Grandmother for Peace

2008-07-04T16:21:00.000-04:00

She is aglow with love

2008-06-15T19:24:00.002-04:00

This picture was taken years ago in a cottage up at Kings Bay at an Alternative New Year’s Eve celebration. Gil Marshall’s daughter Anya was speaking of how to bring about Peace, her hands emphasizing her fervent feelings. Sister Denise on the left and Jo on the right are listening carefully. But Peg is more than attentive; she has stopped her knitting and her rapt expression shows so much about her feelings for young people and kindred spirits. She is aglow with love, support, and admiration, as she so often was with so many of us.

Marybeth Sullivan

2008-06-13T13:37:00.002-04:00

December 2007

Mcintire's active life recalled

2008-06-04T12:29:00.001-04:00

Article published in the St. Augustine Record on June 2, 2008
See link

Obituary

2008-06-02T10:50:00.000-04:00

Margery D. (Peg) McIntire quietly passed away on the night of May 29. Her son, Jo, and daughter-in-law, Sali, were by her side.

Born on October 2nd, 1910, raised in Woodmere, Long Island, Peg was a lively youngster, a good student and athlete at Woodmere Academy. She was also a talented pianist. She especially enjoyed accompanying her violinist mother, Hilda Stern Dallet, at temple, weddings and parties.

In the fall of 1927, Peg was granted a scholarship at Vassar College, which she abandoned in the middle of her junior year to marry writer Larry Goldstone. At that time, Vassar did not have male students, nor enroll married women. She transferred to Columbia University, but once again abandoned her studies, this time for a prolonged honeymoon in Torremolinos, Spain. While Larry wrote, Peg played chess on the beach, took odd jobs such as baby sitting and teaching English, and helped the local Rotary Club build a golf course to lure cruise ships to Malaga.

Peg's hero was her older brother, Joe. He abandoned his studies at Dartmouth College in the middle of his junior year. At the suggestion of Roger Baldwin, founder of ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, he transferred to the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, to study the labor movement. Later he became an organizer for the fledgling CIO Steel Workers Union in Youngstown, Ohio. Angered by Generalissimo Franco's fascist regime in Spain, Joe joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, boarded ship, flew to Paris, but was arrested and jailed in Perpignon for nearly a month. He was finally released with orders to be out of France within 48 hours. Together with fellow inmates, he climbed the Pyrenees by night, met up with his unit, and, despite being a "political commissar," he moved to the front lines of battle and was killed in the famous Battle of the Ebro.

Joe's death was a catalyst in Peg's life. She and Larry left Spain and started anew in New Orleans. Peg was determined to do something that Joe would have done – or would have admired. After considerable searching, Peg was directed to a shabby YMCA meeting hall to hear Gordon McIntire talk about his efforts to organize a union of small farmers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers in Louisiana. Peg, 5'2", a city girl, fell in love with Gordon, 6'2", a country boy. Their courtship was not easy. Gordon developed TB. Peg carried on the Union work alone until her mother died in an auto accident and she was needed in NYC to care for her father. Six years later Peg and Gordon married. Gordon got a Masters Degree in Denver, while Peg worked for the National Youth Administration. They moved to Washington, DC, where Gordon worked for the Bureau of the Budget and Peg for the Office of Price Administration and as a freelance speech-writer for the NEA (National Education Association).

In 1948 Jil was born, in 1949 Jo. In 1952, Gordon was offered a transfer to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy. The excited little family moved from their Georgetown home to a terraced sun-filled apartment in Rome. Jil and Jo went to a Montessori preschool, and were speaking Italian within a week. Peg learned kitchen Italian but later attended the Dante Alleghieri Language School for proper grammar and was given the opportunity of a lifetime - to become gofer, translator, private secretary, 24/7 assistant to Henry Hennigson, producer for MGM's giant film "Ben Hur". She got to work with the poet Christopher Fry, Gore Vidal, both Wilders, Charlton Heston, Michael Boyd, Martha Scott, and many others. Gordon was not so lucky.

Sen. Joe McCarthy provoked a five-year legal battle with the U.S. Government for Gordon. He was summarily and wrongly dismissed from his employment with the FAO. The passports of the entire family were taken away. Gordon fought back. There were hearings, depositions, findings and appeals at every level. Finally he was totally vindicated, and compensated for legal costs. His back pay was put into an escrow account in the U.S. where it eventually expired because, although the U.S. Embassy restored the passports, the family opted to stay in Italy and go into business. Their "empire" collaped with Gordon's sudden death from emphysema in 1969.

Jo and Sali brought Peg back to the U.S. in 1980. Another country, another life! The three immigrants settled in Saint Augustine. Always motivated, Peg quickly found fellow activists in NOW, Pax Christi and the statewide Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice. For 15 years she served as Treasurer for the Coalition and was the guru for its summer Peace Camps and music festivals. In 1985 in California, at a NOW conference, Peg met and was inspired by Barbara Weidner, founder of Grandmothers for Peace, Int'l. Upon returning to Florida, Peg founded an affiliate, called Grandparents for Peace, St. Augustine, which has some 100 members. Although primarily anti-nuke, anti-war, anti-violence, the organization recognizes the connection of violence with poverty, racism, homelessness, social and economic injustice, and supported individuals and organizations striving to improve social conditions, provide leadership, and generally creating a saner, safer, happier and healthier world. Peg has attended the last eight demonstrations at Fort Benning, GA, to close the notorious School of the Americas.

In 1999 Peg and other grannies protested the launch of NASA’s Cassini, carrying 72.5 lbs of radioactive plutonium, at Cape Canaveral. After serving 30 days in jail, she was hounded with questions like "what did they give you to eat? How often could you bathe? " Wanting to give people something more important to think about, she and Paul Archetko created an Earth Day event in Saint Augustine which has since become an annual affair.

Until the end of 2007 Peg worked at Susan Bradley’s candle shop. Peg and Susan also worked together creating the St. Augustine Youth Hostel and organizing the Toys for Tots program.

Peg was hospitalized for the first time in her life in 2007 with an intestinal problem. On the first day after leaving the rehab center, she made her way to the anti-war rally held that Saturday morning at the Bridge of Lions, co-sponsored by Grandparents for Peace, People for Peace & Justice, and Veterans for Peace. She ended 2007 participating as an invitee in the Council of Elders established by UNF's "Peace Awareness Week" together with her close friends Stetson Kennedy and John Linnehan.

In 2008 at the age of 97, Peg had to start cutting back on her activities after suffering a major heart attack. But she never gave up.

She was a voracious reader, an avid scrabble player, and a twice a week played at the Duplicate Bridge Club. She always attended the Gamble Rogers Festivals, rarely missed a concert at the pier, followed every tennis tournament on TV, campaigned for Senator Barak Obama, and always gave full support to her children, Jo and Sali.

Peg was born and raised Jewish, taught Christian Sunday School while living in Italy, joined the Center for Positive Living for a few years, and has been a long standing member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

During the past months, Peg received extraordinary care from Community Hospice, their doctor, nurses, aides, social workers and volunteers.

Peg had many friends and an incredible intergenerational support base. She will be missed for her blue eyes, her smile, her jokes, her vitality, her dedication to causes, her love for Chinese food, music, and red wine.

No flowers, please.
A donation may be sent to Community Hospice of NE Florida, 4266 Sunbeam Road, Jacksonville, FL 32257 or to the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, PO Box 652, Brunswick, Maine 04011.

Plans for a Memorial Service to be announced.

Peg is moving on . . .

2008-05-29T14:04:00.006-04:00

Dear friends,

Peg returned from her Memorial Day demonstration with some chest pain. That evening she started collecting liquid in her lungs.

Over the next 24 hours we were able to dry up her lungs and eliminate that horrible breathing rumble . . .

But Peg is definitely closing down.

She has mentioned joining her husband and daughter. We regularly exchange last hugs several times each day. She is ready to go and looking forward to it. In the meantime, with the help of hospice, we are keeping her comfortable.

If you would like to spend a little time with her please feel welcome to come over to Ocean Gallery. If you can, please give us a call first.

Sali and I (jomcintire@bellsouth.net) are setting up a core group of folks to plan her memorial celebration. So far I have selected John Linnehan (metanoia1@earthlink.net 504-1004) from the Florida Peace and Justice Coalition, Dora Lovell (doralovell@aol.com 814-6417) from the local UU, Rabbi Mark Goldman (goldmanmark@bellsouth.net 794 4133) from Temple Bet Yam. Food is being coordinated by Annie Bobrowski (avbster@gmail.com 461 3188).

If you would like to work with this core group, please let them know.
The group is meeting at the UU at 17:00 on Tuesday June 3.

=================
Jo and Sali McIntire
Tel 904-461-3175
Cell 904-806-5077 and 806-1400

Death Certificate

2008-05-28T16:02:00.000-04:00

Peg and Katherine Archer - coordinator of the musical component of the "Celebration of Peg's Life"

2008-05-28T16:00:00.001-04:00

Hey!
As you know I walk in the mornings and take a photos of the sunrise. We always do 3 Sun Salutations with a brief prayer/meditation. Friday Morning we dedicated the Salutation to Peg. Attached is the photo I took right after the Salutation.
Hugs,
Tina

friends

2008-05-28T15:15:00.000-04:00

Barbie and Annie

Laurie and John

Memorial Day '08

2008-05-24T12:13:00.002-04:00

Dear GFP members and friends,

We will all be celebrating Memorial Day as a national holiday, but with a uniquely personal twinge as we remember loved ones who have died, and pray for the young men and women who are in danger today on active duty in foreign lands.

The following is the poem that I will read on Sunday at UU. and again on Monday when our local anti-war groups rally in St. Augustine's Plaza de la Costituzione.

Poem by Captain Michal Davis O'Donnell
Killed in Action on March 24, 1970
Republic of Vietnam
If you are able,
Save them a place
Inside of you.
And save one backward glance
When you are leaving
For the place they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
You love them,
Thought you may
Not have always.
Take what they have left
And what they have taught you
With their dying.
And keep it with your own.
And in that time
When men decide and feel safe
To call the war insane,
Take one moment to embrace
Those gentle heroes you left behind.

Peg

Jil's Memorial Bush

2008-05-18T17:33:00.005-04:00

Hi Peg -
This is a picture of the blossom on your daughter's memorial bush.
Love
Joyce

2008-05-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Joe ... we had such a wonderful visit with peg last week (Sun May 18) and she was as sharp as a tack! We did hear from Ron and May Lea about the turn in recent days. She is ready to move on, and we we wish her Godspeed. Please give her another hug from Patricia and John and let her know too that our four grown children all send their love as well.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you too as you help her set sail for distant horizons. When the time comes, let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

Peaceprayers.
John and Patricia Frank

Canada's dirty war in Afghanistan

2008-05-17T15:56:00.004-04:00

Peggy

In answer to your question about "Canada's dirty war", this in fact is yet another proxy war being fought to support USA's colonial aspirations . I have no idea who the author is but she seems to have a load of half-truths in her article but really does not understand what really is happening.

The problem is that the current Conservative government in Canada wants to cosy up to US and will do anything necessary - including sacrificing lives of many young men - to support a puppet leader, put in place by the US, who from all reports, is in it for the money he can gather from the large sums of $$$ which US is willing to spend to force its will on the region.

The background is that Canada, under a Liberal government, initally agreed to assign to NATO a limited # of peacekeepers for Afghanistan. Later, when Bush and his buddies needed to gain control of oil and invaded Iraq, Bush and his buddies conceded that Canada need send no fighting soldiers for Iraq if their numbers in Afghanistan were increased.

Canada then doubled the # of peacekeepers with an end date of 2005.The Liberal party then lost an election and one of the first actions of the new Conservative government to curry favour with the US was to reassign the troops into a fighting role and to extend the end date to 2007 . These were to be assigned in the worst area of the country (Kandahar) where the French , German , Dutch etc. refuse to go! The end date has subsequently been extended to 2009 and the Tories (Stephen Harper) are now talking about 2011. In all of this, Harper has been supported by a reactionary General - Rick Hillier, whose aim in life seems to have been to increase Canadian military spending and fight a brutal occupation of Afghanistan.

The per capita death and injury rates for Canadian troops in Kandahar far exceed those of British and US!

Yes, it is a very sickening story, and a very high proportion of the Canadian nation would like to see them out of an untenable position. Our opposition parties say that when they defeat the current government, they will pull all troops out immediately. We hope so! It looks as though the election will happen this summer so maybe we can get out of the mess then.

So much for that , glad to hear that you are keeping well .

All the best , please excuse the diatribe, but we feel very strongly about the useless slaughter of both Canadians and Afghanis.

Malcolm and Jutta

Grannies to the Democratic Convention

2008-05-08T23:43:00.000-04:00

Dear Anti-War Grannies Everywhere:

Last night, the Granny Peace Brigade in New York held a meeting and decided that we would like to go to the Democratic convention in Denver being held August 25-28 this summer.

