I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, May 12, 2012, from 11 a.m. to noon (which is tomorrow--sorry). I hope that you will be able to join us.

I'm sorry for the late reminder, but life has a way of interrupting one's plans. For this month's excuse, I present my brand-spanking new grandson, Anderson. Even though he doesn't do much as yet, he still manages to keep one occupied for hours on end.

It's interesting when a new baby comes into one's life. One has such great hopes for the child's future. In part that future depends on the advantages he inherits from his parents (and grandparents) and in part the future depends on the external circumstances in the world into which he has been born. I have no control over the former, but I do worry about the latter.

One reason, I worry about the external circumstances in which Anderson will find himself is that he has been born into a society that can no longer even discuss issues of war and peace. Many of our current economic woes stem from the unfunded wars of the last ten or twelve years, but you'd never know that if you read the news, listened to pundits, heard what religious leaders had to say about the issues,.... Pretty much nothing.

One would think that whether or not one believed in war in general, everyone would agree that, once one began being discussed, the means to fund it would also be discussed. One would also hope that even people who accept that war is sometimes necessary would recognize that often wars aren't worth fighting. Not in this day and age apparently. We can't criticize a war or the diverting medical care away from children to pay for it, because by doing so we would not be "supporting the troops". To quote the younger generation, "WTF?"

So, that's why I worry about Anderson's future. We need to redevelop a society in which one can discuss the needs for wars or not and the means to fund the ones we do have. So, it seems to me that's pretty much our mission, to witness to the necessity of introducing such discussions into our communities. I hope to see you tomorrow.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, April 14, 2012, from 11 a.m. to noon. I hope that you will be able to join us.

Sadly, Brewster will not be able to provide his peaceful witness nor his extravagant welcome. He passed away a week and a half after the last vigil, in March. He had massive cancer of the spleen. To the very end, he stayed faithful to the cause of believing all people deserve the respect that says their lives have value, and retained a cheerful and loving spirit.

Peace Vigils were one of Brewster's favorite activities. I think he probably had the best attendance record of any of us. When he saw me get out the bag of vigil signs, he would immediately jump up and run to the back door. Even when, in his last year, his arthritis made getting up and on his feet difficult for him, the arthritis never hindered him when it was time for a vigil. He was as eager to attend the March vigil as he was all the others he attended over the past nine years. Brewster understood that nothing in life is more important than working to develop a community of faithful souls dedicated to treating each other with respect. If we could all have such generous hearts, there would be no need for peace vigils. Sadly, such is not the case. Thus, it's imperative we continue to vigil to develop generous hearts within ourselves and also to help our friends and neighbors develop their own generous hearts.

So please join us, and Brewster's spirit, as we vigil in support of a day when all can be accepted and valued.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, March 10, 2012, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

The current situation in our country seems like a case of "déja vu all over again", to take a line from Yogi Berra. Now that we've pretended our mission is "accomplished" in Iraq (although we're still spending billions of dollars on mercenaries there), and nearing "accomplishment" in Afghanistan, we need a new distraction (gladiators anyone?). As a result, all the "serious thinkers", i.e. those people well paid by the 1%-ers to expound on what they're told to think (I'm not making this up, prominent, so-called conservative David Frum and several of his cronies lost their jobs at "think tanks" because their "analyses" stopped agreeing with their paymasters' desires. See, for example: http://is.gd/S6aHUJ), are now beating the drum for "muscular action" against Iran. It would seem they're advocating the Curtis LeMay approach, "bomb them back to the stone age". Another great quote from Lemay, an ex-general and Vice Presidential candidate some 44 years ago, that seems to have held sway in Washington for the past ten or so years, "If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting". The problem is, nothing akin to this approach has ever worked...in all of history.

Then too, our Attorney General just told us this week that "we" have a right to kill citizens, and any non-citizens for that matter, if we "say" they are a threat to our security, i.e. potential/suspect terrorists. The President and Attorney General get to decide who is and is not a threat. Back in the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joe McCarthy, most of us would have been considered threats/suspects. Hell, back in the day, the cheerful troubadour, Pete Seeger, was considered a threat (WTF?). As the French, paraphrasing Yogi Berra, would say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".

