from Bob Cooke, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore
Here is a link to the sign-on letter that the Pax Christi Anti-Drone Grassroots Task Force has put together and which will be published in August in the National Catholic Reporter. We are trying to get a least 300 signers. Bishop Gumbleton, Kathy Kelly and Marie Dennis are the first few “well-known” Catholics who will be signing. If you have not signed on already, please consider joining them by signing yourself.
We are asking for a donation of $20 from each signee from those who can make such a donation. If someone would like to sign the letter but the monetary contribution is their only detriment, they should let me know and we will almost definitely include their name (unless we have filled up all the space on the one page ad we are planning to use). Listed below is information regarding how people can sign up and pay by check through the mail or online. Anyone interested in signing but is concerned with the requested contribution can e-mail me (cooker@ppnpf.com) and I will take care of getting their name on the letter (with the above caveat).
You can pay to have your name included on this letter by paying by check or online at the PCMDC-B website.
If paying by check, please let us know exactly how you would like your name to appear (with or without titles such as Dr., Mrs., etc.) when you mail us your check. Please send your check, made out to Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore (with “NCR Drone Letter” in the memo line) to PCMDC-Baltimore, PO Box 29030, Washington, DC 20017-9030. All sign-on’s received by check must be received no later than July 13, 2013.
Paying online – go to http://www.paxchristimetrodc.org/ and click on the Donate button, where you can choose to pay by Pay Pal or credit card. Click on “Add Special Instructions to the Seller” and note that this payment is for the NCR anti-drone letter and if you want your name to appear on the letter differently than it does for PayPal or your Credit Card, as applicable, please note how you would like your name to appear.
Deadline for Online Payment– please sign on as soon as possible and encourage others to do so also. The deadline for online payment is set for 07/17/2013.
As noted above, besides considering signing the letter, please forward this to all others, especially Catholics, who you think may sign and especially other Pax Christi members who you know!
If you have any further questions on the sign on ad/letter, please let me know.
Thanks much, Tim. This really helps us out. Helen Schroeder
Asking people to sign their names on the anti-drone petition does not follow equal opportunity guidelines. I would rather sign a petition that does not ask for money.
Dear Maggie, I I respect your desire to sign a petition that does not ask for money. But newspapers charge money for ads like this. And Pax Christi expressly gave all of us — not just those who can afford a $20 donation to Pax Christi — an opportunity to join in this public witness. Please join us by writing a short note to the email address on this appeal: cooker@ppnpf.com
The Hive
A melancholy droning
faint but persistent
sounding softly
amongst the clover
An almost funerary air
like bells in the distance
Still tolling
for the loved
and lost
They murmur gloomily
moving slowly
above the soft grass
Mourning
a honey-textured hymn
for someone they never knew to love
***
Suspicion
Like a coiled carpet-snake
It seems harmless enough
to begin,
lurking quietly
in the darkened reaches
of the mind
Then,
rasping gently
it slides
slipping smoothly,
Insidiously
over the truth
but rubs
just enough to catch the skin
ripping tiny holes
for hate to get in.
***
Rapunzel’s Leavings
Hairpin
A delicate butterfly
Toothed with silvery barbs
Lying abandoned
Once treed
Those tangled flaxen skeins
drawn to severe order
Now drowning in the dust.
Wicked
Curving thorns meant to trap
Keep and hold the unruly
Tresses blessed by Mab.
Spindles
Of brilliant dragonfire
Predatory but still soulless
Left to a lonely fate.
This is why we are allienating many countries around the world, using drones increases more opposition. Deal with conflict some other way. Thanks, Wayne Alt, Western New York Peace Center
Opening And Closing
Look down
Her baby eyelashes
Are perfection
Each silken hair
Exquisitely designed
Exquisitely aligned
Known and treasured
Since all eternity
By the Lord of every
Hair, eyelash, baby
Precious human
You call her death collateral damage
You call this war just
Her beautiful eyes
No more
Opening and closing
What is wrong with a government that starves the children of the poor, uses other countries to torture its prisoners, holds people without charge for years and kills innocent strangers from empty planes
from caves in Colorado? That country has lost it’s soul ….
The congress and many of those who represent us have become focused on winning their political opinion, their egos have taken them over and to be right even when it is wrong doesn’t matter all they what is to be right! They don’t want what is good for anyone but themselves, they don’t see the poor, the sick, the old, the dying, they only see what they want, which is to be right. But they are wrong.