Our thinking is that, first of all, it's important to let the Democrats know that we want them to make it a priority to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home as well as stop all threats to Iran. Secondly, there will be huge media presence there so that we will have the optimal chance of being picked up by them and thereby spread our message of peace. We decided that it would be a lost cause to go to the Republican convention, but we might have some influence on the Democrats to achieve our ends.

We are hopeful that we can make this a coordinated national granny action and would like to know if some of you would be interested in joining with us in Denver. A group of grandmothers from all over the country would be a terrific media event, we believe, and would be helpful in applying some much-needed pressure to stiffen the Democrats' backbones, sorely in need of such treatment.

Please get back to me when you've had a chance to think about this and talk among yourselves. Then, we can put our virtual heads together and design our strategy.

Yours in Peace, Joan Wile, Granny Peace Brigade

Marriage Seminar

2008-05-08T15:17:00.001-04:00

At Saint Mary's Catholic Church they have a weekly husband's marriage seminar. At the session last week, the Priest asked Luigi, who was approaching his 50th wedding anniversary, to take a few minutes and share some insight into how he had managed to stay married to the same woman all these years.

Luigi replied to the assembled husbands, "Well, I've a-tried to treat-a her nice, spend the money on her, but best of all was that I took her to Italy for our 20th anniversary!"

The Priest responded, "Luigi, you are an amazing inspiration to all the husbands here! Please tell us what you are planning for your wife for your 50th anniversary?"

Luigi proudly replied, "I'm a-gonna go and get her."

Celebrating Mother's Day

2008-05-06T20:40:00.002-04:00

GRANDPARENTS FOR PEACE

Peg McIntire (pegmcintire@bellsouth.net)

21 Village Las Palmas Circle

St. Augustine, FL 32080-3590

Blog : http://PegMcIntire.Blogspot.com

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can

change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has. " - Margaret Mead

Dear Mothers, Grandmothers, Daughters, Granddaughters,

SUNDAY, May 11th, 2-3 pm, GAZEBO

Vigil, bring photos and stories to share

Our political activism does not preclude our celebrating Mother's Day. We celebrated last year for the first time. We will celebrate again this year.

If you are in or near St. Augustine next Sunday, May 11th, from 2-3 pm, please join us at the Gazebo in the Plaza de la Constitucion to share photos and stories of our mothers, grandmothers, daughters, grand daughters, and our greats....

Peg

MaryLee and Ron Zamora

PS.

Saturday, May 10th, at 4 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, showing of documentary film Abu Ghrab.

Tuesday, May 13th, at 7pm at Arla's hom, regular monthly PPJ meeting,

Saturday, May 17th, 10 to 12 noon, regular 3rd Saturday anti-war rally at the Bridge of Lions.

Monday, May 26th, Memorial Day protest . Time and place TBA.

The cost of the Iraq war

2008-05-05T22:26:00.001-04:00

So, how much is it that we are spending on the war in Iraq?

In 2004 it was estimated at $177 million per day, $7.4 million per hour, $122,820 per minute.

In March 2008 the New York Times estimate was $13 billion a month, nearly half a billion per day, $18 million per hour, and $5,000 per second.

Couldn’t you do a lot of birth-reducing, water-finding, and micro-lending with that kind of money?

Or think of the things we could be doing in the U.S.. . . .

Mother's Day

2008-05-05T21:44:00.001-04:00

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history (or should I say "her story"):

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston , 1870

*************************************************************

Mother's Day for Peace - by Ruth Rosen.

Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets. The holiday began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother's Day. But to ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a mother, you'll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one day of the year.

Mother's Day wasn't always like this. The women who conceived Mother's Day would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that "perfect gift for Mom." They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not eating with their families in restaurants. This is because Mother's Day began as a holiday that commemorated women's public activism, not as a celebration of a mother's devotion to her family.

The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' Works Days in West Virginia. Her immediate goal was to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Afterward she convened meetings to persuade men to lay aside their hostilities.

In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", proposed an annual Mother's Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe wrote: "Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage... Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs".

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers' Day for Peace on June 2.

Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor. To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day. By then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly embraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As the Florists' Review, the industry's trade journal, bluntly put it, "This was a holiday that could be exploited."

The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their mothers - by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were selling carnations for the exorbitant price of $1 apiece, Anna Jarvis' daughter undertook a campaign against those who "would undermine Mother's Day with their greed." But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists' Review triumphantly announced that it was "Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched."

Since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.

Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but not all mothers. Poor, unemployed mothers may enjoy flowers, but they also need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other industrialized society.

With a little imagination, we could restore Mother's Day as a holiday that celebrates women's political engagement in society. During the 1980's, some peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother's Day to protest the arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missiles but from our indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation's capital. Imagine a Mother's Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother's Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all year round.)

Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women's civil activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic activism.

Ruth Rosen is a professor of history at UC Davis.
Reprinted with permission

How I feel about getting old

2008-05-05T21:42:00.000-04:00

By Renee Mintz:

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know.

Old Age, I decided, is a gift.

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body, the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror (who looks like my mother!), but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon?

I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60&70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ... I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.

They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.

So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day. (If I feel like it.)

Dear Little One

2008-04-30T18:17:00.001-04:00

Dear little one,

I do not know you. I do not even know your name. But I love you because you are the daughter of a fine man who was a good friend of my daughter. She passed away, childless. He went on to marry your Mom. So, altho you are not legally mine, you hold a very special place in my heart.

I am American, you Italian. I am Jewish, you Catholic. Way back in 1937, my 27 year old brother died in Spain, in a desperate battle against fascism. Mussolini was a friend of Gen. Franco’s. You will have learned this from your history books.

In 1952, when my husband, Gordon McIntire, was offered a job in Rome with the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, my first reaction was negative. I was afraid we would be met with both religious and political prejudice, but it turned out very differently. (We had trouble with our own government but not with yours). We found friendship, beauty, good food, good wine, good skiing -- I have wonderful memories of more than 20 years in your beautiful country. So my advice to you is: Give life a chance!

Take risks. Do your best at all times, seek and give cooperation, think for yourself, study hard, play hard, work hard, and love what you are doing.
There will be peaks, and depths – that’s life – but in the long haul, if you make the right choices and obey your own instincts, I pray you will become an active young woman, doing your bit to make a safer, happier, and healthier world.

Granny Peg (will be 96 years old on October 2nd, 2006)

Accomplishing extraordinary things - CNN Hero

2008-04-29T20:52:00.008-04:00

You are so right - the amazing thing is how much ordinary people can accomplish.

Most recent example - the Cuban peasant woman, Irania, who cleaned up a dump heap and turned it into The Garden of Eden - captured on camera by CNN. Was awarded the Save the Planet $l0,000 prize. BUT our government prohibited CNN from giving the money to her - gave it to Unicef instead.

Kristi Weeks, a friend who has been to Cuba on several occasions, with delegations which included her husband and children as well) visited Guantanamo, saw the Garden, returned to St. Augustine and as owner of a highscale beauty salon pledged to raise $10,000 for Irania. Their fashion show, with her staff as producers and modelers of crazy, gorgeous, outrageous creations using only recycled material (bottle tops, plastic bags, newspaper, used computer posters, etc.) raised not $l0, not $15 but $20,000 last Sunday evening. Admission was only $25 or $35 for a reserved seat. All the rest came from donations, program ads,and auctioning off several of the dresses -- the one, fitting like a body shield, made entirely of shiny bottle tops, went for $260. Another, entirely of sheer recycled Publix plastic bags, went for $200 -- amid cheers, applause, , incredibly happy vibes.

This effort, originally, to make Baracoa a sister city, was foiled mostly by ex Cubans from Miami who came in bus loads to our City commission meetings to defeat the initiative. So my son and daughter in law, Jo and Sali, with just a few others, opted to withdraw the resolution and go for it on a people to people basis. Six years ago. Since then, there have been some three delegations to Cuba each year, 20 40-ft. containers sent down, packed with humanitarian aid, art shows, books published, concerts, and more.

Ordinary people, accomplishing extraordinary things, for ordinary people. Amazing.

Mother Superior

2008-04-28T12:49:00.001-04:00

Have you heard about the young girl from Bavaria

Who had a virginal interior

Until one night a monk

Jumped into her bunk

And now she's a Mother Superior.

What is a BILLION?

2008-04-26T20:29:00.000-04:00

A Billion - the true story about a Billion Dollars. This is too true to be very funny. The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the politicians spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in caves.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division . .

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number.

What does it mean?

A. If you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.
or
B. If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787 for repairs.
or
C. If you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Grandmothers Against the War

2008-04-25T23:18:00.002-04:00

www.kensingtonbooks.com/itm_img/0806528737.gif

This is to announce the publication of my book, "GRANDMOTHERS AGAINST THE WAR: GETTING OFF OUR FANNIES AND STANDING UP FOR PEACE," with a foreword by best-selling author, Malachy McCourt, on April 29 by Citadel Press. On that date, the book will be available in all major book stores and most independent ones. It can be pre-ordered now or at any time at amazon.com or bn.com.

The first review was published yesterday on democrats.com, afterdowningstreet.com and several other blogs, and isn't so much a testimonial for the book as it is a tribute to the peace grandmothers portrayed. Here's part of the review:

Can Grandmothers End Wars?
By David Swanson

Here is the perfect Mother's Day gift for your mother, your mother in law, your grandmothers, and in fact for the men in their lives as well - who ought to be shamed into action. Joan Wile has published a book called "Grandmothers Against the War: Getting Off Our Fannies and Standing Up for Peace." As far as I know, this is her first book. It is very much an account of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. If more people did the same, we would put an end to war.

Of course, the people in this book are extraordinary, but everyone is, and the actions that Wile recounts this group of grandmothers having taken are actions she describes as fun and exciting. If more people understood that and acted on it, we would put an end to war.

These grandmothers in New York City hold a weekly vigil against the occupation of Iraq. And they mean it. They are protesting the current proposal by the Democrats to "oppose" the occupation by throwing another $178 billion at it. Quick! Quick! Can somebody "oppose" me like that?

The grannies don't just vigil. They generate significant discussion of peace in the media through actions that have included attempting to get themselves recruited at the Times Square military recruiting office. They sat down in front, were arrested, went to trial, put the war itself on trial, and were acquitted, generating more attention all the while.

They've traveled abroad, networking with peace activists, and spreading awareness of the depth of American opposition to our government's crimes.

They've bird-dogged John McCain and Hillary Clinton. And Clinton recently gave peace activists the credit for her defeat.

They've gone to Washington and lobbied for peace. They've performed hilarious and biting song and dance routines. They've inspired and collaborated with grannies around the country and others working for peace. They've knitted stump-socks in rocking chairs in front of the Veterans Administration. If more people took similar actions, we would put an end to war and have more fun at the same time.

In case you did ever doubt that a handful of people can make a difference, that one person can make a difference: READ THIS BOOK. Then go forth and do likewise. And order a copy now for every Mother's Day present you'll need.

Incidentally, the book is very inexpensive -- $14.95 -- so it won't disrupt your budget if you want to purchase it. I can't claim to have authored the literary masterpiece of the year, in all honesty, but if you're interested in a straightforward account of the events leading up to, during and following our notorious arrest and jailing when we tried to enlist at the Times Square Recruiting Center, you'll find it in my book. It's been quite a ride.

I ALSO DISCUSS SOME OF THE NATIONAL GRANNY ACTIONS MOST OF YOU PARTICIPATED IN WITH US

Stratcom Conference

2008-04-25T23:17:00.001-04:00

By Tim Rinne & Bruce Gagnon

Admittedly, “StratCom: The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth” sounded a bit over the top for the title of a conference. But by the time the participants caught their flight home from Omaha, Nebraska last month, there wasn’t anybody disputing whether U.S. Strategic Command deserved the label.

Two hundred people from 12 countries and 28 states gathered April 11-13 at the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space 16^th Annual Space Organizing Conference to learn about this remote command in America’s heartland. And the local sponsor, Nebraskans for Peace, who for years had been fretting about what was going on in its own backyard, couldn’t have been more excited. There’d never before been an international conference specifically addressing the transformation that’s taken place at StratCom. But then, until just recently, StratCom had never before represented the threat to the world that it does now.

From the moment George W. Bush was rushed to StratCom’s underground headquarters at Offutt A.F.B. on 9/11, the U.S.’s nuclear command began to undergo what StratCom Commander General Kevin Chilton described as “not a sea-state change, but a tsunami of change” in its role and mission. In the years since 9/11, the command has seen its traditional and sole responsibility of maintaining America’s nuclear deterrent proliferate to include missions for space, cyberspace, intelligence/reconnaissance/surveillance, missile defense, full spectrum global strike, information operations and combating weapons of mass destruction.

In the blink of a strategic eye, the command has gone from being something that was ‘never supposed to be used’ (i.e. the doomsday machine) to ‘being used for everything.’ It’s gone from being putatively ‘defensive’ to overtly ‘offensive’ to become, in the words of Nebraska activists, “Dr. Strangelove on steroids.”