But there is always hope that things will change if faithful people stand up to say, "enough!". The first step is to remind our friends and neighbors that war is not inevitable, that they can, and should, join the chorus that sings the refrain, "enough". So please join Brewster and me on Saturday as we continue vigil in the belief that peaceful ends will only result from peaceful means (which is to say, Curtis LeMay had it wrong, but then you know the business in which he was engaged), and as we sing, though perhaps silently, "enough".

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday (tomorrow!), February 11, 2012, from 11 a.m. to noon. Sorry for the short notice. Things were a bit weird this week. Whatever, Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

For what it's worth, this month marks the ninth anniversary of our vigiling on the Common. In theory, the no-end-in-site wars are being wound down. In practice, they are just morphing to different forms. Instead of a regular occupational army in Iraq, we now have several thousand "contractors" "protecting U.S. interests". We are moving in much the same direction in Afghanistan. We have also outsourced our war efforts to robots. Now, instead of having actual soldiers fighting other actual soldiers (perhaps) in far-flung places, we have young men in places like New Mexico hooked into computers, guiding drone missiles over people's houses in search of alleged "bad guys". Rather often, however, the drones land their cargoes on houses of normal men, women and children, whose only sin is their having been born in the wrong part of the wrong country. In essence, we have embraced a form of terrorism as a component of our counter terrorism policy. Seems kind of weird.

A few months ago, I read a column in the Guardian about how in Britain one can no longer even discuss war efforts. The military has become mainstreamed into daily life, military people showing up in uniform at all manner of public gatherings and all manner of TV shows. Something similar is happening in this country. As a result, any discussion regarding the need of all this expensive militarism, or the need for the militarism's resultant devastation of the lives of millions of people in the Middle East, is portrayed as personal attacks on all those nice young men and women in uniform that we see nightly on the TV or participating in our halftime displays at football games, etc. Seems kind of weird.

The first step in re-opening the discussion will be merely to remind people that there is an issue to address. Hence our purpose on the Common, we are the reminders. So please join Brewster and me as we remind our friends and neighbors to re-open a sadly, long-forgotten discussion.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, January 14, 2012, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

I recently read "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson. It came out 100 years ago, but Johnson's comments on race relations, specifically on how we view "others" is, sadly, pertinent to our society today. The protagonist didn't know that he wasn't a "white person" until he had been going to school for some time. Neither did his class mates. Then one day, a visitor came to the school and asked to have all the white students stand. When the protagonist stood along with the others, his teacher bade him sit. Once his classmates realized he wasn't white, they viewed differently. They treated him differently.

We still do that. Once someone has been labeled, we view and treat them differently. Not so long ago, a prominent African American commentator said that people who "looked Muslim" gave him the willies. How little has changed. In an earlier age, the 13th-century, Persian poet, Rumi, made a similar observation:

"Every war and every conflict
between human beings has happened
because of some disagreement about names."

It's the giving of names itself, "colored person", "Muslim-looking", etc., and casting our own complex set of hidden meanings to those names, that causes the problem, not generally the individuals themselves, who happen to have a skin that is a different hue or to wear garb different from our own.

So, please join Brewster and me as we witness to our longing to see a day when people can be accepted as they are, not as we would assume them to be based on a superficial naming.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, December 10, 2011, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

We have entered, once again, the season of consumerist orgies. Not all of us, of course, partake in said orgies, but we are all exhorted to do so, on a daily basis, for the "good of all". In theory, we have also entered, once again, a season that alleges to spread "peace on earth, good will to all". I think if we spent a little more time on the "peace on earth" side of things than the consumerist orgy side of things, the "good of all" would more likely ensue.

So, I hope you can join Brewster and me on Saturday as we try to witness to peace on earth for the good of all.

Take care,
larry p

p.s. A little late, but our friend Carolyn wanted me to remind/inform you all that there will be a meeting of the Reading 99% tonight at the UU church on Woburn St. from 8 to 10 p.m. They are just getting started discussing economic justice issues, which are inextricably intertwined with peace issues. My guess is they'll have more meetings. Ping Carolyn for more info. If you don't know her email, send queries to me and I'll see they are forwarded in a more-or-less timely (for me) fashion.

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, November 12, 2011, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

I recently read Edgar Rice Burroughs' book, "The Warlord of Mars". My father once said it was his favorite book growing up. My impression of the book is that it was pretty much targeted toward adolescent boys, and indeed, when the book came out in 1919, my father was thirteen.

