Until further notice...
"Listen, to live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know."

"I may have to stop talking again, until I can be sure of what I know." ~ Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

I haven't updated in over week. It's not for lack of trying. So, gentle reader, rather then leave you in suspense, I'm just saying that productivity is down.

I'll continue to write, and when it's coherent - I'll put it up for your enjoyment (and your criticisms - which I tend to prefer). Let's just say I'm acquiring the words to the story. Stories.

And there are several rolling around up there - stories of elephants and mushrooms and other pieces of life crammed into dusty corners and gathering cobwebs.

Maybe I'm just waiting till I'm sure of what I know. Soon though. Soon.

"I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light." Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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On a sunny Saturday, two young women – freshmen at the University of Missouri – sat at a kitchen table in a house in Barnhart, Missouri drinking coffee.

Glad to be away from classes for the weekend, the ladies relaxed in their pajamas in front of the kitchen window.

“Oh, do you see that little box of house down there,” said Jana, the one who had invited her roommate to come home with her. “The one just down there at the bottom of the hill?”

The white house at the bottom of the hill was beyond tiny. Just four walls enclosing four rooms. It had a gracious front porch that looked out to a garden that seemed almost bigger than the house itself.

Jana knew the family that lived there – the father had passed away the year before, when Jana and one of the boys had been seniors at Crystal City High. There were eight kids in all, and only two were still under the family roof. The mother was a tough old bird who worked long hours at Steak ‘n’ Shake to take care of her boy in college and her son still at home.

“Yes, I see it,” said her friend. She was from Raytown, the eldest of five children and the first in her family to attend college. The daughter of a TWA pilot and an Illinois farm girl, she was studying to be an elementary school teacher, but spent lots of time playing bridge and drinking coffee in the Union.

“Well those people can cram more people into that house for barbecues and get-togethers than you could ever imagine,” said Jana. “They practically pour out of the house and on to the porch and into the lawn.”

“But the house is so small – how could they possibly fit two people, much less ten or fifteen?” said her roommate.

“Oh, more than that. I say you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it – their family is large,” said Jana.

With that, they finished their coffee, and at the end of the weekend returned to their life in Columbia.

I suppose Jana’s roommate didn’t think much more of that weekend until she found herself, three years later as a senior in college, in the small house next to the man she loved.

She must have laughed remembering her first encounter with her husband’s family from Jana’s kitchen window.

Actually she’s still laughing about it. Both of my parents are still laughing about it.

37 years ago, today, Jim, who grew up in that box of a house, and Lynn, who was Jana’s roommate in Johnston Hall, got married in an evening ceremony at a Methodist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

She carried a bouquet of daisies and yellow roses and her husband wore a daisy in the button hole of his jacket. And in every picture the joy on their faces seems to challenge the world to find something to bring them down. Hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s to them: 37 years and they love each other something fierce. They have a gift of laughter. They have a tremendous sense of adventure and curiosity. And they have given their children a vast appreciation of life and love and all that those two things entail.

Congratulations folks. And thanks.

This little piggy went to market, or
An open letter in response to the recent flurry of comments

To the one who posted the comment, "which gives me the right to free speech,":

The constitution also gives you the right to not speak - it's a lesser known right, but just as cool.

It's a little incomprehensible that you seemed to reiterate Jo's comment - but perhaps you were confused about what the first amendment is - that's the free speech one - which is actually what Jo was pointing out.

The right to free speech is wonderful - you're absolutely right. And it's that right that protects that marketplace of ideas of which you are so fond.

Why then, does it seem like just because Sam and Jo and me don't agree with you, you respond as though it is an attack on your right to free speech.

Do you really want to play in an open marketplace of ideas, or would you rather just bemoan the entire "liberal media," and follow your country unquestioningly because of your belief in the fundamental goodness and decency of your nation and the righteousness of your cause.

And by the way, the above paragraph isn't an attack on your right to free speech. Just a question of how open the marketplace of your ideas is - wouldn't it be kind of pointless if everyone agreed on everything - how horribly blasé.

Yeah, the first amendment rocks my face off - the right to speak or not speak, the right to worship or not to worship, the right to have a courageous and free press. The right to question your government.

You want to go to market? Great, come on, there's room for everyone - but let's not feel your speech is being subverted or attacked simply because people don't immediately see the "rightness," of your words. By posting your response to, “Penny for your thoughts, a flag for your troubles,” on a separate blog, you invited comments and responses to that. And I would say that most of those comments have been extremely kind and more generous than I am being right now, or am inclined to be.