With now eight missions under its belt, StratCom’s fingerprints are seemingly everywhere. Though it’s almost never mentioned by name, you can hardly open a newspaper anymore without reading about one of its various machinations. Here’s a rundown:

Now charged with actively waging the White House’s “War on Terror,” StratCom is authorized to attack any place on the planet in one hour—using either conventional or nuclear weapons—on the mere perception of a threat to America’s ‘national interests.’

Through its National Security Agency “component command,” StratCom is regularly conducting the now-infamous ‘warrantless wiretaps’ on unsuspecting American citizens.

The proposed “missile defense” bases in Poland and the Czech Republic that are reviving Cold War tensions with Russia are StratCom installations under StratCom’s command.

Having conducted what it touts as “the first space war” with its “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign on Iraq, the command is now actively executing the Bush/Cheney Administration’s expressed goal of the weaponization and “domination” of space.

StratCom’s recent shoot-down of a falling satellite using its Missile Defense system, just after the U.S. had repudiated a Russian proposal banning space weapons, demonstrated the anti-satellite capability of this allegedly ‘defensive’ program and is certain to jump-start an arms race in space.

In actively promoting the development of new generations of nuclear weapons (the so-called ‘bunker-buster’ tactical nukes and the Reliable Replacement Warhead), StratCom is seeking to ensure America will wield offensive nuclear capability for the remainder of the 21^st century.

Under the White House’s “Unified Command Plan,” StratCom commands access to the hundreds of military bases around the globe and all four military service branches, while working hand-in-glove with the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

Operating like some executive branch vigilante and scofflaw, StratCom is now poised to routinely violate international law with preemptive attacks and to usurp Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war under the “War Powers Act.”

StratCom, in the words of Commander Chilton, is today “the most responsive combatant command in the U.S. arsenal”—and the next war the White House gets us into (be it against Iran or geo-political rival like China) will be planned, launched and coordinated from StratCom. In fact, Chilton recently told Congress, he believes the name actually ought to be changed to “Global Command,” to better reflect the “global” nature of its new role and mission.

This is the “New StratCom” that Nebraskans for Peace has watched materialize before its eyes. This is the enhanced threat, which the world community has no notion of whatsoever, because the changes at StratCom have occurred with the speed and power of a “tsunami.” This is the global menace the Global Network sought to expose to the international public at its conference in Omaha this past month.

And while the media coverage of the conference was minimal, the word is neverthess starting to get out nationally and internationally. Most of the people in attendance were activists, organizers and academics from all across the country and around the world. Picking up on the comment that StratCom is now a global problem, Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation stressed that addressing it will in turn require a global response. Americans, she said, can no more be expected to halt this threat than we can expect Nebraskans to do it: “It’s going to take the efforts of the world community.”

That sort of international commitment was already strongly in evidence. While the speaker from Poland was prohibited from entering the U.S. by Homeland Security, Jan Tamas of the “No To Bases Initiative” in the Czech Republic tied the proposed Star Wars radar in his country directly to StratCom. From the title of his talk alone, “StratCom is the Main Threat to Peace in the Korean Peninsula,” Ko Young-Dae, the representative from Solidarity for Peace and Reunification in Korea (SPARK), made it clear that he understood the connection to the Omaha command center. British activist Lindis Percy of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases, who regularly contends with StratCom’s presence in her homeland, sized it up perfectly with the expression, “horrid StratCom.” Similar sentiments were expressed by the German, Swedish, Indian, Japanese, Filipino, Mauritian, Italian, Romanian and Canadian participants. In country after country, an understanding the StratCom menace is starting to take hold.

The final keynote of the conference was delivered by Bishop Emeritus Thomas Gumbleton, who back in the mid-‘80s had committed civil disobedience at Offutt A.F.B. when it was still the “Strategic Air Command.” Back then, all we had to fear—and it was plenty—was nuclear holocaust. Today, the Bishop said, because of our greed for wealth and power, we now have to fear StratCom’s nuclear prowess and much more.

That greed for ever-more wealth and power had been the message of the conference’s first speaker, national Indian activist and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska member, Frank LaMere. The city of Omaha, LaMere noted, was named after the Indian Tribe of the same name that had inhabited this area for centuries and still has a reservation about an hour north of the city. The Omaha, he said, had a covenant with Mother Earth, that in return for the corn and buffalo she so generously provided them to live, they would in turn honor her by living in a good way. Never, LaMere said, when the Omaha deeded their lands to the U.S. government—without once going to war—had they ever imagined that an instrument of destruction like StratCom, capable of destroying the Earth multiple times over, would rest on their ancestral homeland, on that sacred ground.

The Omaha, he said, cannot stop what is happening today by themselves. Nor for that matter can the people of Nebraska, nor even the people of the United States. To stop what is happening at StratCom—indeed to save ourselves from our own greed and self-destruction—Americans will need, LaMere said, the help of all their relations around the world. So he was cheered, he said, to see all these relations from around the world here in Omaha, willing to help. That was good, he said. But we need to act fast. Time is getting short.

A five-minute introductory video about StratCom created by Global Network chairperson Dave Webb, who is also the Vice-Chair of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), can be viewed by clicking on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkOeUHHV1eU

- Written by Tim Rinne (Coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace) and Bruce Gagnon (Coordinator of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space)

GfP Newsletter - May 2008

2008-04-21T22:37:00.003-04:00

To all Grandparents for Peace members and friends:

Want War Waste

What do those three words mean to you? How do you relate them to each other?

They came to my mind on Saturday, April 22^nd, when I reflected on some very interesting booths I had seen at the Earth Day event in St. Augustine.

WANT:

As to be expected, there were several booths with information on social issues: the homeless, the hungry, the poor, the ill -- all disturbing examples of want, of need, of suffering. Each booth had personnel and literature describing the social agency’s program and accomplishments.

WAR:

There was a dramatic anti-war presentation on stage, beginning with a tribute to Stetson Kennedy, acclaimed author and peace activist. This was followed by an award of $500 to a graduating senior of St. Augustine High School, Leda Balch. She was the winner of an Essay Contest sponsored by three local anti-war groups, People for Peace & Justice, Grandparents for Peace and Veterans for Peace. The suggested theme for the 500 word essay was taken from a song by the popular musician and anti-war activist, Michael Franti:

“We can bomb the world into pieces,
We can’t bomb it into peace.”

The 17 year old winner read her essay (attached) which began by comparing today’s fractured world with a l000 piece jigsaw puzzle, with no picture on the cover of the box to show what the finished picture would look like. She finished on a positive note. “We, the determined youth of this day and age, will find those pieces and put them together. We will find peace.”

WASTE:

And the third dreadful word, waste. There were half a dozen booths and tables showing not just the negative but the potential for avoiding waste with energy saving, water saving, and other home appliances within our grasp. We do not need costly high tech installations. Simply turning off unnecessary lights saves electricity. Turning off unnecessary running faucets saves water. Recycling and reusing prevents waste. It behooves each one of us to stop and think and make a list of what we can do. And lastly, we should write our elected officials and ask them to sponsor legislation to provide incentives via tax reductions and subsidies for new construction and for upgrading existing homes, schools, and public buildings. These suggestions, and many others, will provide employment, boost the economy, and reduce waste, assuring a cleaner and better world for generations to come.

Calendar

The photograph of the May 2008 calendar , distributed by Syracuse Cultural Workers, is a poster of a farmer with the wording “Los Campesinos del Mundo Aplastaran La Globalizacion:” Kyang Hae Lee was one of 120 Korean famers who protested in 2003 at a World Trade Organization meeting in Mexico. He climbed to the top of a barricade and stabbed himself in the heart in profound testament to the crushing burden so-called “free trade” policies placed on the world’s small farmers. In India, Korea, China, Mexico and elsewhere they face ruin as domestic markets are forced open to imports of cheap (read subsidized) staples like cotton, rice, soybeans and corn from the European Union and the U SA. He said: “My warning goes out to all citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation…that uncontrollable multinational corporations and a small number of big World Trade Organization members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environmentally degrading, farmer-killing and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately.” Does this sound familiar ?

Thursday, May lst, according to the Peace Calendar distributed by the Syracuse Cultural Workers, is not only International Workers Day, but also May Day ,and ushers in Asian/American Awareness month, as well as Beltane (a Festival of Fertility, Wiccan and Pagan.)

In May,1830 Mary Harris (Mother Jones) was born. She was an anti-war activist, agitator, and inspirational union organizer.

In l958, President Eisenhower declared May lst Law Day in a pathetic attempt to subvert a radical labor holiday.

May 10th is World Fair Trade Day. Free trade is FAIR only to multinationals. We can’t stop corporate globalization, but we can reduce it by looking for the label and buying FAIR TRADE CERTIFIED products which combine a fair price with rigid environmental standards for farming families, thus raising the standard of living for millions of people around the world.

In 1932 on May 25^th, thousands of World War 1 veterans marched in Washington, DC, demanding promised war benefits.

This year, Monday, May 26^th, is Memorial Day. And in St. Augustine, PPJ (People for Peace and Justice), Grandparents for Peace, and Veterans for Peace, will celebrate with a silent vigil across the street from the Record. We will have a flag-draped coffin and our white wall with the names of the Floridians who have died in this infamous war in Iraq. Time to be announced. Please join us for this special vigil, and for our rallies on the first Friday May 2^nd, and the third Saturday, May 17^th, at our usual site in the Plaza della Costituzione .

Honor the warrior, not the war.

“Those wearing the uniform must know beyond any shadow of a doubt that when refusing immoral and illegal orders, they will be supported by the people, not with mere words, but by action.”

Lt. Ehren Watada, U.S.Army, Iraq War Resister

Peace to All.
Peg

Puzzle Peace by: Leda Balch

Let me start out by thanking my preceding generation. Thanks for the puzzle you will be leaving my generation to put back together.

It is too bad that we don’t know what it should look like. There is no picture on the front of the box to guide us. There is no memory of how it used to look before you decided to break the picture up and start the puzzle over again. This is because we have never seen the puzzle all together. Maybe because the “adults” that run this world never knew how to keep it together. And a few years down the road we will be inheriting this unsolvable puzzle. Or so it seems to be unsolvable considering no one has been able to find a solution to it yet.

But I am here to change all of that. My generation is constantly growing more aware of the changes that need to be made in today’s world. Awareness leads to proactivity. Proacvitity leads to change. And the motto, be the change you wish to see in the world, is becoming ever more prevalent.

The pieces of this global puzzle seem to have been misplaced underneath the sofa cushions of life. And when we should be looking for those lost puzzle pieces, we are out there starting a new puzzle. This is not right.

What are you trying to teach the young people of the world? I thought that setting a good example for the youngsters was most important. After all we will be in your shoes one day, and then what? How many new unfinished puzzles will there be for us to complete? Or will we be too preoccupied with starting our own puzzles?

You are teaching us that if something is lost it cannot be found. You are teaching us that if something is too hard, simply give up and try something else. What kind of solution is that? No solution, I’d say.

You can do, and surely are doing what you want. You can try to bomb the world to peace, but you will only created more pieces for us to pick up. You can scatter those pieces of the puzzle across the globe. You can hide those unfinished puzzles under all of your supposedly charitable organizations. But we, the determined youth of this day and age, will find those pieces. We will find all of those unfinished puzzles and put them together again. And when we put them back together the finished picture will show a healthy state of being worldwide.

So I say, children of the world UNITE! Turn over those sofa cushions! Sweep under those bookshelves! Move furniture around! Because if nothing gets turned over and swept up and moved around, nothing will ever be found.

I know it looks bleak. I know that it seems like trying to put together a one-thousand piece puzzle of a blue sky, but do not despair. We will find the pieces. We will find peace.

Founder of SERVAS passes

2008-04-21T20:11:00.001-04:00

FOUNDER OF SERVAS, WORLDWIDE PEACE ORGANIZATION, PASSES

Long before the internet, decades before Hospitality Club, Couchsurfers, and all of the other hospitality organizations, there was SERVAS, the first worldwide peace-through-hospitality network.

Founded in 1949 by WWII conscientious objector Bob Luitweiler as a way of healing some of the wounds of the war, SERVAS has quietly continued its peacemaking mission right up to the present day. Members work to break down the stereotypes and misconceptions that lead nations to fight one another, by simply visiting and getting to know members from other countries and cultures, one conversation at a time.

Earth Day 2008

2008-04-19T16:11:00.005-04:00

Indroducing Stetson Kennedy:

Stetson Kennedy was born Oct.5, 1916 in Jacksonville. He is an award=winning author and human rights activist, and is also known as a pioneering folklorist, a labor activist, and environmentalist. A prolific author, his books , distributed worldwide and translated into many languages, include Palmetto County, Southern Exposure, the Jim Crow Guide, the Klan Unmasked and After Appomatox.

As a teenager, he began collecting white and African American folklore material while he was collecting “a dollar down and a dollar a week” accounts for his father, a furniture merchant.

He left the University of Florida in 1937 to join the WPA Florida Writers Project, and soon, at the age of 21, was put in charge of folklore, oral history and ethnic studies. He was Zora Neale Hurston’s friend and boss in the WPA.

