Sorry I didn’t brief yesterday.  I had a lot of family things to tend to.  In order to continue giving my brief I’m going to have to talk about vaginas.  I know that some people of Booman joined because they HATE sexual objectification.  I don’t really care for it myself, but I saw two completely different individuals on two different sides of the supposed current culture wars bump right up against each other at Camp Casey on Saturday and it has become part of my personal experience there.  If you find my talking about vaginas distasteful then you may want to not read this particular part of my Crawford brief, or you may want someone to read it to you or send it to you edited.

Once again I have to add a detail that I missed a diary back.  On Friday evening when the local counter protesters arrived before the bus came, I met a most amazing soul.  It happened before there were any heavy confrontations, but the counter protesters were tramping through camp and helping themselves to water.

We had that older gent march through with his flag claiming that some people didn’t know what a flag was for, and then another older fellow came into camp with what appeared to be his wife.  His wife was an extremely beautiful woman clad in a beautiful orange linen flowing pant and sleeveless shirt with a cool little sash (and Stupid Stupid Tracy immediately assumed that she was just another rich well tended Republican wife!).  He appeared in the cleaned up rancher look that my redneck family sports for special occasions, but he was clean shaven.  You can’t judge a book by its cover for damn sure, but I still did.  I took one look at them and crossed my arms and pouted as they stood in camp looking around, but they didn’t look at us, they faced outward as we all tended to stand at Camp Casey when counter protesters are around and they were calm and quiet.

One Camp Casey occupant next to me picked up that there was something different about them and she said that she was going to offer them some water.  I followed cautiously behind her.  She offered them each a bottle and they gladly accepted and then the husband said that he was veteran of the Korean War and he had just been diagnosed with PTSD after years of fighting various compulsions to drive terribly fast and taking risks that shock other people.  He said that he told his wife he needed to see us all out there for himself, so they came.  He cried……he cried and the whole time he attempted to smile and talk to us also.  We all shook his hand and placed an arm across his shoulders and his beautiful wife simply allowed him to get the things that he needed to get while he was there.  She is his second marriage, his first wife never understood or had patience for the man who returned from Korea.  He sobbed telling us a few tales of being pulled over by the police for traffic violations but instead of stopping he attempted to outrun them with his children in the car, and he could never explain to anybody why he did those things.  He has lived most of his life with PTSD and has been undiagnosed until just recently.  Yet like my Uncle, he is well dressed and spoken and tender and loving apparently when he feels safe to be so.

I’m glad that he left before the counter protesters became huge enormous buttheads.  God knows I believe that he needed to leave Camp Casey filled and enriched and unchallenged.  The man has been challenged enough in this lifetime for God’s sake! Maybe seeing us stand up to them could have helped also though too.  I don’t know.
Back to Saturday morning and a ditch full of counter protesters staring at us in camp.  I’m a little crazed about them not crossing my boundaries.  As time began to approach for the rally that was held in the town of Crawford outside the Community Center, camp activists began nudging me to attend.  I didn’t want to leave though and have counter protesters trying to overrun our camp again and it felt good to float crusty stares right back at em!  I know the truth!  My husband doesn’t sleep through a single night without Trazadone and some nights that doesn’t even fully work.  They can kiss my ass and I’m all too glad to tell them that!  These days, if anybody feels that we need to STAY THE COURSE or stay until our “trustworthy leaders” deem that Iraq has achieved stability then they need to get their ass gone to their nearest recruiter this very moment.  Put your ass where your protest sign is!

I went back to my car to call my husband and try to decide if I would give up “guarding” Camp Casey and attend the rally.  I knew that the rally would be good for me but I like crusting Bushies off a lot too now (not sure how good that is for me though up to a point, nah, I’ve paid a price and I can crust away because what have they paid but the couple of bucks to make the fucking silly protest sign they hold!)

On my way to my car I spot Rebel Gary with an artist that has been at Camp Casey.  The artist was a young man probably 20 to 23 years old at most.  He was a really beautiful young man, I mean strikingly beautiful.  I have no idea what his ethnicity was but he had beautiful brown skin and luminous green eyes to go with it.  His hair was ringlet curly and dark brown, but he had bleached his curls out blonde.  Being an artist he stared at the whole world with those eyes, if I was a 20 year old young girl again I probably wouldn’t have spent much time at Crawford protesting (sorry, just being honest!).

The artist had been sketching anybody who wanted to be sketched in charcoal for no cost….he was part of the Camp Casey protest and a peace loving guy.  I stopped at Gary’s blazer to watch him sketch Gary.  Gary was really excited too to have this guy sketching him.  The artist asked me if I wanted to see his work and of course I said sure. I love to draw and paint….not much of a writer until recently, but art is food for my soul.  He had two nicely bound sketch books.  I thumbed through the first one.  He liked craggy faces and sad eyes or very expressive eyes.  Gary had a face that I could tell was a the kind of face he loved to sketch.  Gary’s life seemed to be written into his facial features.  I put the first book down and began going through the second book.  Halfway through I have a face and a face and a…a…looks like someone’s thighs and a vagina. Oh My!  Next page a face (whew!), and a face, and a vagina, and thighs and vagina, and more thighs and vagina. The last half of the sketch book was all vaginas.  Big vaginas and smaller vaginas and round thighs and thin thighs and some with bottoms and some not, they were all very different vaginas.  I’m too old for this shit!  I set the second book down and look at Gary who is still so excited to be sketched.  I know that Gary didn’t see any of the vaginas….. all kinds of vaginas and Fox News worship just don’t go hand in hand.  I did enjoy seeing the vagina for a change in its natural state instead of what pornography and Penthouse have tried to make it into.

The artist looks up at me with those eyes and asks if I would want to be sketched too.  Looking into those eyes I realize that this young man enjoyed all of those vaginas in their natural state also.  Good Lord!  I mumbled something about maybe later.  The rally began to look really good to me, I’m just too old for this shit!