I read the following story in today's Columbia Daily Tribune and thought it important enough to pass along to any gentle readers of this site. It has to do with a funding shortfall for an important function of the Rainbow House, a local children's emergency shelter.

Please read the full story and if you're able, give, and regardless, pass along to any who might be able to. An excerpt:

A wing of the Rainbow House emergency shelter is home to a special place where children can go to talk about things that are sometimes hard to say.

If necessary, a doctor or nurse examines them. Sometimes they get a warm bath and a clean set of clothes. Always, they are made comfortable in a room designed with boys and girls in mind.

The room features stuffed animals and toy cars, happy pictures on the walls and furniture built to accommodate little people.

The Regional Child Advocacy Center was created to give young victims of sexual and physical abuse a safe place to talk with trained professionals about what happened to them.

Jan Stock, Rainbow House executive director, said last year 250 children from nine Missouri counties were taken to the child advocacy center inside the shelter’s 12,000-square-foot facility at 1611 Towne Drive. The children are referred to the center by sheriff’s departments, prosecutor’s offices and police.

So far this year, the number of young victims needing help is up. Last month, 21 children were taken to the regional center for services, Stock said.

But funding for the center is down.

Labels: Culture

Well, in what seems like an odd choice to me, our flagship local newspaper has chosen my mug (among a couple others) to feature on the front page in their big above-the-fold photo covering yesterday's peace rally. Though I hardly consider myself among the most worthy to be the face of this effort, I have to say it's pretty fun nonetheless and I'm proud of participating in this and other peace-related events. Of course the real local heroes in this effort are the dedicated regulars of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, most notably organizer Mark Haim.

See below for my tabloid spectacular, and also see a sharper PDF version which can be zoomed to reveal the following caption (which is the only real written coverage given to the event, sadly):

From left, Desiree Long, Hugh Curran and Kevin Gamble join scores of others yesterday in circling the Boone County Courthouse Square during a peace rally. Hundreds of people from around the region traveled to the rally to mark the three-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Similar rallies took place in other parts of the United States and around the world. The local event, sponsored by the Columbia Peace Coalition, featured speeches, live music and the reading aloud of Iraqi and U.S. casualties of the war.

Labels: Life, Politics

Today a large peace rally was held in downtown Columbia to mark the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. So far from the halls of power where decisions about war are made, sometimes even the most strident pro-peace statements can produce feelings of helplessness and despair. But today's rally was informative, positive, and encouraging.

One of the best aspects of the day, both in its spoken themes and in who participated, was a palpable sense of togetherness--of this being a shared issue with shared solutions. Military veterans, church members, teachers, teenagers, activists, musicians, and families all exchanged smiles, hugs, questions, and concerns about the moral quagmire in which our country currently finds itself.

Perhaps the emotional highlight of the day was a stirring speech by the Rev. Maureen Dickmann of Rock Bridge Christian Church. Rev. Dickmann challenged the status quo from a moral perspective, scorning the pseudo-holy words used by our current leaders as hollow and meaningless perversions of the peaceful nature of Christ and his teachings, and encouraging people of faith to pursue peace and abandon leaders whose mission is more violence.

Also delivering a bitingly observant speech was John Betz of Veterans for Peace. Betz, a blue-collar Vietnam veteran, spoke of the ease with which those with wealth and power sacrifice others for their causes while suffering no pain or loss themselves. He also drew on his personal, first-hand experience to highlight parallels between the misguided motivations for going to war in Vietnam with the words and motivations used by our leaders today.

Professor Michael Ugarte admonished the current administration and advised us all to heed the words of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower:

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The rally ended with a statement of hope from organizer Mark Haim that next year, we come together to celebrate a war which has ended rather than another year of ongoing death and misery.

I've opposed this war, this unjust invasion, from day one, and I do so now, unflaggingly. Justified with falsified evidence, lies, and deceit; sold using fear and allusions to the unrelated terrorist attacks of 9/11/01; executed with poor strategy and under-equipped soldiers; and consuming more innocent lives every day (latest counts are more than 2,300 American GIs killed, more than 4,200 post-invasion Iraqi police & military deaths, and more than 33,000--at the very least--Iraqi civilians killed).

And for what result, what benefit? Are we really safer than before this debacle began? We've turned a stable country into a seething hotbed of terrorist activity. We've turned the only secular government in the Middle East into a fundamentalist theocracy, democratic in name only. Of course Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, and his people weren't free, but is this the solution?

In the name of pursuing democracy (that is, after the president's first couple of justifications were proven to be dishonest fabrications), we've poisoned our relations with the rest of the world, unleashing fear, violence, antagonism, and mistrust around the globe. In the name of freedom, we've tortured and imprisoned thousands of people charged with no crime. We've condoned spying on our own citizens without any judicial oversight. We've allied ourselves with violent dictatorships for the conveniences of air space and having somewhere to export our difficult prisoners for torture. We've become what we hate.

This isn't the America I've grown up in, the one I love. This is wrong. And we can do better.

Labels: Politics

Up, up it comes, and over the rim, and I'm chasing it.
And I burst out into the dark
Wasted on nothing, giddy
I run to you, but you're not there
And I open my arms to empty air
I race out to nowhere.

I circle the scene of my folly
The bruised armor rattling alongside
I blow dust from Claire's buoyant crystal ball
And see myself trying to teleport
somewhere, anywhere,
Ahead from before, back from nowhere.

You leap to your feet and spring lightly about
I'm not sure how much of you is really there
You're an early spring day with your flax and apple cheek
And a sky blue promise rimmed in horns
Inside I rewind and laugh at the distance
From this feeling to nowhere.

And I want everything I've been saving up to want
And I want to spill this dream-drunken seed around my roots
And I see the nothingness of elsewhere, elsewhen
And I don't want to be anywhere but right where I am

It's the only place that's somewhere.

Labels: Poems