“Turn off your TV and Smartphone. Take back control of your own life. We don’t own a TV and I’m not checking online (happened to be on Facebook). One 19-year-old on the loose and government shuts down a city. What craziness. Media rules the people, and who/what rules the media? (I could discourse on that.) Imagine what would happen if someone destroyed our capitol building in Washington. Oops, that’s already happened, in Berlin in 1933, when a democratic government was lost to the people by government declaring emergency powers and the people, made fearful by the media, mostly stood by and let it happen. Don’t think it couldn’t happen here.”

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Herman Goering 4/18/46  http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34626.htm

My graduate experience was very positive and I am grateful to Princeton for that.  In addition to getting an excellent education, I benefited from the special recognition/prestige given to graduates of elite Universities (whether deserved or not), such that when I received my Ph.D. at age 23 I felt totally free and competent to be myself and not needing to prove anything to anybody. That’s a great feeling, but also somewhat scary, to be free with no one to blame for things that don’t turn out as you might have intended – can’t play the victim card.

What I did not realize when I was a student (well, I did, but I didn’t feel under the weight of it) was the significance/meaning of being part of a highly-selective, expensive and exclusive club.  But when much of the reunion is held at the Icahn building (thanks to that notorious corporate raider), and I recall that buildings named Frick and Firestone had contributed to my education and that I had often paddled on Lake Carnegie…well, it strikes home that Princeton was substantially built with the blood money of the rich and powerful robber-barons of American history and their kin. I truly appreciate the quality and beauty of the place, but in saying this I must also acknowledge treading on the backs of generations of oppressed laborers who never got to share in these fruits of their labors. There is great beauty and excellence and great injustice.  Justice for a few is not justice. Times have changed, but there is still a mad scramble for these select fruits, and while I credit the institution for its considerable striving to be just, the end product is not just and never can be while Princeton operates within a larger American system that is fundamentally unjust in so many ways.

Something else that got my attention was a symposium focused on the history of the Psychology Department over the past half-century.  Specifically, a panel of past faculty gave their impressions of how things had changed. Well, some things never change, and one highly-significant instance is that history is promulgated by the winners/survivors and in accord with the current culture.   And so we got our dose of revisionist history. A small group of us, representing the “elder” graduates from a half-century ago, sat at a front table and took open exception to some of the “facts” we were told, and our corrections were generally acknowledged. Maybe it was just sloppy preparation by some of the panelists (not acceptable), but whenever people are ignorant there is a tendency to turn personal memories, feelings, and intentions into historical fact. I believe there exists a latent sense of superiority of those who have succeeded at a place like Princeton that can lead to such unthinking and inaccurate self-congratulatory memories.

This annual peaceful action takes the form of a religious observance and includes a modified version of the Stations of the Cross. A few participants feel moved to carry their crosses and the Good Friday message of suffering humanity directly into the Lockheed Martin facility, to confront this suffering at its source.  On this occasion we were carrying the most recent list of Pakistani civilians killed by drones (a Lockheed Martin product) and ended up reading this list to the security forces that blocked our way. These peaceful actions usually result in arrest, and I was one of ten arrested today while on my knees in the Lockheed Martin driveway.

Search this blog for relevant information about previous arrests.  I feel called to faithfulness in the spirit of the original Plowshares Eight (including Dan and Phil Berrigan), who were arrested at this same facility in 1980.

Besides being faithful to the legacy of Martin Luther King, today’s activities are faithful to the spirit of the original Plowshares Eight (including Dan and Phil Berrigan), who were arrested at this same facility in 1980. Today’s action took place directly behind the King of Prussia Mall and in front of the King of Prussia Cinema, a location with high activity and visibility.

In the words of Martin Luther King, spoken at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967:

“A time comes when silence is betrayal…spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government….Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered…True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring…We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation….In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. .. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.”

I reread this poem on New Year’s Day 2013. I believe that I had not read it fully since high school, and it is amazing how different it feels to read it in my late 60’s compared to reading it as a teenager. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” is a common quotation from the poem, and it was my intention to understand that phrase better though a better familiarity with its context. I often heard that phrase when young, with only vague understanding, The poem was written for an adult reader, yet I am grateful for having been exposed to it when still a callow youth.

