felts Sr.• Justin R. Garcia • Mario D. Gonzalez • Tung M. Nguyen • Eric G. Palacios Rivera • Michael D. Scholl • John R. Dennison • Schuyler B. Haynes • Mitchel T. Mutz • Rhett W. Schiller • Bradley N. Shilling • Jeremy S. Shock • James P. Musack • Eric Vizcaino • Donovan E. Watts • Joshua C. Alonzo • James R. Davenport • Heath D. Warner • James D. Priestap • Reece D. Moreno • Nicholas P. Rapavi • Michael C. Ledsome • Daniel M. Morris • Jeromy D. West • Joshua C. Burrows • Jeannette T. Dunn • David M. Fraser • Jason R. Hamill • Troy L. Gilbert • Michael A. Schwarz • Jonerik Loney • Christopher E. Mason • Theodore M. West • John L. Hartman Jr.• Jeremy W. Mulhair • Robert L. Love Jr.• Keith E. Fiscus • Bryan T. McDonough • Corey J. Rystad • Jesse D. Tillery • Troy D. Cooper • Shawn L. English • Kermit O. Evans • Billy B. Farris • Kenneth W. Haines • Joseph T. McCloud • Joshua C. Sticklen • Dustin M. Adkins • Christopher A. Anderson • Thomas P. Echols • Jay R. Gauthreaux • Ross A. McGinnis • Albert M. Nelson • Roger A. Suarez-Gonzalez • Nichoals D. Turcotte • Jordan W. Hess • Marco L. Miller • Jesse J.J. Castro • Nicholas R. Gibbs • Jason I. Huffman • Travis C. Krege • Dustin J. Libby • Joshua B. Madden • Megan M. McClung • Yari Mokri • Travis L. Patriquin • Vincent J. Pomante III• Yevgeniy Ryndych • Cody G. Watson • Brent E. Beeler • Kristofer R. Ciraso • Micah S. Gifford • Henry W. Linck • Nathan M. Krissoff • Thomas W. Clemons • Philip C. Ford • Brennan C. Gibson • Shawn. M. Murphy • Nicholas P. Steinbacher • Budd M. Cote • Matthew V. Dillon • Brian P. McAnulty • Clinton J. Miller • Gloria D. Davis • Brent W. Dunkleberger • Matthew W. Clark • Theodore A. Spatol • Luke C. Yepsen • Paul Balint Jr.• Henry K. Kahalewai • Joe L. Baines • Nicklaus J. Palmer • David R. Staats • Matthew J. Stanley • Seth M. Stanton • Kevin M. Kryst • Brian L. Mintzlaff • Andrew P. Daul • Joshua D. Pickard • Scott D. Dykman • Jacob G. McMillan • Myles C. Sebastien • Robert J. Volker • Ryan J. Burgess • Ryan L. Mayhan • Kyle A. Nolen • Fernando S. Tamayo • Joshua D. Sheppard • Wilson A. Algrim • John Barta • Michael J. Crutchfield • Elias Elias • Bobby Mejia II• Curtis L. Norris • Chad J. Vollmer • Evan A. Bixler • Stephen L. Morris • Hayes Clayton • Jason C. Denfrund • Jae S. Moon • Andrew H. Nelson • Aaron L. Preston • Dexter E. Wheelous • Eric R. Wilkus • John T. Bubeck • Joshua M. Schmitz • Joshua M. Strong • Douglas L. Tinsley • Nathaniel Given • William C. Koprince • Clinton T. McCormick • Christopher P. Messer • Edward W. Shaffer • Luis G. Ayala • Aron C. Blum • Dustin R. Donica • Christopher E. Esckelson • Nicholas A. Miller • William D. Spencer • Lawrance J. Carter • David E. Dietrich • William R. Newgard • John M. Sullivan • Alan R. Blohm • Sandra S. Grant • Jonathan E. Schiller • Richard A. Smith * Thomas E. Vandling Jr.• Charles D. Allen • Michael L. Mundell • Jeremiah J. Johnson • Raymond N. Mitchell , III• Eric T. Caldwell • Elizabeth A. Loncki • Daniel B. Miller Jr.• Stephen J. Raderstorf • Timothy R. Weiner • Ryan R. Berg • Ming Sun • James M. Wosika Jr.• Gregroy A. Wright • James D. Riekena • Paul T. Sanchez • Ian C. Anderson • John E. Cooper • Jason J. Corbett • Mark J. Daily • Matthew T. Grimm • Collin R. Schockmel • Jennifer A. Valdivia • Joseph D. Alomar • William J. Rechenmacher • Russell P. Borea • Jacob H. Neal • Brian D. Allgood • Jeffrey D. Bisson • Darryl D. Booker • John G. Brown • David C. Canegata • Luis J. Castillo • Johnathan B. Chism • Shawn P. Falter • Sean P. Fennerty • Brian S. Freeman • Jacob N. Fritz • Marilyn L. Gabbard • Roger W. Haller • Ryan J. Hill • Allen B. Jaynes • Paul M. Kelly • Jonathan P. C. Kingman • Floyd E. Lake • Victor M. Langarica • Sean E. Lyerly • Phillip D. McNeil • Johnathon M. Millican • Toby R. Olsen • Michael V. Taylor • William T. Warren • Andrew G. Matus • Darrel J. Morris • Emilian D. Sanchez • Nicholas P. Brown • Brandon L. Stout • Jamie D. Wilson • Gary S. Johnston • Michael M. Kashkoush • Michael J. Wiggins • Keith A. Callahan • Hector Leija • Michael C. Balsley • Alexander H. Fuller • Mark D. Kidd • Darrell W. Shipp • Nathan P. Fairlie • Alan R. Johnson • Mickel D. Garrigus • Anthony C. Melia • Jon B. St. John II• Timothy A. Swanson • David T. Toomalatai • Cornell C. Chao • Mark T. Resh • Carla J. Stewart • Adam Q. Emul • Corey J. Aultz • Alejandro Carrillo • Milton A. Gist Jr.• Stephen D. Shannon • William M. Sigua • David C. Armstrong • Kenneth T. Butler • Matthew G. Conte • Terry J. Elliott • Michael C. Mettille • III Quill Richard O.• Eric R. Sieger • Jason G. Defrenn • Terrence D. Dunn • Kevin C. Landeck • Alan E. McPeek • Keith Yoakum • Matthew T. Zeimer • Ronnie L. Sanders • Randy J. Matheny • Clarence T. Spencer • Brandon J. Van Parys • Brian A. Browning • Joshua J. Frazier • Joseph J. Ellis • Jennifer J. Harris • Tarryl B. Hill • Jared M. Landaker • Gilbert Minjares Jr.• Jennifer M. Parcell • Matthew P. Pathenos • Travis D. Pfister • Manuel A. Ruiz • Thomas E. Saba • James R. Tijerina • Ross A. Clevenger • James J. Holtom • Raymond M. Werner • Leeroy A. Camacho • James J. Regan • Eric Ross • Alan W. Shaw • Donnie R. Belser Jr.• Russell A. Kurtz • Dennis L. Sellen Jr.• Robert B. Thrasher • Nickolas A. Tanton • Branden C. Cummings • Ronnie G. Madore Jr.• Daniel T. Morris • Allen Mosteiro • John D. Rode • Carl Seigart • Todd M. Siebert • Christopher K. Boone • Brian A. Escalante • Justin T. Paton • William C. Spillers • Matthew S. Apuan • Blake H. Howey • Chad E. Marsh • Kelly D. Youngblood • Matthew C. Bowe • Adare W. Cleveland • Pedro J. Colon • Shawn M. Dunkin • Montrel S. Mcarn • Brett A. Witteveen • Clinton W. Ahlquist • Richard L. Ford • Louis G. Kim • Angel R. Ramirez • David R. Berry • Travis W. Buford • Joshua R. Hager • Rowan D. Walter • Jeremy D. Barnett • Ethan J. Biggers • Anthony Aguirre • William J. Beardsley • Jonathan D. Cadavero • Lorne E. Henry, Jr.• Karl O. Soto-Pinedo • Richard A. Soukenka • Chad M. Allen • Bufford K. Van Slyke • Gould Dustin M. • Lucas W. A. Emch • Paul M. Latourney • Luis O. Rodriguez-Contrera • Morgan C. Tulang • Wesley J. Williams • Christopher D. Young • Raul S. Bravo • Ashly L. Moyer • Brandon A. Parr • Michael C. Peek • Darrel D. Kasson • Ryan M. Bell • Justin M. Estes • Blake Harris • Cory C. Kosters • Barry W. Mayo • Andrew C. Perkins • Justin A. Rollins • Ryan D. Russell • Robert M. Stanley • Mark W. Graham • Shawn P. Rankinen • Michael D. Rivera • Christopher R. Webb • Dennis J. Veater • Thomas L. Latham • Jonathan K. Smith • Douglas C. Stone • Daniel E. Woodcock • Robert M. Carr • Alberto Garcia Jr.• Angel Rosa • Nathanial D. Windsor • Joshua M. Boyd • Steven M. Chavez • Brian L. Chevalier • Stephen M. Kowalczyk • Adam J. Rosema • Forrest J. Waterbury • James L. Arnold • Emerson N. Brand • Blake M. Harris • Raymond J. Holzhauer • Terry W. Prater • John S. Stephens • Christopher R. Brevard • John E. Allen • William N. Davis • Marieo Guerrero • Anthony A. Kaiser • John F. Landry Jr.• Ed Santini • Benjamin L. Sebban • Nimo W. Tauala • Harry H. Timberman • Ryan P. Green • Wayne R. Cornell • Curtis E. Glawson • Stephen K. Richardson • Darrell R. Griffin Jr.• Dustin J. Lee • Adrian J. Lewis • Nicholas J. Lightner • Joey T. Sams II• Henry W. Bogrette • Freeman L. Gardner • Greg N. Riewer • Lance C. Springer II• Trevor A. Roberts • Orlando E. Gonzalez • Sean K. McDonald • Jason Nunez • Jason W. Swiger • Anthony J. White • Curtis J. Forshey • Marcus A. Golczynski • Sean M. Thomas • Joe Polo • Wilfred Flores Jr.• Neale M. Shank • Jason R. Arnette • William G. Bowling • Miguel A. Marcial III• Robert M. McDowell • David A. Mejias • Eric R. Vick • Bradley D. King • Daniel R. Olsen • Brian E. Ritzberg • Curtis R. Spivey • Shane R. Becker • Gabriel J. Figueroa • Jerry C. Burge • Joseph H. Cantrell IV• James J. Coon • Walter Freeman Jr.• Derek A. Gibson • Forrest D. Cauthorn • Jason A. Shaffer • Gregory J. Billiter • Jay S. Cajimat • Ryan S. Dallam • Daniel A. Fuentes • Curtis R. Hall • Joseph A. McSween • Anthony Palermo • Damian Lopez Rodriguez • Joseph C. Schwedler • Ebe. F. Emolo • Jonathan D. Grassbaugh • Levi K. Hoover • Rodney L. McCandless • Philip A. Murphy-Sweet • Harrison Brown • Adam P. Kennedy • Phillip I. Neel • David N. Simmons • Todd A. Singleton • Jesse L. Williams • Brian L. Holden • Ismael G. Solorio • Clifford A. Spohn III• Brett A. Walton • Kyle G. Bohrnsen • Raymond S. Sevaaetasi • Jason J. Beadles • John G. Borbonus • James T. Lindsey • Gwilym J. Newman • Cody A. Putman • Larry R. Bowman • Robert J. Basham • Ryan A. Bishop • Daniel J. Santee • Joshua A. Schmit • Brandon L. Wallace • Steven J. Walberg • Shaun M. Blue • Mario K. De Leon • Jesse D. Delatorre • Aaron M. Genevie • Daniel R. Scherry • Lucas V. Starcevich • Richard P. Langenbrunner • Jason M. Morales • Wade J. Oglesby • Michael M. Rojas • Dwayne L. Moore • Jeffery A. Bishop • Ray M. Bevel • William W. Bushnell • Marlon B. Harper • Christopher M. North • Michael J. Slater • Steven R. Tudor • Jeffrey A. Avery • Kevin J. Gaspers • Jerry R. King • Garret C. Knoll • Kenneth E. Locker Jr.• Randell T. Marshall • William C. Moore • Brice A. Pearson • Dale G. Peterson • Michael J. Rodriguez • Michael L. Vaughan • Jeremy E. Maresh • Willie P. Celestine • Christopher Degiovine • Adam E. Loggins • William J. Callahan • David A. Kirkpatrick • Nicholas E. Riehl • Eddie D. Tamez • Peter Woodall • Glenn D. Hicks Jr.• Michael R. Hullender • Jay-D H. Ornsby-Adkins • Cole E. Spencer • Norman L. Tollett • Brian A. Botello • Alexander J. Funcheon • Travis L. Manion • Jay E. Martin • Zachary R. Gullett • Johnathan E. Kirk • Ryan P. Jones • Katie M. Soenksen • Astor A. Sunsin-Pineda • Matthew T. Bolar • John D. Flores • Felix G. Gonzalez-Iraheta • Kelly B. Grothe • Jerome J. Potter • Coby G. Schwab • Colby J. Umbrell • Andrew R. Weiss • Christopher N. Hamlin • Larry I. Guyton • Kenneth N. Mack • Charles O. Palmer II• Matthew L. Alexander • Anthony M. Bradshaw • Robert J. Dixon • Jason R. Harkins • Christopher S. Kiernan • Joel W. Lewis • Virgil C. Martinez • Michael A. Pursel • Sameer A. M. Rateb • Vincenzo Romeo • Kyle A. Little • Dan H. Nguyen • Blake C. Stephens • Bradly D. Conner • Walter K. O'Haire • Michael K. Frank • Roy L. Jones III• Anthony J. Sausto • Jason W. Vaughn • William A. Farrar Jr.• Douglas A. Zembiec • James D. Connell Jr.• Daniel W. Courneya • Christopher E. Murphy • Anthony J. Schober • Andrew J. Bacevich • Rhys W. Klasno • Allen J. Dunckley • Christopher N. Gonzalez • Nicholas S. Hartge • John T. Self • Jeffrey D. Walker • Thomas G. Wright • Jesse B. Albrecht • Victor M. Fontanilla • Aaron D. Gautier • Jonathan V. Hamm • Steven M. Packer • Coty J. Phelps • Ryan J. Baum • Scott J. Brown • Anselmo Martinez III• Marquis J. McCants • Casey W. Nash • Joshua G. Romero • David W. Behrle • Ryan D. Collins • Joseph A. Gilmore • Travis F. Haslip • Jean Paul Medlin • Christopher Moore • Jason A. Schumann • Alexander R. Varela • Justin D. Wisniewski • Brian D. Ardron • Michael W. Davis • Shannon V. Weaver • Benjamin D. Desilets • Kristopher A. Higdon • David C. Kuehl • Robert J. Montgomery Jr.• Oscar Sauceda Jr.• Julian M. Woodall • Robert A. Worthington • Joseph J. Anzack Jr.• Steve Butcher Jr.