“I don’t walk about belief – whether or not we should have started this war. Rather, I walk because we shouldn’t live our lives as if all is normal. People are suffering every moment because of this war – U.S. Soldiers and their families, Iraqi soldiers and civilians and their families – and this question of what we can do to end this suffering should be with us every day.”
a Concord (MA) area resident – in a letter to the editor regarding her own participation in a public vigil each Friday morning at the town center – ‘We Walk for All Who Suffer Because of War.’
this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
we honor courage in all its forms
in loving gratitude today for ahna jin – sensitive artist and caring thinker born 20 years ago – who left seoul to join our family
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
An Iraqi resident runs away from the scene of a bomb attack at a shopping district in Baghdad, February 28, 2006.
REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldeen
Leaving Seoul: 1953
by Walter K. Lew
We have to bury the urns,
Mother and I. We tried to leave them in a back room,
Decoyed by a gas lamp, and run out
But they landed behind us here, at the front gate.
It is 6th hour, early winter, black cold:
Only, on the other side of the rice-paper doors
The yellow ondol stone-heated floors
Are still warm. I look out to the blue
Lanterns along the runway, the bright airplane.
Off the back step, Mother, disorganized
As usual, has devised a clumsy rope and shovel
To bury the urns. I wonder out loud
how she ever became a doctor.
Get out, she says Go to your father: he too
Does not realize what is happening. You see,
Father is waiting at the airfield in a discarded U. S. Army
Overcoat. He has lost his hat, lost
His father, and is smoking Lucky’s like crazy. . .
We grab through the tall weeds and wind
That begin to shoot under us like river ice.
It is snowing. We are crying, from the cold
Or what? It is only decades
Later that, tapping the cold, glowing jars,
I find they contain all that has made
The father have dominion over hers.
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