I suggest that you read the poem and think about it yourself.

It is amazing poem that perfectly fit the mood that I was in on New Year’s Day and that relates to what I have been considering of late. I often find it helpful to try to express my thinking through writing, and my first Comment (“The three-legged stool”) is an attempt at expressing how I am reviewing/organizing/structuring my life at the moment.

p.s. Framed copies of two Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems (How do I love thee; If thou must love me.) hang in our bedroom with pressed leaves that a relative gathered from E.B.B.’s grave in Florence on Christmas Day, 1911. I gave them to Fran our first Christmas.

Some of Mom’s particular interests were good music, edifying travel, education, and of course her family.

Her interest in music started early in life. As a child, she was the youngest member of a string quartet composed of the four Otto sisters who performed for various church and civic groups. Her devotion to music continued throughout her life, and I suspect that she was one of the longest regular ticket holders of her beloved Boston Symphony – a loyal attender for many decades. “Going to symphony” was how she put it, and she would describe wintry blizzard concerts where the total number of players and listeners was hardly more than are in this right church now. Our Christmas present for her six years ago was to take her to the Boston Pops for a Christmas concert – her last time at Symphony Hall.

Mom was always “on the go” and began driving at age 12 by chauffeuring her mother about town (with permission of her neighbor, the police chief). She continued driving well into her 90s. (by the way, that’s “well into her 90s” not necessarily driving well in her 90s – I always drive carefully on Sunday mornings, thinking that that person in front of me could be somebody’s great-grandmother on her way to church).

My Mom was the first female math major at Marietta College. When I commended her for her trail-blazing interest in math, she replied, “Well, I really didn’t have that much interest in math, but it was easy for me and your father was a math major, so it seemed like a good idea.” Hmmm.

During college in the 20s, to protest Japanese incursions into Korea and China, Mom and her sorority sisters burned their silk stockings (made in Japan) on the library steps. They first poured red Mercurochrome on them, symbolic of their cost in blood. (I sometimes wonder if this sort of thing could be genetic. I didn’t even hear about this until I described some of the things I was doing, and she nonchalantly replied “Oh, yes.”)

Throughout her life, she was always taking courses in one thing or another. As a senior, she kept busy with lifetime learning programs

Education, travel, and music were all combined in the most formative experience of her early married life, living in Nazi Germany before the Second World War while my father did graduate work in religion at the University of Berlin.  She spoke appreciatively of how she and Dad would attend the opera in Berlin, standing in the student section.  They were aghast at the Nazi regime and allied themselves with those who were opposed to the government. Mom told of when they attended a special church service to demonstrate opposition to the Nazis. When the minister (apparently Pastor Niemoeller) began to speak critically of the government, a band of SS soldiers marched noisily down the center aisle of the church and arrested him in his pulpit. As a child, I was always impressed that our home movies had clips of both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in public appearances.

As well as living in Germany and visiting Palestine and the Middle East, they were interested in seeing the Soviet Union. At that time the Communist Party was the only party in America that supported equality for women (“women’s rights” as it became popularly known decades later) and also equality of all races. But what they saw with their own eyes showed them that the Soviet Union was not what it was purported to be.

Anyhow, that picture of Joseph Stalin. They happened to be in Moscow on May Day for the annual Soviet May Day parade in Red Square. There was an American contingent in the parade, so they joined in and got their movie of Joe and the entire Politburo in the reviewing stand.

That reminds me of a story from some decades ago. I somewhat hesitatingly told Mom that I was hanging out with the Socialist Labor Party. Mom: “Oh no! Not the Communists.” Paul: “No, no, no; the Socialist Labor Party, a legal political party more than a century old.” Mom: “Thank goodness, not the Communists.” I thought to myself “Wonderful, somebody who knows there’s a difference.”

Mom travelled all over the world, with many adventures. She made a point of traveling light, taking only a travel bag that she could carry on her shoulder. One time in Africa, Mom wanted to go from Zimbabwe to Zambia over the Victoria Falls Bridge. She was warned not to cross the bridge because terrorists had been shooting at tourists recently. My mother, not considering herself to be a tourist, walked across the bridge to have her passport stamped at the border crossing on the far side.