• Daniel P. Cagle • Victor H. Toledo Pulido • Jonathan D. Winterbottom • Benjamin J. Ashley • Mark R. C. Caguioa • Robert H. Demobowski • Robert E. Dunham • Russell K. Shoemaker • Iosiwo Uruo • William L. Bailey III• Mathew P. LaForest • David P. Lindsey • Alexander Rosa Jr.• Casey P. Zylman • Clinton C. Blodgett • Clayton G. Dunn II• Charles B. Hester • Michael J. Jaurigue • Gregory N. Millard • Erich S. Smallwood • Francis M. Trussel Jr.• Nicholas R. Walsh • Emmanuel Villarreal • Alexandre A. Alexeev • Zachary D. Baker • Theodore U. Church • Anthony D. Ewing • Keith N. Heidtman • Thomas M. McFall • Junior Cedeno Sanchez • James E. Summers III• Kile G. West • Richard V. Correa • Robert A. Liggett • Jonathan A. Markham • Joseph M. Weiglein • Doonewey White • Bacilio E. Cuellar • James E. Lundin • Joshua M. Moore • Matthew E. Baylis • Matthew A. Bean • Chadrick O. Domino • Travis W. Atkins • Juan F. Campos • Bruce E. Horner • Romel Catalan • Jeremiah D. Costello • William J. Crouch • Dariek E. Dehn • Shawn E. Dressler • Keith V. Nepsa • James C. Akin • Joshua D. Brown • Caleb P. Christopher • Greg P. Gagarin • Tyler J. Kritz • Robert A. Surber • Kimel L. Watt • Ryan A. Balmer • Andrews J. Higgins • Matthew J. Kuglics • Justin A. Verdeja • Timothy B. Cole Jr.• Shawn D. Gajdos • Matthew Soper • Greg L. Sutton • William N. Newman • Cory M. Endlich • Scott A. Miller • Eric M. Barnes • Llythaniele Fender • Adam G. Herold • Brian M. Long • Meresebang Ngiraked • Glade L. Felix • Cameron K. Payne • William C. Johnson • Damon G. Legrand • Johnny R. Strong • Casey S. Carriker • Michael A. Bechert • Val J. Borm • Dustin R. Brisky • Farid Elazzouzi • Josiah W. Hollopeter • Richard K. Parker • Derek T. Roberts • Michael P. Pittman • Kevin H. Sonnenberg • Zachary A. Grass • Danny R. Soto • Frank B. Walkup IV• Larry Parks Jr.• Frank M. Sandoval • Eric L. Snell • Jacob T. Tracy • David A. Wilkey Jr.• Darryl W. Linder • Joshua S. Modgling • William A. Zapfe • David J. Bentz III• Sid. W. Brookshire • Joe. G. Charfauros Jr.• Darren P. Hubbell • Shawn P. Martin • Stephen J. Wilson • Daniel J. Agami • Karen N. Clifton • Anthony D. Hebert • Thomas R. Leemhuis • Alphonso J. Montenegro II• Raymond N. Spencer Jr.• Jerimiah J. Veitch • Ryan M. Wood • Michael J. Montpetit • Dominic N. Rodriguez • William E. Brown • Derek A. Calhoun • Joel A. Dahl • Chris Davis • Joel A. House • Joseph P. Kenny • Jimy M. Malone • Michael D. Moody Jr. • Jason D. Nathan • Daniel P. Riordan • Shane M. Stinson • Henry G. Byrd III• Carter A. Gamble Jr.• Eric C. Palmer • Andre Craig Jr.• Trista L. Moretti • Derek C. Dixon • Nathan L. Winder • Daniel A. Newsome • William W. Crow Jr.• Cory F. Hiltz • Shin W. Kim • Michael J. Martinez • Giann C. Joya Mendoza • Dustin L. Workman II• James L. Adair • Robb L. Rolfing • Raymond R. Buchan • William C. Chambers • Victor A. Garcia • Jonathan M. Rossi • Michael L. Ruoff Jr.• Jeremy L. Tinnel • Christopher N. Rutherford • Juan M. Garcia Schill • Steven A. Davis • Andrew T. Engstrom • Scott A. M. Oswell • James M. Ahearn • Jeremy D. Allbaugh • Keith A. Kline • Michelle R. Ring • Jeremy L. Stacey • Steven A. Stacy • Anthony M.K. Vinnedge • Steven Phillip Daugherty • Gene L. Lamie • Jason Dale Lewis • Eric A. Lill • Jon M. Lockey • Robert Richard McRill • Bruce C. Salazar Jr.• Kory D. Wiens • Le Ron A. Wilson • Roberto J. Causor Jr.• Jason E. Dore • Maria I. Ortiz • Courtney T. Johnson • Jeffrey R. McKinney • Allen A. Greka • Christopher D. Kube • Benjamin B. Bartlett Jr.• Eric M. Holke • John R. Massey • Robert D. Varga • Shawn V. Starkovich • Nathan S. Barnes • Brandon K. Bobb • Jeffrey L. Chaney • James J. Harrelson • Ron J. Joshua Jr.• Patrick L. Wade • Zachary R. Clouser • Richard Gilmore III• Daniel E. Gomez • Luis E. Gutierrez-Rosales • Ronald L. Coffelt • Brandon M. Craig • Rhett A. Butler • Christopher G. Scherer • Jacob S. Schmuecker • Shawn G. Adams • Bobby L. Twitty • Courtney D. Finch • Camy Florexil • Robert A. Lynch • Joshua P. Mattero • James H. McRae • Daniel S. Noble • Matthew R. Zindars • Daniel A. Leckel • Michael A. Baloga • Charles E. Bilbrey Jr.• William R. Howdeshell • Jaime Rodriguez Jr.• Cody C. Grater • Wilberto Suliveras • Jason M. Kessler • Sean A. Stokes • Zachariah J. Gonzalez • Charles T. Heinlein Jr.• Alfred H. Jairala • Stephen R. Maddies • Bradley W. Marshall • Daniel F. Reyes • Travis S. Bachman • Julian Ingles Rios • Cristian Rojas-Gallego • Eric D. Salinas • Fernando Santos • Cristian Vasquez • Jaron D. Holliday • Jason K. Lafleur • Braden J. Long • Matthew M. Murchison • Dustin S. Wakeman • Justin R. Blackwell • Jeremy S. Bohannon • Charles E. Leonard Jr.• Joey D. Link • Juan M. Alcantara • Nicholas A. Gummersall • Kareem R. Khan • Christopher T. Neiberger • Jacob M. Thompson • Reynold Armand • Jon E. Bonnell Jr.• Donald M. Young • Alicia A. Birchett • Michael E. Tayaotao • Joan J. Duran • William L. Edwards • Scott L. Kirkpatrick • Andrew W. Lancaster • Justin O. Penrod • William D. Scates • Eric D. Cottrell • Alun R. Howells • Juan M. Lopez Jr.• Paulomarko U. Pacificador • Sean P. Fisher • Shawn D. Hensel • Steven R. Jewell • Christopher C. Johnson • Jackie L. McFarlane Jr.• Stanley B. Reynolds • Robert R. Pirelli • Princess C. Samuels • Zandra T. Walker • Kamisha J. Block • Paul B. Norris • Willard M. Powell • Jonathan W. Edds • Michael S. Fielder • Sandy R. Britt • Donovan D. Witham • Rickey L. Bell • Jeremy P. Bouffard • Phillip J. Brodnick • Edgar E. Cardenas • Derek A. Dobogai • Paul J. Flynn • Joshua S. Harmon • Michael A. Hook • Nathan C. Hubbard • Garrett I. McLead • Jason L. Paton • Jessy G. Pollard • Tyler R. Seideman • Matthew L. Tallman • Omar E. Torres • Corry P. Tyler • Adrian M. Elizalde • Michael J. Tully • David A. Heringes • Matthew S. Medlicott • Joshua L. Morley • Rogelio A. Ramirez • Tracy C. Willis • James S. Collins Jr.• Edward L. Brooks • Erick M. Foster • Andrew P. Nelson • Justin T. Sanders • John C. Tanner • Jason M. Butkus • Daniel E. Scheibner • Travis M. Virgadamo • Kevin A. Gilbertson • Christopher G. Patton • Delmar White • Rodney J. Johnson • David J. Lane • Joel L. Murray • Randol S. Shelton • Dane R. Balcon • David A. Cooper Jr.• Keith A. Nurnberg • Javier G. Paredes • William T. Warford III• Christopher L. Poole Jr.• Bryan J. Scripsick • John C. Stock • Lee C. Wilson • Michael J. Yarbrough • Lance M. Clark • Marisol Heredia • Jason J. Hernandez • Thomas L. Hilbert • Drew N. Jensen • Ryan A. Woodward • Alexander U. Gagalac • Courtney Hollinsworth • Ari D. Brown-Weeks • Steven R. Elrod • Carlos E. Gil Orozco • Yance T. Gray • Michael C. Hardegree • Jon T. Hicks • Omar L. Mora • Nicholas J. Patterson • Sammie E. Phillips • Gregory Rivera-Santiago • Christopher M. McCloud • John Mele • Todd A. Motley • Jonathan Rivadeneira • Terry D. Wagoner • Terrence P. Allen • Brandon T. Thorsen • Michael L. Townes • Matthew J.
Emerson • Joseph N. Landry III• Nicholas P. Olson • Donald E. Valentine III• Aaron J. Walker • Edmund J. Jeffers • Graham M. McMahon • Christian M. Neff • Roselle M. Hoffmaster • Luigi Marciante Jr.• John J. Young • Jonathan M. Lankford • Joshua H. Reeves • David L. Watson • Anthony K. Bento • Kevin R. Brown • Zachary B. Tomczak • Randy L. Johnson • Robert T. Ayres III• Donnie D. Dixon • James D. Doster • Chirasak Vidhyarkorn • Randell Olguin • Herman J. Murkerson Jr.• Shayna Ann Schnell • Vincent G. Kamka • Avealalo Milo • Ricardo X. Rodriguez • Rachael L. Hugo • Jason N. Marchand • Joseph B. Milledge • Gilberto A. Meza • Benjamin C. Dillon • Jeremy W. Burris • Frank L. Cady III• Lillian Clamens • Eric T. Duckworth • Jason M. Lantieri • Samuel F. Pearson • Donald L. Munn II• Nathan Z. Thacker • Kenneth J. Iwasinski • Jason B. Koutroubas • Thomas M. Martin • Justin S. Monschke • Micheal D. Brown • Vincent A. Madero • Jarred S. Fontenot • Wayne M. Geiger • Erik T. Garoutte • Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho • Genesia Mattril Gresham • Robin L. Towns Sr.• Adam J. Chitjian • David E. Lambert • Cody M. Carver • Rush M. Jenkins • Daniel L. McCall • Louis A. Griese • Timothy McGovern • Brandon W. Smitherman • Tracy Lynn Alger • Thomas A. Crowell • Nathan J. Schuldheiss • David A. Wieger • Dwane A. Covert Jr.• Kevin R. Bewley • Carletta S. Davis • John D. Linde • Adam J. Muller • Daniel J. Shaw • Derek T. Stenroos • Christine M. Ndururi • Benjamin D. Tiffner • Lui Tumanuvao • Jermaine D. Franklin • Ashley Sietsema • Joseph M. Vanek • Christopher R. Kruse • Casey P. Mason • Peter W. Schmidt • Derek R. Banks • Kenneth R. Booker • Peter H. Burks • Steven C. Ganczewski • Mason L. Lewis • Alejandro Ayala • Marius L. Ferrero • Jason T. Lee • Christopher J. Nelson • Alfred G. Paredez Jr. • Melvin L. Henley Jr.• Jonathon L. Martin • Isaac T. Cortes • Benjamin J. Garrison • Allen C. Roberts • John J. Tobiason • Blair W. Emery • Matthew K. Reece • Kyle Dayton • Eric J. Hernandez • Dewayne L. White • Adam P. Snyder • Randy W. Pickering • Johnathan A. Lahmann Spc.• Mark T. Carter • Samuel E. Kelsey • Brynn J. Naylor • Daren A. Smith • Jonathan A. Lowery • Austin D. Pratt • Juctin R. P. McDaniel • Jeremy E. Ray • George J. Howell • Peter C. Neesley • Bryan J. Tutten • Rowdy J. Inman • Benjamin B. Portell • Joseph R. Berlin Jr.• Victor W. Jeffries • Reno S. Lacerna
2008
Joshua R. Anderson • Ryan D. Maseth • Thomas J. Casey • Andrew J. Olmsted • Menelek M. Brown • Jason F. Lemke • James D. Gudridge • Timothy R. Hanson • David J. Hart • Ivan E. Merlo • Phillip J. Pannier • Todd E. Davis • Jonathan K. Dozier • Sean M. Gaul • Zachary W. McBride • Matthew I. Pionk • Christopher A. Sanders • Curtis A. Christensen Jr.• Keith E. Lloyd • Danny L. Kimme • David H. Sharrett • John P. Sigsbee • Richard B Burress • James M. Gluff • Jon M. Schoolcraft • Justin R. Whiting • Michael R. Sturdivant • Tracy Renee Birkman • Duncan Charles Crookston • Robert J. Wilson • Mikeal W. Miller • Alan G. Rogers • James E. Craig • Gary W. Jeffries • Evan A. Marshall • Brandon A. Meyer • Joshua A. R. Young • Michael A. Norman • David E. Schultz • Matthew F. Straughter • Chad A. Barrett • Nathan H. Hardy • Michael E. Koch • Christopher J. West • Rafael Alicearivera • Miguel A. Baez • John C. Osmolski • Timothy R. Van Orman • Bradley J. Skelton • Luis A. Souffront • Michael T. Manibog • Timothy P. Martin • Jack T. Sweet • Jerald A. Whisenhunt • Gary D. Willett • Corey E. Spates • Javares J. Washington • Chad D. Groepper • Luke S. Runyan • Conrad Alvarez • Albert Bitton • Bryant W. Mackey • Michael B. Matlock Jr.• Nathan R. Raudenbush • Drew W. Weaver • Keisha M. Morgan • Orlando A. Perez • Micheal E. Phillips • Kevin S. Mowl • Christopher S. Frost • Steven R. Koch • Robert T. Rapp • Jose A. Paniagua-Morales • Gabriel Guzman • Phillip R. Anderson • Donald A. Burkett • Torre R. Mallard • Shawn M. Suzch • Ernesto G. Cimarrusti • David D. Julian • Robert T. McDavid • Scott A. McIntosh • Laurent J. West • Juantrea T. Bradley • Dustin C. Jackson • Tenzin L. Samten • Collin J. Bowen •William D. O'Brien •Lerando J. Brown •Michael D. Elledge •Christopher C. Simpson •Gregory D. Unruh •Tyler J. Smith •Unknown •Thomas C. Ray, II •David S. Stelmat •David B. Williams •George Delgado •Andrew J. Habsieger •Christopher M. Hake •Jose A. Rubio Hernandez

