Sonya Clark's truce flag

At last night's discussion group, the topic was Ukraine: when did the war begin? is "war" the term you'd use? why did it start? how much money has the U.S. spent in support of Ukraine in the last nine months? is that amount reasonable? organizations that funnel donations to the Ukrainian cause? to Ukrainians? would you send money? specific support for Ukrainian relief or to organizations that work in many situations, e.g., International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, American Friends Service Committee (or other service committees)? how has your opinion changed over the course of the year? can the U.N. or the international courts play a role in ending the Ukrainian conflict?

Most of the people in the discussion supported aid for Ukraine, including military aid. I mentioned in an email before the discussion (which was online rather than in-person) that I was torn by the whole thing. I'm an adamant pacifist but I couldn't explain what that meant in this context. I do believe strongly that war is generally (always?) a result of earlier war or conflict. How do you get to peace? Is it just utopian and totally unachievable? Quakers and Mennonites and others have been trying for centuries to achieve peace. Martin Luther King said that "true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

I'm in Washington at the moment and visited the "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World" at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum today. Lots of powerful work but one work that seemed to me to address my dilemma about explaining pacifism. The wall text near Monumental by Sonya Clark read "What if this flag of truce was the flag we knew, instead of the Confederate battle flag?"

The large textile work is based on the piece of cloth flown at Appomattox Court House in 1865 to indicate the surrender of the Confederate army. The cloth is in the collection of the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian. This large version was made by Sonya Clark in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. It was shown in a 2019 exhibition at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. For more information on the project: https://americanart.si.edu/blog/sonya-clark-art

Conflicts and wars involve two or more parties. We need justice but, mostly, we just need to all be willing to say "no" to resolving our conflicts through violence. I am discouraged by the situation in Ukraine but I know that peace is impossible when military response is honored.

war is not the answer

There was a roundtable discussion on the AU campus yesterday afternoon on "9/11 and Afghanistan: twenty years after." The panelists were a senior history professor, a veteran who served in Afghanistan and is now the director of the Military Aligned Program at Saint Bonaventure University, a junior history professor who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and a psychologist who was in Junior ROTC in high school. The panel was rather weighted toward military service, terrorism, veteran services, patriotism, American international operations, ineffective Afghan forces, and the messy departure from Afghanistan. Thoughts of the late 1960s efforts to get ROTC off campus were roiling in my brain, along with how there is now a military office on campus. I was feeling quite stressed (though of course I was also experiencing plenty of privilege sitting in a library meeting space on a sunny afternoon). The last question was "was the Afghan incursion worth it?" A veteran in the audience answered in the affirmative and talked about women's freedom, schools, and other good things that had happened. It is good that some of the Taliban tyranny of the 1990s ended but twenty years of costly and destructive warfare can't be the best method for achieving such social change.

Today's Environmental Studies speaker was K. Neil Van Dine on "Water and sanitation in Haiti." His group, Haiti Outreach, works with communities to get a sustainable water supply and sanitation. Many groups have helped with various relief efforts in Haiti but few have helped build the systems needed to manage and maintain the infrastructural improvement. Upwards of 500 communities, mostly rural, have received help from Haiti Outreach which builds community support before any well drilling happens. Van Dine noted that the UN/WHO Global Goal for Sustainable Development is for the water supply to be within a thirty-minute round trip. It's hard for us to imagine anything other than light switches, water faucets, and flushing toilets. But just think if the billions of dollars and hours of effort expended in Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of Vietnam and Korea and elsewhere, had been spent on sustainable development.

The Haiti talk will be posted on the Environmental Studies Speaker Series at AlfredU YouTube channel.

Thanks to the Friends Committee on National Legislation for the "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER" bumper sticker.

going to Buffalo, again

The VRA Upstate New York Chapter called a meeting for Thursday, November 13, in Buffalo. It was pretty exciting to get a notice about a planning lecture on the preceding Wednesday night by Emily Talen, with the topic "Walkable Diversity: Chasing an Elusive Planning Goal." The meeting got cancelled because not enough people registered but I decided to come up to Buffalo anyway for the lecture and to see a show at the UB Anderson Gallery.

