October 31: The website traffic has died down some but still remains strong. Another way too busy day. I began washing the house down in preparation for painting, but it was taking too long, and since many wonderful folks have begun contributing for our walk I decided we could afford to have it power-washed, so the guy is coming to do that tomorrow morning. Then I get to paint. Whoopee. I’ve also been finishing up some interior painting and papering today. I hope to be able to knock off about midnight. Or so. Channel 10 is coming out for another interview tomorrow as well.
I hope to be able to set up a page one day with some of the emails we’ve received from people. I had been working on it before everything broke loose on Sunday, but right now I can’t even give you a good estimate of the number of people who have signed the petition so far because I haven’t been able to keep up with it. It’s all there when I get the time to tabulate it. I do wish you could hear many of the stories that have been shared with me. I received a call this afternoon from Jerry, who is tremendously excited about my walk and wants to be able to help. Jerry, you don’t know how much you’ve helped already. Jerry immigrated to our country forty years ago from a communist held country to escape the oppression and control that dominated his life there. Now, he tells me, America is beginning to feel just like the country he left - and he is way beyond distressed. Are you hearing this, people? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Are you looking around you? I’ve received a few emails from people quite upset about what I’m doing - talking about how we must defeat the Muslim extremists and wipe out terrorism or they will blow us to smithereens. I have news for those people. If they would just open their eyes a little wider they might suddenly realize that we’re about to save the terrorists the effort. What the terrorists could not hope to do even in their wildest dreams is being done to our democracy by our own leadership and right before our eyes! People who have lived under oppression can see it quite clearly - why can’t we? By the time another terrorist makes it here with a bomb (yes, it will happen - and more sooner than later if we don’t stop breeding them) he may look around when he arrives and say, "Oh, never mind. Mission accomplished," - because there won’t be a democracy left to attack. We have a limited window of opportunity to reclaim our country and rebuild the democracy that we’ve been letting inexorably slip away in our blindness of rage and fear. I’m only hoping that enough of us will wake up in time. As for me, I guess you could think of me as that annoying little alarm clock that’s trying to roust you even when you don’t want to be rousted. But I don’t have a snooze button.
October 30: Just a quick note tonight - the volume of response yesterday and today has had both of us absolutely overwhelmed. While it’s a good problem to have, it has come to my attention that it is possible that some emails that were sent to us never arrived. I have tried desperately to respond to each and every personal email as well as every donation. I think I have gotten everyone, but if you didn’t get a response from me, it is possible I didn’t get your email. The problem we’ve had since the 17th with corrupted emails has not gone away, but it has lessened. But to my knowledge that problem only affected the petition signing page and not the Contact Us page. Anyway, if you didn’t hear from me, please try again - I may not have received your email.
Still have to finish the kitchen ceiling papering before giving up for tonight - then start on painting the house tomorrow. After this week, walking is going to be a cinch!
October 29: What an absolutely crazy day! But good crazy rather than bad crazy for a change. I got up early this morning and discovered that the San Diego Union Tribune article had been published - a week earlier than we expected. I discovered this not by reading the paper, but by finding that the website statistics were going bonkers. Suddenly we were getting visitors all over the place! And then the phone calls started. The local CBS affiliate came out to do an interview. Three local radio stations called to do interviews. The local Fox affiliate called to do an interview - and since they were very supportive I actually agreed, although they had to cancel. One of the local Hispanic stations emailed to set up an interview. We got our very first donation through the PayPal feature on the website. Then another one - and another one. We began getting dozens of emails from people expressing their support and Jonna and I have spent much of the day with tears in our eyes. Then the house sold! Jonna was literally dancing for joy. I told her that I don’t expect I will ever again see anyone so downright thrilled to suddenly find themselves homeless.
It’s not quite ten p.m. now and so far today we have had over 400 visitors to the website...and people are still logging on. The power of the press. We thought they did a great job with the article in the paper, although they did manage to turn our daughter Kari into a boy. She wasn’t upset. She’s pretty secure in her sexual identity, having had two children of her own now. The interview with CBS was also handled well - we managed to catch both airings of the interview, and noticed that they restructured it the second time around. Jonna was very pleased to see that they gave me more air time than Duncan Hunter. Maybe it was because I had something to say worth listening to. Maybe it was because I’m so darn good looking. Well, maybe not.
I’ve been amazed that we haven’t had more whackos crawling out of the woodwork. We’ve had a few. The worst one so far signed the petition with a few things I suppose he thought were cute, then, apparently unsatisfied with his handiwork, wrote me an email expressing the sincere desire that I get run over by a Greyhound bus during my walk. As long as he isn’t a Greyhound bus driver I really don’t feel terribly intimidated. But I can count the hate mail on one hand and still have fingers left over. The messages of support have been overwhelming. I’ve tried to answer each and every one of them (except the ones that hope I rot in hell - don’t see much point in responding to those) and think I got everyone. There were even a few that disagree with me but wished me well anyway. I hope those will take some time to read my journal and perhaps find out that I’m not exactly what their first impressions lead them to believe I am.
We sold the house - did I mention that? Full price - cash! That means no more sleepless nights (particularly for Jonna) wondering how we’re going to get through the next several months. That’s an incredible load off our minds. We won’t close for another month, but we’ll make it through until then. We have been amazed time and time again by people today. As we were watching the second newscast on CBS - which included a quick flash of the for sale signs on both the house and the car - the phone rang. Jonna answered it and it was a woman wanting to know whether we had sold the house yet! She was about five minutes too late, as Anne, our realtor, was watching the news with us, having come up to let us know we had sold. This woman could have only gotten the number by watching the newscast, since the house hadn’t even made the listings yet. Then, as soon as she hung up, someone called asking whether we had sold the Jeep yet! He had seen it on the newscast and is coming by Wednesday to look at it. Amazing. Then, a couple of hours ago I discovered that we’re getting people visiting our site from Michael Moore’s website. So I checked and sure enough, there’s the article from the UT on Michael Moore’s website, with a link to WTETW. I am beginning to feel like we’ve touched off a little spark here, and I’m hoping we can do whatever is necessary to fan it into a roaring blaze. I guess that’s a pretty disquieting metaphor, given that it’s the fire season here in California and we’ve already had some tragic fires. But I’m sure you know what I mean.
In the middle of all of this we’ve been trying to paper the kitchen ceiling today. Between checking the website, responding to people, answering the phone, selling the house and generally going bonkers, we did manage to get some of it done and I hope I can finish it tomorrow because I have to start painting the house as well. We are both completely drained, physically and emotionally. With the possible exception of our wedding day (maybe I’ll tell that story sometime) never in our lives have we experienced a single day where so much has happened so quickly.
To all of those who have written us or sent contributions - I wish I could think of some way to express our profound gratitude. At times words fail us - this is one of those times. Although we started the website nearly two months ago and have been busy planning and working on this ever since, it feels like it really all begins today. If I have missed responding to you, please forgive me and know that I have read - and will cherish - every single word of support you’ve sent our way. Time for us to get some rest.
October 28: Hooray! We got the ol’ van back today! She is all fixed and ready to go. Well, we haven’t had the chance to fix the heater yet - haven’t had to worry about that much out here in southern California - but we’re going to be needing it soon, so I guess we’ll get that done some time soon. Right now I’m working on some interior painting and papering that I hope to have done tomorrow so I can start painting the house exterior by Monday. Have to have it done before I start the walk - and that’s only a week away now. I’m going to be very, very busy. At the same time the website traffic is continuing to increase and I’m getting lots of emails from people wishing me well. You can’t imagine how much good those do. As we get down to the wire and haven’t yet sold the house or Jeep the financial end of all of this remains a real worry, and has caused Jonna in particular to lose way too much sleep. We know it will all come together at some point, but we have no idea yet when that point will arrive. Then we get some fantastic letters of support and we both remember that we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons and it really helps us be able to push on.
So far I’ve been able to acknowledge every email we’ve received. I worry that, especially through the first few weeks of the walk, I’ll wind up falling a bit behind on that. We’ll be working out our communications sort of on the fly and Jonna, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, is a world-class technophobe. To her, a mechanical pencil is too much of a machine and therefore cannot be trusted. Same goes for a cigarette lighter. So don’t even think about a computer. And the trouble is, among all the other things we have yet to do within the coming week, I’m going to have to teach her how to check emails, update the website and so forth. It will not be an easy task. Pray for me. And send some happy thoughts her way so that maybe she will refrain from chucking the computer out the window when it doesn’t do what she wants it to do. By the way, none of this is either chauvinistic or demeaning - Jonna will readily agree with every word of it. She hates computers. End of discussion. Well, she has made a couple of minor concessions - she likes Ebay and solitaire, but outside of that, the computer is a vicious little beast lurking back in the corner just waiting for the opportunity to frustrate and aggravate her.
