Vigils in March 2014

[Brian]

The sun set right before 6, reminding me that Daylight Savings Time begins this weekend.  This Friday marked the last Montrose Peace Vigil to take place in the dark until next November.  Ironically, we spent the first three months of Standard Time 2013-14 under mostly broken street lamps, so we only had five weeks after they were fixed to have what feels like a normal winter on the corner after all these years -- and next Friday we'll be standing in the sun again.

Experience says that daylight will boost the number of pedestirans and vehicles passing the northwest corner of Ocean View Boulevard and Honolulu Avenue.  As have the 80 degree temperatures most Fridays this strange winter.  Seems to me, from the 45 minutes I attended this week, that spirits are raised and more people are positive and engaged.  Let the sunshine in.

Eleven long-time regulars participated in this week's Montrose Peace Vigil.

Since October 2011, we have displayed all of the Defense Department's news releases announcing troop deaths, almost always in Afghanistan, during our weekly vigils. In the past seven days, two deaths were reported in the attachment below. If you register on this message board, you will be able to log in and download the PDF of our posting on the light pole:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents....pdf (150.76 KB)

[Brian]

At this Friday's Montrose Peace Vigil, people expressing support stopped to take photos of our signs while students sold fresh baked goods at a table nearby to raise funds for their high school.  Yes,  Daylight Savings Time is back, just as our strange warm winter transitions into spring.  Fifteen stalwarts came to the corner this week.

Immediately afterwards, Montrose Peace Vigil co-sponsored a screening of "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars" at Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church with RAPP, the church's Read and Practice Peacemaking group.  Along with other church members and area peace activists, I counted 19 in attendance.  I'll have more to say later in this thread about the event elsewhere on this message board.

The Pentagon reported no military deaths in Afghanistan in the previous seven days.

[Jeanne]

[Source] Brian said:

The Pentagon reported no military deaths in Afghanistan in the previous seven days.

Usually when we read the reports of combat deaths, we wonder about the lives of the deceased. The same is true with the numbers of suicides reported. Last Tuesday Chris Cordova, a graduate of North Hollywood High, a trainee in the Navy, took his own life. I'm not sure if he was in my class or not four years ago when I started teaching there, but his girl friend (since 8th grade) was.

Chris was on the football team and did well academically. He joined the Navy for economic reasons and to make his family proud of him. He was in Connecticut training to be on submarines. He had never experienced winter before and this one has been very challenging. He thought that his crew was going to move on to the next phase of training but they were informed that they were going to have two months of isolation instead. That means that they would be on lockdown in their quarters. It sounds like they do that arbitrarily to get them ready for the difficult life on a submarine. The winter, the separation from family and girl, and the isolation were more than he thought he could handle. Rest in Peace, Chris.

[anni]

Oh, Jeanne. Heart wrenching, terrible news. War making or planning to make war seems a pitiable pursuit. We each lose a piece of soul when we lose any one of us. Any precious one.

[Brian]

Many thanks to Jeanne for writing such a moving tribute, which I keep thinking about over the past two days.  Coincidentally, I heard a story from someone at the documentary screening that Jeanne hosted last Friday:  A man showed up at a church in Shadow Hills asking for the minister.   He wanted to talk about the 160 people he killed in Vietnam, where soldiers were strongly encouraged to compile body counts.  Forty-five years later, he was still tormented.  But some, like Chris Cordova, kill themselves while they are being trained to kill.  Suicides in basic training are seldom reported, not even by the Defense Department.

The Army has also ceased its monthly suicide reports for active-duty soldiers-- the last one was released on December 30 for November 2013, with 139 potential and confirmed suicides for the year to date, compared to 185 for all of 2012, only one of those still under investigation.  I used to post PDF attachments of the news releases in these monthly vigil threads on the Montrose Peace Vigil message board.  If the Pentagon releases another suicide report, I'll do it again.  Since they only contain numbers -- body counts, really -- I appreciate Jeanne's post.

[Brian]

I've watched the seasons change for nearly eight full years on the corner of Ocean View and Honolulu. This Friday's Montrose Peace Vigil was our first gathering of spring, but it comes after a winter that wasn't. Ironically, the temperature between 5:30 and 7 p.m. dipped below 70 degrees for the first time in weeks. What does not change -- more people walk and drive by us in the springtime, especially the groups of teenagers who virtually disappear from Montrose during the summer.

Thanks to Norm and Pearl, who have become regulars of Montrose Peace Vigil as they were at the Glendale Peace Vigil for many years, and to our friend Rosalind of the local Progressive Democrats of America chapter, we had 14 participants this week.

The Department of Defense reported no military deaths in Afghanistan in the previous seven days.

[Brian]

I've stood at hundreds of Montrose Peace Vigils since 2006, but I don't remember seeing three honking cars rounding our long, wide corner at the same time, everybody in the front seats and the back, adults and children, waving and flashing peace signs at us, as I did this Friday.  They may have outnumbered us:

• Mar. 7 - 11
• Mar. 14 - 15
• Mar. 21 - 14
• Mar. 28 - 11

The vigils averaged 13 participants per week this month, compared to 11 in February, 13 in both January and December and 14 in November. The average last March and in March 2012 was 12.

For the third week in a row, the Pentagon reported no U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan.

Montrose Peace Vigil is co-sponsoring another documentary screening at Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church on Friday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. -- not far from the corner and only half an hour after our vigil -- with RAPP, the church's Read and Practice Peacemaking group.  For more about the movie and the evening, please stay tuned to this developing thread here on the message board:

montrosepeacevigil.proboards.com/thread/348/next-rapp-movie-night

[Roberta]

Cynthia --She lives and she writes!!!!

dianeravitch.net/2014/03/26/a-veteran-teacher-defends-the-teacher-at-the-center-of-the-vergara-trial/

[anni]

Here's what you've all been waiting for:

THE LIVING END IN PEACE VIGILS

[Jeanne]

No buts about it.