The lecture was fine even though Talen admitted she was preaching to the choir about making cities walkable because that made them more environmentally benign, safe, beautiful, and diverse. She had originally called her talk "Neighborhood Diversity" but decided neighborhood was too complicated. Besides, she's working on a book on neighborhood and recognizes that diversity is meaningless without neighborhood, and vice versa. Strangers are important to a lively diversity. This talk came one day after an Alfred Village Board meeting with discussion of changes to the zoning code. Talen talked about the downside of zoning since it often codifies things that work against diversity, e.g., type of business, size of buildings. We don't necessarily all want to be zoning-free Houston but walkability is significantly enhanced by variety. Fortunately, form-based zoning is coming down the pike and we've been talking about it on the Alfred Village Planning Board. As an aside, Talen mentioned that students are good for street safety because they keep all hours and therefore provide pedestrian traffic pretty much around the clock. In a small college town like Alfred, student housing is a regular topic. Talen has great hope for community land trusts and using big data to strategize how to spend on urban development. For example, she and some colleagues got a grant from HUD to study location of public housing and found that 71% of public housing is in unwalkable areas; she argued for building more walkability into areas with affordable housing and vice versa.

As I walked back to my car, I was reminded of another aspect of walkability. Pedestrians have a fair shot in New York City. They might not survive a crash with a car, truck, or bus but they are respected in the City, at least in Manhattan. Cars stop before the crosswalk. No right turns on red. After the lecture, I saw two drivers doing mighty me-first actions. I was crossing Main Street near the South Campus of UB. A driver on Main Street went way through the crosswalk I was using, sucking on her Big Slurpy, ready to turn right on red, glanced at me and did her right turn anyway. I got to the other curb after she'd turned and a car came up Niagara Falls Boulevard and accelerated into the yellow light past a stopped car in the curb lane in order to make a left turn onto Main Street. Cars, actually drivers, need to be more respectful. That's my second amendment slogan: cars don't kill pedestrians, drivers do.

Today was art day. I started at the "Art = Text = Art: Private Languages, Public Systems" show at the UB Anderson Gallery. Mostly 1960s and 1970s work by folks such as Rauschenberg, Johns, Jess, Joe Brainard, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and William Anastasi. Also later stuff including a provocative "Constitution" (2004) by Annabel Daon in which she phonetically transliterated the U.S. Constitution into Arabic. Susanna Harwood Rubin is represented by "102 rue Haussmann," in which Proust's address is subtly drawn in a field of graphite. I also liked "Die Welt" by Ellsworth Kelly in which his normal color shapes replace the image portion of pages of the German newspaper. The installation was really inspired. Lots of queer content too.

Then over to the Albright Knox Art Gallery for some Helen Frankenthaler and Joe Feeley. The Frankenthalers were lovely. And another quick round through the printed works from the 1970s in the wonderful hemicycle gallery. Across the street to the Burchfield Penney Art Center. The Marion Faller photographs were OK but they were installing a show on Alexander O. Levy that looks really interesting. Thank heavens I don't need much excuse to make a trip to Buffalo.

After the galleries, I went down to India Gate and had some Indian buffet and then drove down to Allen Street. I walked around some streets that I haven't been on before even though with light snow falling, it wasn't a particularly commodious day for strolling or picture taking. When I was almost back to the car, I discovered that I was near Rust Belt Books, a pretty good used bookstore ... so I checked it out, escaping without any purchases. Part of me would love to travel light through life, just a suitcase or two. A bigger part of me knows the hardest part of that would be parting with books, even the ones I know are pretty readily available at some library.

Back in the car. I wanted to see what the East Side looks like. I keep hearing or reading that it's the poorer and more devastated part of town. Still, it amazed me how quickly the vacant lots and potholes multiplied as I went out Broadway from downtown. Amenities that make for a walkable area were few and far between.