When you read this, I will have removed our clergy robes, albs and stoles from the Walking Sale page. I had thought quite a while back about listing them on Ebay, but at that time I could not find a section on Ebay where they would fit. Jonna encouraged me to try again and, sure enough, Ebay now has a category for such items, so we listed them there a few days ago and have had bids now on all but two of the items we listed. That’s great news and will provide a few more bucks to keep us going. But since they’ll be selling on Ebay I’ve removed them from the Walking Sale.
Among the many things I need to remember to do within the next week are things like: changing our email address from our home one to the gmail address, since we’ll be losing the home address when we sell the house; disconnecting our phone landline and notifying everyone who needs to know about that; cancelling the few subscriptions we have and so forth. All the normal things people do when they move - except that we’re not moving to any particular place for now and that tends to complicate things a bit. We got a PO box in Lakeside and will have to get our daughter, Kari, to check that for us on a regular basis. Most of our bills are set up for electronic payment, so as long as I can find a place to get online there shouldn’t be too much problem there. I’m boring you, I think.
One more week - and I’m as ready as I think I’m going to be. I’m ready to walk. I’m ready to meet many of you and talk with you. I’m ready to concentrate on the purpose of this rather than all the mechanics of preparation that have consumed us so much for the past couple of months. I’m ready to let our leadership know that I am more than displeased with what they have done and what they are doing and I do not intend to sit still for anymore of it - and that there are millions of us who have had more than enough of being deceived, manipulated, demeaned and ignored. I’m ready to do what I can to shake us out of our long national nightmare of anger and fear and help people start to think once again about what kind fo future we are creating for our children and grandchildren. I’m ready to stand up in the face of the illusion of security that has been used to strip away our rights, our freedoms and the very essence of what it means to be an American and let those who would use fear to control us know that my country and my grandchildren’s future mean far more to me than any pretense of safety they can conjure up. I’m ready to let the snake oil salespeople know that it’s time for them to pack up and slouch off the stage - and try to find some people who remember what the job description of a public servant is supposed to be. I’m ready.
October 26: We’re getting closer and closer to the walk date - and busier and busier. I’ve become convinced the Jeep is going through pre-separation anxiety. Last week the starter motor quit - the first problem we’ve ever had with it - and we had to replace it. The day before yesterday it began losing bladder control. Occasionally it would wet itself all over our driveway. Poor thing. From the intermittent nature of the leak, I suspected it was the water pump. I was right. We replaced that today. We may be the only people in the world to own a neurotic Jeep. I’ve been trying to reassure it that it’s new owner will treat it just as nicely as we have. Now all it needs is a new owner. And maybe some counseling.
The San Diego NBC affiliate station was out to interview me this morning. I thought the interview went well again. They told me that they would be airing it at 4, 5 and 6 this afternoon, but there was a terrible fire today in Riverside in which four firefighters lost their lives. I’m sure coverage of that disaster quite understandably displaced the story on my walk. Perhaps it will air tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping the families of those firefighters in our thoughts and prayers.
I decided today would be my last day on the job - I have LOTS to do in the next week, including painting the entire house! I’ve enjoyed the work, perhaps more than any other job I’ve ever had. And who knows what awaits us on the other end of my walk? Tomorrow I plan on going down to retrieve the van, assuming it’s ready. I’ll know tomorrow morning.
The number of visitors to the website spiked yesterday for some reason, and Jonna and I have been trying to figure out why. Neither of us have been able to come up with a reason yet, but it sure is nice to see the numbers going up. Still having the same problem with the weird petition signing results. I submitted a request for assistance to our host, but haven’t received a reply yet. Please be aware that if you have signed the petition since October 17th I most likely did not get your email. If this applies to you, please contact me directly at radicalgeezer@gmail.com (an email address I have been told is wonderfully apropos) and I’ll be sure to include you on the list. Since the petition signing is all messed up I’m afraid I don’t have an accurate count of signers at this time. I hope we can straighten out the problem soon. It’s very late so I’ll put the journal to bed for tonight and check in again soon.
October 23: We’ve been recuperating from the swap meet today. I would say it was a disappointment, but we managed to cover all our expenses - including the day we had to miss because of the van’s transmission giving up the ghost on us and the rental of the van this weekend - and still come out about two hundred bucks ahead. Still, it was the slowest Sunday I’ve ever seen at the swap meet. Various theories were floating around the grounds - a street fair in Encinitas, the Chargers game, etc. but whatever the reason, there were probably less than half the people there you would normally see on a Sunday. We arrived with the van loaded to the gills and Kari’s Cherokee not only loaded, but with a bed strapped to the roof. We left with the van loaded, so I guess we sold a Cherokee’s worth of stuff. And I think we must have set some sort of record: We left the swap meet at exactly 4 p.m., drove back to our house in Lakeside, unloaded the van into the driveway, gassed it up and got it to the U-Haul place in El Cajon at precisely 5 p.m. - the minute they close, thus saving us having to pay rent on it for another day. We were beyond exhausted.
I finally managed to get the van down to Tijuana this morning. My friend at work had the day off and so did I, so we met in San Ysidro and he escorted me across the border to the transmission shop. I was relieved to see it was an actual transmission shop and not just a general auto repair place. It gave me more confidence that they’ll know what they’re doing. The van should be ready to go by Thursday - and at one-fifth what it would have cost on this side of the border.
Laura, the photographer for the Union Tribune, tracked us down at the swap meet and took about a gazillion pictures, on top of the two gazillion she took at the house the other day - and I expect that, at most, one of them will wind up in the paper. I’m sure digital photography has changed her job drastically. If she had been working in film, I doubt that she would have taken one tenth as many pictures as she did. The reporter, Mike, called again today to verify a few bits of information. He said that the article will probably appear in the paper either Friday, the day before I start my walk, or the day of the walk.
People keep asking about preparations - whether I’ve equipped myself yet and so forth. Other than what’s evident on the website in terms of planning the route and such, we’ve made a couple of trips to local thrift stores and have outfitted me with about a half dozen pairs of jeans and long-sleeved white shirts - which will be my "uniform" for the walk - and that’s about it. In terms of any other equipment, we won’t be able to do much until we sell either the Jeep or the house. Actually, we’re not planning on too much in the way of equipment anyway: a very light one-man tent, a backpack, a sleeping bag. I plan to travel as light as possible and won’t need even those things for the first few days anyway, as Jonna will be picking me up at the end of my walk for as long as the first week. After that, I’ll be out of practical range and will be needing the tent and such unless I find people along the way who are willing to put me up for the night. Still looking for people between Julian and Yuma who might be willing to put up with me for a night.
When Mike called today he asked me what my plans were when we reached Washington D.C. Was I going to the White House or what? I told him that we have no firm plans for that end yet, that what will happen in Washington will develop as my walk progresses. But I did say that I hoped by the time arrive we would find a contingent of Congress members willing to receive my petition. As for the Opportunist Occupying the Oval Office, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to meet him - and I doubt he’d be much interested in crossing my path. I try at all times to be civil and respectful to everyone I meet, but I doubt I could maintain a pretense in front of the OOOO, and would probably wind up telling him exactly what I thought of him which, while honest, would probably not be very wise. Jonna would most likely try to whap him upside the head, and outside of providing an immense degree of satisfaction for her, that would undoubtedly be counter-productive.
We’ve been talking a bit about what we’ll do on the other side of the walk. It will depend somewhat on where the country is at by that time, of course, but if our leadership hasn’t yet come to its senses, we’ll certainly continue to pursue our objectives. We’re also watching Barak Obama and John Edwards closely and wondering if either of them would be interested in a couple of dedicated workers. I’d mention Hilary Clinton as well but while we both think she’d make a fine president, I (sadly) believe there’s too much raw, unthinking, emotional baggage among the electorate for her to be successful. Too many people hate her just for the sake of hating her, which is a terrible commentary on our citizenry - but an inescapable reality nonetheless.
Now we have to get rid of much of the stuff we didn’t sell at the swap meets. We’ve taken a load down to the Amvets thrift shop today. The baby clothes will go to a local church that takes them to an orphanage down in Mexico. Some things are just going to be tossed. I don’t want Jonna having to deal with any more stuff than she has to once the house sells - especially since it’s becoming pretty obvious that I’ll be a good distance down the road by the time that happens and won’t be able to help her.
