Blogblast4Peace: November 4, 2011

For the past few months I've (sort of) joined the count-down to the blogblast for peace.  Even when I didn't write or post, I read and thought about peace.

• I've thought about the Peace of God that passes all understanding.
• I've thought about the peace and quiet that comes from hiding in bed in the dark eating bread and cheese.
• I've thought of the peaceful feeling that comes from walking with my darlings in the swampy woods.
• I've thought of peace and justice; peace and praise; peace and quiet.

I've thought about why we need to blog for peace.

I've blogged for peace because of the wars that have taken my family and friends away from their families and friends.  Because of the wars that cause children to grow up believing a bomb shelter is just another room in the house.  Because of the wars that poison our world and our lives, that take food from the hungry and warmth from our hearts.

I've blogged for peace because of the war on drugs; because of the war on poverty that has become a war on the poor; because of the war on our freedoms that disguises itself as a war for safety & security.

I've heard that there has always been war and injustice and there always will be.  And although that made me sad, it helped me realize something important.

We blog for peace as if war is a crisis.  Something different that is happening right now (not yesterday... not tomorrow) and must be addressed immediately but only for today ... something to which we must react.

But war and violence in all of its manifestations are not crises.  They are chronic.  And as such, Peace must be addressed as a chronic issue.

Yes, we need to blog for peace.  We need to march and wave flags for peace.  We need to stand up for peace.

And most of all, we need to live Peace.  Every day, as much as we can.  Peace to grumpy neighbor, peace to the harried mother, peace to the sad businessmen who've misplaced their souls.

Peace, even to those of you who really irritate me.  Just for today.


And because this is a world wide blogblast4peace, please check out/check in with the founder and center of this movement.

BlogBlast4Peace2011

2011 Blogblast for Peace: Peace Globe

Like a writing spider, I forget. And like a writing spider, I write to remember. 

I blog for peace to remind myself to practice peace.

Reason 86 to blog for peace: Education not War

My son has spent his first week in a conventional middle school.  It is a new experience for him, since he spent 6th grade at Carolina School for Inquiry, a K thru 6th grade child-centered, multi-age, inquiry based public school & last year at a virtual school.  Now he is caring a 20 lb book bag, changing classes, eating school lunch, spending time with people he didn't know before Monday.  For an introvert and a thirteen year old, this is hard.  But he's a trooper, and I'm cautiously optimistic.

What does this have to do with peace?  Well, middle school isn't really a peaceful place, is it?  The theory is great.  Take kids whose hormones are exploding like popped pimples, whose intellectual development is leapfrogging over the factory-model teaching formula of traditional public schools, and whose social awareness is limited to their hair and their latest crushes; throw them together with a bunch of other kids like them and feed them junk food. 

Oh, no, wait, that's not Best Practices...

Middle school has a great deal of potential.  Kids ARE developing quickly, but they are still kids and haven't lost their enthusiasm and joy (unless it was already beaten out of them in third grade.)  There are lessons in social responsibility, personal responsibility, and personal development.  There are lessons in meta-cognition --- how do I learn best?  what do I want to learn?  how can I organize myself to be the best I can be?

But we don't want to "throw money at the problem" of inadequate education.  We want to continue to do the same thing over and over again, to see if the same things get different results.  (Which is the definition of insanity.)  Then we test and test and test.  As someone once said, that's like "treating" an illness by taking the patient's temperature over and over again without any change in treatment.  (Which is the definition of malpractice.)

But we are willing to throw money and people at war machines.  I mean, look at Afghanistan.  Again, we are doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  (See definitions above.)

So, let's quit throwing money and good  people at war machines & toss some money and good people toward authentic education of EVERYONE.

Just a thought....

Reason 87 to blog4peace: stop the name calling!

Let me start with a disclaimer, or a confession, or whatever this is:  I am a Democrat.  I live in South Carolina and I'm old enough to remember when there was (for all practical purposes) ONLY a Democratic Party in SC.  I am a "yellow dog" Democrat, which means, I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran as a Democrat.  My mother told me that if I voted for a Republican, hair would grow on my palms.  I have since found that that isn't necessarily true, but I've had very few temptations to test the threat.  One time someone said to Mom, "I'd bet you'd vote for Satan if he ran as a Democrat."  She thought a minute and said, "Well, yeah, but not in the primary."  This is where I come from. 

