Flashback
A day of wanting to grow my hair long (again … actually now any hair would be a radical statement indeed! 
The NY Times front page today reports that the precipitous US intelligency agency story that helped justify the Vietnam war was in fact fabricated as part of a cover-up.
A flashback, for me, number 16 in the final draft of that senseless war, of the paradox of despair and conviction that characterized an era where we began to understand the power and hope of authenticity on so many levels.
In the words of that time’s bards, Crosby Stills Nash Young:
The sky is clearing and the night
Has gone out
The sun, he come, the world
is all full of light
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but
To carry on.
November 1st, 2005 04:48
Yes . . . we (No. 314 in the first lottery) carry on. But I can’t help wondering in dark times if the road’s not a mobius strip
November 1st, 2005 22:20
They may be a mobius strip; life happens in patterns that repeat. The nice thing about intelligent systems is their capacity for creativity - breaking of old patterns with new.
November 1st, 2005 22:49
Yes, I was No. 13 in that same draft. I remember the warnings my mother gave me about claiming CO status.
November 1st, 2005 23:02
Our mothers were at the intersections of existential guilt, not wanting to be disloyal to the country of their birth, and not wanting to risk the loss of their own.
So I empathize with that. For me, my dilemma was that at that time, I was steeped in Gandhi, with weeklong fasts in support of non-violence. Some people’s backgrounds perfectly supported their commitment to the war. My background somehow perfectly supported my commitment to non-violence.