October 20: I’ve always thought that any day you experience something new is a good day. By that measure, today was a very good day. After continuing the process of cleaning up and fixing up around the house today, I had a limousine run this evening taking a couple to a company party way out in the mountains northeast of San Diego. Apparently it’s a yearly event held at a "ranch" that is only a ranch in the San Diego sense of the word - that is to say, the home was actually a series of buildings, each one basically containing a room of the home, built on the side of a desert mountain. Quite the place. My clients invited me to join the dinner - probably because the nearest place to get anything at all to eat was about fifteen miles away. As the home is built on multiple levels of the mountainside, so food service was set up accordingly. The hostess told us we would find taco and burrito fixings on the main level, seafood on the upper level and "exotic meats" on the lower level.
I opted for the seafood first, since I’ve never met an ocean dweller I didn’t like, and politely downed a few huge shrimp, followed by some wonderful miniature cream puffs that I thought only Jonna knew how to make. I bypassed the taco/burrito section. You can’t walk fifty feet anywhere near San Diego without falling over a taco shop. But I had to check out the exotic meats department, wondering just how exotic it was. You can never tell in San Diego. With the amount of money floating around this county it really wouldn’t surprise me much to find some dinner party serving panda, condor and white rhinoceros kabobs.
It wasn’t quite that exotic, but it was exotic. The meats were buffalo, elk and rattlesnake. They also had jerkies - emu, crocodile and kangaroo. I tried the buffalo first. Not bad. Just a tad chewy but good flavor. I had no interest in the elk - I’ve had venison and such and never cared for it, and I figured elk had to be pretty much the same. But I debated the rattlesnake for just a minute - wasn’t too sure I wanted to go there. Finally I figured, why not? Actually, I told the server, "Well, I figure it’s better to bite a rattlesnake than to have one bite you." I have to say I was disappointed. The meat was so thoroughly marinated in a plum and Peruvian pepper sauce that all you could really taste was the marinade. Not that it was bad, but that’s all there was to it.
Next was the emu, crocodile and kangaroo jerky. I tried the emu first and it was quite tasty. Next came the crocodile. Very strange taste and texture. Not bad, just strange. I’d like to say it was kind of like such and such, but I can’t think of anything to compare it to. Sorry. Finally, the kangaroo. Another disappointment. Not much of any flavor at all - just a chewy, nondescript jerky.
There aren’t too many days when you get to try five different foods you’ve never eaten before, so it was a really neat experience. At one point, one of the servers mentioned that the rattlesnake meat cost them fifty bucks a pound. I quickly realized that I’m in the wrong business. A couple of quick trips to the desert and I could relax for a while.
We rented a van today to get our stuff to the swap meet, since ours won’t be fixed for a while yet - still haven’t managed to get it down to Tijuana. The whole van rental experience was a telephone nightmare. When I first came to San Diego I worked for a company that designed call center software. I’m one of those people who absolutely hate to talk to automated phone systems, so it was a real challenge for me to design automated phone systems that wouldn’t drive callers crazy. I was quite proud of some of the systems I designed - one in particular was the system for the Clark county, Nevada jury system. If you’re called to jury duty in Clark County and call about your jury service, on your first call the system will ask you a series of questions pertaining to your qualifications to serve. This information is recorded in the system’s database. After your first call, all you have to do is enter your juror ID number. The system hits the database, retrieves your information, and you never are asked the same question twice. You are also never given options that don’t apply to you or asked for information that is not relevant to your situation.
Anyway, I digress. First of all, we have over half a dozen San Diego area phone books lurking around the house which range in terms of usefulness from semi-useful to emergency toilet paper supply. Second, in a rather extensive sampling of numbers for truck rental companies, approximately one quarter of them are no longer in service, another quarter are answered by a fax machine, a third quarter are answered by a regular answering machine and the final quarter take you to a national call center for the company you called. One exception - I did have one call answered by a real, live local human being. Unfortunately, he spoke only Spanish.
I wound up with the U-Haul national call center, which wanted me to answer a few questions to make the process of renting the appropriate vehicle "easier", the machine told me. Right. The first question was, "How many bedrooms do you want to move?" I don’t want to move any bedrooms. In fact, I know exactly what I want, so just get me to someone I can talk to.
A few little secrets for those of you who hate stupid systems as much as I do. If you don’t reply at all, or reply "Help" or "Operator" or "Agent" a few times (usually the default is three) the machine gives up and connects you to a human being. This doesn’t always work. Sprint, for instance, will just disconnect you if you refuse to play their game. I repeated "Help" three times (feeling kind of like Dorothy chanting, "There’s no place like home" - but I refused to click my heels) and the machine relented and connected me to Madeleine who, I eventually found out, was in Pennsylvania. Madeleine gave me a number which does not appear in the local phone books (I checked) so I called it. I got an answering machine. Back to the national call center. Helphelphelp. I got Madeleine again. She didn’t have another number. I tried a few other companies. I got similar results. I gave up. This was Thursday night.
So this morning I searched my driving memory for nearby rental places I have passed in my wanderings and drove to one that happened to be a U-Haul location. It took me all of five minutes to reserve a van for tomorrow. The moral of this story, I suppose, is that if you encounter an obtuse automated phone call center, your best bet is to abandon the phone altogether and, if possible, accomplish what you want to accomplish in person. If I had the time, I’d write to U-Haul and describe my experience in even greater detail than what I’ve provided here. I did that with Sprint, who ignored my letter as blithely as they did my calls. I no longer deal with Sprint. Technology can be wonderful - I truly believe that. It can also be an excuse to allow your customer service to deteriorate to the point of non-existence. I find more and more companies opting for the second path. And I haven’t even mentioned the companies whose phone agents are calling us quite regularly from India and can neither pronounce our names nor much of anything else that is understandable as English. This is not prejudice - it is cold, consistent experience. I’m not too thrilled about the outsourcing of jobs, but I am totally dumbfounded by those companies who outsource the jobs to agents who are unable to intelligibly speak the requisite language. I also haven’t mentioned the recorded sales pitches for mortgages, siding, windows, etc. that do not even permit you to tell anyone to take you off their calling list. Are these legal?
Enough rant. We got a van rented. The local NBC affiliate will apparently be there the day I begin my walk. I wonder who all is going to be there? We also got word today of a donation arriving through San Diego Veterans for Peace. I don’t know who sent it yet, but Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! The petition signing page on the website is still delivering the weird results I mentioned yesterday. It has me worried. If anyone can provide any wisdom on the subject I would truly appreciate it.
October 19: An item of business today. Every email I’ve received from (I assume) petition signers since October 17 - except one - has been in a similar format and very strange. The website is set up so that when someone signs the petition it generates an email that contains the person’s name and email address. For instance, I’ll get an email that says "John Smith jsmith@aol.com."
However, since the 17th, all but one of them begin with three dots, then a first name, then a four digit number followed by yahoo.com. For instance, it will be ...Chris1476@yahoo.com.
If anyone knows what is causing this I’d really appreciate hearing from you. Has someone hacked the website? Is someone just playing a game? I’d really like to know. I tried using the email address without the preceding dots ( such as Chris1476@yahoo.com) to try to contact the people these are supposedly from, but my attempts come back as undeliverable. My website experience is extremely limited so I hope someone can tell me what’s going on. I've tried test emails which come through just fine, but don't know what else to do. IF YOU HAVE SIGNED THE PETITION IN THE LAST FOUR DAYS, PLEASE EMAIL ME DIRECTLY AT radicalgeezer@gmail.com Maybe we can get this figured out. Thank you for your help.
October 18: There have been a number of times in our lives when we’ve said to each other that if we ever wrote a book about the bizarre events we muddle through, no one would ever believe it. This seems to be one of those times. First the transmission went out in the van. Mind you, the last time we experienced any sort of failure on the van was about three years ago when the fuel pump decided it didn’t want to pump fuel anymore as we were merrily cruising out Interstate 8 taking Jonna’s mother on a little desert fossil hunt. Then the transmission curls up and dies the night before our swap meet. We’ve never had any sort of trouble with the Jeep. Never. Until this morning. The starter motor suddenly elected to join the van’s transmission in that great junkyard in the sky. Just like that. No warning, no clue. So instead of spending the day cleaning up the yard and painting and so forth, I spent it getting the lousy starter motor replaced so we had at least on operable vehicle. I kept telling Jonna she messed up our feng shui when she cleaned up the house. She whapped me. She does that often. She claims I need it. I unerringly disagree.
