something else

there is no specific purpose for this post. i am home from riding bike. to the library, to city council. i missed the portion of the city council meeting during which citizens may speak; specifically I missed the part where people talked about a proposed city council resolution supporting an end of the occupation of Iraq and a withdrawal of U.S. soldiers.

i went to the last one and spoke. it was about Iraq and i was nervous because that stuff makes me really nervous. city council has so far refused to even have a vote on it. most of the members do not want to endanger their re-election by coming out one way or another on the Iraq war. there is one who openly opposes it. he claims it is not a local issue. the weekend before that last city council meeting, a young man from Fort Collins was killed in Iraq.

this time i thought it was at 6:30 but i got there and it was over.

i had just been reading about consumerism, separation of self and others, and the war in Iraq. i was feeling pretty shitty and hopeless. then i figured i would go to the city council meeting at least.

anyway, i just ate some food and i am going to drink water. that is about all.

stuff

We are getting ready to move to a different place in town. It is amazing how much stuff I have accumulated. It is maybe especially bad when we have an attic space to store things.

It's been a long time coming, though. Much of the "stuff" I moved here with. I just put it in boxes and hauled it here. This time, though, I am taking more time and trying to lighten the load. But it's difficult for me to get rid of some things, even though there is no real purpose to keep them. The longer I am going through stuff, though, the easier it seems to be to part with things. And there is much that I have accumulated, stuck away in the dark recesses of the attic, that hasn't been difficult to throw out. But still it is really weird that it is so difficult with some things.

It has been interesting. A lot of memories. Many from high school and college and some even from childhood and junior high. Things from different trips and periods of my life.

Part of the difficulty is that I just don't like throwing stuff into the landfill where it will just sit and not even rot. Things that I can give to someone--a friend or a thrift store are not so bad in that sense.

Dan, do you remember the Happy G-Day box? That is one thing that has been hiding out up in the attic. Also, a candle that Amy Hamar gave me in some Christmas exchange years ago. Notes from friends, a pair of shoes from junior high, lots of pieces of paper with people's phone numbers, and a bunch more. It does feel good to be sorting through all this and throwing out and figuring out what it is I do still want to haul around.

a letter to the newspapers

The following is a letter that I'm sending to some newspaper here in Fort Collins. As mentioned in the letter, this last weekend was the 40th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine. I had really wanted to go to D.C. for a large rally and march demanding an end to the occupation but it did not work out. And then, too late, I wished I had helped to do something locally, in coordination with efforts nationally and internationally. So, I wrote a letter. That will sure change everything.


This last weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The situation worsens, as Israel continues to build illegal settlements in the West Bank, construct a wall on land inside Palestinian territory, confiscate Palestinian agricultural land, and maintain a brutal military occupation.

In the West Bank, hundreds of internal checkpoints prevent freedom of movement and subject Palestinians to daily humiliation. Israeli settlements, funded by the Israeli government using U.S. foreign aid, surround every city in the West Bank. Israeli-only roads crisscross the West Bank. Sniper towers wage psychological war on Palestinians. I witnessed this in the streets of Askar refugee camp outside the city of Nablus. A green beam of light was projected from an Israeli military installation on a nearby hilltop into the camp after dark. This targeting laser was trained on individuals; the message very clearly being “We can see you and shoot and kill you any moment we wish.”

So the occupation continues, entering its 41st year. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and others are only too happy to continue this conflict, as it means profit. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world and most of the money is used to purchase weapons from U.S. corporations. These corporations then contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns, ensuring their profit interests will be looked after. As long as this continues, we will see many more of these anniversaries.

a trip, meeting people, and a motorcycle

I’ve been wanting to write something for this blog for several days. I’m up in the morning and before long the sun has set and I’m climbing into bed.

I want to catch up a little. After the last dumpstering experience chronicled, I went out again and found a great amount of food. It was up at the university apartments—whole garbage bags full of food. People had seriously just dumped the entire contents of pantries and fridges into garbage bags. It was like looking through the aisles of a grocery store. I think I ended up making four trips, each time filling up a big backpack, a crate on my bike and two grocery bags hanging off the handle bars. We kept a lot of the food and also took a bunch to Food Not Bombs.

Then I headed for Missouri to meet up with my brother. I packed up some of the aforementioned food, a sleeping bag, and some comics for my niece and got dropped off at the closest interstate exit in town. From there I hitchhiked to Columbia Missouri. It was a very good trip.

The first night I camped outside of some small town in eastern Colorado, under some cottonwoods by a creek. On the walk to the creek I found a can of beer on an overpass; it was mixed in with several soda cans that appeared to have fallen from a truck or something onto the side of the road.

The next night I ended up spending the night with a guy named Dave in Kansas City. He picked me up west of Lawrence on his Harley. I’ve never even been on a motorcycle like that and the ride was great! We stopped for a beer in Lawrence and then went on to Kansas City. I was sitting on the back seat that was up higher than the main seat and it put my face above the windshield--much of the ride I was afraid my glasses were going to blow off.

Dave was an exceptionally kind person and I really had a good time meeting him. I ended up getting into Columbia the next day and got a ride to the laundromat that my brother used to work at. I had a couple of hours until he got into town (he was coming from Chicago).

The whole trip was great—I met many really nice people. It would be really long to describe all the encounters but I do want to mention a couple of things. Mostly, some stereotypes were challenged and broken and that’s refreshing. For example, this old school rancher picked me up in his big pickup hauling a livestock trailer. He was a neat guy. He told me all about his farm and his children and how he rode horses all over Kansas and how his family still used horses instead of four-wheelers. He told how, about 14 years ago, he found a man on his family’s land who had fallen from a train as it passed by. This man was from Honduras, bordered the train in Mexico, and was severely dehydrated, almost dead. He picked him up and the family nursed him back to health and ‘adopted’ him into their family. After a while, the young man wanted to go back home, to visit his wife. The ranching family was worried about his safety since he didn’t have papers but he was determined to go. He made it home but was caught on his way back. According to this rancher, who talked kinda out of the corner of his mouth and very quietly and deliberately, his stepbrother, as he called him, was sent to a prison camp (this was the word the rancher used) where he stayed for 5 months. He was then sent back to Honduras. He tried coming again and was caught again. He was sent to prison. Eventually, the ranching family learned of his fate and were able to get him out of there and get him some papers. He moved back in with the family and lived there for years as one of the family. He now lives in Missouri and comes back to Kansas for holidays and other visits.

The rancher and I just rolled on down the highway with both of the windows wide open and a blue heeler pup that liked to jump in your lap.

The rancher gave me his name and told me where he lived and that if I was ever coming through there and needed anything to let him know. He was a kind person indeed. One thing I remember that he said is: "It's a heck of a lot easier to be friends than enemies."

I wanted to continue on but I see where this is headed—paragraph after long paragraph! So, I think I am going to head to bed for now. I want to write more about the last couple of weeks....maybe tomorrow.

a poem i just read tonight

This Morning

after Wang Wei

Winter ending in the field, snowcrust thrust
into gray grass. Two crows flopped
to the bare ash, black, and raised their heads
and shouted, and the hillside resounded. Just
last night Wang Wei said, “No looking back.”

Hayden Carruth