After World War II Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. Living dangerously, working undercover, he provided information, including secret code words and details of Klan rituals, to the writers of the Superman radio program and to the FBI

A Stetson Kennedy Foundation has been established, dedicated to human rights, social justice and environmental stewardship. His home at Beluthahatchee has become a museum, housing his books and papers, manuscripts and memorabilia, including guitars, letters and songs by Woodie Guthrie, a dear friend and neighbor.

Stetson Kennedy was to have presented the prize to the winning Peace Essay contest. He had an ear infection, and consequently couldn't make it.

Peg's follow-up letter to The St. Augustine Record:

I do not want to be a whiner, but I can't understand why no mention was made of the Peace Essay contest winner. Several months of effort and preparation by high school students and guidance counselors were involved. The winning essay was sent to you.

It was enthusiastically applauded when read from the stage on Earth Day at l pm by Leda Balch, l7 years old, a graduate of St. Augustine High School. She was awarded $500 by the sponsoring groups, People for Peace & Justice, Grandparents for Peace, and Veterans for Peace. She and the two young ladies who tied for 2nd place were given Certificates of Appreciation.

The suggested theme for the essay contest was taken from a song by a popular lyricist and musician, Michael Franti:

"We can bomb the world into pieces,We can't bomb it into peace."

Is that why the Record ignored this event?

Peg McIntire,
Chair Peace Essay Competition

PS You may print this as a letter to the editor, or reply to me personally.

Grandmothers hungry for peace

2008-04-18T19:52:00.001-04:00

Hello All,
Here is what happening in Chico, CA.
Peg

April 17, 2008

1000 Grandmothers are getting rockers greased, and stomachs prepared for the Close the SOA Fast which will occur on April 23-25 in the Downtown City Plaza. Fasters and supporters will be in the plaza during the hours of 10am – 3pm, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The grannies and others will be in their rocking chairs offering information about the former School of the

Americas

, collecting quilt squares, and urging citizens to call Congressional District 2 Representative Wally Herger urging him to vote for House Resolution 1707. The bill before the House budget session this summer will suspend the funding of the school until a full investigation into documented abuses is reported and acted upon.

A walk/caravan to Mr. Herger’s office at Philadelphia Square on Thursday at 11am will include the giant puppet grandmother and companions featured in the city plaza on March 15^th. Trinity Methodist Church pastor David Moss will conduct a teach-in on fasting for social justice at the Congressman’s office. Rev. Moss fasted at Mr. Herger’s office for over two weeks last fall to call attention to the injustice of the Iraq War.

The Grandmothers organized in 2006 to join the annual protest and vigil at the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia to demand the closure of a controversial school housed on the U.S. Army base. At that protest grandmother CathyWebster was arrested for trespassing and served two months in Sacramento County Jail. In a previous year, another Chico grandmother, Dorothy Parker, trespassed in protest at Ft. Benning and served two months in federal prison at Dublin, CA.

Cosmetic changes and slick public relations tactics have not addressed the fundamental issues in its deeply disturbing history, including its use of "torture training manuals" and the records of human rights abuses by many of its graduates. It remains a combat training school that provides dangerous skills to countries with serious on-going human rights problems despite attempts by the congressionally-mandated Board of Visitors to address some of the concerns that have been made over the years,” said Webster.

The School of the

Americas

, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001, is a US-taxpayer funded military training school for Latin American soldiers located in

Georgia

1000 Grandmothers is a national coalition of grandmothers and others taking direct action to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC.

For more information on the SOA/WHINSEC, visit http://www.soaw.org/

2008-04-17T22:24:00.003-04:00

If you cannot decipher anything,
then try pulling the corner of your eyes
as if you were Chinese.

Peg dining at Le Pavillon

2008-04-02T20:45:00.001-04:00

Subject: Picture of Peg dining at Le Pavillon -- March 12, 2008

Dear Jo -

Hope this reaches you.
Maybe it could be added to her "blog".
What a great human being she is!

Best,
Sally Luther.
Neumluth@aol.com

Open letter from Alice Walker

2008-03-30T19:43:00.000-04:00

Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.

March 27, 2008

I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find - because of the
presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton
race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside
the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the
Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves
just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is
a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia
plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May
Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all
white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would
never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told
by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken
skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys
would.

My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May.
They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and
processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof,
ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities
my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at
any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with
green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as
Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.

We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a
rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as
a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was
burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant
their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate
to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten
dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay
that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a
nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the
dairy cows herself.

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus
carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my
brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my
parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks
while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick.
We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and
"Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not,
as black children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started
reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had
had no idea - so kept from black people it had been - that such a
place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the
public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in
libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair,
refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early
twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents,
who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the
plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic"
right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other
black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed
to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all
too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in
the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked
to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head
were gender free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who
loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they
did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That,
for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into
the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my
way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the
other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo.
Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable
inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school
for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my
relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to
lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the
country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep
sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see
him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh
choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that
millions of Americans -black, white, yellow, red and brown -choose
Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic
to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I
thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job
required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in
any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a
remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King
was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and
are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been
trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The
change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world
that we care about people other than our (white) selves.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does
not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on
important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman
and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I
was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the
earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one
person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or
to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of
suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a
people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my
friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba,
trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher
of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and
slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want
an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be
encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of
Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior
towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States
to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All
colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the
same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the
sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to
understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But
most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to
anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It
is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is
afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are
making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in
places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who
looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish
she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a
woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One
would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less,
but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in
America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world,
did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make
her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to
person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the
world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar
their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who
would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same
image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others'
lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the
world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States.
My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in
Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is
leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have
cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office
in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and
because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including
some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over
Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces'
case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational
inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this
country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most
North American families -and only partly due to the fact that we have
Native American genes - we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the
right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for
it.

When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us
a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These
are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our
singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not
white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries,
often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black
person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage,
intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many
women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many
young and old white women and men who do.

Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three
black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none
of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom
line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of
surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with
whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other
words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with
us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share
the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi
elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of
our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race,
ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on
Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do
not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our
country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us
toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must,
individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on
helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist
that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught
us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river
has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet
Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have
been waiting for.

Namaste;

And with all my love,

Alice Walker

Sali, Jo and Peg

2008-03-26T23:06:00.002-04:00

Peg and Gloria

2008-03-26T23:05:00.003-04:00

Peg and Gloria

Cheney: "So?"

2008-03-26T20:16:00.004-04:00

Click the map to make it bigger . . .

Grannies Peace Brigades

2008-03-26T20:13:00.001-04:00

CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Enjoy the coming of spring

2008-03-21T11:43:00.002-04:00

From Renee Mintz:

Click here.

You will get a black page. Click your mouse anywhere & everywhere on the page. Better yet, click & drag your mouse over the black page.

Spring Equinox 2008

2008-03-21T08:52:00.008-04:00

Steve, Susan, Jane, Paulette, Joan, Michael, Sharon, Jennete, Tina, Sole, Peppe, Peg, Rose, Jay

5th Year Iraq War Anniversary

2008-03-20T14:14:00.005-04:00

Jerry Yoest

Terry
Peg and Gloria

GfP Newsletter March 2008

2008-03-16T15:41:00.002-04:00

Dear GFP member and supporter,

Today is Saturday, Feb. 15th, the 75th day of 2008. There are 201 days left in the year.

Did you know this is "Buzzard Day"? The day the buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio.
Trivia, yes.

But there are highlights on Feb. 15th in history: The most recent was today's funeral march that our anti-war peace groups (PPJ - People for Peace & Justice), GFP (Grandparents for Peace) and Vets for Peace) carried out on St. Augustine's busiest tourist street downtown (St. George Street) and along the Bayfront. A coffin, draped with the American flag, was carried by four black-robed persons, accompanied by solemn drumming. There were signs, of course, and flyers, and NO arrests. Tomorrow we will have the coffin and flyers about the Winter Soldier project on the sidewalk outside of the Cathedral. Hopefully NO arrests. And Wednesday evening, from 5-7, we will be at the Gazebo in the Plaza de la Costituzione
with a silent vigil reminding everyone that 5 years ago, the U.S.A. began the immoral war against Iraq -- a war not only based on lies, but continued with lies and deliberate misinformation. When will it ever end?

Some interesting historic events:

On March 15, 44 B.C Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.

On this date:

In 1493, Crhistopher Columbus returned to Spain, clncluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

In l920, Maine became the 20th state.

In 1943, President Wilson met with reporters for what has been described as the first presidential press conference.

In l956, the Lerner and Loewe musical "My Fair Lady" opened on Broadway.

In l964, Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton. It was her 5th marriage, his 2nd.

Ten years ago, Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose child care guidance spanned half a century, died in San Diego at age 94.

Five years ago, protesters in Washington, D.C. and around the world, demonstrated against plans for a war with Iraq.

One year ago, in the Senate, Republicans easily turned back Democratic legislation requiring a troop withdrawal from Iraq to begin within l20 days.

When will the Iraq war ever end?

What can you do to stop the war? Stay informed. Talk to your elected officials. Write letters to your local newspaper. Vote for Obama. He is not the perfect idealist by any means, but (in my opinion) he will do the most to slow down the military industrial complex, to convert it to environmentally sustainable production, to prevent a new arms race, and to heal our domestic and foreign policies. (Obama for America, P.O.B. 892708, Chicago, IL 60680.)

On the legislative front, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund - 501c(4) remains a priority for me. Melani Hom, the Communication & Outreach Director, says: " I challenge you to reflect on your religious and/or ethical beliefs, and begin to continue to live out what you believe as true. Through your financial support, you can help us establish vocal strength, a powerful reputation and a realistic angle to achieve our goals." (Address: 2121 Decator Place NW, Washington, DC 20008.)

Have I told you about The Smile Train? It works in desperaly poor countries, like Ethiopia, Inner Mongolia, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Peru, where hundreds of millions of families live on less than $1 a day, Working with local doctors and hospitals, the Smile Train provides free nedical equipment,\and free training. The Smile Train performs free cleft lip or palate surgery on children in these countries, where, in as little as 45 minutes, a child can be given a new smile and a life without shame and suffering. (Address: 26 Fifth Avenue, NYC, NY l0016.)

The Helen Keller Foundation Int'l is the world's foremost non-pofit organization working to prevent blindness and malnutrition. It is a heartbreaking reality that up to 500,000 children go blind each year beause of vitamin A deficiency; 70% of them die within one year of losing their sight. A child goes blind every minute; an adult every 5 seconds. Yet for only $l per year, the HKF saves sight and lives through massive community-based distribution systems.

More than 600 HKL professionals and volunteers work in 23 countries on 3 continents, reaching tens of millions of people every year. (Address: 351 Park Ave.S, NYC,NY. l00l0.)

We have had two outstanding concerts in St. Augustine. The first, a delightful husband and wife, the Castelbays. I met them last summer at the Elderhostel at Campobello. Julia plays a Celtic harp, and Fred plays guitar, fiddle, and woodwinds: "a musical journey through time and across the Atlantic, blending the timelss trad itions of Maine's nautical legacy and its poignant Celtic heritage." They will be back again next spring. Contact me if you would like them to perform in your community.

The second was the internationally famous Anne Feeney, life-long "union maid" labor and peace activist, with an absolutely unique voice and a limitless inspiring repertoire.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Ides of March, Winter Soldier, and soon -- Easter.

Peg

Ron Zamorra

2008-03-15T19:46:00.000-04:00

Photo by Joyce Petterson

2008-03-12T18:09:00.002-04:00

Click image to make it larger . . .

The FARC in Colombia

2008-03-10T11:08:00.005-04:00

The following article was written by my son. It's important to put a face on "terrorists" and understand their aspirations . . . This article was published in the St. Augustine Record:

The FARC in Colombia

The struggle in Colombia began in the late 1940s when a popular group stood up to the Colombian oligarchy and the corrupt military dictatorship that perpetuated the interests of Colombia’s ruling class.

After a cruel civil war, the rebels, together with dissident members of the Liberal and Communist parties, established their own independent republics deep in the south of the country where they established peaceful, communal, peasant-based settlements founded on socialist ideology.

It was only after 1964, when the US-Colombian military waged a devastating napalm attack against them that the survivors expanded their agenda into a nationwide Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) to defend its communities, its schools, judicial system, health care, and agrarian economy.

In 1984, Colombian President Betancur initiated cease-fire negotiations based on recognition of the FARC as a legitimate political party, the Unión Patriótica. The political goal was to lead Colombia to a peaceful democratic juncture independent of neo-liberal and imperialist expansion. Peace accords were signed.

The Patriotic Union party espoused anti-corruption policies, harsh penalties against narco-traffickers, and progressive land and economic reforms. But, as they won more municipal and national elections, its members became targets of right-wing death squads and paramilitary organizations that incorporated counter-insurgency strategies. Since 1984, at least 5,000 Unión Patriótica members, including presidential candidates, mayors, and legislators, were murdered or disappeared. The consequence was the formation of a broad-based, national, clandestine movement, "Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia." And yes, they held hostages as shields. The aggressors had satellite surveillance, drones, fighter aircraft, night vision, communications, napalm, etc.: they were poor farmers with barely a pair of shoes. Holding hostages was their only hope of survival.