Now, let me say that I am very tired of name calling and bad rhetoric on ALL sides of what passes for political debate.  Governor Perry calls a respected economist and member of the Obama administration a "traitor" and laughs when people get upset.  But what does that mean, dude?  Don't you know that treason is a federal crime punishable by death?  You are accusing a man of a federal crime simply because you disagree with him.

And "Nazi."  Can we quit calling each other Nazis?  Do we have no idea what that word means?  Do we have no idea of the eerily efficient bureaucracy of death associated with that party?  We trivialize horror when we speak of "food Nazis" (who are really offensive, but not eerily efficient bureaucrats of death.)  Someone disagrees with us and we compare them to mass murderers.

The same thing applies to all of the words: communist, fascist, traitor, insane, criminally stupid.  Perfectly fine words that are trivialized while the rhetoric of CIVIL POLITICAL DEBATE is twisted into ever escalating words of hatred and separation.

Pull back people.  I'm not saying don't disagree.  I'm not saying don't articulate your points of disagreement.  I'm saying... I'm PLEADING:  Don't use angry emotion-laden key words as symbols for what pass as ideas.  ARTICULATE.  I know you can.  Please.

And Thank you.

Reason 89: Never again

Reason 90 that I blog for peace: I hope therefor I am

Reason #92 to blog for peace:

"The principle of an eye for an eye will some day make the whole world blind."



Ghandi

99th reason to blog for peace: War is not normal

I'm not sure, but I think I was late getting started, so I'm going to go ahead and give my 99th reason to blog for peace.

This morning while glancing at the Morning Joe between dressing, eating, blogging, and brushing my teeth; I heard Marvin Kalb say that President Obama has no reason to be internally affected by the Vietnam conflict since he was 13 when it ended. Kalb had taken part in a symposium Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama and had a lot more to say, but I want to talk about that one statement.

I was about 14 when the Vietnam conflict "ended." My friends were not drafted and did not serve. I was 'too young' to care, right?

But I did. It was an integral part of my life from my earliest memories until the end of the war. If my friends didn't serve, the boyfriends of my babysitters did. I heard songs against the conflict and songs in favor of it. Everyone thought about it, more than we do now.

When I was in kindergarten, we sang, "God Bless America" and my teacher said, "Let's sing loud enough so that our boys in Vietnam will hear us and know what they are fighting for." I sang really loud, and I think I truly believed they could hear me. And that I was what they were fighting for.

My uncle served in the Navy in Vietnam. I don't remember being afraid for him. I remember that he wrote really great letters to me. He also wrote letters to my aunt, his fiance. I didn't understand why she read my letters but I couldn't read hers. I never said I was a bright kid.

Every night at around supper time, we'd watch the news. There was only one television (which did not appear to have an 'off' button) and there were three or four channels. And on every one (except PBS which showed the June Bug show) there was the nightly news. Walter Concrite (as I called him --- see note about brightness above) or Hunkley-Brinkley (ditto on the note) told us the same thing every night. Over film of soldiers & sailors & airmen fighting & marching & flying, they would announce the death toll. This many Americans died today. This many Vietnamese. Day in and day out.

In 1968, I was eight years old, watching television with my father. There was "Breaking News." Back then, breaking news meant something important had happened and not that, for instance, Michael Jackson is still dead. WC or H-B or whoever announced that the Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia. My dad dropped his teeth (really, he did that).

I looked at him and said, "what's wrong?" 

He said, "the last time anyone invaded Czechoslovakia, we had WWII".

I said, "so what?" 

"SO WHAT?" he said, picking up his teeth and dropping them again.

"There is always a war", I said. "And I'm missing the Monkees."

Over the years there have been years without war or conflicts or whatever, but it still seems strange to me to NOT have a war. I think we care less because we don't know who is fighting so much now. Without a draft, fewer people are directly involved. Fewer people know someone over seas. Fewer people have a personal stake.

And so my 99th reason for blogging for peace is that war should not be the new (or old) normal. Peace should not be an oddity that happens once in a blue moon.