Hopey or Mopey?

2010-07-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

I'll begin by admitting this: I'm stubborn.

I don't like to be told what to think or do or believe. I've been known to hold onto a failing opinion like a drowning passenger with a glass of champagne on the unsinkable Titanic.

Eighteen months ago, we thought our high-riding, much-approved, majority holding Democrats were unsinkable.

Glug. Glug. Glug.

Here's the news today: According to an ABC poll, a majority of Americans want Republicans to run Congress, not Democrats. We still mark our surveys mostly in favor of President Obama - but now we want some checks and balances on his ideas.

ABC news today

I am not alarmed. The democrats have done little-to-nothing-to-absolutely-nothing to flex the majority muscle we all canvassed and campaigned and voted for them to have. Oh well, I say. Let it be.

Am I disappointed with the country's leadership right now? Yes.

We're at war(s). We're financially out of control. We're showing signs of becoming less benevolent on the world stage instead of more benevolent. Greed runs rampant. The rich get richer. The voice of the unheard remains the hum in the background of the powerful.

Am I discouraged? Have I given up all hope for change?

With apologies to those who believe unfettered optimism is something like putting on blinders and dancing to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" - I'd like to say I become more hopeful when "we the people" become more concerned. Only then do we wake up to the smell of the coffee in the kitchen and decide to jump into the day.

Perhaps you missed the part of Barack Obama's "hope and change" rhetoric in 2008 that suggested: "be the change you want to see in the world." Maybe you forgot, in the thrill of the national decision to rally around Obama's hope and change in 2008 that he said this when he announced his candidacy in 2007:

"I’m in this race not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation."

To gather with us. You and me. One guy can't do it. 534 men and women on Capitol Hill can't do it. If change is what we're after, change is what we must all participate in creating.

Or...we can let a snippy, VP-losing, governor-quitting, FOX news-opining woman from Alaska tell us it's time to give up:

February 2010

She wins if we all stand aside and drop our heads in resignation.

Peace.

Land of the Free

2010-07-01T11:29:00.003-05:00

It seems appropriate, as we look straight into the face of our country's hard-earned liberty this weekend, that we evaluate the difference between free and entitled.

Free - Not controlled by obligation or the will of another
Entitled - Qualified for or allowed or worthy of being chosen

It's a fine line, to be sure. Let's be honest: One is what we have - a life full of national choice, individual liberty, and options for happiness. The other is what we want - comfort, abundance, insulation, adulation.

Somehow the term "inalienable right" from our constitution has come to mean "anything we please:"

The right to carry a gun into a crowded event, where we might be met with opinions other than ours.
The right to broadcast lies and hate-laced tirades in the name free speech.
The right to pay, shove, and kill our way to power.
The right to consume most of the world's food resources.
The right to squander much of the world's clean water resources.
The right to destroy the coastal waters of the Southwestern United States in the name of gasoline and styrofoam.
The right to look at a world in dire need and say, "too bad for you. I have mine."

It reminds me of the pizza my sister found at a grocery in Holland a couple of weeks ago.

Not really that funny, is it?

No one will choke up faster than I will Sunday evening as the Star Spangled Banner is played and fireworks fill the night sky here in Austin. The stirred emotion will not come without the sure awareness that we are Big Americans.

But if we don't do right by our freedom, we're going to look a lot like a Dutch pizza: "crispy outside...soft inside."

O say can you see? To whom much is given, much is required.

Peace.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

2010-06-30T19:24:00.000-05:00

Really. You'd think he'd just been told the gender of his yet-to-be-born child. Or that his favorite NBA team had signed Lebron James. Or even that there would be pie after dinner. This does not look like a man who has been talking to senators about a costly war in a far away land...the very war he will take charge of in the wake of a humiliating final curtain for his predecessor in the theater we call Afghanistan.

General David Petraeus...beaming, wouldn't you say? Not the face you'd expect to see on a man for whom it is a self-proclaimed "moral imperative" to keep 98,000 US men and women alive in the middle of a complicated war that we started, and almost no one believes we can win.

61 of those men and women died in Afghanistan in June.
One of those was killed at an airfield in Kandahar today.
In point of fact, June 2010 was the deadliest month in the war on terror since it began almost 9 years ago.

A moral imperative, Mr. Thumbs Up General? When does that kick in? Will it be a Back to School moral imperative? A Christmas moral imperative? A Mother's Day 2011 moral imperative?

Because if saving the lives of our armed forces in Afghanistan is a moral imperative of yours, you should know that following up the declaration of such by telling senators the deadliest months may still be ahead, and then punctuating the whole transaction with a big smile and a thumbs up....well, that just doesn't say "I mean it" to me.

A moral imperative, General, in the purest tradition of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, means this: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

When it becomes universal law, General, that more dying and more killing and more flag draped caskets and more crying mothers and more war poor civilians is the right and unavoidable thing - you can have a pass for your comments, your smile, and your thumbs up.

Of course on that day we'll all be living in Hell.

Thumbs up?

Peace.

A Perfect World

2010-06-04T09:13:00.001-05:00

We have spent 1-trillion dollars on war since 2002.

5,462 American military personnel have been buried in flag draped caskets while that money has been spent.

Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of regular people in Afghanistan and Iraq have been killed.

Dollars for food, clean water, economic stability, education, and improved health in the world have been diverted for guns, bombs, and drones.

It is hard to imagine peace.

And then this pops up on my screen today. It made me smile.
Seed grenades.

Oh, in a perfect world...

Planes would drop food.
Guns would shoot vaccines.
Troops would dig water wells.

And grenades would explode into new life for the planet.

It's a beautiful day for dreaming.

Peace.

When Words Fail...Again

2010-05-24T09:07:00.001-05:00

I posted this last May 24th - on the 2nd anniversary of the death of Bobby McAlister. Today - it has been 3 years since his unexpected and sudden departure from this Earth. I still have no good words...

I'm a word person. I like to read them, write them, fit them into tiny boxes in a crossword puzzle, create them out of wooden tiles on a game board, and turn them into silly rhymes that fit my mood:

Ode to Long Island Iced Tea
It's a magnificent day in the end times of May
And a drink called Tea Is making mush of me
On this...a magnificent day.

I like to hear words spoken, too. I never, ever miss an opportunity to hold my breath in wonder and deep appreciation at the sound of Maya Angelou's voice, for instance, as she imparts - like no one else can - stirring poetic wisdom.

I like passionate sermons, tender theater, and songs that penetrate more than the ear. A word well formed, intelligently placed, beautifully written or spoken can open almost any door in this life - the door to a heart, or a soul, or a firmly made up mind.

But I sit today on the wondering side of a door I cannot quite pry open with words. It is the door of a grief I won't even let myself really begin to imagine - the death of a child.

It has been two years since Bobby - the creative and spirited son of best friends, and the childhood best friend of my own son - died. In the roar of days immediately following his unexpected leaving, words did not matter much. It was a time for tears, and hand holding, and shared longing for a different reality. All of us felt that.

As we marked one year on this day in 2008, words of consolation still seemed to fit the occasion. It had, after all, been one full year of a new world without Bobby. The road was still treacherous, the journey still packed with unfamiliar sights and sounds.

But, now it has just been another year without Bobby. And what we see clearly here is there will be another, and another, and another. What's there to say? I cannot find a beautiful, comforting phrase today. The best I can do is this: It still sucks.

Bobby McAlister, 1982-2007

It still sucks.

My Boggled Mind

2010-04-30T15:40:00.001-05:00

I am lucky to have many friends who are crazy dreamers...people who believe they can and should make a difference in the world. I had lunch with one of them yesterday. Her name is Judy Jennings, and she's currently devoting every waking hour (there aren't many for sleeping these days) to the job of being elected to the Texas State Board of Education. It's four years of unpaid work representing a 1.5 million person constituency in a district that includes 16 counties.

I don't have to ask why Judy wants to do this. I know why.

As God herself knows...we need some difference-makers on the SBOE. Allow me to remind you of a few currently proposed changes from the board, (just in case you missed Jon Stewart's report last month on The Daily Show):

Remove Thomas Jefferson from the portion of our nation's history that includes discussion of revolutionary thinkers.
Take Oscar Romero out of state standards because "he doesn't have his own movie" like Ghandi and Mandela (which he actually does...it came out in 1989 and is called, surprisingly, Romero).
Remove the word "capitalism" from standards because it doesn't sound as nice as "free enterprise."
Eliminate concepts of “justice” and “responsibility for the common good” from a list of characteristics of good citizenship for Grades 1-3.

This is the tip of the embarrassing iceberg.

Judy Jennings is my hero for answering the internal call many of us in Texas have heard ringing in our heads. She is trying to become part of a solution to the problem of a narrow-minded, poorly informed, politically motivated State Board of Education. Hooray for Judy! Texas teachers and students deserve a change.

Here's the mind-boggling part of this story. If Judy wants to be a real contender in this election, she needs to raise a minimum of $250,000.

$250,000 for our attention and, ultimately, our vote.

I find that riduculously ironic as I hear reports today about concern Texas school officials have for children in our system who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school every day to eat. What will those children do in June, July, August?

$250,000 would buy 2,300 kids a hot, well-balanced meal every single day of summer here in Austin. By the UN World Food Program's dollars, $250,000 buys one-million meals for school children worldwide.

If you multiply that $250K by the number of candidates in opposed races for the SBOE, the cash that's going to be spent to persuade Texans to care enough to vote will be $2-million. Half of that money will have been spent on losing campaigns. A.K.A. - for nothing.

How many schools might we open in parts of the world that are terrorist-ruled and poverty-stricken because, in large part, there is no way to educate children? By Pennies for Peace standards, $250,000 would pay 685 teachers in Afghanistan for a full year.

How many wells might we dig in areas of the world where children spend their days walking to bacteria infested ponds for water instead of learning to read? By Glimmer of Hope calculations, 40,000 Ethiopians could have access to clean water if someone donated $250,000.

Instead, we will get a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education.

Don't get me wrong. Judy Jennings is an amazing human being. She deserves, and I hope she wins, the opportunity to serve the people of Texas in this capacity.

I just wonder what it says about you and me that children have to go hungry, uneducated, and without clean water just so we can fast forward through ads on television, throw away stacks of candidate junk mail, and ignore 4' x 8' campaign signs cluttering every street corner between now and November.

Try not to even think about what it costs to be elected to the state legislature or the US senate or the presidency.

We crazy dreamers could, in fact, save the world if we had our hands on that kind of money.

Peace.

On Wallpaper and War

2010-03-12T12:31:00.001-06:00

This is the current state of my kitchen:

It started with a quarter-inch curl of wallpaper that was in my line of sight every time I stood at the sink. Why I didn't think about glue before I started pulling, I'll never know. Secretly, I suppose, I was sick of the wallpaper anyway. But, now, three days into the wallpaper stripping project, I am cursing myself and asking a few critical questions that I wish I'd thought about before I reached for that nagging loose corner:

Will the mess and laborious peeling and scraping ever be finished? There is no short cut. Nothing makes it easy.
Aack. What's that growing under my refrigerator, which had to be moved so I could get to the wall behind it? And, yikes! How did all that stuff get under the oven? Now I have to stop and CLEAN, too.
Really? You want dinner while I'm in the middle of this mess? Are you kidding? I can't even open the pantry door.
Do I know what I'm doing? I've managed to peel down to pieces of wall and sheet rock two-paper-layers deep, and I really have no idea how to prep for whatever is next.

Forgive me if I trivialize the real disaster that is war. I think about the world in the middle of more ease and luxury than I deserve. But I believe I've found a common theme between my urge to pull on a piece of wallpaper and our country's urge to show the world who's boss.

