Tuesday, September 6

A wedding party bustles about on the courthouse steps; photos are taken.  Laughter and the bubbling voices of happy people float toward us.  Three waiting for the signs to arrive.  We each hold the two finger V in lieu of printed statements.  I am ambivalent about this "peace sign"; elders tell me they view it as militant - Victory, is how they remember it from WWII.  Yet, it seems the common currency of contemporary Americans to indicate Peace.  
The van arrives bearing signs & flags.  We are soon 5 and then we are 8.  Three of our cadre celebrate this date as their birthday; one is here this day as are cookies in honor of the occasion.  Conversation rises and falls.   We notice at the half hour that the planetary angle has shifted sufficiently to cast a long shadow over the whole area where we stand.  We've been clustering in the shade of the cherry trees to avoid the late summer heat.
A few loud but garbled shouts of hostility from people in passing cars are balanced by the abundant numbers of enthusiastic carloads of young men.  Has the 10 year duration of slaughter, maiming and anguish finally tipped the broader opinion of what we once would have called the "draft age" population toward non-violence as a national policy?

Monday September 5

Three or four folks at 5:00PM, about ten at the end. Some of us talked about how to respond to passersby who disagree with the vigil, for example the two men who argued on Sunday that we should give war a chance. We came up no clear answer; perhaps it will be an ongoing discussion.

Sunday September 4

Three people to start the hour, half a dozen at the end. One vigil-er brought two Peanuts comic strips, featuring Charles-Schulz-birds "demonstrating" by carrying signs with punctuation marks. In one strip the question-mark birds got into a scrap with the exclamation-mark birds. :)
At the very end of the vigil a couple of men stopped by, proposing that war actually benefits some groups, as for example the Kurdish people in Iraq. We did not make time to sort out the question.

Saturday September 3

Eight or nine people through the hour.

Thursday, September 1

1 to start, then the van & signs arrived and in a few minutes a third person arrived. Slim numbers for the hour - 6.  A question asked: "Are there plans to mark October 7th?"  10 years of war - I want to call it state sponsored terrorism.  10 years of the daily 5pm to 6pm presence at the Benton County Courthouse.  It seems we might consider how to (dare I say it?) capitalize on this upcoming occasion to draw attention to our position(s) regarding peace & war.

Wednesday August 31

I arrived late, about a dozen people were in front of the courthouse.

Tuesday August 30

Three of us at the beginning, ten-ish throughout the hour. Some discussion of the proposed student housing development at Witham Oaks.