Well, at least there’s some potential good news on the van. It appears it’s going to cost us a whole bunch less to get it roadworthy down in Tijuana - when we can get it there. I’ve been trying for the past few days to come up with a time when I can go down with my friend from work - to no avail. I might be able to get it down there tomorrow, but the shop that’s going to fix it won’t be able to work on it until Monday, and we already reserved spaces for this coming Sunday at the swap meet again, which means I’ve got to find an alternative way to get the stuff to the swap meet on Sunday morning. Sheesh.
On the national affairs front, it suddenly occurred to me today that we should have taken the advice of the OOOO’s (Opportunist Occupying the Oval Office) father. I recall when he instructed us all to "read my lips" on the subject of taxes. I realized that we might want to go back and carefully examine any existing videos of the OOOO being sworn into office. As I recall, he is supposed to say something about pledging to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Can someone go back and check? I think he may have become confused, and pledged to subvert, preempt and amend the Constitution of the United States of America. If that’s what he actually pledged, he’s doing a heckuva job, Brownie.
Finally, a quote from Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, on the passing of the Detainee Act by Congress and the signing of that Act by the president - the Act that permits the president to declare anyone an enemy combatant without proof, rights of habeas corpus, right to trial or limit to imprisonment (from "Countdown", October 17):
"Well, this is going to go down in history as one of our greatest self-inflicted wounds. And I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won’t be kind to President Bush.
But frankly, I don’t think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law? There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps, there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate."
October 17: Monday I went down to the shop where we usually have our automotive needs seen to - and came away in sticker shock. I expected transmission work to be pricey, but not that pricey! So we began looking at alternatives. There’s a small ray of hope. One of the men I work with is an ex Tijuana police officer. He knows lots of people, and is confident we can get the ol’ van back on the road for less than half what I’d pay here. So as soon as we can arrange simultaneous free hours, which I hope will be tomorrow, I’m going to drive the van down to Tijuana (still runs in forward gears - I just need to be careful not to get myself in a position where I have to back up) and follow him to a shop...and cross my fingers. If we can just get it to where it will make it across the country for Jonna that will be great. We’re also hoping we can get it back on the road in time to do the swap meet this Sunday that we had intended to do last Sunday.
If there is one single thing I regret about all of this it’s the workload it’s put on Jonna. While I’m still putting in as many hours as I can driving, she’s working like a fiend back here getting everything ready. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Since we made the decision to sell the house she’s been whipping it in shape to show - no mean feat. At the same time she’s riding herd on me, making sure that I’ve always got something to do. Well, actually threatening the continuation of my mortal existence if I slack off at all.
By the way, I know what some of you are probably thinking. "They live in San Diego county and they’re selling their house. They’ll make enough money to hire someone to carry him across the country piggyback if they want." We wish. Actually, that would be an extremely uncomfortable way to travel three thousand miles. We have a double wide mobile home in a senior park. If we’re lucky, we’ll make enough to meet our needs for the duration of the trip, which will leave us pretty much flat when it’s over...flatter than flat if we have to replace the van. That’s why we’re asking for your donations. We’ll do this anyway, but help would sure be nice.
Things began looking a bit better today. Before we can sell the house the park management has to determine whether we need to make improvements so that it meets "park standards". We were pleased to learn that most improvements they want us to make we were already in the process of doing, and that the others are within reason.
The photographer for the San Diego Union Tribune - Laura - came out on Sunday amidst our van woes to take some pictures before I had to go to work. Jonna told me later that after I left, she stayed another couple of hours talking with Jonna - mostly about kids and school and so forth. That happens to us a lot; we meet nice people who feel comfortable talking to us about whatever is on their minds. I hope that will happen a lot on my walk. I have to tie this up for tonight - there’s plenty to do tomorrow, and I expect that I’ll get about half of it done if I’m lucky. Time is growing short.
October 14: It could have happened at a worse time. We keep telling ourselves that. It helps to keep us from throwing things. We stuffed the van to the ceiling this morning and traded the Wrangler for Kari & Joey’s Cherokee and stuffed that full as well so we’d be ready to head down to the swap meet in San Diego early-early tomorrow morning and continue the process of converting much of our stuff to cash. I drove the Cherokee to work for a couple of evening runs while Jonna picked up our granddaughter to take her out looking for fabric Jonna’s going to use to make some things for her bedroom.
Around nine o’clock my cell phone rings. It’s Jonna, who knows not to call when I’m on a run unless it’s important. It’s important. They got the fabric, returned to Kari’s place, and when she went to leave the van would not go into reverse. Forward - fine. No reverse. I dropped off my clients downtown and found another chauffeur (Thanks, Greg!) Who would pick them up later so I could leave to see if I could do anything about the van. So at one in the morning I’m in the kids’ driveway pouring transmission fluid down the van’s gullet, hoping that’s all it will take to get it to behave again. No such luck.
So there we are in the very wee hours of Sunday morning, due at the swap meet at five a.m. to set up, all packed and ready - except that the van resolutely refuses to back up. After an hour or so of weighing all the (non-existent) options...who do we know that has a van or pickup? Nobody...where could we rent one at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning? Hah!...let’s see - if I could get it out of the driveway and take it to the swap meet as long as I don’t have to back up - uh, no...we finally realize we’re washed up. We lose the $50 we paid to reserve spaces at the swap meet (no rain checks, no refunds, etc.) and reschedule for two weeks down the road. Oh well.
Like I said, it could have happened at a worse time. It could have happened a month from now, when I’ll be out in the middle of the Anza-Borrego desert huddled in a one man tent and Jonna will be relying on the van as her only means of transportation, since we’ll have sold the Wrangler by then. That would have been much, much worse. But it also could have waited just one more day. That would have been nice. Looks like a chunk of the proceeds from selling the Wrangler will go in to getting the van road worthy again. We had hoped that selling the Jeep would support us through the first month and a half. I guess it will be more like a month.
New Orleans Voices for Peace has us up on their website now and we’re beginning to get a little traffic from there. We’ve only been to New Orleans once - when Jay and his wife Jennifer graduated from Tulane - but we loved it and have wanted to go back ever since. Sat at the Café du Monde and munched on beignets, walked along with a little impromptu Mardi Gras type parade, browsed for a while in a little art shop where we were mistaken for people who actually had money, and camped out in our tent just outside the city. We can only hope that the city will once again become what it was so that one day we will have more than our memories available to us and will be able to return to a place full of life, full of spirit, full of soul.
October 13: I realize there are certain aspects of this for which I am not fully prepared. I ran up against one of them this evening. Since word is now out at work, I knew it wouldn’t be long until I encountered some friction. When I arrived at work this evening, two of my coworkers were sitting at the table in our break area. One of them heard that I would be leaving my job soon and asked why. Before I had a chance to say anything, the other person pointed at me and said - in a clearly mocking tone - "Because he thinks we’re not at war."
Now, had he simply stated, as a matter of clarification, "Because he thinks we’re not at war," I would have let it pass and continued the conversation he had interrupted. Likewise, had he used the mocking tone and said something like, "Because he says we’re not at war," I would probably have done the same. But the combination of the mockery with the presumption to tell someone else what I think was more than I was prepared to let slide. So I said to him, "No, that’s not true. I understand that we’re not at war and I want to try to help other people understand that."
But he continued to assert his clairvoyance: "No, you think we’re not at war." I was foolish enough to hope that I could clarify the point for him, so I said, "OK, let me ask you this - are we at war with the nation of Iraq?" Instead of answering the question, he launched into a diatribe about being at war with terrorists and making the country safe and freeing the Iraqi people. I replied, "I didn’t ask you about any of that - I asked you a very straightforward question - are we at war with the nation of Iraq?" To shorten the story a bit, I wound up asking him the question over half a dozen times and each time getting in reply not an answer, but a regurgitation of right wing talking points I’ve heard so many times before. At one point I was a tiny bit surprised when I asked the question and he tried to dismiss it by saying, "That’s a rhetorical question." I replied, "No, it is not rhetorical. It is a very direct question that you should be able to answer with a clear yes or no." I really shouldn’t have been surprised at all, as I learned quite some time ago that many people who have no idea what the word "rhetorical" means use it to try to duck or dismiss a question they’re afraid to answer. At any rate, after trying more times than I should have to begin outlining the rationale behind what I’m doing and getting in return a deluge of desperate justifications that included nearly everything short of waving a flag in my face and pulling a picture of the president out of his wallet, I finally gave up, saying, "We have nothing to talk about." He tried a couple more verbal fusillades, but I simply repeated, "We have nothing to talk about," until he finally subsided.