Remember 2001? The year the wallpaper of our national security began to curl right before our eyes? It just seemed too lazy/passive/wimpy to glue the corner down and go on about our business, quietly planning a remodel when we could afford it. We were probably tired of the old world order anyway. So we started yanking at the layers of dictatorial, fanatical, radical regimes in the Middle East - and we created a mess that looks like this:

Here are the questions we've had to face in the midst of the "home improvement" project we call war(s):

Will it ever be finished? Nine years and counting...apparently there are no short cuts.
The messes we've unearthed in the process - the poverty, the persecution, the illiteracy, the corruption, the devastation, the civilian casualties - will the unexpected consequences of our actions ever be cleaned up?
Really? You want stable economics and successful new domestic policies and a congenial Congress while two wars we began continue to drain financial and political resources?
Do we really know what we're doing? It seems we started these projects believing we'd toss the Taliban out of Afghanistan (done in 2002) and dethrone Iraq's Saddam Hussein (done in 2003) and all would be beautiful and new. It appears we never really had a next step in mind.

And so I have adopted a new basic rule for life - a line that must not be crossed without thinking:

Never peel a loose corner of wallpaper. Never start a war.

The resulting angst from either is probably more than we want, more than we planned for, and far more messy than we could have imagined.

So I peel. And I regret the mess. And I long for a quick and successful path to something beautiful and new.

Peace.

The SJ Word

2010-03-10T19:08:00.002-06:00

I joined a new Facebook group yesterday. It's called My Church Preaches Social Justice. Because mine does. And I'm not leaving it. Even though Glenn Beck says I should.

In case you missed the instructive Beck broadcast session late last week, let me catch you up. If you go to a church that has the term social justice or economic justice anywhere in its mission, curriculum, or Sunday sermon - you must leave the fellowship and report the pastor to church authorities. Immediately. Here's why:

the term "social justice" many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism

That's what Glenn says. I am not making this up.

I can't tell you what church service Glenn visited before drawing his conclusions. Perhaps there are some communist/Nazi Christian churches out there just for the sake of amusing us all with the oxymoron-ness of their existence. But where I worship, social justice is code for:

Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. (ex: I have plenty of food to eat, why shouldn't a starving child in Africa have enough?)
Treating other people the way you would treat Jesus. He did say, "Whatever you do for the least of these people of mine you do for me." (ex: Someone is unfairly oppressed by a system that favors the rich over the poor...shouldn't we change that system for the "least of these people?")
The list continues: Give more than is requested, turn the other cheek, love enemies, do good to those who hate, don't judge, forgive, avoid hypocrisy.

In my church, social justice is code for not being satisfied with a resourced and self-focused kind of lifestyle that entitles me and mine to have more than you and yours...whether it's health care, or food, or a place to sleep at night that's free from the perils of war, or a right to love and be loved by the person I choose.

In the holy book I study, the very first people to gather in the name of the holy man we Christians try to emulate actually seemed to operate a bit like socialists. Take a look at what was going on in the second chapter of the book of Acts (The Bible):

⁴⁴All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ⁴⁶Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

What's that about, Glenn?

Take a look at yourself in the photo below, trying to scare church people into believing the very justice Jesus lived to proclaim is something evil and subversive.

Funny. That's exactly the spin the religious "right" put on Jesus' message in his day. They had their own version of scare tactics and crazy talk to stir people into a frenzy.

What do you say, Glenn? Nail that social justice nut up?

Peace.

Let it Begin with Me

2010-02-25T09:49:00.001-06:00

Peace. Let peace begin with me.
We sing it in our churches.
We say it at our gatherings of like-minded friends.
We put the bumper stickers on our cars, the magnets on our refrigerators, and the symbol on our clothing.

All we are saying, after all, is give peace a chance. In Palestine. In Iraq. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Uganda, the Ivory Coast. And, please Dear Creator of All that Breathes...let it begin with me.

Ah, but who really knows where to begin? Peace is so unwieldy and the world is so messy. What does a well-resourced private citizen living in the middle of a gun loving, cowboy-minded, peacenik-disparaging state do? Vote and call it a day? Send an occasional letter to a congressperson? Weep over war stats?

Mother Teresa said this: Peace begins with a smile.

So I'd like to share a mission of peace my friend Jane has just returned from. In Peru. She went for business, but hooked up with an unlikely peace organization before she left - World Hoop Day. The mission of World Hoop Day is this: to bring dance, exercise and toy hoops to under-privileged children living in extreme poverty and the underdeveloped neighborhoods of our world.

Hula hoops for peace? It seems a bit ludicrous, I agree. A month ago, when Jane asked a group of us to help her make the hoops she would be taking to Peru, we all signed up. But, I confess, I secretly scoffed. Hula hoops? Really? Children of the world need food and shelter and education. Not hula hoops.

But as Jane posted photos this week of her hula hoop distribution in one of Peru's poorest villages, I became a believer in the power of simple joy. Take a look.

No, it's not a treaty signing or a cease fire or a water well or a school. It's a box full of $10 hula hoops in one small village in Peru.

And a community full of smiles.

Let there be peace on earth. It begins when we believe we have joy worth sharing.

Peace.

Who Are These People?

2010-02-19T13:17:00.002-06:00

Apparently one of them shopped for groceries in my neighborhood. And lived in a big suburban house like mine. And played in a band like many of my friends do. And flew his own plane like lots of people my age wish they could do. It does not take much imagination to conjure up Joe Stack, the upper-middle class American who seems to have intentionally flown a Piper Cherokee into an office building five miles from my house yesterday morning.

Joseph Stack

In addition to killing himself, it appears he killed one other person. Another neighbor who lives in another nearby suburb who apparently enjoyed his work, loved his large family, and rode to the office with his wife every morning.

Vernon Hunter

So, there was no need to research the annual GDP, or the literacy rate, or the availability of water in a poverty riddled nation to try to understand the angst of the Austin Suicide Bomber. He could not have been more like one of us. If I'd written his character into a ficticious story, I'm betting many readers of the tale would have told me the character just wasn't believable. And, really, he wasn't.

He had the wife, the family, the house, the plane, the education, the independence, and the opportunity that frames the American Dream. But he also had an important bolt missing from his brain - the one that holds back the kind of rationale that advances the theory: "Nothing changes unless there is a body count."

The change Joe Stack believed required a body count was tax reform. I'm not sure where to turn for information that would help me understand Joe Stack - a man from my neighborhood and my income bracket with my unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But Joe Stack is not the only unbelievable character in this story.

Meet Tyler Britten of Texas.

Tyler Britten

According to the New York Daily News, Tyler was quick to join a "Joe Stack Fan Club" on Facebook yesterday afternoon, a few hours before Facebook removed it. Tyler reportedly posted this comment at the site: "His sacrifice was for all of us."

Throw on Emily Waters of Louisville, Kentucky who wrote: Finally an American man took a stand against our tyrannical government that no longer follows the Constitution.

Stir in Greg Lenihan of San Diego who tweeted: "Joe Stack, you are a true American Hero and we need more of you to make a stand."

Who ARE these people?

My friend Jane sent me an email last night, puzzling over that very question. I liked her conclusion: "Can you say Taliban?"

Peace.

Remember You Are Dust

2010-02-17T23:24:00.000-06:00

It's that awkward day of the year...

The day Christians show up in their places of worship to be marked with a smudge of a cross and reminded: "You are dust, and to the dust you shall return." The ashes on the forehead symbolize penance and contrition. It's the beginning of the season of Lent.

I have a 23-year old on my mind this Ash Wednesday evening. An army specialist from Austin, Texas named Bobby Pagan. Bobby was killed in action over the weekend in Afghanistan. He was on foot patrol, when a suicide bomber drove up on a motorcycle and exploded an IED that killed him.

Bobby Pagan is returning to dust. Just like that.

In a flag-draped coffin.

Two weeks before he was scheduled to come home and be married.

So today, every time I've seen the smudgey reminder that I am dust, the penitent spirit in me has whispered, "Does your lifestyle require these wars?"

I have decided to give up complacency for Lent.

To seek peace and pursue it.

Before one more 23-year old becomes dust...

Peace.

A Rose by Another Name?

2010-02-12T17:24:00.001-06:00

Roses at my neighborhood high-priced organic market were $1.24 each today. A bargain, I suppose - but you had to commit to 24 roses at that price - $29.99. In our generally depressed economy, I'm guessing no one will miss the extravagance that is an armful of roses at the door this Valentine's Day.

Please don't.

Especially if you live in Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, anything red or heart shaped or rose-related is against the law this week. A red rose, if you can score one in the underground network of risk-taking florists, is $8. For one rose. But the truth is, you probably can't get one. Not a pair of red socks or boxers with hearts on them either. Or candy hearts with catchy messages like: BE MINE or THE ONE or YOU'RE HOT stamped on them. The religious police in Saudi Arabia - the Mutawwa - have been ordering anything red or heart-shaped off retailer's shelves for the last couple of weeks.

Valentine's Day is against the law in Saudi Arabia...
which is a country ruled by a king...
who adheres to the constitution...
which is the Qur'an...
the holy book of Islam.

Saudi Arabia, you might say, is a Muslim nation.

And because Valentine's Day has a vaguely defined connection to one of three canonized saints from the Catholic tradition - well, you can probably see the problem. It's just not cool to give a Christian saint a nod of honor, even if it is the patron saint of love.

So...don't go looking for chocolates in heart shaped boxes in Saudi Arabia.

Or a movie theater.
Or a live music venue.
Or men and women chatting in public.
Or women driving cars. Or riding bicycles. Or showing their knees.

None of that is allowed either.

Really - for the love of roses - who's in favor of a church state?

Peace.

Life in Marjah

2010-02-10T12:42:00.004-06:00

Can you imagine it for a minute?

You may not be rich - the average annual income in Marjah is $800. But you likely have access to the indigenous culture and basic amenities and social structure that is present in any mid-sized town - one the size of, say, Berkeley, California or Albany, New York or Gary, Indiana. Perhaps you run a small clothing business, or work in a cafe, or teach in a school. The soil is rich in your area of Afghanistan, so there is a good chance you know some cotton farmers.

You probably are also very familiar with the annual blooming season of this crop:

A couple of weeks ago, you might have picked up what you thought was litter in the street, only to discover it was a leaflet intentionally dropped by NATO to warn you, and your friendly neighborhood Taliban gang, of imminent attack. If you aren't among the 1% of the population that made it out of town before yesterday, you are likely locked down in your house today, and are whispering prayers that begin with Sam'i Allahu liman hamidah (God hears those who call upon him).

And you are hoping God is listening.

Hundreds of US Marines, Afghan military forces, and other armed members of the International Security Assistance Forces have set up camp on the perimeter of your town, and are promising a showdown with the 2,000 Taliban members who have decided to put up a fight to prove who's boss in Afghanistan. People say it will be the biggest battle in the country since the US showed up to rout terrorism in your homeland eight years ago.

And you, my friend in Marjah, have a seat on the front line.

There are mines in your streets and the Taliban's improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are scattered everywhere. They say a new and bigger IED has been made. You have heard people call it the Omar, and they say it cannot be detected by US mine scans. You have no idea how much damage the Omar might do. Now or later.

You have heard the Taliban is ready to fight to the death to deny Afghan government control of this area.

Machine gun fire began two days ago - just after the sound of helicopters filled the air. Your children are afraid. Your old people are angry. You are confused.

The Taliban lives in your province because it is a center of financial resource for the organization. Ten-percent of the world's opium is produced here - helped along, in part, by irrigation systems built by the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The drug trade is rife with corruption and fear, but it is lucrative. As long as the Taliban is allowed to make its profit - there is peace and a measure of prosperity.

Today, the reality that the Taliban has made some fierce enemies has come to your backyard. Those enemies have sworn to put an end to "business as usual." NATO's top dog in the area has said this:

"People need to be under no illusion -- this operation is going to succeed, we are going to bring Afghan government sovereignty to this area." - Mark Sedwill

And so, when you look outside, to check on the neighbor who has no wood to build a fire on this cold, windy, and overcast day, perhaps you are distracted by this:

And you go back to your prayers.

For peace.

The Quiet Revolution

2010-02-06T13:53:00.000-06:00

I have steeped myself in short stories this week...part of the fun of an annual contest I enter, as much for the access it affords to the works of a multitude of creative writers as for the wacky assignments, deadlines and potential contest winnings. It seems important to be reminded, at least annually, of the spectacular brilliance out there in the world of made up stories. I have read some doozies this week.

One of the stories that's lingered in my head is an historical fiction piece called Records on Ribs. If you're my age and from Russia - you probably know exactly what the story is about. If you're my age and from Texas - you may be thinking it's a story about a barbecue cook-off, like I did.

In fact, it's a well-crafted tale about the lengths Russians went to to listen to the music of The Beatles in the 1960s and '70s - including recording boot-legged copies of Beatles records onto discarded x-ray films and distributing the copies through underground networks. Records on ribs - get it?

It's all true.

It seems The Beatles' place in Soviet history is as catalysts for an erosion of authority in Russia that ultimately destroyed communism. Beatle music was, in the words of a Russian doctor still living in Minsk today, "A quiet revolution in our brains. We had it in our hearts."

Russia's Communist Party leader, Nikita Khrushchev, did not approve of The Beatles' music. "It is not far from saxaphones to switch blades," he warned the Russian people.

But the people knew better. They had it in their hearts. And thus began a quiet revolution in their brains.

The Beatles' music changed the way an entire generation of Russian people dressed, coiffed, spoke, and regarded their government. The music produced a cultural revolution that, ultimately, destroyed the hold of the status quo east of the Iron Wall.

They had it in their hearts...and so the revolution began quietly in their brains.

I am savoring this notion that people are changed by what they ponder their hearts and know in their brains. It is giving me great comfort during this week of "health care waffling," and "don't ask, don't tell testifying," and "war making worries in yet another Middle Eastern country"...

Just as the people of Russia knew the music they wanted to listen to was not leading to their demise, I want to believe people in the United States know in their hearts that a President who wants to save lives by increasing America's access to health care is not driving the country toward Marxism.