Perhaps if your response had been grounded upon stronger evidentiary proof, the comments you have received would have been different. By basing a response upon your knee-jerk reaction rather than well documented occurrences, you have effectively closed the door on any truly open and reasoned discussion about your position.

It's a big market - and in this particular booth, there aren't any bullies trying to steal your lunch money, er, I mean your right to free speech.

Penny for your thoughts, a flag for your troubles

The vast majority of the bodies of American soldiers fly into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Under the auspices of protecting the privacy of the soldier’s families, the Bush administration has enforced the policy used in the first Gulf War, which prohibits journalists or other citizens from witnessing the homecoming of these now quiet Americans.

While no press cameras are there, photographers from the Department of Defense are clicking away for record keeping purposes.

The public saw these pictures after Russ Kick, of Arizona, requested their release under the Freedom of Information Act. Kick requested the photos and was denied on the grounds that releasing the photos would result in an invasion into the privacy of the families. Kick finally won on an appeal, and received 288 photos of U.S. dead returning to Dover.

Not all the pictures are of soldiers killed in Iraq. Some are from Afghanistan, others from U.S. military operations in other parts of the world. But it is a reasonable assumption that most of the bodies are coming from combat actions in Iraq.

In Griswold v Connecticut, 1965, the Supreme Court held that there was indeed a right to privacy within the constitution. Justice Douglas wrote in the court’s opinion, “Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras formed by emanations from those guarantees that give them life and substance.”

Thus, there are implied freedoms, without which the “specific guarantees,” would not stand.

Justice Douglas illustrated his point using the example of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He wrote, “The right to freedom of speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to read and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach…Without these peripheral rights, the specific rights would be less secure.”

Justice Douglas efficiently affirms both a right to privacy and a right to know.

The Restatement (Second) of Torts, an academic collection of laws, states that a charge of invasion of privacy must meet two requirements in order to have legal weight. The matter at hand, in this case, pictures of caskets, must be both highly offensive to a reasonable individual and not involve a matter of public concern.

Even if the subject is deemed offensive, it may still be released if it is a public concern, that is, if it is newsworthy.

From Iraq we have seen pictures of the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein, towns a flame, and other violent pictures which might be called offensive.

But the pictures recently released show nothing of that sort. There is no blood, no anguished faces, no smoke or fire or terror.

Just an honor guard. Just a white hearse. Just the belly of a transport plane and rows of simple boxes covered with the stars and stripes.

So here are the soldiers who joined up to pay for college, or escape from their town, or to provide an income for their families. Here are those who went to a strange land to die.

And the American government refused to let you see them cloaked in red, white, and blue. Not because the pictures were gruesome or offending to delicate public sensibilities. But because, these pictures, more clearly than any chart or newspaper show the cost of the war.

The Vietnam War was called “the living room war,” because of the broadcasts that were shown on the evening news. The images returned from those jungles played a great role in turning the tide of opinion against that war.

Operation Iraqi Freedom is already an unpopular war. And it isn’t just about the dead Americans. It’s about the Japanese humanitarian workers taken hostage, the journalists who have died, 25 since 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the people of Iraq.

There are folks here in Columbia who stand on street corners holding signs asking people to “Honk for peace.” And several people sound their horns each time they pass, but whether the sound is heard in the hallways of the capitol has yet to be determined.

There have been numerous ceremonies here to read the names of the American dead. Still the appropriation of the names of the dead soldiers in an anti-war protest is arguably offensive. No one can say whether these soldiers would have added their voices to the vehement declarations against the war.

Either one of these actions may be thought offensive and ineffective in turning the tide of war.

But pictures of living soldiers helping their fallen compatriots to a final home?

This is not offensive. This is not invasive to their privacy. This is their last statement, neither affirming nor denying the justness of the war. These are their silent voices. And no one may say what these soldiers thought of the war except that they are dead because of their service.

They are no different from those silent Americans in Flander’s field, who, “short days ago…lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved…”

Regardless of one’s stance on the war there is no denying that there are costs to the action.

We hear that we are at war in order to protect our freedoms – this is a perennial justification for military action. Yet this most recent challenge to our freedom to view public records and the freedom of the press, came not at the gates of Baghdad, but from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And that ought to be offensive to any reasonable person.