When Colombian President Andrés Pastrana offered the insurgents a land deal in 1998, the FARC released several hundred hostages. But at the end of the day, the negotiations went nowhere: peace talks grew increasingly more frustrating and desperate FARC fighters carried out a series of brutal attacks.

President Uribe, President of Colombia since 2002, is one of the best friends and partners the U.S. has in South America. His hard line against the FARC is portrayed by Washington as a bulwark for democracy. After Afghanistan and Iraq, Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. counterinsurgency aid. Uribe has consistently set unacceptable peace terms and has ratcheted up offensive military actions. Colombia's insurgency war is now in its forty-third year, with no end in sight.

Rather than lump the FARC into that vague group of “terrorists,” I would suggest that we might be on a road to peace if we would recognize the FARC as a legitimate revolutionary group with a political agenda. Political conflict cannot be resolved by simply bombing and demonizing the other side. Dialogue is the only way to bring this movement into the democratic process.

Jo visited Venezual in January and February of this year. On his return he documented his imprssions of the Bolivarian Revolution and U.S. policy in the area in a comprehensive report that can be found here.

Anne Feeney and Tom Santoni

2008-03-08T18:08:00.001-05:00

At the UU:

The concert was sponsored by Amnesty International, the St. Augustine Peace and Justice Association, Veterans against the Iraq War - and Grandparents for Peace.

The first song sung was dedicated to Peg.

Samson had long hair

2008-03-06T22:56:00.000-05:00

A Rabbi's son had just gotten his driving permit. He asked his father about use of the family car.

His father said, "I'll make a deal with you. You bring your grades
up, study your Talmud a little, get your hair cut and then we'll talk
about it."

After about a month, the boy came back and again asked his father
about his use of the car. The rabbi said, "Son, I am very proud of you. You
have brought your grades up, you've studied the Talmud diligently, but you didn't get your hair cut."

The young man replied, "You know Dad, I've been thinking about that.
You know Samson had long hair, Moses had long hair, Noah had long hair,
and even Jesus had long hair."

The Rabbi said, Yes, and everywhere they went, they walked".

Alberto Jones

2008-03-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

WE'LL TRY!

2008-03-03T14:48:00.000-05:00

If this world survives, and every other day I think it might,
In good part it will be because of the great souls in our community.

There are a lot of them.

I've seen them walk in lonely thousands down a city's streets,
Or hand out leaflets in the rain, or turn the handle of a print machine, or empty their pockets as the plate comes by,
or gaze into the camera's eye.

And answer the question: "Will the world survive?"
And they have said, "We’ll try. "We'll try."

Thanks to Wendy Clarissa Geiger for sending us this inspiring message from Malvina Reynolds.
Live and Love,
Peg

Some oldies

2008-03-03T13:35:00.003-05:00

Obama party - March 2

2008-02-27T10:50:00.003-05:00

Hi Friends!

We just signed up to host a "Yes We Can" Obama party run by MoveOn.org Political Action.

Sunday, 2 Mar 2008, 4:00 PM

We'll be reminding Texas voters about the critical Democratic primary on March 4, which could decide the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
This event is really important, and I'd love for you to attend.

Bring your cell phone, charger and something to eat/drink!
This is a fun-raiser not a fund-raiser!

You can sign up for the "Yes We Can" Obama party we're hosting, or to host your own, at: http://political.moveon.org/event/callforobama/44474

Here are the details of the event:

Yes, we can/ Si', se puede!
A.1.A. South, one mile south of Anastasia Publix
4600 A.1.A. South, 21,
Village Las Palmas Circle
St Augustine,, FL 32080
Tel 904 806 1400

We hope you'll sign up.
Peg/Jo/Sali McIntire

Castlebay - and Celtic Music

2008-02-24T12:35:00.003-05:00

Peg met Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee, musicians from the Celtic tradition, when she was a Campobello (Bay of Fundy) last summer while on an Elderhostal trip.

Her enchantment with them resulted in a visit during which they performed at the Ocean Gallery Condominium, Flagler College, and the Center for Positive Living.

The concerts drew enthusiastic audiences.

Peg is on the up and up . . .

2008-02-23T18:29:00.007-05:00

After her heart atack (see January 31 below), Peg is back. She's now able to get around on her own again. She's recuperated much better and faster than the doctors had predicted despite the fact that her heart is only operating at about 30% capacity.

Her heart attack was very stressful to her roommate, Judy, who has since left and will be replaced shortly.

The good news is that Hospice has accepted Peg!

Hospice provides a truly incredible service. The best part is that they offer all kinds of wonderful services - and they come to her! For example, as well as other support, she'll have a nurse aid help her with showers etc., and she'll have a nurse visit her at least once a week for the rest of her life to make sure her medications are what they should be and that she's as well as possible!

I just want to say again how grateful Sali and I are to all of you for loving Peg as you do!

Please Speak Up

2008-02-16T19:12:00.000-05:00

"Please Speak Up"
by Sybil Bayles,
University Friends Meeting (Seattle, WA), 1994

O Friend who mumblest when thee speaks
We urge, we beg, entreat you
Shriek
Rather than have one precious word be lost
Be sure, when thou art moved to speak
Thou wilt be held
In light
Endearing
By those of us with
Impaired hearing

2008 War Tax Boycott

2008-02-14T12:47:00.001-05:00

From: Robert Randall

Tax season 2008 has arrived.

January brings W-2s, 1099s and 1040s to our doorsteps. It’s time to register for the 2008 War Tax Boycott and bring notice of our resistance to the steps of the White House and Congress. The earlier we register our resistance, the more we will inspire others to join us. The earlier we register our redirection, the better we can plan for the public display our priorities. It only takes a few moments. Just go to www.wartaxboycott.org.

This Year, Together We Can Defund the War

It’s time for taxpayers who oppose this war to join together in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. We can show Congress how to cut off the funds for the Iraq war and occupation and deny funds for any possible assault on Iran. Instead, let’s redirect our taxes to the needs of people.

How do we register and prepare to take this stand?

Our strength is in numbers. Our numbers depend on taking steps now to be ready to act together in April 2008. Go to the website or call to explore steps to get started in war tax resistance, examine the likely consequences, and join with others. Whether the amount you refuse is large or small, or if you choose to reduce your taxes by legal means, you can register your resistance as part of the 2008 War Tax Boycott.

Where will we redirect our resisted taxes?

This 2008 war tax boycott will release resources from the war and redirect them to two designated projects providing desperately needed healthcare services to Iraqi refugees and Katrina survivors. You can also choose your own project.

Who is promoting this act of conscience?

Code PINK, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, the Nonviolent Direct Action Working Group of United for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and War Resisters League are assisting with the promotion of this campaign, which was initiated by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

“If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year,
that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them
and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Henry David Thoreau, during Mexican-American War of 1846-48

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
1-800-269-7464

In hospital again

2008-01-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

Peg has been admitted to the hospital again.

Judy called me last night the 29th shortly before 8:00 P.M. She was shot of breath clammy bad color and chest pain.

The long and short is a minor congestive heart failure indicated by elevated enzymes of some sort. Cardiologist saw her this morning and indicated that her heart was not pumping efficiently and fluid was backing up and draing to her lungs. They have her on a diuretic lasix to get rid of the fluid and she is now stabilized with better color and comfortable.

Gloria came down to help explain as best she knew and the nursing staff has been helpful as in the past.

No room upstairs as of noon so still in holding room down in emergency.

So that is briefly the situation now will try to contact again later. No room phone right now but have her cell and mine

Love
Jay

Typing the wrong email address

2008-01-26T12:44:00.001-05:00

from Renee

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel plans. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing his error, sent the email.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister who was called home to glory following a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My loving wife

Subject: I've arrived

I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. I've just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then. Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. sure is freaking hot down here!!!!!

Martin Luther King Day 2008

2008-01-21T10:13:00.000-05:00

These are words from Barack Obama for MLK day:

"And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.

"We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

"Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

"So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others -- all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face -- war and poverty; injustice and inequality.

"We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

"Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts. "

2008-01-19T21:49:00.002-05:00

Elders who attended the Luncheon at UNF's Peace Week in October 2007

Lloyd Pearson, Stetson Kennedy, John X, Willye Dennis, Henri Landwirth, Peg McIntire, Bob Ragland
- photo by Susan D. Brandenburg

Terry with Peg

2008-01-19T16:32:00.001-05:00

GfP Newsletter - January 2008

2008-01-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

Dear GFP member and friend (maybe you'll join this go around)

2007 : It's history
2008 : It's up to us

Our protests, our demands, our tax money, our votes will determine the future.

I said 2007 was gone, but it cannot be forgotten. It never will be, because some terrible things occurred for the first time, and some terrible things continued, and some never happened at all. But, more importantly, some good things happened and should be recognized.

Finally there is a strong possibility that a woman or a black man might become president!

Despite the lack of media support, the demand for impeachment grew phenomenally. (I have found Kucinick and Wexler the strongest advocates.)

Death by legal injection was abolished in New Jersey, and the issue is being studied in a number of other states.

The old slogan "Think globally; Act locally" took on greater significance in the USA and in many other countries, where local peace and justice groups flexed their muscles, pressured their representatives, and got results!

Grandparents for Peace members were wonderfully active throughout the year. They worked with and gave financial support to state and national organizations, including ACLU, the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice, Amnesty International, Southern Poverty Law Center, Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Veterans for Peace, the SOA Watch, the Baracoa-St. Augustine Friendship Association, and more.

GFP members in St. Augustine frequently attended City and County Commission meetings, worked with and gave financial assistance to PPJ (People for Peace & Justice), CIA (Citizens in Action), the St. Francis House (for homeless), Betty Griffin House (for abused women), Council on Aging, the Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity, PUSH (People United to Stop Homelessness), and more.

Together with PPJ and Vets for Peace, we held 1st and 3rd Saturday morning anti-war vigils all year long at the foot of the Bridge of Lions. We held several special events in the Plaza, including Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Tax Day and Constitution Day.

Representing GFP, I went to Miami to attend a Florida Coalition event, an art exhibit of a fabulous anti-war mural by Vietnamese artist, Anna Huong. I was thrilled to see the same mural later, this time at the University of North Florida, in Jacksonville. I represented GFP at the Florida Coalition Convocation in St. Petersburg; at a Pax Christi gathering in Gainesville with Bishop Gumbleton; at several Wage Peace events in Jacksonville, at Bridges Across Borders in Gainesville; at the SOA, Ft. Benning,GA, where I walked and wailed with hundreds of white-kerchiefed Grannies and my beautiful wounded baby doll.

Finally, at a fitting end-of-the-year gathering at Crooked River State Park, St. Marys, GA, some of us sneaked off to Cumberland Island (to visit the Carnegie estate and see the wild horses), but returned in time for the communal banquet. Some 50 or 60 peace activists came from N.E. Florida and Georgia to share their food and stories. This was followed by the traditional candle-lit walk to Kings Bay Naval Base, home to some dozen vicious Trident Submarines.

Personally, in January I had 10 glorious days in Hawaii (I loved the lava); then there were a few difficult months until I recovered enough to visit Bruce and Mary Beth for a busy week in Maine, followed by a lovely week with Elderhostel at Campobello, Bay of Fundy (where I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the summer home of Eleanor and FDR (both of them have long been my heroes) exploring the lighthouses, seeing whales, and meeting the residents of the community. I always recommend an Elderhostel vacation. I went again to the Peanut Festival in Plains, GA, and again enjoyed Jimmy Carter's Sunday School lesson. This year, though, either his health or his security guard prevented his playing the traditional baseball game: but he threw the opening pitch.

It's fun living in St. Augustine. Lots of concerts (the pier, the plaza, the college and home concerts) Lots of art and archeology. I work Mondays at the Candle Shop, I tape oral histories of the clients of the Council on Aging on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Wednesday and Friday afternoons I play duplicate bridge. Sundays I go to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which has interesting programs, a good Social Concerns Committee, and feeds us fabulously on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

The year 2008 is off to a great start. Together with PPJ and Vets for Peace we did a die-in on St. George Street one Saturday, and put up a clothesline with Bush's Dirty Laundry on another. We plan to host Anne Feeney. We will be participating in the MLK events. This week we will launch our Peace Scholarship Competition - 500Words = $500. The essay theme is from Michael Franti's song: "You can bomb the world into pieces. You can't bomb it into peace." We are helping plan Earth Day, April l9, and the Gamble Rogers Music Festival in May.

Which brings me to a reminder that dues are due. $l5 for an individual, $25 for a family.

Checks should be made out and mailed to Grandparents for Peace, 21 Village Las Palmas Circle, St. Augustine, FL, 32080. Thanks in advance.

Perhaps you would like a financial report before writing your check. Here goes:

Opening balance, Jan. 2007 $161.69
+ Dues & Contributions l,685.00
- News letters, donations, misc. 1,539.40
Closing balance, Dec. 2007 $ 307.29

Commitments: $50 Earth Day, $50 Scholarship Fund. $25 Anne Feeny, $50 reserve fund.