Just as Soviet Beatles fans of the '60s knew the style of their hair and the collar on their jacket did not make them "capitalist criminals," I want to believe we the people of 2010 America know the sexual preference of a soldier in the US military is absolutely immaterial to the evaluation of that person's ability to serve the country.

And, just as Russians watched with a sense of daring and excitement as western culture seeped through the cracks in the wall of what had always been...I cling to hope that citizens of the USA are willing to fearlessly embrace a new kind of peacemaking in the world - one that gives life, not death.

What really happens when we listen to our hearts and use our brains?

The writer of Records on Ribs inspired me with this beautiful sentence about her Russian characters:

Our government is changed because its children heard the music.

Find your groove, America. Listen to the music of your heart. Let the quiet revolution begin in your brain.

Peace.

Pro Life

2010-01-29T12:19:00.000-06:00

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for only 37 minutes. - news today from Wichita, KS

Scott Roeder made it so easy. He admitted he shot Dr. George Tiller in the forehead at point blank range. He confessed he'd been stalking the doctor since 1999. He said he felt relieved after the killing, and even stopped for pizza as he drove out of town.

All of this from the witness stand earlier this week, at his murder trial in Wichita, Kansas.

Dr. Tiller had performed late term abortions - legally - in Kansas for 35 years. Scott Roeder considered Dr. Tiller's work murder, and hoped a jury would agree that he was appropriately protecting the unborn when he killed Dr. Tiller at the back of his church on a Sunday morning last May.

The jury did not agree. In fact, the jury was clearly not a bit confused about its disagreement with Mr. Roeder. I'd say it appears members of the jury were unanimously pro-life.

As in prison. Life in prison.

Perhaps it's a good turn on the phrase...

Peace.

A Heartbeat for Hope

2010-01-28T10:49:00.000-06:00

As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home. - President Obama, State of the Union last night

Okay...so it was a bit anticlimactic for we peaceniks who have been disheartened since last March, when the President announced his August 2010 plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq. After all, he had promised an end to the war in Iraq within 16 months of the beginning of his term. August 2010 was 20 months.

Plus, the distinction "combat troops" seemed like a bit of a fudge on the promise to bring all troops home.

But, oh, I did love the sound of "Make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home." It gave me chills and brought tears to my eyes. I couldn't suppress my own round of standing applause.

And then I couldn't suppress my memory.

I am still trying to forget the words of a different President, spoken quite dramatically in May of 2003: "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." -George W. Bush

Oh, if only...

If, indeed, we had prevailed in Iraq by May of 2003, perhaps 4,000 young US men and women would still be walking this Earth.

If we had prevailed and stopped fighting in Iraq by May of 2003, we'd have had 960-billion dollars in the national bank to keep our economy out of the depths of despair.

So Barack Obama better not be blowing smoke up our pant legs. Because we all know how to calculate the cost of war.

If only he had waved a magic "instant peace" wand last January:

The US would have 90-billion unspent war dollars sitting in the national treasury, and 149 US military troops might still be alive.

"Make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home."

Make no mistake, Mr. President: Our patience is ending in August. Bring the troops home.

Until then, I choose to embrace the President's tone of resolve and be hopeful.

Peace.

Fighting Weak Resignation

2010-01-26T10:38:00.003-06:00

This is the awkward, reluctant confession of a liberal...

Tomorrow night when the President stands before Congress and a worldwide television audience to summarize his opinions and his plans regarding the state of this great Union of ours, I'll be having dinner with friends.

I doubt we'll tune in.

Interestingly, these are the very same friends who gathered in my home last January, giddy with excitement, to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. We took the day off work, proudly waved flags, drank champagne at noon, and cried as we watched the President take his oath of office.

Tomorrow, I suspect we will ignore him.

What gives?

We are still intelligent, well-read, peace-loving, hard-working, outspoken people. We still believe in democracy, free speech, liberty, equality, justice for all...but I bet we'll be drinking wine and talking about our new year's resolutions instead of listening to what the President has to tell us.

I fear we've given up. We are one-quarter of the way through President Obama's term, and we seem to have decided it's too risky to cling to hope. There is not peace, and no health care legislation. There are no jobs, and no mortgage deals. We have no CLOSED sign on Guantanamo, and no gays openly serving in the military. What's more - like icing on our Cake of Woe - the Supreme Court has tossed out 100 years worth of wisdom about corporate campaign funding.

We have begun to think our small voices, which seemed so loud and beautiful last January, are about to be squelched forever. After eight years of George W. Bush, and now one year of political in-fighting and hope strangling, we feel like we are living a Japanese proverb:

Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.

And so we sit in our complacent ditches and tell everyone we're tired of caring.

Gulp.

This, my friends-of-like-mind, is how the other side wins. No matter what the game..

Handball - we give up, we lose. Learning piano - give up, lose. Running, bicycling, dancing, growing vegetables, fighting cancer, educating children, loving your spouse, raising your kids, creating peace/health care/opportunity/fairness - we give up, we lose.

We sang a great hymn in church Sunday, then stood around after the service and talked about how tired we are of sorting through promises and politics and pundits to find our way to effective participation in this democracy. In the middle of the conversation, my friend Carol picked up the hymnal and pointed to the first line of the last verse in the song we'd just sung:

Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage. That's the refrain of the hymn...

...for the facing of this hour.
...for the living of these days.
...lest we miss the kingdom's goal.

At 8 pm tomorrow night (CST) - I'm standing up again. Because there is no moving forward if I stay in the ditch waving my flag of weak resignation.

Peace. It's coming...

An Afternoon in the ER

2010-01-21T10:19:00.001-06:00

Most of my attention was focused on the rattling 6'5" frame that was my son in a world of pain.

But I couldn't help counting the number of people and kinds of test equipment coming in and out of the emergency room cubicle. Simultaneously, it was hardly enough to take care of my baby, and way too much to pay for. Each time the door opened, I was grateful we'd bought him a private health insurance policy.

There was the doctor, two nurses, three technicians, another doctor, and one volunteer. They delivered four injected medications, two bags of saline, tubes for body fluids, CT scan orders, and blankets (eventually). We were there a little over four hours before they released my son with instructions for coping with kidney stones.

What do you think that afternoon in the ER cost?

I can promise you this - if it was more than $100, my self-employed musician son could not afford it.

The ER was full of people like my son last Tuesday. Full. I asked one of our nurses if the frenzied pace he was keeping was normal.

"It's always like this," he said. "We prioritize on the run. People dying come first. People who might die if we don't hurry next. People who can wait, wait."

"How do you think it will be when everyone has access to health care?" I asked him.

"Much better," he was quick to respond. "People will go to their doctors when they're sick, and come to the ER when it's a real emergency."

Spend an afternoon in an ER waiting room if you don't believe we need health care reform in this country...

If you don't know someone who can't pay for a doctor when he's sick, then you don't get out enough.

If you can honestly look one of those uninsured/underinsured people (who I'm sure you know) in the eye and say, "Sorry you don't have health care like I do," then you're selfish.

If you can deny our systems are overloaded with people in medical crises who might have avoided a dire situation if they'd been able to afford a visit to a doctor, then I'm guessing you haven't looked up from your FOX News channel in quite a while.

And if you think Democrats are defeated by an election in Massachusetts, and are now going to their underground lairs to lick their wounds and play nice with the health reform naysayers, then you've swallowed a pill - which I hope you can pay for - and wandered into Never Never Land.

I pray, for your sake, there's a decent public health care system there.

Peace.

Heartbroken

2010-01-20T01:45:00.002-06:00

The pastor said something last Sunday like, "Our hearts have broken this week as we've seen images from Haiti..."

So I began to check my heart.

To be sure I had experienced overwhelm as reports came in detailing the amount of devastation the 7.0 earthquake had caused. Of course I felt horror when the number 50,000 was offered as an estimate of the dead in the small, poverty stricken island country. And, yes, my heart stopped as I listened to radio stories of digging for survivors under tons of rubble, only to find the cries for help had stopped before help had arrived.

But if I was going to be honest, sitting in my comfortable, completely unruined chair in the suburbs of Austin last Sunday morning - there was no brokenness in my heart over Haiti.

People die in natural disasters. Heartbreak, for me, unfolds as political instability or bureaucratic bumbling or human ignorance gets in the way of efforts to relieve human suffering. But that's not the story that was coming from Haiti last week. It seemed, in fact, that humanity rallied for the people of Haiti.

Political ideologies were put aside for the higher calling to respond with common compassion.

Technology was used to its greatest good to ensure quick and efficient response to overwhelming need.

Heroes of the stage, screen, and sports arena stepped forward with open hearts, big checks, and inspiring messages to their fans.

My heart was actually soaring (once I got Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson out of my system). I mean...wow! See what we can do in the world in the name of love and compassion when we tune out the voices of those who want to be richest and strongest and smartest and best, and listen simply to our own hearts?

Here's what I discovered was breaking my heart as I sat in church last Sunday:

Obama Wants $33B More for War Budget

And this:

2009 deadliest year for Afghan children

And photos like these:

And I couldn't help wondering...

What if Presidents Bush and Clinton were called into service on behalf of peace in Afghanistan?

What if "PEACE" texted to 90999 sent letters to Congress urging lawmakers to re-think all war funding?

What if Sandra Bullock wrote a $1 million check to Ayni Education International to help build schools in Afghanistan?

So, yes, my heart is breaking. We know how to love all people. We have resources that - shared - would make the world a very kind and gentle place. We could - I believe - create peace if we wanted to.

We proved it last week.

Seek peace.

Religion Gone Wrong - Part 2

2010-01-14T14:22:00.006-06:00

Pat Robertson on Haiti. Oh, c'mon, Pat...

The Huffington Post on Pat Robertson (I could not say it better, so I didn't try)...

Go to Hell, Pat Robertson: Haiti Needs Help, Not Stupidity

What God-honoring people should be talking about, thinking about...

What You Can Do to Help in Haiti

Why waste our God-given resources on anything else? Pat?

Peace.

Religion Gone Wrong

2010-01-11T12:18:00.000-06:00

Records and interviews with family and friends suggest (he) had a fanatical preoccupation...and used (religion) to support his beliefs.

...said he believed killing "is justifiable,"

...described him as self-righteous and someone who may be capable of murder.

...a highly religious individual who had very high moral convictions in order to carry out this act...

These words were not written about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Muslim Nigerian citizen who attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear in a Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines flight.

The words above were written about a Christian man from Kansas whose murder trial opened this morning in Wichita.

Scott Roeder shot George Tiller in the head at point blank range last May, as Dr. Tiller stood in the back of his Lutheran church on a Sunday morning helping people find seats for worship. Mr. Roeder has never denied he killed Dr. Tiller - he's counting on a "necessity defense" to absolve him of wrongdoing in the matter.

He killed Dr. Tiller, he said, in defense of innocent lives. George Tiller, you see, had performed legal abortions in Kansas for 36 years.

Like the judge presiding over Scott Roeder's trial - I hope to avoid a conversation about the rightness or wrongness of abortion. That's a matter clear-headed people should be taking up with presidents and congressfolk .. the people who seat judges on the Supreme Court, which allowed women the right to legal termination of pregnancy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1973.

What I would like to encourage is a pause in the fervor of patriotic, God-fearing Americans who believe Muslims are to be feared. I'd like to call us all to a moment of self-examination and sanity in which we realize violence and destruction lives in the wrong-headed religious fanaticism of every faith.

Even ours, Christians.

Who wants his/her faith evaluated on the basis of proclamations of righteousness from Scott Roeder and his supporters? If you want to be afraid, click over to the Army of God website, where Scott Roeder is hailed an American hero, and verses from the Christian holy book are used to justify his actions.

Who's ready to cast the first stone at an entire faith based on a spin off group of radical thinkers or one verse taken from a holy text? Not me.

I've cranked up Terri Hendrix' song Judgment Day (listen here, cut 1) this morning, and I'm singing along:

Everybody wants to use God when there's nobody but themselves to blame.
Everybody wants to use God when they do the dirty deeds in his name.

Everybody.

Peace, all.

Never A Question?

2010-01-08T11:22:00.001-06:00

I never question why things happen the way they do.

That's what Texas quarterback Colt McCoy said last night after an injury sidelined him in the BCS National Championship game during the first quarter of play.

If you follow football at the University of Texas, no doubt you've heard Colt McCoy "give God the glory" week after week, year after year. He walks from fist pumping and back slapping with his teammates after each game (he is the winningest QB in major college football history), meets the ESPN reporter at the sidelines, and opens with, "I just give God the glory."

He has done it every time. For four years.

He stuck to the script, mostly, last night after he watched his beloved Longhorns fizzle out on his college career ending field of dreams. He stood bravely facing the national TV audience, his throwing arm hanging limply at his side and said, "I always give God the glory. I never question why things happen the way they do."

Oh my. Colt McCoy has a lot of life yet to see.

I can appreciate Colt's determination to be faithful in all circumstances. I can honor a young person who lives all of life - including the part that involves throwing a ball - in awe of the Creator who put all of life in motion. I can even abide a naive world view that imagines a God who cares about which team wins a college football game.

But the comment, I never question why things happen the way they do erased believability from the strength of Colt McCoy's glories to God for me last night. I couldn't suppress a cynical laugh and a bitter comment.

"Really, Colt? Really?" That's what I said to the TV.

Perhaps when the "things" that happen in life begin to ooze outside the confines of 100 yards of well-kept grass, Colt McCoy will have a question or two. Maybe when he has time to look up from impressive personal stats and game day clipboards, he'll find the millions of questions the rest of us are taking to our moments with God each day.

Why do the world's children die hungry while America dies fat?

Why is killing innocent people in Iraq...Afghanistan...Vietnam...Hiroshima not murder?

Why do healthy, creative young people suffer with illness/succumb to tragedy waaay before their time should end?

Why are people hated because of the color of their skin, the choice of their mate, or the preference of their religion?

Even the most faithful saints of all time have wondered, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Maybe Colt McCoy will discover, as I have, that trust in God is strengthened in those moments of deep longing for answers to life's painful questions. I find no greater affirmation of my belief in God than I do when I meet a grieving Creator who does not stand at the control panel dishing out tragedy to test the strength of my resolve to believe - but stands with open arms and a broken heart to say, "I'm sorry it hurts so much. There is confusion and disappointment and evil in the world. I am here to hold you."

So what's a God-fearing, heartbroken, high profile, NFL-bound quarterback to do when the nation turns its eyes and ears to him for a comment at the end of such a night?

Well...I was grateful he didn't cry. And I was struck by his poise and the absence of bitterness in his voice. But I do wish he'd left God out of the conversation for once. Talk about the team, the helplessness of the situation, the injury. Sum up the interview with a smile and a wave and a God is still God if you must.

That's honest and believable.

Colt McCoy: I never question why things happen the way they do.

Really?

Teresa of Avila: The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.

Really.

God is on the journey, too. Sometimes it's just a puzzlingly bad trip.

Peace.

Hope Dancing

2010-01-05T10:25:00.002-06:00

Peace did not prevail on Earth in 2009.
Justice did not roll down like waters in a mighty stream.
Barack Obama did not save the world in 11 months.

There was reason to cry everyday for people all over the world - in Gaza, Baghdad, Kabul, Killeen...

Children continued to die in Pakistan, Peru, Zimbabwe, and New York from hunger and hunger related diseases - one dead child in the world every 5 seconds.

We found no bottom to the economic downturn in this country, and no jobs for the many eager and unemployed people we all know.

We fanned smoldering fires of hope for most of the year and fought feelings of betrayal, disappointment, and utter despair.

I did not land the perfect job, unearth a new calling, publish a piece of important literature, or win the lottery.

The year was unremarkable, really - unfolding in the stillness of mornings, the mystery of moonlit evenings, and the wonder of thoughts emerging on the tips of fingers poised over this computer keyboard.

I attended more weddings than funerals, laughed more than cried, loved more than hated, held tight more than pushed away. I stood awestruck and teary at the edge of the Grand Canyon, held hands and dreamed dreams to the sound of the Pacific Ocean, passed soup to the homeless, coins to the jobless, and many glasses of wine across my kitchen counter to friends.

My sons fell in love - one with the creative, feast-or-famine life of a musician; one with a brilliant and beautiful girl.

My husband stayed in love. In spite of meltdowns, insecurities, flakiness, and general ADD behavior on my part, he stood with me - encouraging dreams, affirming milestones, kissing the hurts, reattaching the severed visions.

Most people I know still believe in God, still respect the wisdom of their elders, and continue to have faith in the ultimate goodness at the core of all that has been Created.

The dance of hope is tricky. The steps are complicated and the rhythm in the music is sometimes hard to find. The signals from our brains to our bodies so often miss the mark. We feel like fools, look like klutzes, and become so self-conscious that we forget to laugh at ourselves.

Stop today. Listen for the music playing in the background of life. See if you can find a groove. Look for a partner in the dance. Extend a hand. Move your feet. Stick with it. Hum the tune all day long. Write your own words.

That's hope you're nurturing, friends. Dance on.

2010 - bring it on.

Peace.

Must Be Santa...

2009-12-17T10:22:00.000-06:00

One of the most worn holiday books in my house is Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkeley Breathed. The extraordinarily illustrated tale - which Breathed presents to us as a true one - follows a young boy as he encounters an old hermit named Saunder Clos who converts the solidly skeptical child into a lifelong believer in Christmas.

The same thing has happened to me this holiday season.

It wasn't an old bearded hermit surrounded by tiny, pointy-eared friends who turned my humbug into hope this year...it was an elementary school full of generous teachers.

The school falls under the watch of Title1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. This is the provision that ensures all children, regardless of their socio-economic status, will receive "a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education." In other words, many of the children in the school are poor.

One of the high schools in this crowded metropolitan school district has an annual fundraiser every December to buy bicycles for children in their schools who might not otherwise have a gift under the Christmas tree. Teachers in Title 1 schools are asked to identify students to receive the bikes, and then to consult with parents of those children to make sure the gifts will be meaningful.

The bicycles had been promised this year. But the fundraiser fell short of the promises. The teachers at the school received an email late Monday filling them in: "We need 10 more bicycles. They cost $75 each. Let's try to raise the money."

Before dawn had broken on the next school day, every bicycle had been funded. By teachers. You know...the very people who are in the trenches with our children every day. The ones we expect to mold and shape and educate the next generation. The heroes who bring snacks to school for children who are hungry, buy coats for children who are cold, give away hundreds of thousands of pencils and markers and crayons to children who never show up with supplies. The professionals among us who are paid an annual salary to compete with drywall installers, game wardens, and postal carriers ($45,600).

They gave without hesitation, even though they've already given those children so much.

I won't overstate the saintliness of teachers. They are human. There are good ones and bad ones, as is the case in every profession. But they are with our children. They are paying attention. They are dipping into their own depleted bank accounts at Christmas to ensure "fair, equal, significant opportunity" for every child.

They know opportunity sometimes comes with pedals and two wheels and a big, red bow.

...if you ask if I'm not making all this up, I'll say this: The word of the Red Ranger of Mars should be all you need. And if you ask if I believe in Santa Claus, I'll say this: Mind your own business. And if you ask about that tree on a Christmas morning a lifetime ago, the one holding the last little bit of an old man's faith and the first of a sour-faced little boy's...

It's from the book.

And, it's from real life, too. Both make me smile and give me hope.

Peace.

Everything You Need To Know...

2009-12-14T10:51:00.002-06:00

You can still learn it in kindergarten.

My sister does the heroic work that is the public school equivalent to a prep cook in a kitchen, or a weight trainer on an NFL team, or a computer programmer for NASA - without whom we would have no Iron Chefs, no Super Bowl winners, no space exploration.

My sister is a kindergarten teacher.

She calls it herding kittens. I call it tilling the soil of our future. Because what happens during a child's first year in school is so often the bellwether of success or failure for a student in the circuitous 13-year system that is public education. Leaders are born and buried in that system.

So I'm eager to relay this story from a kindergarten class in one of the "boom-burbs" of the Dallas-Ft.Worth area...

My sister received an untimely summons for jury duty this week - the last week before the holiday break at her school. The kindergarteners are receiving some intense hands-on lessons about the holiday traditions of a variety of faiths and cultures. Each teacher is specializing in one particular tradition. My sister's assignment for the week was Hanukkah. She was scheduled to teach the traditions of the Jewish Festival of Lights to every kindergarten class on Wednesday - the very day she has been called to court to do her duty as a good citizen of the United States of America.

She contacted her favorite sub to fill in for her. Then, as she worked on lesson plans for the day, my sister realized she was asking a conservative, head-covered Muslim woman to teach Jewish traditions all day. So, in the name of cultural sensitivity, she called the substitute and apologetically confessed that she didn't even know if her question was appropriate. "Do you have a problem teaching Hanukkah to kindergarteners?"

The woman was more than gracious.

"Oh no," she told my sister. "There is one God who loves all people. I believe we will all eventually stand together before that God." Then she added, "And, I also love all people. Of course I will teach the traditions of Hanukkah."

And so candles of the menorah will be lit this week in a kindergarten classroom in Mansfield, Texas by a Muslim woman, who is filling in for a Christian woman...

It's an example for little children that the rest of the world needs to see.

Whether you light candles for eight days, decorate evergreens in your living room, fast from dawn until sunset for a month, or feast 'round the clock from December 26 'til January 1 - there is one God. Surely it does not matter how we choose to tell the story.

I believe this kind of lesson is our One hope for peace on Earth.

And we probably learned it in kindergarten.

Peace.

Have A Great(ful) Day

2009-12-11T11:21:00.001-06:00

Christmas is not my season.

First, there's the shopping. I do hate shopping. Already I've mistakenly double-ordered from Amazon, over-spent at REI, and dragged my feet too long to get a must-have item on a loved one's list. Ugh.

Then there's the clutter. Christmas decorations make sense to me for about two days...then they become visual background noise that ultimately confuses and irritates me. But, I'll be racing out for a Christmas tree today, because I'm afraid if I let the weekend pass, all the good trees will be gone. Double ugh.

Stir in the call of the Faithful to set aside time to anticipate and wait with patience for The Holy, throw in the expectation that all human contact will be full of comfort and joy, add a heaping helping of the Martha Stewart inspired dream of gingerbread in every oven and fresh evergreen boughs on every hearth...and, well, I mostly want to cry.

So I walk gently through the days. I negotiate the emotional expectations to the present reality every day. I remember to sleep and eat. I cling to time to be still and know God...not the babe in the manger, but the Holy Parent who loves me. And, I try to be eager in my resolve to return all kindness with kindness - hoping, ultimately, that goodness will grow beyond grumpiness.

But I find people are generally grumpy this time of year.

"Wanna bag for this?"
"Really? We haven't had that for two weeks."
"Uh, yeah, you too (have a nice day). Next."
"No, you can't return that without a receipt. Next."

Finally this week, I made a transaction with someone who smiled and said with cheerful authenticity: "Thank you. Merry Christmas. Have a great day."

It didn't happen at the upscale kitchen gadget shop, not at the all-natural-eco-friendly retailer, not even at the bookstore where I was purchasing books about saving the world one school at a time.

It came from the toothless, shivering, under dressed-for-the-weather man standing on the corner near my house with a sign that read, "Good Karma for you. Anything helps." I gave him one dollar. One measly dollar. And I said, "I hope you have a warm place to go to soon."

He was cheerful. He was grateful. He said, "Thank you for caring, m'am. Thank you. Merry Christmas." And as I drove away, he smiled, waved, and shouted, "Have a great day!"

I now have a stack of dollar bills in my car. It's my investment in Christmas sanity.

To those among us who need so little from us to be gracious and kind this holiday season...
Thank you.

You have increased my joy and made me mindful of goodness in the crazy world that is Christmas.

Peace.

Let There Be Peace

2009-12-06T15:25:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. President,

We lit the second candle of Advent this morning in our Christian worship service. The candle of Peace. Our prayers were focused on waiting, patiently, for the celebrated birth of the Prince of Peace. Our scripture texts reminded of us journeys in the wilderness. Before the gathered parted company for the week ahead, we sang: Let there be peace on earth. Let it begin with me.

The words stuck in my throat. What, I wondered through tears, do peace and justice oriented people of faith do now, in the midst of escalating war, to begin peace?

We thought we were beginning it as we registered voters, walked neighborhoods, and voted in 2008.

Now, as we have done for the last eight years, we have to imagine peace starting with us in some other way. A dollar to the homeless woman on the street corner? A donation to a microcredit fund? A bowl of soup served to a hungry child? A candle lit in the window? Prayers for people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Israel?

We’re doing all that – we’ve never stopped. Perhaps you can imagine how it all seems like not quite enough.

What would you have been thinking today if you’d sung these words?

Let there be peace on earth

And let it begin with me?

Why can’t the leader of the most powerful , best resourced, most envied nation of the world … the man who will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this week … stand up and say, “We’re finished with war”? Do we have no allies for peace? Would our economies all collapse if our war industries went idle? Is there no real good to be done on this planet with one million dollars, multiplied by 140,000 soldiers, multiplied by 1.5?

What happens if peace begins with you, Mr. President? Will no one else follow? Are there not enough people in the world who will stand in the name of peace with us to face our enemies?

They do seem to be growing weary of standing alongside us in war.

How, Mr. President, do you suggest peace begins? Not “disrupt, dismantle and defeat.”

Peace.

Any chance it can start with you?

What Don't I See?

2009-12-01T23:18:00.002-06:00

A dozen years ago I sat my pacifist self down across the table from two teen aged boys who were temporarily in my care. They had been in a fight, and I do not approve of fighting. Not between teen aged boys. Not between nations.

I told the boys a racial slur was not worth a fist fight. I reminded them that they - both black - were bigger than that. I told them nothing was ever solved with violence, and that they gave away their power the minute they engaged in it.

It's what I believed with all my heart.

But - I have never been called a nigger.

That day I wondered if my pacifist perspective was a bit sheltered. Tonight, I'm wondering the same thing. Are some things worth a fight?

What about "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future?"

President Obama thinks that's a perfectly good reason to fight. He's sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan based on that argument: We must beat the bad guys.

But, it seems to me the bad guys win if we continue to deplete our deeply-indebted financial stores to the tune of $1-million per soldier per year to continue a war that's been depleting our stores for eight years.

It seems to me the bad guys win when the locals (Afghanis) blame poverty, corrupt government (US supported), and interference from other countries for the war in their land before they blame al-Qaida.

It seems to me the bad guys win every time another flag draped coffin is pulled from a plane at an Air Force Base on US soil.

Did you study the faces of the cadets tonight as President Obama delivered his plan to the West Point audience? To say they were solemn would be an understatement. Many of them will go to Afghanistan as soon as the last verse of "Silent Night" is sung in a few weeks. They know this.

Some of them have already been.

Surely a good number of them have lost a friend to the battle.

I'd love to know how they feel about the worthiness of the fight.

Because I have never trained nor taken an oath to defend the constitution of the United States. Nor have I read through daily security briefings with information like the President divulged tonight: "In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror."

Maybe there is something about our ongoing quagmire that we call war in Afghanistan that I just don't see.

But if it's peace and stability we're after...I sure don't see it at the end of a gun.

Peace.

On Giving Thanks

2009-11-26T07:09:00.001-06:00

The question was asked a few days ago: What are you thankful for this year?

I looked around the table at friends gathered. We all seemed a little embarrassed and put on the spot, which is awfully weird for church people four days before Thanksgiving at an annual event called the Agape (Love) Meal.

"I guess I should have known that was coming," I said. Everyone laughed. Then we made a few jokes about what we are not particularly thankful for: conservative TV pundits, the economy, the extra pounds headed to our waistlines in the coming days.

It was a table of eleven well-fed, highly-educated Americans. We had all driven cars to the event. We were wearing clean, weather appropriate clothes, and sat in a candlelit room full of 120 people, any one of whom would have walked a mile or more with any one of us on his/her back, if that were necessary.

