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What's New 2003
Now, it being near Easter, the above website will tell you about Easter baskets that have hand-grenades and similar delights in them, being carried by K-Mart. Fortunately, the site will tell you how to protest these criminal products. WAR - Not a day passes but that I receive (and forward) e-mail from the anti-war movement. Some of the best writings I have received are on the Then and Now section of this website. The Web is a wonderful weapon, keeps us informed as nothing has in similar past situations. In a day I will receive a dozen communications or more about the war, a similar number for Viagra or breast implants, half-a-dozen messages from girlie-sites, half-a-dozen offers of lower mortgage rates, and various junk mail from airlines, insurance companies, etc. I am incapable of watching the war on television and reading about it in our so-called newspapers. These exercises just paralyse me with rage and grief. So I just don't go to the media. I go to the information I receive on e-mail, which strikes me as far more truthful and informative as much of it is eye-witness and I-witness rather than hearsay and propaganda. As I travel the country and speak to people in person I find far more sense and anti-war sentiment than one would suppose from the newspapers. We, the USA people, are much like the UN. We don't count. He's just not listening to us. He has his agenda and his decisions are made without us. So many anomalies - so many people who do not support the war but who support our troops - so many people who do not realize that half the Iraqi people are under the age of 15 - here I go again. Better stop. ACTION MISC - I went to a show given by RENO, the New York comedienne. EXCELLENT! Catch her if you can. Have also attended the Asheville peace rally on February 15 and subsequent peace actions in Asheville, made less peaceful by strident police action. Have done a lot of voting and letter writing both by snail mail and by e-mail, on Progressive Secretary and Moveon (see below). Joining the big marches in the large cities is wonderful and heartening but as much local action as possible should be recommended. WEBSITES FOR ACTION - try some of these websites, for news and
suggestions for action: BUYING GASOLINE - Every time you fill up the car, you have a choice as to where that gas comes from. We can help the present situation by avoiding companies that import middle eastern oil. Below is helpful information: Major companies that import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00
- 8/31/02). !Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil: Citgo approaching 0 barrels All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and can be easily documented. Refineries located in the U.S. are required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. They report on a monthly basis. Keep this list in your car; share it with friends. E-mail on your group lists.
I moved over here from England determinedly but quite light-heartedly. There was no work for me in England at the time (that's another story) and there was plenty of work for me here. But the amount of travelling is prodigious. Last month I attended a conference on women composers at the western edge of Kentucky. Look at a map of the States. I then drove to Maine, which took me four days. Could have done it in three, but driving alone takes longer. You need to sleep every now and then. I hop out of the car every 90 minutes or so, usually at a petrol station or rest-area, and do 10-15 minutes of step-ups on kerbs, accompanied by variations of arm-waving and body-bending. Truckers who've dropped in for refreshments, relief or bottles of water, make jokes. "Learning to fly?" "Nope," I reply. "I already know how. That's how I got here." I listen to them on the CB in my van. They're a great source of information about the traffic or speed-cops ahead. They are invaluable when there's a five-mile tail-back and you want to detour around it. They don't know that you're listening to them unless you butt in with a question or a comment so you hear raunchy talk, political talk, truck talk, complaints about family, firms and fare. The huge tractor-trailers (as they're called) pull up in the truck-stops side by side, like huge beasts in an open-air battery farm for mechanical behemoths. Their minders rest in the little cubicles that lie behind the driver's seats. These cubicles are well set up - a little bed, a little fridge, a place to hang clothes, a shelf for books, stereo and beer. Sometimes there's a little television set there that runs off a generator somewhere in the body of the beast. In the really hot summer weather they keep their engines going all night so as to have air conditioning in their nests. Noisy as hell if I've decided to park my little motorhome there to sleep. These long-haulers are, in my opinion, the best drivers on the road, and often the most polite. They labour up the Interstate hills and race down them to get momentum, then labour up the next hill and race down the next, mile after ten-mile after hundred-mile. This country is so very large. Petrol (a.k.a. gasoline) is what holds it together, petrol and oil. Without it, you couldn't get to your grocery store, your hospital, your school, your job, your friends, your family. Everything is far away from everything else even when everything else is in the same town as everything. It is a country built on the assumption that people can and will travel. Because of this, Iraqi people are dying right now as I speak. Young American soldiers are doing what a soldier has to do when he (occasionally she) invades someone else's country. Is my job, in which I have to travel, helping to keep all this going ….? |
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What's New 06-07 |
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