It really upset me and made me quite angry - and I’m going to have to learn very quickly not to let either of those things happen, because I know I’m going to be encountering quite a bit of this. And I’m going to have to learn to recognize much more quickly when I’m trying to develop a reasonable conversation with someone who is doing the equivalent of the grade school practice of covering their ears and shouting, "I can’t hear you! Nyah Nyah Nyah!"
But it is distressing. And it isn’t the first venue where I’ve encountered it. When I was in the ministry, I often came up against people who would become extremely upset when what I was preaching wasn’t exactly the same thing their grandmothers had taught them or kindly old Reverend Smith had preached. In the church, the attitude was often encapsulated in (yet another) slogan: "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" - a cute-ish way of advertising to the world that one’s mind is firmly closed and securely locked. It is sad to realize that there is a great number of people in this world who - at some point and for some strange reason - make the voluntary and conscious decision to literally stop thinking. I suppose for some it provides a sense of security to pretend that you now know all the answers, that the world has been neatly sorted into either black or white, and that anyone who even politely suggests that there just may be some shades of gray out there must immediately be dismissed or even demonized.
I don’t have all the answers and I will never pretend that I do. I have no perfect solution for the situation we have created in Iraq and around the world. But I do know - and I sincerely believe that the evidence makes it quite clear - that what we are presently doing has no possible outcome other than unending death and destruction and the evaporation of the very essence of what it means to be an American. I am not willing to sit back and allow that to happen without trying to do something about it.
By the way, if you’ve been wondering whether we’re really serious about this and whether we’re truly committed to making this walk, I just want to let you know that we put the house up for sale today.
October 12: Stepping out on faith. Our daughter Becky has likened what we’re doing to the exercise she (and so many others) did at her youth group in her teens. One of them would stand on a chair, close their eyes, stiffen their body, and fall backwards off the chair. The rest of the group would catch the member as they fell from the chair, but it was an act of faith. With eyes closed, there was no personal guarantee that there would be anyone there to catch them. She says that’s pretty much what we’re doing - except that we’re doing it with our entire lives. I suppose she’s right. Not that it’s the first time either of us has stepped out completely on faith - but I expect it is the most drastic thing we’ve ever done.
I should mention that in my 57 years of experience I have many times trusted in others to do the right things - and I have many times been burned, sometimes quite severely. But long ago I made a conscious decision about this. I took a look at who I am and who I would like to become. I decided that I am basically a trusting person. I firmly believe that, in general, people will live up to...or down to...your expectations of them. I also decided that I would like to continue to be a trusting person. So I determined that in those numerous cases in my life where I have trusted someone and been wounded in that trust, the problem was not within me, but rather within the person who could not live up to my expectations of how people ought to rightly relate to each other in the world. Were I to change who I am as a result of the actions of another, that would mean I am permitting someone else to define who I am. Letting others define you, I think, is never a good idea. It is not wise. It is not responsible. The only one who, ultimately, should define who I am is me. Therefore, my decision those many years ago was to continue to trust people to do the right thing regardless of how many times I wind up being disappointed. I know I will often be disappointed in the future, but in sum I believe it is worth the risk. Those times when my trust is betrayed, I hope that those who fail me will learn something from the experience and grow, because I believe the weight on most people of betraying an open trust is a heavy burden - a burden they may one day find the wisdom to avoid. And those times when my trust is rewarded I believe that both the people I trusted and myself experience growth in our humanity, our hope, and our experience of the joys of this world. By the way, my faith and trust is reserved for individuals. It does not - nor has it ever - extended to institutions. There is an old saying that you can calculate the intelligence of a mob by taking the average intelligence of the members of the mob and dividing it by the number of people in the mob. I think something quite similar applies to institutions. And while institutions are organisms, they are not human - and will only possess those qualities of humanity that are intentionally and determinedly instilled in them by the members of the institution.
Many people have a hard time believing we’re doing what we’re doing. "You’re going to walk the whole way?" Yes. "You’re going to quit your job and have no income?" Yes. "You’re selling all your stuff?" As much as we can before we begin. "Where will you stay?" Wherever we are welcomed. "What if you’re not welcomed?" I’ll have a tent. "What will you do when you’ve finished the walk?" We’ll look around and see where life takes us next. "You’re not serious!?" Yes. Very. "What will you do if the changes you seek all come to pass before you make it to Washington?" I will celebrate. "Won’t you feel that your time has been wasted?" Not at all. I will have done what I knew I must do, and I will hope that my determination to do this will have played some small part in the changes that must be made.
There is change in the air. Do you feel it? People are just beginning to really think about what’s going on. Perhaps some of the things I want to accomplish will actually come to pass before I can get to Washington. I can certainly hope so. But I can’t decide this will probably happen and call off my walk. Those who wish to keep us confused and controlled have become too practiced at their craft. And government moves too slowly to accomplish the sort of changes I’m petitioning for rapidly...unless it is pushed. Let’s push. Hard. Relentlessly. Together.
October 11: I think today will wind up being the day it all broke loose. Jonna and I were busy cleaning up the yard this afternoon when I got a call from Juliette Vara, a reporter from Channel 10 news in San Diego. She wanted to do an interview. About a half hour later I was walking with her and her cameraman around Lindo Lake Park - with Finn and Spoof along, of course. Jonna elected to stay away from the camera, feeling that thirty minutes was not sufficient time to go from garden grungy to camera ready.
I knew this facet would be coming, but I was not prepared for it. The interview went well, I thought, and Ms. Vara treated what I had to say respectfully. She asked me quite a bit about preparations and so forth - I think she had a hard time taking in how much we’re doing this on faith that resources will come and people will be supportive. As we walked around the lake, she observed that I was giving up a lot to do this. And that’s when I lost it. I tried to say that I wasn’t giving up anything compared to nearly 6,000 parents who have lost 2,700 sons and daughters - and as many as half a million or more Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives so far, but I choked up and couldn’t quite get the words out for a while. I don’t intend to get emotional about this, but it is not something over which I seem to have much control. I waited nervously tonight to see what they would do with this and was quite relieved just a few minutes ago to see the report they did. It came out well.
And now I expect the floodgates will begin to open. In the report they told about how I was quitting my job to do this - something I haven’t mentioned at work yet. I was planning to let them know in about a week that I would be taking an extended leave of absence, but I’m afraid it is quite possible when word of this gets out at work I will find myself without employment a few weeks before I hoped. Not much I can do about it. We’ll simply have to find other ways to keep things going a little earlier than we had anticipated.
Beyond the interview, it was an evening of real serendipity. We had been given tickets to a spaghetti dinner tonight hosted by Street Light - a local organization committed to issues of homelessness, poverty and social issues. Early this afternoon I received an email from Ana Barral, who reports for the Street Light newspaper and had happened upon our website and wanted to see if I would do an interview with her. She was surprised when I called her right away and told her that we’d be at the dinner and if she was there I’d be happy to talk with her. Turned out she was helping to serve at the dinner, so afterwards we sat down and talked for a while.
Ana wanted to introduce me to some of her friends. I spent some time talking with her friend Sue, who told me that just this morning she had been thinking that someone ought to be walking across the country to protest what is going on - and within a few hours she, too, had discovered my website. It does us so much good when we encounter people like those we met this evening. We don’t know where life will take us once my walk is over, but we now know that, if we do return to San Diego, we have found a community where we can relate to the people around us and be amidst true friends.
I don’t know who emailed Channel 10 to tell them about my walk, but Thank You to whoever did. Like I said, I wasn’t prepared for this phase to kick in, but I also know that I wouldn’t have been any more prepared regardless of when it happened. It will be interesting to see if this interview will begin to open up channels to further opportunities to let people know what we’re doing. I suppose the next few days will tell. For now, both Jonna and I are completely emotionally drained and I’m going to try to get some sleep. Peace.
October 10: Well, turns out the vacuum problem is more than a Sheltie hairball after all. It doesn’t seem to be picking up anything at all. Guess we’ll have to see about borrowing Kari’s vacuum for a while. We have had lousy luck with vacuums over the years. Maybe it will be something simple and easy to fix. Hah.
I took the day off today - first, because I’ve been routinely working 14 or more hours a day and needed a break, and second, because the reporter from the San Diego Union Tribune came to the house today to interview me. He was very nice and I think the interview went well. He said that he’s going to wait until nearer our departure date to do a story (no surprise there) and also plans to do regular updates as my walk progresses.