Why were we so squirmy?

I can only speak for myself.

It seems I'm so drenched in the good life I can't even formulate an honest response to the question. I guess, truth be told, I'm a little self-conscious about the utter blessedness of my days...

I have had nothing but opportunity this year - to write, to refresh my soul, to rediscover deep joy, to connect with the sweetest little amazements of this life; things like: rain falling off my roof, babies smiling at me from their car seats, a full moon over the ocean, fresh greens in baskets at a local farm stand.

I will sit at a table later today with my mother, who eight months ago had a heart attack after chopping down a tree in her front yard. Today, she is cooking a turkey.

I have never been hungry.

I have always been loved.

I have stayed out of hospitals and chemo facilities and a myriad of scary sounding diagnostic machines.

I have not bailed a child out of jail, a husband out of rehab, a family member out of financial ruin, or a friend out of an abusive marriage.

The question is just too easy.

So, please let me take a moment to say thank you...

To those of you who help keep my eyes open to the fact that life is, indeed, very good.

To those of you who trust me with your stories of brokenness and heartache when it comes your way.

To friends and family who struggle, alongside me, with the absolute abundance that defines our American lives. Thank you for teaching me, reminding me, leading me to see the big hurting world that lives outside my warm and cozy upper middle-class window.

I am about to watch the sun rise outside that very window. A clear and beautiful morning is emerging. I am huddled around a good cup of coffee and a day that will be filled with the comfort of family.

I will pause in these moments to give thanks - and to pray for a sunrise like this in the days of each of your lives as the next year miraculously unfolds.

Give thanks.

Peace.

On Paying Attention

2009-11-04T08:00:00.002-06:00

I am haunted by images of an adorable child in my past who was always eager to tell me his stories and share his unique view of the world - with little or no implore on my behalf.

(I told you he was adorable.)

The images of this child...in my kitchen, in the backseat of my car, in my bedroom before dawn's earliest light and long after the last dish was washed in the evening...haunt me for one simple reason - I wasn't listening.

I was busy.

Busy doing what, I cannot tell you. Making the beds? Baking the cookies? Organizing the fundraisers? Taking soup to the sick? It is beyond anything worth searching for in my junk drawer of a memory, I can promise you that.

There is one scene that comes in loud and clear, though...from 13 years ago. I was in the kitchen - busy. My storyteller was talking, and I was paying enough attention to say "uh-huh" and "really" in response. Exasperated, he stood up, looked me squarely in the eye and said, "Mom, you're not even listening."

He was right. And he stopped talking.

That boy is 23 years old today. His view of the world is now bigger than mine - so much more studied and wise and complete. He's traveled Europe, lived in California on his own, read hundreds of books I've only talked about reading, worked alongside the homeless, written music, played in orchestras and rock bands and church ensembles, loved deeply, lost painfully, and lived - always - authentically.

I am very lucky. This boy still tells me his stories (although he usually waits to be asked). It is one of the most significant measures of grace I have ever received. I try not to think about the things I must have missed when I was too busy to listen.

We think they'll be 3 forever...and then, poof, they're 23. Pay attention.

Happy Birthday, Travis!

Stepping Out

2009-10-31T13:05:00.000-05:00

According to Google Analytics linked to this site...which I endearingly refer to as my Google Voodoo because it seems like magic every time I log on and find pie charts and graphs telling me more than I can possibly understand about visitors to Thinking in Peaces...about 600 of you honor me with a read of these ramblings every month. So it seems I should post a preemptive apology.

I will not be writing here in November...although I will be writing. Like a fiend.

I have accepted the annual challenge from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) to finish 50,000 coherent words between midnight tonight and midnight on November 30.

Writers from 90 countries step up to the plate every November, ready to take a swing at the story burning within. There is no prize for finishing - and only 18% of the 100,000+ folks who commit actually do - it's just a deadline. And most of us need a deadline.

I've started writing no less than a dozen books in my life. I figure it's time to get past page 25. So...off I go, into the great wide open - now 12 hours 'til the kick off, and still unsure exactly which story I'll pull out of the shadows of my imagination. Will it be the Martini Chronicles? the Letters from Africa? the Neighborhood Mosaic? the Organic Mixed Nuts? the Bracelet? Or will something entirely new pop from brain to page over the next 30 days?

I'm excited and afraid.

Strategy #1 for completion, say the experienced NaNos, is to tell all your friends you're writing a novel in November. So...here it is friends. Feel free to hold me accountable.

I'll be posting one sentence from the writing every day at my other blog, Just Six Journal. So reset your bookmarks, and take a peek from time to time. I'll also let you know how I'm doing on word count each day - to stay on target, I'll need to write 1667 words a day!

Gulp.

Of course I won't stop thinking about this big ol' goofy world we live in every day - that thinking is likely to emerge somewhere in a character that shows up at my desk in November. I only hope he/she isn't too boring...

Thanks for the encouragement - which is the time you take to read here. I'll be back in December.

Peace all.

Meeting Planes

2009-10-29T12:36:00.000-05:00

I logged onto my favorite flight tracking site early yesterday morning so I could keep an eye on the plane that was bringing six young musicians I know and love back to Texas after a three week tour of Europe.

My youngest son is one of those musicians.

I hit the refresh button no less than two dozen times during the day, and got so much pleasure out of seeing the little plane icon ooonch slowly across the world toward home.

AA2491 40 minutes from Austin

We met the weary travelers at the Austin airport a little before midnight. It was a happy reunion with hugs, celebrations of luggage/instrument arrival, quick stories about pizza box lids and the Fall colors of Germany...and then home to familiar showers and beds and facebook.

President Obama met a plane late last night, too. At Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. It was carrying 18 passengers - all in flag draped coffins - from Afghanistan.

President Obama salutes the coffin of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Terre Haute, IN

The dead were this week's "fallen" in Operation Enduring Freedom, which has seen the biggest loss of US life this month since the war began in Afghanistan in 2002. These troops and DEA agents died in two separate incidents on Monday of this week: Ten in a helicopter crash, and 8 in a vehicle struck by an "improvised explosive device."

The families of these sons and daughters were at the air base to meet their loved ones' plane, too. They had a few minutes with the President, who I imagine heard their stories, offered his condolences, his gratitude...and, perhaps, his promise.

His promise that as long as he is president, no more Americans who seize the opportunity to serve in this country will be sacrificed to an unclear purpose. A promise that men and women of America who willingly give their talents to the service of our defense will no longer be left to wonder, "Why am I here?" or "What are we doing?" A promise that he has paid attention to the resignation of US Foreign Service Officer Matthew P. Hoh, who wrote in his resignation letter:

(we are)...encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people

I crawled into bed last night just before 2 AM, knowing my son was safely home...looking forward to hearing his stories and seeing his pictures in the days to come.

President Obama landed on the White House lawn just before 5 AM this morning, knowing - I hope - that real people with real hopes and real dreams and loving families are sloshing through a quagmire that is in his hands to fix.

Peace.

Equal Opportunity Evil?

2009-10-27T11:47:00.002-05:00

I've had reason over the last couple of weeks to ponder the question: What if women ruled the world?

It all began with the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which tells the inspiring story of the women of Liberia who stood - quite literally - for peace in their country and made it happen. The film ends with the promise that the Liberian Women for Peace are ready to mobilize on a moment's notice if their families and communities are ever again subjected to the terror of war.

(The woman who began that movement in Liberia...Leymah Gbowee...will receive the Gruber Women's Rights prize this week for her "demonstration of courage and commitment to a fundamental shift in culture in the face of significant obstacles.")

Not a fist was raised, a face slapped, or a bullet fired by these women in Liberia. Good things happened.

And then there was the story of Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink: Women for Peace - who stood face to face with President Obama two weeks ago, wearing a pink t-shirt that announced "End the Afghan Quagmire," and handed him the signatures of thousands of women in Afghanistan who want to be part of making peace in their country.

As Jodie told the president, if good is going to come in Afghanistan, "the women need to be involved."

And finally, there was the book on my nightstand, loaned to me by my friend Karen, titled If Women Ruled the World: How to Create the World We want to Live In. The book is a product of the White House Project, the non-partisan, non-profit organization that exists to advance women's leadership in this country, "up to the U.S. presidency." Among the 95 essays included in the book are works titled: "We'd Put a Compassionate Face on America," and "We Would Walk a Mile in Each Other's Shoes," and "Bullying in All Forms Would Be Unacceptable."

Good things, it seems, would happen if women ruled the world.

Then came the headline this morning:
Bosnian War's "Iron Lady" Freed From Prison

...and I was compelled to investigate what happened when Biljana Plavsic ruled the Serbian world of Bosnia in the mid-late 1990s.

Good things did not happen. Horrible, terrible, nightmarish things happened to Bosnian Muslims who Plavsic deemed "genetically deformed." She considered the torture, murder, rape, and displacement of Muslims a "perfectly natural phenomenon."

When it came time, in 2002, for the Iron Lady to stand trial for her crimes against the people of Serbia, she was, at least, clever enough to bargain with prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity in exchange for seven counts of war crimes - including genocide - being dropped.

Then when her day in court came, she blamed Slobadan Milosevic for the whole thing and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She served less than seven before her release today.

And so, Biljana Plavsic has pushed me out of my bubble of belief that if women ran the world, the relational nature that seems so inherent in our genetic make up would make world peace a walk down Easy Street. Take a look at this Plavsic quote from 1994:

I don't have much faith in political negotiations. One good battle would settle this war.

So much for the kinder, gentler face of leadership.

Biljana Plavsic - Bosnia's Iron Lady

It was a wise man - Lord Acton - who said in 1887:

Power tends to corrupt. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

And - sigh - bad women?

Peace.

"Young" Inter-Nut Genius

2009-10-24T10:16:00.006-05:00

...that's me.

At the end of most days, I find myself wondering if I forget things because I have crammed so much information into my head in one day, or if I forget things because the electrical depolarization of the membrane around a handful of my presynaptic cells has gone awry.

Wow! It's startling to me how quickly I can sound brilliant on any given subject...like the synaptic processes in the brain. You should be afraid.

And encouraged.

According to a new study discussed last week in Chicago at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, I'm keeping my brain young when I engage in the curious exploration of a topic on the internet. Yep, the "use it or lose it" thinking behind brain functionality has gone high tech. It's not the crossword puzzle keeping old brains firing anymore - it's the internet. Scientists have hooked "old people" (55-78...gulp) up to MRIs and put them in front of computers to prove the theory: Web Surf to Save Your Aging Brain.

Since I spend no small amount of time each day surfing the web for information about everything from: the current time in Asse, Belgium; the current mood of women in Afghanistan; the best recipe for gumbo, I am thrilled to run across this research (online, of course).

Now I can worry about wrinkles instead of dementia...

So surf on, friends. It's good for the brain.

But, make sure you step away from the desk from time to time to blink and breathe and discuss your online discoveries with a real human being. Surely time face-to-face, idea-to-idea, laugh-to-laugh, hand-on-hand with another person is still the delight of being human...and, the real key to aging with grace.

Peace.

Rowdy in Pink

2009-10-20T17:54:00.013-05:00

In the days before I had time to blog, I worked at a very cool conference center in Austin that threw some flat out amazing events. As manager of the team that pulled every one of those events right out of a magician's hat, I must honestly confess today that there were very few names more feared than this one when it came time to coordinate a meeting plan: Jodie Evans. She's the co-founder of:

Clearly, I had no complaint with the work of Code Pink and I was beyond delighted to be part of bringing the likes of Molly Ivins and Anne Lamott to our beautiful Texas hilltop when the group of peace advocates gathered. But, I'm here to tell you, as an eyewitness - these are not your laid back peace-niks. These women, lined up behind the energy and presence that is Jodie Evans, are demanding and wild and stubborn and just plain rowdy. Making a 3-day conference plan that fit into the little boxes of my banquet event orders and production forms was just not going to happen with this bunch. I spent the duration of both 3-day events we hosted with Code Pink wondering what had hit me and what was coming next.

Guess who got a dose of Jodie Evans last week? President Obama. And I think he had it coming.

Jodie had just returned from 10-days in Afghanistan, where she talked to people - real Afghans - about their visions for peace. In particular, Jodie wanted to hear from women. She came back to the US with thousands of signatures from those women...all of them asking the President of the United States to stop fanning the flames of destruction that are ruining their lives. You know what she did with the signatures? She bought herself a ticket to a pricey fundraiser...$15,000 for dinner in downtown San Francisco and a photo op with the President. Instead of a ball gown, Jodie wore a pink t-shirt with "End the Afghan Quigmire" stenciled on it. And, she had her moment with the President. It went something like this:

Jodie: The women there (Afghanistan) are really upset that they are not at the negotiating table.
President: What do you mean, I have Hillary?
Jodie: No the Afghan women want to be at the negotiating table.
President: Oh.
Jodie: I am here to remind you to keep your promises for peace.
President: You know we are not going to end the problem in Afghanistan any time soon.
Jodie: Actually you’re not going to solve the problem, they are.

Consider yourself introduced to Jodie Evans.

You know what? The peace movement is - perhaps - not necessarily peaceful. It may not be particularly calm and organized, timid or very soft-spoken. It mostly likely should be unruly...outside the lines and boxes and usual thinking and polite talking. Because peace takes courage. To put aside guns and walk into a place known to be hostile with nothing more than a plan to stay the course until the peace is successfully waged...that takes some guts. Ask the women of Liberia how it goes.

Today, you can log onto the Code Pink facebook causes page and pledge $10 to begin a run at sustainable peace in Afghanistan: $10 will pay for one of these critical services: * Food for one woman for 7 days * Medical care for one woman for one month * One dress for one woman * A young girl's school tuition for 15 days.

I am grateful for the gutsy women dressed in pink who are not afraid to speak their minds with congressmen/women, presidents, generals, or people in war weary countries. And I'm looking over my shoulder in hopes of finding Jodie Evans, in a wave of pink, stirring up life all around us.

