Yesturday some friends organized a benefit on my behalf ... music and poetry by some amazing local musicians ... friends came by to lend their support and my good buddy R came up from Oly (thanks R, your visit was very sweet!) ... It was, in many ways, a strange position to be in. I'm a lousy self-promoter and I went around saying, "No one will come!" right up until all these people showed up. And then I spent alot of the time in the back fighting back tears.

I wasn't going to speak but I ended up saying a few words ... I told them of a letter from my mother where she tried to convince me (with good reason, I'll grant) not to return to Iraq. She wrote something like, "Why do you feel you need to pay personally for the faults of this administration?"

I told the gathered crowd that I didn't see how any of us can avoid paying for these faults ... they are so many afterall and they will effect us all in the end. I know how easily it is to get discouraged and think that you can't make any difference. You end up feeling ineffectual and are left to shake your fist at the T.V. I have a friend who grew up during the Reagon years and she told me that it took her awhile to realize that the word "Reagon" was not just a sware word. Well, that's how I grew up too. Cursing our leaders but finding no positive way to work for any alternative.

But when I went to Iraq last year, I was filled with such a sense that I was doing the right thing. I'd never felt anything quite like that before. It didn't matter that we didn't achieve the goal of stopping the war or achieved change through peaceful means ... it only mattered that we tried.

Many thanks to those who came to support me and those how came to performs!