Since I had the day off, we planned to get a number of things accomplished, few of which actually got done - as is usually the case. I did get a number of pictures taken and added several new things to the Walking Sale, so check it out. As is so often the case in my line of work, when I take a day off I wind up with a second day off (I think they forget about you when you’re not there for a day), so at the moment I have tomorrow off as well and we’ll see how many of the things we planned to do today we can get done tomorrow. We’ll be at Kobey’s swap meet in San Diego again this coming Sunday trying to convert more of our stuff to cash, and we’re trying to assemble what we want to take this time. We rented a double space this time to accommodate more stuff, since this is probably the last time we’ll have the opportunity to do a swap meet before my walk begins. It’s getting close now. I’ve been trying to figure out what clothing I’ll need for the walk. Even in southern California the nights get pretty cool in November, and after the first six or seven days I’ll be on my own out in the middle of the Anza-Borrego desert, so I’ll need some warm stuff, but I want to keep it as light weight as possible. It will probably be another week or so before I seriously get down to equipping, but it’s one more list to make.
October 9: The vacuum was suffering from a two Sheltie-sized hairball, which can be quite impressive. The one down side of having two Shelties is that at certain times of the year you find yourself ankle deep in fur, even though to look at them you’d swear that they hadn’t lost a single hair. I begin to suspect that they import it from unemployed neighborhood dogs in exchange for squeaky toys and a few smuggled morsels of kibble and decorate the place with it in the wee hours of the night when we’re fast asleep.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the global problem of terrorism lately. As I say on my home page, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I have recently come to the conclusion that, in terms of trying to quell the use of terrorist tactics in the world, it is difficult to imagine that this nation could have done anything worse over the past five years than what it has done. By portraying our actions as a war, we have perversely legitimized those who resort to terrorism. Instead of treating terrorists as the criminals and mass murderers they are, we label them enemy combatants and thus lend them a sovereignty and status they do not otherwise possess or deserve. What we should have done from the beginning is to sit down on an international scale and set about to determine effective methods of first addressing the root causes of terrorism, and second, to establish consistent, international, cooperative ways to identify, apprehend and prosecute those who engage in terrorist activities.
But not us. Not the U S of A. For the past five years, you would think that we were the only nation ever to suffer from terrorist attacks. For the past five years, you would think that all terrorists are radical Islamic fundamentalists. For the past five years, you would think that anyone, anywhere in the world who would resort to terrorism dreams day and night of finding some opportunity to cause massive death and destruction somewhere on American soil. We have all but forgotten that many nations have suffered - and continue to suffer - far greater devastation from terrorist attacks than we have.
Few of us have even heard of the Tamil Tigers. Are you ready for a few eye-openers? The Tamil Tigers, a militant Sri Lankan force, are responsible for more suicide terrorist attacks than all other terrorist groups in the world combined. Did you get that? All other groups combined. And guess what? They’re not Muslims. They’re not even a religious group. They are a secular Marxist force that draws membership primarily from Hindu families in the Tamil province of Sri Lanka. Yet when we speak of terrorism, groups such as the Tamil Tigers never even enter our conversation - because they haven’t attacked us. But if we are truly concerned with defeating the idea of terrorism, it should be easy to understand that we have no hope of even making a dent in the problem unless we examine the how and why of terrorism on a global basis.
I’ve been following some interviews with Associate professor Robert Pape from the University of Chicago, who has done extensive research and recently released a book titled, "Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism". This gentleman has been doing the sort of research that our government should be doing - but the current administration has indicated no interest whatsoever in his work (he says, however, that the defense department in acutely interested in his findings). He has studied over 400 instances of suicide terrorism that occurred between 1980 and 2004. A few of his findings, which should be useful to establishing some important clues as to how to proceed in the face of terrorism:
"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland."
"Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us...The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life."
"The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism."
"Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled...There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion."
"Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop - and often on a dime...That doesn’t mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not want to keep going...but the real issue is not...Osama bin Laden...It is whether anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism."
"I think [the chances are of a weapon of mass destruction being used in an American city] depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack."
Food for thought. By the way, I’ve also been wondering lately if Keith Olbermann might wind up becoming the Walter Cronkite of this generation. I can only hope he will continue to be given the opportunity to be heard.
October 8: I’ve been working long hours at the job lately, which hasn’t permitted much time for the journal when combined with the many other preparations under way. I did find time to do a bit of redesigning of the website - the separate "Support" and "Contact" pages didn’t seem logical, so I combined them into one page and modified some essential information - the primary thing being that San Diego Veterans for Peace is now receiving donations for us, which first of all makes contributions tax deductible (since we haven’t had time to set up a non-profit ourselves yet and probably won’t have the time before the walk begins) and will also make it easier to administer this facet while I’m on the road. Thank you, Dave Patterson and all the great folks at SD VFP!
Becky is still working on a general website redesign. Work there has been slowed down by the death of her husband Joey’s grandfather and the necessary focus that has engendered. I think it won’t be too much longer before the redesign is ready, though, and I’m looking forward to it.
I need to start making a few things clear for those who are interested in walking with me. I’m sure I’ll do this again before the 4th, but I want people to be as aware as possible of what to expect. It should be clear by now that we are doing this on less than a shoestring. I’m leaving on the 4th regardless of what may transpire between now and then, but especially at first it’s going to be a day-to-day thing. From the beginning I’ve made it clear that anyone and everyone is welcome to walk with me for a mile, an hour, a day, a week - whatever anyone feels led to do. But I need to make sure that everyone knows that they will be individually responsible for their circumstances. If you want to walk with me for a day, you’ll have to find a way to get yourself from wherever your walk ends to wherever you’re going from there. Longer than a day, you’ll have to accommodate yourself for sleeping arrangements, food, etc. I do hope that as the walk progresses we will be able to form a network of support around us that will assist us with such things as we travel, but there is nothing in place at all yet, so while we may be together for the walk, everyone is on their own beyond that.
And while I’m on that subject, I want to try to begin putting the first section of support together. The first place I am probably going to need accommodations is after Julian - from Ocotillo Wells to Brawley to Glamis to Ogilby to Yuma. If you or people you know live along this route and have a place I could stay for a night sometime during the first half of November I’d really appreciate hearing from you. Also, it would be a good time to let me know - if you live anywhere from Ramona to Yuma - if you have a group you’d like me to meet with during this time period. Talking with others about what I’m doing and why is a very important part of my walk, so if you have an interested group just let me know.
I’m going to have to cut it short for tonight - it’s getting late and the vacuum apparently needs some attention. I’ll be back soon.
October 4: We’re down to one month until I begin my walk and many things are falling into place. There’s much, much, much more to do, but we are making progress. The website continues to pick up traffic, and we’re getting more and more organizations devoting major chunks of their own websites to us. First there was Jackie Wagner at protestispatriotism.com who has been a true believer and a tremendous help. Then U.S. Labor Against the War featured my walk, and San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, and Progressive Democrats of America. I heard from New Orleans Voices for Peace the other day, who also want to give us space on their site. I’ve been told that the folks at Declaration of Peace are thinking of adopting my walk as part of their ongoing efforts, but I haven’t heard anything official yet. I finally got in touch with the San Diego Union Tribune reporter and will be doing my very first interview with him on Tuesday. Jonna represented us last night at the local Veterans for Peace meeting. She laments that we hadn’t met these people several years ago, as they are truly kindred spirits. Veterans for Peace is going to be helping us through the hoops of managing donations and contributions.
Speaking of which...I am fortunate to be blessed with a reasonable amount of talent in many different areas, but salesmanship is not one of them. I would make a lousy salesperson and I know it. But it is time for me to do a sales pitch. Bear with me. As you’ll know if you’ve been reading this journal, Jonna and I have been doing everything we can think of to try to raise the necessary funding for this endeavor. We’ve started with selling off many of our possessions at local swap meets. We established the Walking Sale page on the website and will be adding more items there shortly. Next week our Jeep Wrangler goes up for sale (I shed large tears as I mention that, because I’ve grown quite attached to the Jeep but it will fund us for a month and a half or so). We have a post office box ready to receive donations, a PayPal account where donations can be made instantly, and we’ll be doing yet another swap meet Sunday after next. The net result after one month? Outside of what we’ve managed to sell at the swap meets, we have had exactly two donations and one sale from the Walking Sale. I believe the financial support is going to come, but in all honesty, this is beginning to panic Jonna. If you believe in what we’re trying to do and in the dialogue and action we’re trying to encourage, even a token contribution at this point would do more to hearten and empower us than you could possibly imagine. I think you can understand that it is more than a bit frightening to be stepping away from every source of income for many months based solely on the conviction that what you’re doing is the right thing to do. Like I said, I firmly believe (and so does Jonna, for that matter) that the financial support will come as the walk progresses, but quite frankly it would do wonders for both of us if we could see some evidence of that early on. I know we’re going to be meeting thousands of people during the course of this walk. If we could get even a few hundred to support us to the tune of a penny per mile it will make this doable. But right now, if we can find even a few who are willing to step out early it will allow us to sleep much better as we confront the chaos of trying to organize this whole thing. I hope you’ll consider becoming one of our early backers. End of sales pitch. See, I told you I was a lousy salesman.
