Reporter: Mr. Harrison, with all that’s going on in the world today, why did you decide to focus on this (Bangladesh)?”

George Harrison: “Because a friend asked me to help.”

from a press conference for the Concert for Bangladesh

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune,  My Left Wing, and TexasKos.

images and poem below the fold

The coffin of Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, the first British service woman to die in Iraq arrives at RAF Brize Norton, England, Thursday May 18, 2006. Flight Lieutenant Mulvihill was killed with four colleagues when the helicopter she was travelling in came down in Iraq. The five were killed when an apparent rocket strike brought down their Lynx helicopter earlier this month, an incident which sparked anti-British rioting by some local Iraqis.
(AP Photo / David Jones, PA)


Iraqi youths carry the coffin of a relative outside a local hospital in Baghdad. Violence shook Baghdad, killing 13 people, as last-minute political horse-trading continued over key security portfolios ahead of this weekend’s expected unveiling of Iraq’s new cabinet.
(AFP/Wisam Sami)


Nancy Kelly, center, leads the funeral procession for her late husband, Maine National Guard Staff Sgt. Dale Kelly Jr., Saturday, May 20, 2006, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brunswick, Maine. Kelly was killed May 5 in a roadside blast in Iraq.
(AP Photo/Joel Page)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)
by Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –  

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –  
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –  

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –  
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

– – –
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