Spicoli and me

Ever since I weaned myself off headphones (not easy, considering my forty five minute morning walk to work and my joint music/NPR addictions), I've relished long rides in the car. I can rock out to something scary that might not play well at home (say, Bobby Beausoleil's soundtrack to Lucifer Rising?) or listen to an extended spoken thing that requires more concentration and still-sitting than I can summon after a workday It's nice... So the idea of loud sounds sweetened the deal today when I considered whether or not to drive fifty minutes in each direction to Ft. Lewis to support Lt. Ehren Watada whose court marital commenced today. It was a last minute decision, sealed on the recumbent bicycle at the Y this a.m. as I read the New Yorker article about Putin's (suspected) assassination of that journalist who wrote about Chechnya. This woman continued speaking out despite constant death threats and the murder of a woman who looked remarkably like her outside her apartment when she was out of the country. Thinking of her and of Molly Ivins' final column in which she said "every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war," made me realize that if, as I was arguing last week to my Dad, I truly believe that public protest can I make a difference, then I have a moral obligation to get out and protest. So I did. It was good, a strong turn out. The quality of the speakers at these things seem to improve the worse things get. It probably helped to have a specific rallying point--Watada and other resisting soldiers. Sometimes, otherwise, the message can get pretty quickly diluted. Watada is facing years in the brig. Driving out there is a tiny gesture, but the sort of gesture I think we all need to be making right now.

Right?

Maybe?

I guess Sean Penn was there, but I didn't see him.

Oh yeah. On the way there I listened to Eckhart Tolle's "Findhorn Retreat." On the drive home it was Sun City Girl's "Carnival Folklore Resurrection." The Tacoma Dome looks even weirder than normal when your stereo sounds like the rabbit ears on your radiation cloud just brought proof deep space has already been colonized by the Vietnamese.

Peace.