Jodie Evans

Peace.

Paying Attention

2009-10-19T09:17:00.005-05:00

I am looking away from the Balloon Boy stories today. The Heenes are tragic, no doubt. Having your family drama - fabricated or not - beamed from sea to shining sea just can't be fun. I know they're reality TV veterans, but when your lawyer is asking the sheriff to resist the spotlight and let you quietly turn yourself in for creating a nationwide panic...well, reality begins to suck. So, I'm looking away from Richard and Mayumi Heene today. I find the rest of us more interesting to ponder. What is it we find so fascinating about this story? I guess it's that we love a happy ending. The tale of a lost and found 6-year old provided that for us last Thursday. We also seem to love juicy gossip. The continuing saga of this offbeat family has fed that hungry animal in us every day since the happy ending was upended by the balloon boy saying to his dad, "I thought we did it for the show." Kids. They'll make us look like fools every time, won't they? What I can't explain about this story and our collective response is all the outrage I've heard over it. People right here in Texas suddenly know exactly how many dollars it costs to put a Colorado National Guard helicopter in the air for an hour, how many Ft. Collins law enforcement dollars can be wasted in one afternoon, and exactly how much a family makes as part of a reality TV show. Waste like this is, apparently, despicable. But, ask the same people what we spent last Thursday on lingering war in Iraq ($720-million) and you'll be lucky to get a shrug. Why aren't we outraged over muddy answers to strategic questions about ongoing war? Ask them how many children in the world died from hunger last Thursday afternoon (16,000). Why aren't we incensed over the disparity between the never-satisfied American consumer and the barely-surviving third world child? Ask how much money was spent last week ($3 million) trying to tell us what to believe about health care reform legislation. Why can't we get a hackle raised about that? I am weary of the low-consequence Balloon Boy story. Let Ft. Collins sort this one out alone. Leave the family to manage its own fame or shame. In the meantime, can we get an eyebrow raised for a costly war or a hungry child or an expensive media propaganda blitz? Peace.

I Believe in Blue Skies

2009-10-15T09:07:00.011-05:00

I lived in the Silicon Valley of California for two years in the early 1980s. I was young, and research like Google was not available, so I went to the far-away land of Cupertino, California somewhat uninitiated. For starters - I didn't know the place was an actual valley. Imagine my surprise on the second week there when the haze cleared enough for me to see where I was. Once rich in orchards, flowering trees, and every kind of plant a valley soil near the Pacific Ocean could produce...by the time I arrived in Silicon Valley, the high tech industry had taken 20 years off the life of the place. The tiny piece of paradise I had moved to, nestled between Mount Hamilton on the North and the Saratoga foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains on the South, looked like this: ...on a very good day. Most days we were unaware hills and mountains existed at all. A blue sky was a very rare occurrence. I tried to hold my breath for two years. And I grieved over the color of the sky, wondering if there would be a blue sky left in the United States by the time I had children. Here's the good news. I've been back to California recently. Look at the view of Mount Hamilton from the valley today: So, cheers to the State of California, which has spent the last 20+ years aggressively enacting legislation designed to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide released into the blue-sky air of the Golden State. The air regulatory board in California has also taken on dry cleaning fluids, second hand smoke, and outdoor residential waste burning...to name a few. Up next on the contentious US Senate agenda is Cap and Trade legislation. Another fight of health care proportions is expected. We can expect corporate lobbies to take a vested interest in the outcome. I would imagine we can also expect hours and hours of "less government is better" rhetoric designed to to persuade us we are not ruining the earth with our polluting industries and modes of transportation. Study the issues now. Be ready for the conversation. Setting controls on pollution works. The evidence is in California's blue sky. I believe in blue skies. Do you?

Declare your own support for blue skies. Feel free to copy the logo above (I have the copyright) and announce your plans for saving our skies on your own website/blog.

Peace. And happy Blog Action Day!

Avoiding Stress

2009-10-12T09:39:00.008-05:00

There's an article on the front page of my newspaper today about some hard working psychologists at The University of Texas who are studying Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in soldiers. Let me disclose right off the bat that I have nothing but the highest regard for scholarly research in the field of psychology. My oldest son does it at Indiana University. He learned to ask questions like: What were they thinking? and, Why do they do that? growing up in a house where those questions were regularly pondered. Still, today's story on the work of Dr. Michael Telch and his staff with the Texas Combat PTSD Risk Project created no small amount of stress in me. The UT scientists are running Ft. Hood soldiers through a battery of tests before, during, and after battlefield deployment in an attempt to "provide important new insights into the causes of combat PTSD and ways to prevent it." If researchers can pinpoint risk factors for the disorder, says the article, perhaps it is possible to "inoculate" service members before they deploy to a war zone. Really? At Dr. Telch's UT website, he says this:

Fear can be a good thing.
Being afraid makes us heed severe weather warnings and keeps us from running across busy freeways. It is a survival mechanism.

I like the idea of fear when it comes to war. Should human beings really be "inoculated" to manage this fear? Is there a reason scenes like these should NOT terrify us? Perhaps the best answer to PTSD is to subject every politician pondering war to some real-life war scenes, in hopes that a fear response - which is embedded in each of our souls - will take the lead. End war. End combat PTSD. Peace.

Eight Years on the Beach

2009-10-08T18:41:00.001-05:00

I sat down at my computer at 9 am this morning. By 10, I'd hit 109 different websites in a quest for bits of information about my world. Today that first hour of internet exploring included: the weather in Switzerland, the possible location of a touring post-rock band, the definition of post-rock, the linkedin page for a former colleague who requested a recommendation, the facebook page of a great kid I know celebrating his 19th birthday, the number of Weight Watchers points in a cup of granola... Multiply the list by 20. It's ridiculous, really, how much I stuffed into my brain in one hour. Ridiculous, but awesome. We're moving across the world at speeds I can't even comprehend. It's described in hundreds of thousands of bits per second - and whatever that means, it's fast. I'm accessing information in one hour that I'd have spent a full year trying (and sometimes failing) to find in a library as recently as 20 years ago. And so I forgive my grandparents for not knowing what was happening to the Jews in Hitler's pre-war Germany. Even after they knew of the persecutions, there was rarely access to photos like these:

Lager Nordhausen, concentration camp where 20,000 are believed to have died.

And I understand that my parents had to settle for Chet Huntley's and David Brinkley's and Walter Cronkite's views of what was happening in Vietnam. There was no way for average, busy Americans to find out about things like the March, 1968 massacre of 350 unarmed South Vietnamese people in My Lai. It was a year before this photo became news in 1969:

Son My village in South Vietnam, March 16, 1968

We people of the digital age have a different level of accountability, I think. With our laptops and desktops and PDAs and 3G networks, we don't have to let Brian Williams or Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann deliver the real world. If we want to know what's happening in, say, Afghanistan after 8 years of a US war - we just log on and, boom! Afghanistan, war dead Afghanistan, daily life Afghanistan, women Afghanistan, children Afghanistan, US To quote John Prine - and I often do - "It's a Big Ol' Goofy World." But it's at our fingertips, my fellow internerds...there for our edification. It's time we got our heads out of the sand and flexed our surfer muscles.

The US and allies invaded our country under fine slogans of “democracy”, “women’s rights”, “liberation” and so on, but today they are supporting and helping the dirtiest enemies of such values in Afghanistan.

Knowledge is power. If we have computers with internet access, we have the power. Shall we use it? Peace.

Who's Happy Now?

2009-10-06T18:48:00.003-05:00

I find a lot to ponder in the opening line of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I have stretched Tolstoy's assumption a bit today, as I've pored over speculation and specifics about our war in Afghanistan. I'm guessing most Americans would call Afghanistan an unhappy family. It is war ravaged and fear-ruled. Promises of a fair democracy have been broken, women have been setting themselves on fire at frightening rates, children have been starving. Rain doesn't fall. Human services don't arrive. Offers from terrorists continue to look like the best people can hope for. We could talk all day about Afghanistan's long and storied history of misery, I'm sure. But Afghanistan is not the unhappy family that keeps seeping into my analogous thinking today. It is my country...the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. United we stand. Bedrock of democracy. For starters, we cannot stop fighting about our fighting. Defense Secretary Gates has indirectly rebuked General Stanley McChrystal who has drawn a line in the strategic sand with President Barack Obama who has a Vice President and a Secretary of State singing in two entirely different keys... All while an assortment of "experts" on the subject show up on our television screens with no small amount of hopeless rhetoric to deliver to us in the name of objectivity. And while we're all wringing our hands and saying, "Oh, Vietnam," 65,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines are on the ground in Afghanistan. Yesterday eight of them died there. If the President and his war council (convening tomorrow) decide to stick with the counterinsurgency plan kicked off earlier this year, the number of our mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who are fighting the terrorists, the culture, the climate, and the geography of Afghanistan will climb to 108,000 within a year. And it seems only right for our big, superpower USA family to be reminded that Russia fell to Afghan freedom fighters in the 1980s with 120,000 troops on the ground. I think happy families dance in the streets. Afghan people were doing that as the Soviets pulled out of their country in 1987 and 1988. There is no dancing in the streets for our US family these days. We are mired in a war that is not working. My opinion - which will surprise no one - is that war never works. Anywhere. It creates nothing but chaos and fear and mile after mile of human suffering. A family at war is not a happy family. We are unhappy in our own way. As I read heartbreaking stories about families in Afghanistan today, I came across a website for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. This organization is working courageously, under the most dire of circumstances and conditions, to keep women and children alive in its most unhappy country. Here's what RAWA says of our war:

RAWA believes that freedom and democracy can't be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values.

Let there be peace...and happiness...in the world family. Let it begin with us.

C'mon People Now...

2009-10-05T16:23:00.002-05:00

Love is but a song we sing. And fear's the way we die. I know if I can sing the words to this song, I must be an old hippie (you are too) - but surely there is a load of truth to be heard in every generation's ears in those two simple lines, sung by the Youngbloods in the late 1960s. Fear's the way we die. That's the one that really gets me. Because it's true. Our bodies respond to the way we think, feel, and act. It's often called the "mind/body connection" and it's a medical fact of life. High blood pressure, chronic digestive upsets, lowered immunities - these are the lesser evils of the body's response to fear, anxiety, grief, and anger. I only mention it because bumper stickers are affecting my good health. Does it make folks feel better to put rude slogans on their cars? Is it empowering in some way to display an angry opinion and drive on? Is there anything more to be accomplished by this behavior than some version of a passive-aggressive middle finger in the air? Are you daring me to ram my car into yours? Here are a few back-bumper-wisdoms gnawing at me from the road this week: Here's what bothered me most about that one. This was on the other side of the bumper: I know there are some nasty ones from the thinkers who dig in the other field of thought. I see those too, and - yes - they make me bite my nails, too: What is up with us? Who goes first in the effort to make bumper sticker peace...you or me? Can we begin to imagine peace on this Earth if we can't even leave our hatefulness rolled up behind our car windows? How 'bout we all order one sticker and be done with it... C'mon people now, smile on your brother (and sister!) Everybody get together Try to love one another... Right now. If not for peace on Earth, why not for our good health? Peace.

One More Real Person

2009-09-28T14:05:00.001-05:00

I have one more story about a real person and health care. This one had medical insurance when he needed it. But, because he is my son, I've spent no small amount of time wondering...

What if?

He is 22-years old, 30 hours from a BA in English, healthy... and a working musician. He plays in a band of notable fame in its genre, and he really does receive some noticeable money doing it.

But the pay is not steady. And there are no benefits beyond expense-paid trips to Europe, venues that provide gourmet food and free beers, and rooms full of wildly happy fans.

Yes, he's living the dream.

But, if his parents couldn't afford to fund a private health insurance policy for him, he might be living that dream with one less foot. Or one less leg. Or - if you'll allow me a dramatic mother moment - not living at all.

On a Sunday evening last February, he returned to his apartment after work, kicked his shoes off at the door, greeted friends who were gathered for dinner, and hurried down the carpeted hallway to his bedroom to change clothes. Before he reached the bedroom door, his bare foot found a two-inch long sewing needle. The force of his step drove the needle completely into the arch of his foot. You could see where it was only because the very end of the needle was trying to push through the skin of the bottom of his foot...from the inside.

The group gathered sprang into action. Tweezers, razor blades, and pain pills were pondered. My son's roommate thought she could pull the needle out if she could slice through the skin where the thing was trying to protrude.

Thankfully, before any field surgery was performed, someone asked my son if he had health insurance. When he said yes, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and agreed, "Time to go to the hospital."

An x-ray showed the needle was lodged in one of the peroneal tendons. Ouch.

Oh, and the needle was broken.

ER nurses hooked my son up to IV antibiotic and gave him a tetanus shot before the doctor came in to perform some emergency room surgery: Novocain, incision, tweezers, stitches, bandage - $4,000.

My son could not have paid that bill. Nor could he have paid the bill that might have resulted from his not seeking immediate medical attention. If that relatively minor emergency had gone very far into infection, it is likely that we would not have been able to afford the consequences, either.

According to the American Journal of Medicine, 62-percent of all bankruptcies in this country are the sad result of medical debts. Most of these debtors are well-educated, own homes, and have middle class occupations. They are people accustomed to paying their way and they intend to do all they can to pay their way through a medical crisis.

But, really...who can do that without health insurance?

People you know are neglecting medical problems because they think they cannot afford to pay the bill. I guarantee it. Some of them will get very sick before they see a doctor, which likely means they will have to see a doctor in an emergency room.

Some of them will die.

This is not an Obama issue. It is not a democrats-in-charge issue. It is a national crisis.

We are the only industrialized nation in the world without publicly financed health insurance. The fight against cash-coated insurance lobbies for the right to accessible medical care is as old as I am. Read this article at the Physicians for National Healthcare site.

It was posted FIVE YEARS AGO:

Break the Insurance Lobby Choke-hold on Health Care

Real people. A very real issue. Just so you know. Peace.