I tried to look into communications for the walk today. I’ll be needing to email text and pictures regularly to Becky, who will post them on the Journal page. I also need to be able to make and receive phone calls all the way across the country. Both of our daughters have Cingular service, so I thought I’d check into that, since the calls to them wouldn’t use minutes for any of us. I discovered that the people working in the cell phone stores do not speak - nor do they understand - English. Before I was able to sit down, the girl who accosted me had me into a $300+ phone, an $80 a month service plan and a $45 per month add-on for internet access. I managed to escape with two brochures written in Sanskrit and my wallet intact.
I am far from a technophobe - in fact, I ran my own computer store for ten years. But the cell phone industry seems to be where the computer industry was in the 80s - nobody involved in it is capable of explaining in readily understandable terms exactly what various things actually do or why you might want or need them. If you don’t already know what they are talking about, they are incapable of communicating with you. And everyone seems interested only in selling you the most expensive equipment and plans they possibly can. That’s the way computers were in the 80s - and one of the reasons I started my own store. I remember one friend who was in the waste management business at that time and thought a computer might be useful in his accounting operations. He had been to a number of stores looking at hardware and software before he came to see me, and by that time was completely overwhelmed by both the cost and the complexity he had been encountering. I talked with him for a while about what he actually wanted to do in terms of computerizing his business and discovered that all he really wanted was a way to track payments and print monthly billings. When I told him what he actually needed, it took two months before he finally decided to trust me, because I told him I could get him up and running with everything he wanted to do for roughly one tenth the cost anyone else had tossed at him. And I did. And he used that system for years, until he sold his business. And the next owner of the business also used it for years. Maybe one of these days someone will cut through all the cell phone garbage and start providing people with the communications they actually want.
At any rate, I gave up. Emailed my son, Jay, and asked him if he could sort through some of this, as he’s kept up on it far more than I have. We’ll be talking on Saturday. Maybe we can get something accomplished. I have more goofy stories about the cell phone industry - maybe I’ll tell them one of these days.
October 3: Not going to say much about the Foley thing washing over the news this week - except that I do wish that one of these days people would stop straining so hard to make the nonexistent connection between pedophilia and homosexuality. The news media could do a lot to correct that bias if they’d only try - even half-heartedly.
I thought I’d reach back just a bit this evening and post a little talk I gave a few months ago at Chalice Unitarian Universalist Church in Escondido - which is under the wise and loving leadership of our dear friend Margo McKenna. She invited me to give a talk on opposition to the Iraq war, while our very close friend Tom Brower offered a talk in support of the war. Yes, Tom remains one of my dearest friends and I forgive him for his stance on the war...but just barely. Despite where he is on the war, he plans on joining me for the first day of my walk. I’ve promised not to point him out to the others who plan to show up - I want him to remain in one piece in the hope that some day he may see the light. Anyway, here’s the talk I gave early this summer:
One of my favorite little word pictures was written by Damon Runyon and included in the movie Guys and Dolls. In the movie, Sky Masterson, played by Marlon Brando, tells this story to explain why he is not about to fall for a sucker bet offered by Nathan Detroit, played by Frank Sinatra. He says, "One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider."
I have a convergent personal philosophy developed over years of observation and direct experience of the world, and that is this: Perhaps the two most suspicious words in the English language are "Trust me." With one particular exception, anytime anyone in this world looks you in the eye and says, "Trust me", your safest response is to hold onto your wallet very tightly and view any and all subsequent statements or actions of that person with the utmost suspicion.
The one exception is for children. Kids, when your parents say to you,"Trust me", you really should trust them. They only tell you this because they honestly have your best interests at heart and sincerely believe that if they were to try to explain to you why you should trust them you probably wouldn’t be able to understand.
But once we have grown beyond childhood, people who resort to imploring us to trust them are almost invariably doing so because they are well aware that they have not offered us - and quite probably are not capable of offering us - any rational, logical, demonstrable reason why we should do so. To boil it down to its essence, people generally resort to "Trust me" because they are acutely aware that they have given you no reason to trust them and that unless they can play on your sympathy or gullibility, you will do the wise and reasonable thing - and not trust them.
I’m saying all of this because it is central to the reason why, from the very beginning, I was vocally and forcefully opposed to the war in Iraq. As I listened to all the rhetoric pouring from every member of the administration - from the president and vice president to Condeleeza Rice to Donald Rumsfeld to Colin Powell - what I realized I was actually hearing, over and over and over again, was "Trust me". Naturally - and it really should be natural, you know - this caused me to take literally everything I was being told with a very, very large grain of salt.
Four years later, I feel that my life-acquired instincts have been thoroughly and glaringly vindicated. But we are here to debate the pro and con of the war in Iraq, and even though it is tempting, I cannot and will not resort to the tactic I’ve just exposed. I cannot say to you, "the war in Iraq was an incredibly foolish and terrible idea - trust me."
While I could offer you a tremendous number of reasons to support my position, time restraints preclude that sort of depth. So I will rely primarily on one concept I’m sure most of you are already at least passingly familiar with, and that is a little treatise known as the just war theory.
Now from the very beginning we could get into all sorts of ways of parsing this, because there are many different interpretations of the just war theory. The theory itself has evolved and expanded somewhat over the years - there are even ongoing efforts to expand it further specifically to attempt to shed a different light on the very war under discussion. But I believe that for most people to whom the just war theory is meaningful, there is general agreement on seven statements that form the foundation of the theory. In order for a war to be considered to be a just undertaking, it must meet these seven criteria. So I want to simply state these criteria and examine the war in Iraq in the light of each.
The first tenet in just war theory is that "A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified." While I’m certain that my friend Tom has all sorts of ways to dress this up, the old saying tells us that if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... It seems quite clear that in the run-up to the war in Iraq, we not only did not exhaust all non-violent options, but we quite deliberately circumvented or silenced a number of those options. We can look back and try to assuage this fact by citing the national rage that was blinding us after the murders of September 11th, 2001, but even the blindness of our rage cannot excuse our allowing it to be manipulated and turned toward an unrelated target. We did not exhaust all non-violent options, and thus the war fails the first criterion for a just war.
Secondly, a just war "is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate." If we take seriously the mandate for an authority to be seen as legitimate by people both inside and outside of the society, the only current authority that could hope to lay claim to legitimacy would be the United Nations. But let’s forget about that part for just a second and talk about legitimate authority strictly from our own national perspective. I’m sure most of you know that the constitutional authority to declare war is the province of the legislative branch of our government. In the case of this war, based on the information it was given, our legislative branch elected to cede that authority to the executive branch. And we went to war. But we now know that a great deal of the information on which this decision was based was massaged, manipulated, and in some cases just plain wrong. I think it only reasonable to conclude that any authority granted on the basis of information that is not legitimate cannot claim itself to be legitimate. With that understanding, this war also fails this criterion.
The third tenet holds that "A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause. Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury." For me, this is the most crucial element of the just war theory and the one on which this war fails most emphatically. Indeed, this is the very criterion of the just war theory that a number of people over the past four years have been feverishly attempting to modify, amend, or rewrite - because it leaves absolutely no room for a concept such as a preemptive strike. Moreover, I am convinced that the concept of a preemptive strike is not only completely contrary to any serious definition of a just war theory, but it is absolutely antithetical to the very soul and fabric of this nation. Some of the very earliest flags of this country displayed a snake, with the emblazoned legend, "Don’t Tread On Me." This, I had always presumed, was at the heart of our military might and will. As a country, we hold certain and lethal venom, but we only strike with it in response. If we are wronged, we justly and rightfully redress that wrong. To this day, I remain thoroughly heartsick that we ever even considered - let alone actually employed - such a morally and ethically bankrupt device as a preemptive strike. It is a device that is contrary to nearly every religion or set of moral ethics devised by humankind, and is something I never believed would become a part of the history of the country I have served and loved.
