{"id":814,"date":"2013-10-19T22:08:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T03:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=814"},"modified":"2015-03-24T16:59:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T21:59:32","slug":"princeton-graduate-school-alumni-conference-and-paul-makes-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=814","title":{"rendered":"Princeton Graduate School Alumni Conference — and Paul makes some waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wore my \u201cPeace\u201d vest today and it garnered some attention not just for the buttons I wore on the front but particularly for the large OccupyPhilly flag sewn on the back. A few well-honed activists came over to speak with me, and we exchanged contact information.<\/p>\n

At the time of the Conference group picture, I wore my Peace\/Occupy vest and made a peace sign for the camera (made sure to be in a visible place \u2013 that should be interesting). (The picture does not show this…wonder if it was removed? — ed) \u00a0Right after the picture taking, I heard a voice directly behind me addressing another alum behind me. \u201cHello. I\u2019m Norman Augustine and believe we were on a committee together when I was CEO of Lockheed- Martin.\u201d \u00a0It didn’t seem appropriate to ask why wasn’t I allowed to carry a petition against making nuclear weapons to his King of Prussia facility and kept getting arrested instead, but I’m sure my visual message was obvious to him). His talk at lunch was on the topic of improving American education and was relatively reasonable. At one point he spoke of the challenges of funding improved education. I was grateful\/relieved that during the question period, one alum suggested that funding might be found if the military budget were reduced (I made a point of speaking with that individual immediately afterwards).<\/p>\n

And then, there was General Petraeus, the featured Princeton Ph. D alumnus. He seems an intelligent and thoughtful person, and his talk was moderate in tone. EXCEPT, he did sing the praises of energy sufficiency and independence via fracking, which he described as quite safe. It was a large group, and this was not the time\/opportunity to discuss aspects about which he seemed unfamiliar. \u00a0HOWEVER, to do what I could to let him know that there were quite different opinions about this topic, I made a point of walking alongside him from the auditorium to the dinner tent. He was gracious in speaking with well-wishers along his route. I shook his hand and thanked him for his talk, while also noting that based on my studies I held a quite different opinion about the safety and desirability of fracking. He acknowledged that there were differing views and readily agreed for this picture of us, complete with my No Fracking button.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wore my \u201cPeace\u201d vest today and it garnered some attention not just for the buttons I wore on the front but particularly for the large OccupyPhilly flag sewn on the back. A few well-honed activists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-peace","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}