If anyone of you wants a detailed itemized report, don't hesitate to ask. Transparency is the name of the game.

2008! Make it a good one. For yourselves and for every living creature, every where.

Peg

Peg speaking to youth in Jacksonville "truth-in"

2008-01-14T00:07:00.000-05:00

97 yr-old Peg McIntire, life time peace activist and founder of St. Augustine Grandparents for Peace, spoke at an anti-recruitment/truth-in-recruitment rally in Jacksonville, FL.
Listen to her speech here.

St. Augustine Landfill

2008-01-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

From: Peg McIntire
To: letters@staugustinerecord.com

Letter to the Editor:

The spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.was alive and well at the recent meeting to protest a landfill on Riberia Street. Ed Slavin termed it "environmental racism". St. Paul's AME Church on King Street was "standing room only".

The issue has been covered in the press at previous meetings and on several occasions. But I found this last meeting more intense and more constructive. At least a dozen concerned St. Augustine citizens, not only the residents of Lincolnville, spoke out intelligently and passionately, demanding that the City of St Augustine "do the right thing"... cancel the planned project (presently at a standstill) It was exciting to see democracy at work. It was inspiring to close the evening singing "We Shall Overcome."

Peg McIntire
Member of PPJ (People for Peace & Justice)
Director of GFP (Grandparents for Peace)
Tel. 471 1986

"Looking into the future"

2008-01-12T17:43:00.000-05:00

Peg, here is a picture of you and my daughter at the Kaltenekker's xmas party. It was such a good pic that I felt you should have a copy. I would call it "Looking into the future".

LEDA N PEG XMAS 07

Yours,
Bob Balch

Quiche

2008-01-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are having breakfast at the White House. Theattractive waitress asks Cheney what he would like, and he replies, "I'd like abowl of oatmeal and some fruit."

"And what can I get for you, Mr. President?"

George W. looks up from his menu and replies with his trademark wink andslight grin, "How about a quickie this morning?"

"Why, Mr. President!" the waitress exclaims, "How rude! You're starting to act like President Clinton,"and the waitress storms away.

Cheney leans over and whispers to Bush... "It's pronounced 'quiche'."

Grandmothers Against the War

2008-01-04T14:20:00.000-05:00

I hope Peg included mention of Love, Grandma: Activists Write in her blog. I feel sure she is our oldest author in the book, with a fine letter. The book is available on line from our publisher, lulu.com

Please pass on the best wishes of our group, Grandmothers Against the War. We're in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Health, happiness and peace in this new year for Peg and her family.

Shirley Van Bourg
Grandmothers Against the War

Bush's Dirty Laundry Protest

2008-01-04T12:22:00.000-05:00

St. Augustine, FL/1-4-08
The monthly Friday night protest took place at the Plaza.

John Vandemburg

The flag in the background is at half mast for a soldier from St. Augustine killed in Iraq.Sgt. Bryan Tutten, 33, died when a roadside bomb hit his squad in Iraq on Christmas Day.

submitted by:
people4peacejustice@gmail.com
Marilyn Bagdonas
St. Augustine, FL
32086
marstans@hotmail.com

GfP Newsletter - Christmas 2007

2007-12-23T00:29:00.000-05:00

1. THANKS and GREETINGS

Without your support, Grandparents for Peace could not exist. Forgive the collective thanks and greetings, but please know that each one of you is very dear to me. And I wish each of you a happy, healthy, adventure-filled New Year.

2. I think you know that for the last two years, I have been volunteering and taping oral histories at the Council on Aging. Yesterday I distributed 125 Hug Coupons. Now here is one for you!

"A hug has...

No moving parts, no batteries, no monthly payments and no fees.
It is inflation-proof and non-taxable. In fact, it is quite relaxing.

It can't be stolen, won' t pollute, One size fits all, will not dilute
It uses little energy, but yields results tremendously.

Your circulation corrects, without unpleasant side effects.
It's the best prescription drug. There's nothing like a simple hug.

AND OF COURSE IT IS FULLY RETURNABLE!

The above coupon entitles bearer to One Free Hug, redeemable from any participating human being.

3. CONTRATULATIONS

Irania Martinez Garcia of Guantanamo, Cuba, received a CNN Heroes award in the "Defending the Planet" category. She transformed a toxic dump in her hometown into an eco-friendly "Garden of Eden". Her name and project were submitted by the St. Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association, with which my son and daughter-in-law, Jo and Sali, have been intimately involved.

4. KUDOS TO GRANNIES

Especially to those who participated in or supported the white-kerchiefed grannies at the SOA (School of the Americas/Assassins) Watch demonstration at Fort Benning, GA. We were a very visible group and I think impacted strongly on the attendees, particularly the youth.

5. ACTIONS and EVENTS

In November, GFP and PPJ (our local People for Peace & Justice) executed a dramatic die-in on St. Augustine's most traveled tourist street, St. George. In December, together with PPJ, we did effective street theatre with two members dressed as Bush and Cheney. Next month we will have a clothesline art exhibit entitled "Bush's Dirty Laundry" with a host of signs and boxer shorts.

New Year's weekend,, GFP will be celebrating together with activists from all over Florida and many from nearby Georgia, at Crooked River State Park, St. Mary's, GA. This is the site of the largest Trident Submarine Base. After a communal banquet, from 9-11 on New Year's Eve we hold a 3-mile candle-lit walk from the town's center to the naval base, then chant, pray and dance around a small fire to bring in the New Year. Our goal is to transform the military facility into a Peace University.

On January 3rd, GFP (together with the Social Concerns Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship) will present Bruce Gagnon, the founder and director of Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Andy Johnson, who hosts a progressive radio talk show in Jacksonville, will be MC and facilitator of the question and answer period, and Catherine Archer, guitarist and vocalist, will sing "The Sound of Silence" and "Imagine".

6. SCHOLARSHIP

GFP and PPJ are offering a $500 scholarship to a graduating high school senior. The suggested essay theme is taken from a song by Michael Franti..."You can bomb the world into pieces but you can't bomb it into peace." The award will be presented on the stage of the newly renovated Amphitheatre on Earth Day.

7. CHRISTMAS BY THE NUMBERS

Are we a religiously pluralistic society? According to a poll conducted by Newsweek and reported in Folio last week, 85% of Americans identify themselves as Christian (63% Protestant and 22% Catholic) , Jews and Muslims each make up 1% ( perhaps a little more with updated polling, 4% did not designate their religion and 6% profess to believe in nothing, So in order to be politically correct, we should all wish the majority of our fellow Americans a Merry Christmas -- and all the rest a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Bid al Adha, Bodhi Day, Zarathishi Diso, Winter Solstice, Human Light and Epiphany.

To each of you, again, my thanks and very best wishes.

LET THERE BE PEACE.

Peg

At her work place - the Candle Shop

2007-12-20T19:55:00.000-05:00

With Paul Hebers

2007-12-20T19:51:00.000-05:00

Peg with Paul Hebers

Peg Dec 2007

2007-12-15T17:30:00.000-05:00

Kids video takes 3rd place in Florida

2007-12-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

Peg helped my students out a few years ago by acting in a video we made for a big competition (we came in 3rd in the entire state!).

They still talk about her.

Check out our own Ms Peg, the movie star at:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HtHrpMAhQsw

Leslie Caulfield

Inspiration

2007-12-11T16:15:00.000-05:00

Dear Peg,

Thank God for you and all you do to inspire us to greater eforts to be peaceful people. We really treasure your news letters.

Peace andlove,

Bobbire

Make some noise - Rattle your chains

2007-12-11T13:21:00.000-05:00

MAKE SOME NOISE - RATTLE YOUR CHAINS

While just in Florida we took a one-day side trip to St. Augustine to visit our dear friend Peg McIntire. Peg just turned 97 and remains active in the peace movement. The photo above is her at this year's School of the Americas demonstration at Fort Benning in Georgia.

The day we visited Peg she had spent the morning surveying the public in front of the public library on homeless issues. She told us that a few days before she had gone north to Jacksonville to speak at a rally and in October she had travelled to Orlando to address a big anti-war event.
I've known Peg for at least 20 years and she has become like a second mother to me. For many years she served as the Treasurer of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice which I coordinated for many years. She has been a loyal member and supporter of the Global Network since its creation and has been arrested doing civil disobedience at the space center in Florida numerous times.

Peg, in addition to all her other activities, still ably coordinates her chapter of Grandparents for Peace.

As I write this the Congress is working on a new funding bill for the Iraq occupation and the war in Afghanistan. Once again it is likely that the Democrats will talk big about ending the occupation and then in the end roll over and give Bush the money he wants.

The money that is being wasted on war making is just mind blowing. Just days ago we heard that the Pentagon has lost $1 billion in Iraq. How could that happen except for outright stealing or handing the money over to the "enemy" so they can buy more weapons on the black market thus giving the U.S. a "good excuse" to stay in Iraq because it is such a mess.

Now a new story has come out saying that the Army is undertaking a $200 billion modernization program (called Future Combat Systems) to make all their forces "net-centric". According to an article in the Washington Post, "The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say."
In real terms double or triple that cost estimate and you get an idea how much of your money will be thrown down the rat hole on this one. What happened to all the fiscal conservatives? Hell, they are getting rich off this stuff.

Today, the Army program involves more than 550 contractors and subcontractors in 41 states and 220 congressional districts, a wide dispersal of Department of War funds that generates political subservience.

Ok, so what does Peg have to do with the Army's Future Combat Systems program? What is the connection?

First, I'd say that Peg's life indicates that we have to be committed to our resistance work as a lifetime goal. We can't just dabble in it as a sideline. Age is not a ticket out of the struggle. Peg is in this for the revolutionary change that is needed.

Secondly, we have to understand that just writing letters or showing up a demonstrations is not enough. Sometimes we have to step across the line at our non-violent actions and go to jail if need be. You can imagine the attention she gets when she takes such a step and gets arrested. In Florida she is a legend.

Lastly, I'd say we can learn from Peg that a sense of joy, hopeful expectation, and wonder is important to maintain as we do our work. She is never naive but is always ready to embrace the unexpected. She reaches deep into people just by her own unwavering steadiness. Peg, unlike me, does not preach. She just sets an example by her actions and her life.

Zillions of people have told Peg "I want to be just like you when I grow up."

I am one of those people.

Bruce K. Gagnon
CoordinatorGlobal Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
Email: globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (Blog)

Please mark your calendars: A POSITIVE VISION

2007-12-10T10:54:00.000-05:00

Bruce Gagnon, founder and coordinator of Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, will speak at the UU Fellowshp on Thursday, January 3rd, at 7 pm.

Gagnon has traveled to and spoken in England, Germany, Mexico, Canada, France, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, Australia, Scotland, Wales, Greece, Japan and India. He has addressed thousands in churches and college campuses. He has written for numerous magazines, hosted many cable TV shows, and is presently working to update his book "Come Together Right Now. "

The logo of Global Network is "Keep space for Peace...not for War."

Gagnon will bring news and views of our space program - inventions and experiments, cost and threats - and this will lead to a discussion of the Iraq-Iran situation. Even more importantly, Gagnon promises to conclude with a positive transformative vision for the future.

Gagnon combines a great deal of technological information with a down-to-earth spirtuality, respect for humanity and love for the planet.

Following the talk there will be time for discussion, and time to enjoy refreshments.

The event is co-sponsored by the Social Concerns Committee of the UU Fellowship and Grandparents for Peace, St. Augustine. There is no admission charge but a donation will be requested.

For further information, Internet www.space4peace.org,

or
Peg McIntire, phone 904 471 1986..
Member , Social Concerns Committee of UU Fellowship
Coordinator, Grandparents for Peace, St Augustine

2007-12-05T20:26:00.000-05:00

Dear Poems People,

Today's offering I dedicate to Poems Person Peg McIntire and all Grandmothers for Peace (of which I'm an honorary member).

Actually, Peg's chapter is Grandparents for Peace, since Peg likes men. Peg's our beloved 97 year old indefatigable European American Peace activist and union organizer dwelling in St. Augustine, FL, just south of Jacksonville. Peg's brother, Jo, fought and died in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. In the 1980's, Peg was driving us back from a Southern Life Community gathering (folks in the Southeast US who say no! to nuclear weapons and, especially, the nearby Trident submarines and missiles at Kings Bay, St. Marys, GA), and I sang to her: "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me...." A special time. If you participate in the annual School of the Americas Watch demonstrations, you've heard Peg speak.

In the Struggle,
Wendiferous

"Weary of Weeping"
by Pearl Tilton

I am weary of weeping.
I am tired of weeping for young men and women
Cut down before they have fulfilled their life's promise.
In World War II, I wept for brothers and classmates and neighbors.
In Korea, I wept for nephews and the husbands and sweethearts of younger women.
In Vietnam, I wept for contemporaries of my son.
Between wars I have wept for civil rights workers who laid their lives on the line
For their ideals and were trampled and reviled by the ignorant dupes of the demagogues.
I have wept for the Kennedys and for the Kings and for the fear and hate and ignorance that brought them down.
Today, I weep for the world's leaders and followers who will not acknowledge that peace and good-will are superior to war and violence.
I am growing old and weary of weeping.