Then there was the time in India when a chartered bus arrived at the hotel to give her group a tour of the city. She was the only one to show up, healthy, ready and eager to learn more, and had a private tour of the city with her own bus and driver. At the conclusion, her tour guide commented “Madame is not a tourist, Madame is a traveler.” Indeed she was.

Every year, for years, she would call to tell us that she was about to be away for a couple of weeks, always with some sort of destination or purpose – maybe there was an anniversary celebration for Bach and she wanted to attend a special Bach concert at his church in Leipzig, or maybe she wanted to see a particular museum in Barcelona, or to see Mount Everest.   Another time she called to let me know that she was leaving the next day for Santiago. I had to ask “What Santiago – Spain, Chile, or where?” (It was Chile.) She always combined travel with her interest in education and music.

Mom came from a line of travelers and explorers. Her grandparents were missionaries from Alsace-Lorraine to northern Canada. Uncle Hermann Andree nearly died in an attempt to be the first person to reach the North Pole.  Uncle Herman was on the lookout for any trace of Salomon August Andree, a relative who had been lost in the late l9th century while trying to reach the North Pole by balloon flight.  Uncle Herman didn’t make it to the North Pole on the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition, but at least he did make it back, leaving behind only his amputated toes frozen in the frozen north.  My mother would tell me how, as a child, Uncle Herman showed her the toes, or rather, showed her where the toes were not, as part of telling the story. Apparently this made an impression on her as a child.

Mom enjoyed phenomenal good health, living in her own home until she was 93. She was always driving or taking the bus somewhere. She was an avid driver, but when driving became more difficult, she became an avid bus rider. She would take the bus to Symphony in Boston or Providence, or the bus to concerts in Newport.

She was hospitalized at age 87 for the first time since I was born fifty-five years earlier, and successfully recovered from a condition that was generally fatal. My Mom felt fortunate about her good health and used to say that she had never had any arthritis. I think that until her final year or two, we sometimes wondered if she might not outlive us all.

She lived a full life, both with my father until his death in l971 and then by herself in her own home.  My parents enjoyed a beautiful and loving marriage, and I am truly fortunate to have had them as my parents and am grateful for this.  Mom came from a large extended family, and now the very last of that generation is gone.  Her life was always “on the go” –filled with traveling, meeting people, music, and education.  I well remember our family trips every summer, when we would pile into the car and drive to a different part of the United States each year.  My mother would be the first in the car, at 6 a.m., always telling the rest of us “Let’s Go!”  “Let’s Go!”  That was her signature phrase, and now my mother has got up and went.

I believe we have an entrenched oligarchy, and I support a peaceful uprising to replace it. We have lost our government, which is no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In my understanding, this belief is consistent with our traditional Quaker testimonies of peace, integrity, equality, environment, community and simplicity. God does not grant me the light to know the particular time and process by which such a “peaceful uprising” might occur, nor should it be my individual decision.

At this time I have no particular expectation of how I may be called or what I might be called to do, except that I do feel called to speak out about this. I do know that my models are Gandhi, King, Tolstoy, and last but not least the life and teachings of Jesus. My goal is for a government representative of all people, with liberty and justice for all.

(See third comment for the text of the Committee’s report.)

We’re back from Friends Center and a training session for peacekeepers/marshals for the Shale Gas Outrage non-violent rally and march this Thursday. Getting there and back served as an illustration of how our energy system and transportation system (so closely interlocked) have entered a suicidal spiral.  It was raining, and at Villanova (one of the richest towns in America) the decrepit train station was gushing torrents of water down holes in the roof and over non-functioning gutters. The train arrived late. We took our seats and then I became aware that I was wet and getting wetter. The train was significantly leaking water on me and other riders.  Some riders moved to other seats; I put my raincoat back on, inside the train. The conductor said he couldn’t collect my fare (or count me as a rider) because he had no ticket receipts to give in exchange for my money. We got to Suburban Station only somewhat less wet than those outside.  Later, after our meeting and when we had boarded the train for our return trip home, we had to exit and reboard two times before we were on a train that was prepared to leave the station. People say we need shale fracturing to provide energy and jobs? Ha, there is a crying need for plenty of jobs to provide decent public transportation that would make destroying our environment unnecessary and save countless lives. There is a need, but not the profit for those who run this country for their own careless greed.