One of the things that struck me about this book was how thoroughly war and violence is engrained into our culture. This not only an issue from one hundred years ago, but also a current issue, as anyone who has watched professional football can tell you. The football games fairly drip with references to and glorification of our current military.

Anyway, I found this quote from Burroughs' to be particularly apt in understanding our basic problem:

"The hand of every race and nation was raised in continual strife and warring against the men of every other land and color. Today, by the might of my sword and the loyalty of the friends my sword had made for me, black man and white, red man and green rubbed shoulders in peace and good-fellowship. "

This is the fantasy of every generation, that we can win peace through exercise of the sword. Unfortunately, this fantasy doesn't play out in real life. It never has and it never will.

So, that's our task, to stand up against the popular lie and witness to the fact that the only road to peace begins with peace. It may sound like a fantasy as well, but many millennia of human experience shows the Warlord/NFL version most clearly does not work. Perhaps it's time to resort to plan B.

So please join Brewster and me on Saturday as we witness to our friends and neighbors that plan B is a better way to achieve what we all want.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, October 8, 2011, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

As I was struggling to wake up this morning, the cheerful voice on the radio told me that today was the 10th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan. It's kind of sad to contemplate how bad that effort has turned out. Of course, it has been a disaster for the Afghans. Their country has been destroyed, and what government they have is all but useless. But, it has also been bad for us as a country. In the past ten years, we have decided that torture and targeted assassination aren't so bad after all. Any studies I've seen indicate that such policies don't accomplish their stated goals, but are generally counter productive. But, as a nation, we seem no longer open to using empirical evidence to plan our policies. Indeed, most of our current crop of Presidential candidates deny the validity of empirical evidence. Rather a shame. All of it.

But, things can and do change, if only people keep open to change, keep shining the light of reason into the darkness, so to speak. In the words of the awesome Pepper Choplin song, "press on, let faith and hope sustain you. Press on, keep working for the day when all creation can live in peace as one".

So that's the plan. If so much bad can happen in a stretch of ten years, much good could happen in the next ten. Our job is to keep the faith and press on to make positive changes happen. Please join Brewster and me as we press on our witness for peace.

Take care,
larry p

I wanted to remind you that our regular, monthly vigil on the Reading Town Common will be this coming Saturday, September 10, 2011, from 11 a.m. to noon. Brewster and I hope that you will be able to join us.

As you couldn't help but know, this vigil is on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. I find the current orgy of self pity rather appalling. One would have thought that in the past ten years we would have learned something about the ineffectualness of mindless acts of revenge. The only thing that acts of war beget are yet more acts of war. And so, patiently, we must continue to witness regularly so as to bring this awareness to our friends and neighbors. Please join us.

I also want to point out that Kathy Kelly will be speaking this coming Friday, September 9, at St. Michael Parish Hall, 196 Main Street, N. Andover from 7 to 9 p.m. Kathy Kelly has been involved with the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence for many years. She has traveled to regions of war, such as Iraq and Afghanistan numerous times and has first hand experience of the horrors of living in a war zone, of being in constant danger of becoming yet more "collateral damage". You can learn more about her at http://vcnv.org/kathy-kelly-long-version .

Brewster and I look forward to seeing you all Saturday.

Take care,
larry p

p.s. It was rather fun to see two of our vigilers, Carolyn and A.J. pictured at a sing-out in last night's Reading Chronicle

Normally, I would be reminding you that we have a vigil scheduled for Saturday, August 13, 2011 from 11:00 a.m. to noon on the Reading Town common. Unfortunately, I am out of town and was unable to find a guest host this year. So for those of you feeling a desire to vigil anyway, you'll have to show up with your own signs. Sorry 'bout that.

Now that virtually everyone in Congress as well as the pathetic excuses that pose as journalists these days seem firmly convinced that our budgetary problems are solely the fault of old people and not remotely related to ten years of unfunded, discretionary wars, it's more important than ever that we continue to stand as witnesses for the truth of the matter.

Brewster and I will be a back in September. We hope you will join us.

Take care,
larry p

p.s. I had a computer "mal function" up here in Maine and had to revert to a back-up email client. It's possible a couple of you who asked to be removed from this list will still be in the old address book. Sorry 'bout that. Things should be back to normal come September.