Jay and Jo

2007-12-05T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sexual Relations

2007-12-05T09:14:00.000-05:00

2007-12-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

Dearest Peg,

A simple Thank You is not adequate in expressing my gratitude to you for taking the time to
participate in our event yesterday. Just your presence added such validity to the cause but
your words of wisdom were the hallmark of the rally.

I am truly in awe of your spirit. Your shining example of strength and determination in fighting
for justice is an inspiration to all who meet you. It is an honor to have you in my circle.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Thank you for all that you do.

In peace,
Glenda

Hello Peg...

2007-12-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

Hello Peg,

I received the newspaper clipping that you mailed to me...thank you. It was a really great tribute to you and your years of work.

Carol and I were talking on the way home from SOA about the times when we think we are getting to old to do some things. We both agreed that we think of how Peg is always going and doing in so many places...we agreed that you are our inspiration.

Let's keep it up!

Take care and have a great week-end.

Love & Peace,
Ken

December 1 2007 in Jacksonville

2007-12-01T08:01:00.000-05:00

Pictures from Terry and Carol

Dear Father Roy

2007-11-22T02:45:00.000-05:00

Dear Father Roy,

I am 97 years old, one of l,000 Grannies, founder and director of Grandparents for Peace, St. Augustine (which is an affiliate ofGrandmothers for Peace, Int'l, based in California).

I have been at more than a dozen SOA gatherings. (One of the first times, I even worked in your small office for 3 or 4 weeks prior to the event.)

Thank you for sending the Monday newspaper. The picture was already imprinted on my mind, because I was right next to you and Rep. Kucinich at the fence, when you were comforting Adriana Bartow. .

Last year it was at my suggestion that the l,000 Grannies adopted the white kerchief. I had just returned from Argentina and had walked with the grandmothers in the Plaza there. You may even remember that I spoke from the platform and explained the diaper significance last year.

I am back in St. Augustine but my eyes are still enjoying the reds and browns of the indigenous people at the demonstration. My ears still hear the chanting and singing and wailing. My heart beats with the cadence of the funeral procession. My brain is still struggling to absorb the information from the workshops. I was happy to see Rep. Kucinich for the first time. Being Jewish, I was especially happy to hear and see Rabbi Lerner again. And you -- you don;'t seem a day older - a day less dedicated -

Thank you for being you - and for inspiring all of us!

Peg McIntire
Grandparents for Peace
21 Village Las Palmas
St. Augustine, Fl 32080
email pegmcintire@bellsouth.net

This Year's First Christmas Joke

2007-11-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates.

"In honor of this holy season" Saint Peter said,"You must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven."

The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. "It represents a candle", he said.
"You may pass through the pearly gates" Saint Peter said.

The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, "They're bells."
Saint Peter said "You may pass through the pearly gates".

The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women's panties.
St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And just what do those symbolize?"
The man replied, "These are Carol's."

And So The Christmas Season Begins......

Peg at the SOA 2007

2007-11-20T04:14:00.001-05:00

I can't find words to describe the SOA weekend - the passion, the drama, the intensity - joy and grief, dancing or slow marching in a funeral processiomn led by Father Roy and Rabbi Lerner, with 20 black coffins, 80 black-robed, chalk white-faced coffin carriers, and 30 or more black robed mourners -- closely followed by several hundred white-kerchiefed grannies, many of whom hugged and rocked and wailed for their broken and wounded baby dolls - then thousands and thousands of celebrants, priests, sisters, students, union members, Code Pink, Women in Black, indigenous folks from every Central and South American country, many in native garb.

Their stories were all the same - torture, suffering, loss of dignity, denial of human rights, poverty - the never ending struggle - so much of this due to their own countrymen, trained at this infamous School of the Americas.

Eleven noble activists crossed the line, were arrested, and face from 6 months to a year in a federal prison.

I have been to l0 or 12 of the l9 SOA demonstrations. (The first was 19 years ago, and there were Father Roy Bourgeouis and nine others. This year there were upwards of 20,000.)

Each year the number and the scope of workshops, seminars, videos and concerts increases. Each year the creativity and talent and energy increases. Each year I am overwhelmed, and energized, my tote bag stuffed with literature, my ears with rhetoric, my eyes with the many reds and browns of indigenous people.

Each year I vow to go again and to bring with me more people to share this incredible experience of solidarity.

GfP Newsletter - November

2007-11-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

November 11, 2007

Dear GFP members and friends,

In one way I can't believe 2007 is so close to ending. In another way, I can hardly wait for 2008 to begin. IT HAS TO BE BETTER! Maybe the occupation of Iraq will be greatly diminished. Maybe the threat of war on Iran will die out. Maybe a Democratic administration will enact laws to help the homeless, the uninsured, and the unemployed. Maybe the culture of our society will transform itself from one of violence to one of non-violence. Maybe we, the people, will take back our civil liberties.

Is that too much to hope for? Too much to strive for? I don't think so. We have been angry too long. Now its time for us to change our ANGER into ACTION.

I am proud of our organization, GRANDPARENTS FOR PEACE, and proud to be an affiliate of GRANDMOTHERS FOR PEACE. Every day, several times a day in fact, my Email brings updates about our participating in the upcoming SOA event, the weekend Nov. 16-18, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Some 20,000 peace activists from across the nation, and from Central and South America, will demand that the infamous military School of the Americas (now euphemistically called Western Hemisphere for Security Cooperation) be closed. I will be going with Renee Mintz and Judy Schekel. I’m looking forward to seeing the white-kerchiefed 1,000 grannies. Join us. If you can't come, write or phone your Congressmen. The governments of Venezuela, Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay have all announced that they will no longer send students to rain at the school of the Americas… Bolivia looks set to cut its ties with the school, as does Ecuador.

I am proud of our local PPJ (People for Peace & Justice) who have vigiled every first Saturday for more than six years. Yes, we began before the war, in an effort to keep it from happening. In recent months we have added a vigil on every third Saturday.

We've delivered our anti-war message at several large rallies and numerous holiday events, including Christmas and Easter parades, Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day. This coming Sunday, Veterans Day, we will wear black, gather the Gazebo in the Plaza, then stage a die-in on St. George Street. The following day, again in black, we will hold a funeral procession at the entrance of the Flagler College Auditorium prior to the concert, "Tribute to Veterans". This bit of street theater is not to entertain, but to HONOR those who have lost their lives not only in the current war, but in past wars as well. Our mission is to promote peace. Grandparents for Peace works with People for Peace & Justice and Veterans of America toward this end. Members include Gina Burrell,Stetson & Sandra Kennedy, Mary Lawrence, Renee Mintz, Diana Smith, Judy Sharpe, Ron & Mary Lee Zamora, and others.

Since my last letter, I was asked to represent GFP at several events. An unusual one was a Council of Elders luncheon at North Florida University in Jacksonville. John Linnehan and Stetson Kennedy were also invited. Student activists asked questions about each of our peace activities and organizing techniques. They all expressed surprise that we had pursued peace-making for so many years, that we had not gotten discouraged, or burnt out.

On October 24th several GFPers attended the regional anti-war demonstration in Orlando. Among these were Mary Claire, Al Geiger, June Aplen, Nancy & David, Bernie Welsh, and Rita Lucey. Keynote speaker was former Democratic Sen. Gravel from Alaska, a presidential candidate who was eliminated from a recent Democratic debate by BBC (owned by General Electric) because he had not raised enough campaign money. He spoke out against the corruption in both parties and the need for financial and judicial reform. I called for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney.
The crowd was particularly responsive to my reporting how Florida taxpayers could have provided health care to four MILLION people, eight Million homes with renewable electricity could have been constructed, and two HUNDRED THOUSAND music and arts teachers could have been employed in Florida schools -l -- had we not squandered that same amount of money in this disastrous war in Iraq. "Democracy and freedom are a sham when adequate education, affordable housing, and quality health care are less important than bombs and missiles."

At a Pax Christi retreat in Gainesville, Bishop Gumbleton spoke fervently against all war, saying that there was no such thing as a "just" war, and urged all of us to pray and act for reconciliation, reconstruction, and world community. It was wonderful to see Phyllis Jepson, the Mazurs, the Fuchs, Connie, Marilyn Elsen, and so many other GFP members and supporters at this annual event.

On that same day, Annette, Lois, Alice, Judy, Renee and other GFPers attended the Florida Democratic Convention at Disney World. Unfortunately no presidential candidate bothered to come because our delegates to the National Convention will not be allowed to vote (due to the Republican-engineered early January primary).

As the holiday season approaches, our thoughts turn to gifts, I have two suggestions. The first is a donation to the HEIFER PROJECT. A twenty dollar gift certificate will buy a chicken for a family in Kenya. The second is a subscription to SUN MAGAZINE which I enjoy every month, and read every word. You can get more information about each of these from the Internet.

I turned 97 in October. That makes me a Libra. According to one horoscope, “The most enterprising side of your nature is ready to express itself and you are more ambitious than ever”.
If this means more eager to fix the world, she’s right. But time is flying. It is elusive, hard to catch, impossible to hold on to. My desk is a mess, my body is succumbing to gravity, my mind is full of things I want to do. I need more time…..

Peg

Veterans’ Day Die-In - November 11, 2007

2007-11-11T00:02:00.000-05:00

Event sponsored by St. Augustine People for Peace and Justice

Our most recent action was a die-in on St. George Street.

We gathered at the gazebo, all wearing black, walked a ways, then dropped dead for l0 minutes. Walked some more, dropped dead again, until the police came and told us we were blocking traffic and to move on.

We had pledged to comply without arguing, but we continued the funeral walk back to the gazebo.

Along the way we distributed a mini flyer listing the number of dead, in the US and in Iraq. We printed l,000 - had only a few hundred left. This was on Saturday November 10th, in solidarity with demonstrations across the nation.

http://www.common.solidarityandpeace.org/events/111107.html

Peg at Demonstrations

2007-11-07T11:36:00.000-05:00

Peg and friends

2007-11-07T11:08:00.001-05:00

Itsumi and Denise

XXXX

A rose

2007-11-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

Eleanor Roosevelt:
"They named a rose after me, and I was very flattered - until I read the following description in the catalogue: 'Not good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.'"

Orlando Rally - Nov 2007

2007-10-27T04:42:00.000-04:00

October 27, NATIONAL MOBILIZATION, Orlando

What a wonderful crowd! Thank you, each of you, for being here. We are part of a national day of protest against the war in Iraq. We stand with thousands acrossthe nation in a fearsome expression of the breadth and depth of anti-war sentiment.

From the beginning of the Bush/Cheney administration, it was clear that they were committed to expanding the American geopolitical role in the Middle East. They knew that those huge oil reserves were crucial to the world’s industrial economy and they wanted US domination over those reserves. So they lied to us, to you and to me. They violated national and international treaties to achieve that supremacy. But their lies and their failures can no longer be covered up. Bush and Cheney must be held accountable. They must be IMPEACHED now: before they leave office – or a terrible precedent with be left for future leaders to fall back on.

We know the numbers of dead in Iraq but we can’t begin to imagine the scale of human suffering, the destroyed infrastructure, the destabilizing daily life for the entire population from severe shortage of water, electricity, jobs, and medical care, and the displacement of over 4 million civilians as a result of the bloody civil war.

We know the number of dead in our country, the wounded and maimed, the broken homes, and we see the incredible financial burden this illegal war in Iraq has placed on current and future US taxpayers. This year, taxpayers in Florida will have paid TWELVE BILLION dollars for the cost of the war. For the same amount of money, close to FOUR MILLION people could have been provided with Health Care, more than EIGHT MILLION homes with renewable electricity could have been constructed, or TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND music and art teached could have been employed in our schools.

But knowing all this, and feeling angry about it is not enough. We must transform our feelings into action. We must call on our elected representatives to demand full investigation. We must demand that Bush and Cheney be IMPEACHED.

We must END THE WAR. END THE OCCUPATION.

Negotiations and diplomacy will be our peace-making tools. Reconciliation our goal. The very culture of our society must be transformed from violence to non-violence. Returning troops must be treated with all-out medical and psychiatric care. Homes and jobs must be provided. Family life restored.

We, the people, must reclaim our civil rights. We must VOTE and ELECT national and local officials who will guarantee us an ethical foreign policy and an ethical domestic policy, providing civil liberty, health care and education to everyone. For this, we need PEACE. An end to war.

No more wars – ever!

Grandmothers March Again - Close the SOA

2007-10-24T03:26:00.000-04:00

1000 Grandmothers March Again In Georgia November 18 Calling For Closure of Controversial Training Facility for Latin Americans

St. Augustine’s grandmothers are joining grandmothers across the nation in preparation for the annual mobilization to close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation/ School of the Americas (WHINSEC/SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia on November 16-18, 2007.