After a breather at the Motel 6, I went up to Barnes & Noble on Transit Road. I asked the clerk if they had Why civil resistance works: the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict by Erica Chenoweth. No but she quietly mentioned a new bookstore Burning Books which specializes in political items. Something more to check out before I head back to Alfred. The reason I wanted to see the Chenoweth book is that she was being interviewed as I drove up to Buffalo but that station (WSKG) got out of range just as she was explaining how she, a security studies doctoral student, got into civil resistance and nonviolence.

countdown to peace in Afghanistan

You may have noticed the "countdown to withdrawal" widget in the right margin of this blog. It started with Obama's promise to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2011. Well, I just noticed that it's counting up now. Sigh.

anger, pacifism, cowardice

The book I'm reading now is Mama's boy, preacher's son by Kevin Jennings, the founder and first executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. He grew up poor, mostly in the South, moving around a lot and getting called faggot by his classmates. While my status as preacher's son seemed to protect me from the taunts, I certainly grew up thinking I was different. Maybe we all do. One aside of Kevin's particularly resonated with me:

"(This happy ending aside, Mom and Dad's spankings, and my brother's bullying, would leave their scars in the form of a clear lesson: when people get angry, they hit you. I developed a lifelong, nearly paralyzing fear of angry people, so much so that I would do anything to avoid getting others angry -- anything, no matter how damaging it was to me.)" (p. 52-53)

Even though Kevin also learns that sometimes you get results when you fight back, it can be paralyzing for me as it was for Kevin. I know that my fear of anger has played into the development of my pacifism. I hope it's a more mature way of dealing with conflict.

This also reminds me of a wonderful quote from Colm Tóibín's The master, a novel based on the life of Henry James:

"He was not cut out to be a soldier, he thought, but neither were most of the young men of his class and acquaintance who went to fight. It was not wisdom which kept him away, he believed, but something closer to cowardice, and as he walked the cobbled streets of his new town, he almost thanked God for it."

Sherman tractors

As a pacifist and longtime collector of Shermaniana, it has always been a bit troublesome when folks mention General Sherman or Sherman Tanks when I say anything about Shermaniana. You can imagine how thrilled I was when Reverend Lowery said in his benediction at the inauguration that we should beat our tanks into tractors.

Raed Jarrar at AFSC

Raed Jarrar spoke to about twenty of us on Friday afternoon at the New York City offices of the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker organization that I have long supported). He is an Iraqi, based in the Washington AFSC office, and is an architect by training. He's lived in the US since 2003 and I was very interested in his use of "we" when talking about Americans. I liked that very much and, if we were running, I'd vote for him for legislator in a heartbeat. Actually I'd vote for him for president but he might have to temper his passion, not that he isn't temperate but we need legislators who can argue well and convincingly. He is strongly convinced that a total withdrawal from Iraq will allow them to return to a peaceful state. He had drawn up a chart showing the religious connections of the separatists and nationalists in the Iraqi parliament. The conflict is not primarily based on religious differences. Even Hussein's government was not segregated. Jarrar is of mixed Sunni/Shiite heritage and married to a Palestinian. One of his Sunni uncles traded houses with a Shiite uncle when the neighborhoods were being cleansed. Jarrar didn't express it but it sure seems to me that such temperance and diversity wouldn't necessarily last forever so let's get completely out of Iraq now. For a profile of Raed Jarrar and his work, see "Mr. Jarrar goes to Washington" in Mother Jones. Actually I got quite a few hits in Google on "raed jarrar" including his blog called "In the Middle."

note to self

I started this blog because I had to register in order to respond to Tee's blog. It's been almost a month and I wondered if "shermaniac" would show up if I googled it. Damn. There's a SherManiac out there who is keen on things like Sherman Tanks and warmongering. That's not me!!

This stuff is all too interconnected. My brother put up some family pictures on his Facebook site so I had to sign on for that too. The profile there asked for a favorite quote so I picked:

He was not cut out to be a soldier, he thought, but neither were most of the young men of his class and acquaintance who went to fight. It was not wisdom which kept him away, he believed, but something closer to cowardice, and as he walked the cobbled streets of his new town, he almost thanked God for it. (Henry, the narrator, in The master, a novel based on the life of Henry James, by Colm Toibin)