The fourth requirement for a just war is "A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable." I could go on about this one at great length, but will only mention two points. First, it has become fairly evident that there was either no planning whatsoever beyond the initial conquest phase of this war, or the assumptions made by those in positions of power about the direct aftermath were so arrogant, so ignorant of cultural considerations and so superficial as to be essentially meaningless. In other words, our definition of success as we entered into this war was so narrow and cavalier as to preclude its having any real meaning. Secondly, as we have tried so desperately in the years since to fold this adventure into the broader "war on terror", we have effectively made ourselves forever incapable of achieving success. I say this because one of the central points I want to make today - and one that I think it is absolutely crucial that every citizen must soon come to understand - is that we cannot declare a war against a concept, no matter what that concept is, and ever hope to succeed. Declaring a war on terror is perhaps one of the most unfortunate ideas ever to come over this or any nation. We might as well have declared a war on gravity. A war on terror is no more winnable than would be a war on freedom or a war on democracy. The results are foreseeable and inevitable. For every freedom fighter that is killed, two more will rise up to take his or her place. And for every terrorist that is killed, sadly, precisely the same thing will happen. Until we are able to divest ourselves of the notion that such a war can ever have any sort of successful resolution, we will never be able to come together - as a world community - and seriously envision what we can do to wither the various sources that give rise to the will to use terror as a weapon in our global society.
Fifth, "The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought." This is a precept that unfortunately requires a bit of prescience to establish, but it touches on a rising fear that I am compelled to mention. I fear that, at least in the hearts and minds of some of the people involved in this war, the ultimate goal may be exactly the opposite of what the just war theory holds to be true here. Recognizing the reality that business quite literally has no conscience unless those in control of that business are wise enough to invest it with one, I truly fear that there are those who would welcome a literally endless state of war. It is, after all, very good for business. From just after World War II until the mid 80s, our nation’s economy was largely based on war - primarily the Cold War. When we spent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and dissolution, the war basis of our economy disappeared. While a boom in technology began a recovery, many military related industries saw little benefit from that. At the beginning of this century, Halliburton’s stock price languished at about $12 per share. Today it is $80 per share. ExxonMobil began this century at $32 a share with oil at $25 a barrel. Today the stock is $64 a share and oil is, well, as the MasterCard commercial says - priceless. It is entirely possible, as long as we hold to conducting a war on terror, that we have once again instituted a permanent state of war. This point came out a few weeks ago when Tom and Margot and I were discussing such recent revelations as the NSA wiretapping. Tom asked the very reasonable question of whether, during a time of war, it is incumbent upon citizens, for a time, to relinquish certain of their rights and freedoms. I acknowledged that this is certainly the case, but went on to point out that if the war has no end, then any rights and freedoms relinquished will never be regained. It is a point we must all begin to carefully consider.
The sixth tenet of the just war theory is that "The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered." Since this was a preemptive undertaking and did not meet the initial criteria of redressing an injury in the first place, it automatically fails this test.
The last part of the just war theory states, "The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target." While I suspect - and hope - that in the initial phases of this war there was at least an attempt to honor this criterion on the part of our military forces, the war has now degenerated into a conflict where those we fight cannot be considered to be an organized military operation. If it is impossible to tell combatants from non-combatants, it becomes impossible to adhere to this tenet.
The result of holding this war up to an examination to determine if it can be considered a just war is then that it clearly fails under two of the criteria; it cannot even be evaluated under another two because of its very nature, we cannot honestly determine whether it meets another two because the real objectives of this war have never been made clear to us, and whether or not it meets one criterion depends wholly on one’s interpretation of what constitutes a legitimate authority.
Those who would support this war cannot hope to do so under the banner of any reasonable evaluation of a just war theory. Without that, any argument for the war can only have at its foundation the premise that the ends will justify the means. And here we come full circle, because in order to believe that the ends will justify the means, we must believe that the ends we seek are so honorable, so pure, so right that they make whatever we do in their pursuit morally and ethically acceptable. While this is a terrible presumption on its face, it is made even more frightening in light of that fact that, while you and I may devoutly hope and expect that the ultimate goal of this war is to democratize and stabilize the middle east, while you and I may sincerely believe that democracy is the best form of government for us and thus, obviously, the best form of government for all nations and peoples, it has never been made clear to us what the ultimate objectives of those who have orchestrated this war truly are. And every single time we have encountered something that gives us pause, something that makes us wonder whether the intentions of our leadership are as honorable and righteous as we should demand that they be - from the detention of prisoners without charges, counsel, trial or any form of due process to torture of detainees to manipulation of intelligence to wiretapping without oversight and more - the explanation we have received from those in authority has amounted to two simple words: "Trust me." I should also point out that if we have stooped to believing that the end justifies the means to justify this war, then we have adopted precisely the same ethical standards as the enemy we currently fight in Iraq, for the insurgents we are fighting truly and deeply believe that their cause is honorable, pure and right. Not only that, but they also believe their cause is holy. As surely as we see them as terrorists, they see us in exactly the same light.
We seem to learn nothing from history. Through the 1800s and well into the 20th century, in our missionary zeal, we brought a set of moral disciplines to Africa, Central and South America and the South Seas that we truly believed to be God ordained, but that resulted in overpopulation, disease and famine. We taught agricultural methods which we firmly believed were superior and which wound up literally destroying vast sections of entire continents that may never recover. The last time our hubris wreaked havoc on our planet we did it in the name of Christ. This time we’re doing it in the name of democracy.
And that, brothers and sisters, is why I oppose this war. When those in positions of power can offer me nothing more than a plea for my trust based on nothing more than my blind faith as to their honest nature and righteous intentions, I cannot - as a reasonable and responsible citizen - grant them that trust. History, personal experience and common sense all combine to bring me to this conclusion - not to mention the fact that I have a very strong suspicion that you and I are sitting here right now with an ear full of cider.
October 2: We hit a milestone this morning - our 100th online Signer!!! Hooray! - and thanks so much to each one of you for your willingness to jump on board so early in this project. I can’t tell you how much it means to me and how it encourages me each time I check the emails and see new people have signed the petition. One month to the walk and we have over a hundred signers - is it too much for me to hope that by the time I begin walking we’ll have a thousand? Maybe so, but that’s what I’m going to hope for. By the way, a couple of curious observations: (1) So far, women outnumber men in signing the petition by a margin of almost 2 to 1. I wonder why that is? (2) According to the website statistics page - which, as I’ve noted, isn’t really reliable but can still provide at least approximate information - there have been far more people add the website to their "favorites" list than there have been signers. This also strikes me as odd. I know there are some people waiting to sign in person, but still...
It was a VERY busy weekend - Jonna and I set up at Kobey’s Swap Meet in San Diego both Saturday and Sunday, while I also worked during the evening hours. This meant that Saturday night I got about two hours sleep...and Jonna didn’t get much more. It also meant loading the van to the gills both days, unloading and setting up at the swap meet, tearing down and loading again in the afternoon, and coming home, unpacking, sorting and finding additional stuff to take the next day and doing it all over again. I ache, therefore I am.
This is what happens when two unreconstructed packrats decide to divest themselves of a major portion of their possessions - the house explodes!
At Kobey's. Anyone want to buy an armadillo?
We did very well, though. We sold a bunch of stuff both days and the extra cash will help keep us going - and so far the only thing we sold that we’ll probably miss is the armadillo. As the journal progresses and as we add items to our Walking Sale here, you’re going to discover that our worldly goods consist of an eclectic (many would say eccentric) conglomeration of, well, really weird items. One is our collection of animals. No particular media - some pottery, some wood, some stuffed, etc. But we have everything from aardvark to zebra - usually only one of each, but a few extra dogs (of course) sheep and giraffes. Jonna loves giraffes. Sometime we’ll have to tell the story about taking our giraffe home from D.C. on the plane. Anyway, we sold our armadillo - the first of our menagerie to go.
Today will be no less busy, even though I have the rare day off from work. I’ve been playing phone tag with a reporter from the San Diego Union Tribune, which will probably be the first major media coverage the walk will get whenever we manage to get together. Jonna and I made the decision very early on that if what we’re doing manages to get media attention along the way, we’ll gladly sit down and talk with anyone who wants to do a story about the walk...except anyone from Fox news. For obvious reasons, I think. Anyway, back to work. A little over a month to go. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors. Let’s be heard.
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