The grandmothers and their supporters will join tens of thousands of people at the US Army base to bring attention to the notorious training facility and to demand closure of the school.

Last year a campaign to bring 1000 Grandmothers to the gates of Ft. Benning began in Chico, California. Thousands of white-kerchief’d grandmothers swelled the throng at the demonstration, voicing “Presente!”. Six grandparents trespassed on the base in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Each spent time in prison, with sentences ranging from 2 to 6 months.

Despite a shocking human rights record, this school continues to operate with US taxpayer money. America’s grandparents are neither afraid, nor hesitant to speak forcefully to what they clearly see: our own nation divided, militaristic and subsidizing other nations’ militarism. As shepherds of the next generations we have a stake in how our country relates to the rest of the world.”

Inspired by the Holly Near song “1000 Grandmothers” that calls on the strength, wisdom and courage of the elders to end violence, grandmother Cathy Webster of Chico, California relayed the call to the grandmas of America . Webster served two months in jail for her actions with fifteen others at the military base during the demonstration in 2006.

The School of the Americas, now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place. New research confirms that the school continues to support know human rights abusers.

More information about the School of the Americas can be found on the SOAWatch website at www.soaw.org.

I spoke at the demonstration at the gates of Fort Benning last year and will be going again this year. I hope you might consider joining me. It’s an important and inspiring event.

Thanks.
Peg.

Reflection on Time

2007-10-20T04:17:00.000-04:00

I take it whenever I can find it. Time, I mean; specifically time in the present, the now. This moment, before it dies. I take it and I hold on to it, or at least I try to hold on to it. Because after living for 97 years, I don't know how much time I have left. Or how well I will be able to make good use of it.

I do not look back often. Without searching for details, I know that most of my life has been healthy and happy. Like most women, I went through the stages of adolescence, marriage and motherhood, facing the challenges and enjoying the luxury of family. I was blessed with two fine husbands and two fine children.

As a young woman I was involved in women's rights, and in civil rights generally. I followed my second husband to Italy in 1952 with my three and four year old children. I embarked on a business career in my 60's while we were living in Italy. I learned how to speak Italian, and built up a successful business with my husband. I retired when Gordon passed away, left Italy, and came to St. Augustine with my son and daughter-in- law in 1982.

This entirely new life style spun me into political awareness on a national level, and into volunteerism locally. I had never realized how important volunteerism could be. There were so many places to work -- in the public libray, the hospital, the schools, the COA, the food bank, and more.

Then I learned of several local organizations concerned with social justice issues, including NOW, TREES, and the League of Women Voters, After meeting Barbara Weidner, founder of Grandmothers for Peace International, based in California, I started an affiliate here in St. Augustine, called Grandparents for Peace. We are pimarily anti-nuke and anti-war, but we network with a wide assortment of organizations that are concerned with various issues, such as racism, the environment, the homeless.

Becoming "Granny guru" to the peace camps sponsored by the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice has brought me close to hundreds of youngsters from diverse cultures and walks of life. I have learned so much about their problems, and fears. For example, how the recent immigration legislation affects long-established Mexican farm families in and around Apopka, which is the local base for Cesar Chavez's Farm Workers Union. While the children were born in the U.S.A, their parents face imminent deportation.

I guess the key word to describe what my life has been is expansion - from the limiting confines of self and family, to the boundless world around me. I recognize the value of all life. I am more aware of and concerned for others. I treasure each day.

I want more time....

Recipe for Roast Beef

2007-10-12T04:47:00.000-04:00

1 large Roast of beef
1 small Roast of beef
Take the two roasts and put them in the oven.
When the little one burns, the big one is done.

Peg's 97th birthday

2007-10-02T08:12:00.000-04:00

Peg with President Jimmy Carter 2007

2007-09-22T03:31:00.000-04:00

The 11th Annual Plains Peanut Festival will be September 22 & 23, 2007

Impeach the liers !!!

2007-09-20T08:40:00.000-04:00

GfP Newsletter - July 2007

2007-08-01T04:55:00.000-04:00

Dear GFP member, and Friend of GFP

I can't believe it is halfway thru August already. Time flies. I hope you have been having fun, because I have been very happy!

In addition to PPJ vigils and rallies, Homeless Coalition meetings, concerts at the pier and at the plaza, and acquarobics in the condo pool, I have just had two wonderful weeks away.

The first was with Mary Beth and Bruce in Maine. As most of you know, they coordinate Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Very busy organizing an international week of protest to stop the Militarization of Space, Oct 4 - 13. Their flyer reads:

"Is this the world we want? Satellites, giant
romes, radar installations watching for military
targets everywhere? Cruise missiles,
weapons in space, global strike capacity from
US bases around the globe?

For more information, see their web www.space4peace.org Bruce will be in Bradenton on Jan. lst. He is a powerful speaker, with a powerful message. I will trey to set up a local venue for him here.

From there I went to an Elderhostel at Campobello, on the Bay of Fundy (Canada). It was held at the International Franklin D. Roosevelt Park. We were suffused with stories and anecdotes about FDR and Eleanor and their five children. I had always known of their commitment to Peace & Justice issues, but hearing and reading about Eleanor, especially, made me appreciate her as a woman, wife, and mother with a delightful sense of humor. My favorite joke:

"They named a rose after me, and I was very
flattered until I read the following description in
the catalogue: 'Not good in a bed, but fine up
against a wall.'"

The Elderhostel group was composed of 28 intelligent people from many parts of the U.S. We had a beautiful facility, marvelous food, a variety of workshops (the bog, the tides and fog, shells and rocks, the salt and salmon industries, folklore & music), and one glorious day on a windjammer schooner where we saw whales, porpoises, and seals. What made this experience different from other Elderhostel programs that I've been on was the amount of interaction with members of the Campobello community, so we learned of their efforts to preserve the lighthouses, to restore buildings, and to protect their environment. They are fighting hard to prevent a Natural Gas project from being permitted on their precious shore.

Now, I am back in Florida and thinking of the agenda for Grandparents for Peace. The 1st & 3rd Saturday anti-war vigil has been held at the Bridge of Lions for 6 years! At our last PPJ (People for Peace & Justice) meeting, we voted to move to Walmart, and set up a table so we could meet and talk with people, instead of just standing & waving signs.

For the third year, GFP together with PPJ will offer a scholarship essay contest. Instead of giving one high school senior $500, the decision was made to give $l00 to a winner at each of the seven high schools. I volunteered to undertake the marketing, i.e. contacting the guidance counselor or dean at each school, asking each one to promote the contest, and give us the name of the winner, so that on Earth Day, we will have seven winners up on the stage of a new Amphitheatre in St. Augustine.

August l9 GFP will attend a Bridges Across Borders event in Gainesville, FL.. Some of you know that BAB is especially active in Colombia and Panama.

August 25 and 26, GFP will be represented at the first meeting of the new Board of Directors of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice in
Gainesville, FL..

November l6-18 is the big School of the Americas Watch at Ft. Benning, GA.. We are getting closer to victory each year. It is an important one-of-a kind international event, so come while you can.

And please consider planning to spend the long New Year's Eve weekend at the Crooked River State Park facilities - near Kings Bay, GA.

Before closing, I want to bring to your attention once again the organization Compassion & Choices.

"When faced with the possibility of uncontrollable suffering and loss of autonomy at the end of life, people need help to understand their situation and choices. They need guidance to navigate the medical system and achieve a peaceful, humane ending. Compassion & Choices has met these needs throughout the nation for 14 years. No one who comes to us will suffer in their dying or chose a violent course or die without loved ones present because they have no other choice. We affirm that no end-of-life decision, including aid in dying, is secret or shameful."

I think this is a pretty unique service which merits our support. Their address is P O Box 101810, Denver, CO 80250,

Read. Act. Enjoy.

END THE WAR NOW!

Peg

"The Story Teller" by Will D. Kidd

2007-06-17T04:58:00.000-04:00

She lay with her head on grandpa's breast
In the easy chair that provided rest
And a setting, too, for the tales he told
To the light of his life - the four-year old.
She knew the charm of his cozy nook
When he read to her from a story book,
And the thrill, whatever her mood or whim,
When he rocked and cuddled her close to him
And so she had gone once more to hear
Of the odd little folk who would gather near
And scamper about, as the fairies will,
And talk with her - if she kept real still.
On his lap she listened, quite content,
Till after a time both heads were bent,
And the story lagged, and his voice was low,
And he rocked no longer to and fro.
They slept; and hers was the sleep of those
Who wake refreshed from a sweet repose,
And turning then to the rising sun
Essay life's mission of work well done.
And the grandpa slept, as she nestled there
Against his breast in the easy chair;
But his was the sleep of the sinking sands,
Of the journey's end - of the folded hands -
Of the broken chain, and the shadows gray -
With a little girl lighting him on his way.

Best wishes
Peg

Fathers’ and Grandfathers' Day

2007-06-05T05:02:00.000-04:00

PEACE AND IMPEACH

Sunday, June 17th from 2-4 pm.
Gazebo, Plaza de la Constitucione

Sponsored by Grandparents for Peace, St. Augustine

Bring photos, letters, poems, and memories to share. Bring your daughter, mother, wife, grandmother, and great-grand.

It will be the first time that this important holiday has been celebrated publicly in St. Augustine. Men deserve more than ties and meals. Women couldn’t produce babies without them. There are more men than women in Congress.

We must tell Congress how we stand: We stand for PEACE AND IMPEACH!

This event is open to all. It is suggested that women wear pants and ties. For info, call 471 1986.

History of Father’s Day- Sonra Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane, WA, started the observance of the Father's Day on the 19th of June, in 1910. She wanted to express her thanks to her own father, who had reared her on his own, since the death of her mother. Her father, Henry Jackson Dodd celebrated his birthday in June, thus, she chose this month to celebrate the holiday.

3,000 dead in Iraq

2007-06-04T07:49:00.000-04:00

Dear GFP Members and friends,

I am forwarding (as an attachment) a very beautiful, very sad letter from Lorraine Krofchok, President of Grandmothers for Peace International (of which we are an affiliate, as most of you already know).

I cannot think of anything to add to her message. I did light a candle and will try to light one every evening until the war and occupation are over. I hope some of you will join the nationwide candle ritual. It will bond us to each other and strengthen our peace-making efforts. Ultimately our mission will be to assure appropriate honor be given to the returning troops, and adequate care to the many who will need it.

Peg

Dear Grandmothers for Peace:

It is yet another sad day for America and families of the now 3,000 dead. What a way to end the year of 2006...

Heart wrenching, devastating, outrageous, misery, depression--whatever you are feeling, it has been an awful year and an awful three years, almost four into this "war". Bush has his revenge, Saddam is dead. Was it worth it for all the lives lost--Americans and Iraqi?

Has he called his daddy and said "look what I have accomplished!" Iraq is in a shambles, the world hates us, the Iraqi people are leaving their homes and fleeing to other countries. Democracy?

One bully has the other bully dead now. What next? Osama, where are you...

Please light a candle, put a number in your window, attend a vigil, or just reflect on all the lives lost. So many young. They never had a start in life. As I have said so often, "what if the cure for cancer or any other devastating disease has died with one of those minds?" It truly is a sad day.

The name of the 3,000th victim is no more or less important than the 2,452 or the first, they all mattered to someone. Who will be the last?

Call Congress on Wednesday--(202) 224-3121--or your local offices.

Demand an end to this war, no more funds, no more "surge", bring them home!

I understand Tuesday will be a "holiday" for government workers because of the death of President Ford. 3,000 Americans will never have another holiday.

Peace to all of us,
Lorraine

Water Sprinklers

2007-05-17T05:04:00.000-04:00

Letter to the Editor:

The water sprinklers came on full force at 3 pm last Sunday, May 13th, disturbing the small group that had gathered at the Gazebo, in the Plaza de la Constitution, to celebrate Mother's Day. Sponsored by Grandparents for Peace, the attendees were reading poems, sharing stories about their mothers, and praying for Peace.

When the water was turned on, we were approached by two homeless men who said it was a deliberate ploy by the City of St. Augustine to drive the homeless out of the Plaza.

Isn't watering forbidden until 4 pm? If so, isn't this a bad example for the City to set for its residents? Isn't it a strange way to discourage the homeless? Isn't it too bad that tourists and others also get wet from afternoon sprinkling in St. Augustine's prominent Plaza?

Peg McIntire
Grandparents for Peace
Tel. 904 471 1986

Mother's Day celebrations

2007-05-13T05:05:00.000-04:00

Sunday, May 13th at the Gazebo, from 2-4 pm

Mothers, Grandmothers, Great Grands, Daughters, Sisters, Aunts:

"Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies......

Our sons shall no be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them ..

We, the women of one country, will be too
tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Excerpts from Julia Ward Howe's
Mother;s Day Proclamation, a fervent
plea for peace in 1870.

In the spirit of standing up for peace, in solidarity with Mother's Day celebrations across the nation, please come to the Gazebo in the Plaza.

Bring a flower, a poem, the photo of a loved one, a friend.

This gentle gathering is sponsored by Grandparents for Peace, St. Augustine.