Vigils in December 2013

[Brian]

The temperature was already in the 40's when I got to the corner at 6 for this Friday's Montrose Peace Vigil. Still, 11 stalwarts turned out, close to our average number of participants. Traffic was light, as it always is when the weather is less than agreeable, but we were warmed by the honks we got from many of the drivers and the waves from them and their passengers. Nobody I saw had a window open.

We hope to see you at the Montrose Christmas Parade this Saturday, December 7, with the Peace Train!

Since October 2011, we have displayed all of the Defense Department's news releases announcing troop deaths during our weekly vigils. No deaths were reported in the past seven days. I'm pleased to say that we've had nothing to tape to the light pole for three of the last four weeks.

[Brian]

I got stuck at work, so I didn't make it to this Friday's Montrose Peace Vigil until 6:40, missing one of my oldest friends. John stopped by the corner and held a candle until he had to leave for his work, so he counts in this week's official tally -- 15 total participants. But the group is hard to see in the shadows of the trees, I noticed as I walked down Ocean View Boulevard. The street lights have been out on three of the corners for weeks, at least since the end of daylight saving time. The extra candles that Roberta brought helped.

Tuesday, I heard two or three sentences about the deaths of six troops in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on the national and local news, both television and radio, but that's all. Attached below is the official news release from the Pentagon with their names, ages and hometowns, along with another announcement of a sailor's noncombat death. We copied both pages in large type and taped them to the best lit light pole throughout the vigil:

Attachments:

[Brian]

The year is ending with record temperatures in Southern California, the highest in the nation this Friday -- 30 degrees warmer than the first Montrose Peace Vigil of December. A boy around age 11 in the backseat of his Dad's car asked me what we were boycotting, as they slowly rounded the corner teeming with pedestrians. We're actually protesting, I said, for peace. This many:

• Dec. 6 - 11
  
• Dec. 13 - 13
  
• Dec. 20 - 15
  
• Dec. 27 - 12
  

Montrose Peace Vigil averaged 13 participants per week this month, compared to 14 in November, 13 in October and September, 11 in August, 15 in July and June, 11 in May, 13 in April and 12 each in March, February and January this year. In December of 2012, 2011 and 2010 as well, the corner averaged 10 demonstrators per vigil. The weekly average for all of 2013 rounds to 13 -- in 2012 it was 11, one less participant per week than for 2011.

In January, we'll enter our ninth year of continuous Friday evening vigils while our government tries to negotiate a pact with Afghanistan to keep up to 20,000 U.S. troops there for ten more years starting in 2015. This week, the Defense Department announced the death of one Marine. As I drove to work Friday morning with the printout of the PDF attached below, I heard on the radio about another American soldier lost. His announcement will be the first to be taped to the light pole on the corner in 2014.

Attachments: