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Personal Favorite Web Sites:
www.ivaw.org
- Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war
veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for
Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of
active duty service people and veterans who are against this
war, but are under various pressures to remain silent.
www.veteransforpeace.org - Veterans For Peace is a national
organization founded in 1985 and made up of men and women
veterans of all eras and duty stations including from the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam,
Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts. Our
collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard
to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other
means of problem solving are necessary.
www.TomPaine.com – Seeks
to enrich the national debate on controversial public issues by
featuring the ideas, opinions and analyses too often overlooked
by main stream media.
www.MoveOn.org – Bringing
ordinary people back into politics; catalyst for new kind of
grassroots involvement.
www.afsc.org – American
Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization dedicated to
peace and non-violence.
www.CommonDreams.org
– Promotes progressive visions for America’s future, using the
internet as a political organizing tool.
*****
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Beetlebopper by Peggy and illustrated by her sister,
Loretta Jacobson.
Beetlebopper is rainbow-colored, but the other
bugs are black or brown. They are big and scary, which
is just what Beetlebopper wants to be. But, while trying
to be like the other bugs, he finds out that he is
wonderful in his own way.
Beetlebopper ($7.95 plus shipping) can be
ordered through
Sprite Press at
spritepress@aol.com or get autographed copies
directly from Peggy as shown on the Home page.
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*****
Some
Favorite Quotes:
I wanted
to go out and change the world but I couldn’t find a
babysitter.
— Author Unknown
Speak Your
Mind Even if Your Voice Shakes! — Author Unknown
Patriotism: Supporting your country all the time, and the
government when it deserves it."
—
Mark Twain
*****
From the
introduction of Common Sense by Thomas Paine:
Perhaps the sentiments
contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently
fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not
thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of
being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense
of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes
more converts than reason.
*****
Books I Personally Recommend:
An American Ordeal,
The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era
by Charles
DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield
A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
War and the Christian Conscience: Where Do You Stand?
by Joseph Fahey
*****
Something I
wanted to put in the book but couldn’t find an appropriate place
for it - the following ran as the lead editorial of the
Springfield Daily News, Loren G. Schultz, Editor, on Friday,
March 13, 1970. I think it has stood the test of time.
An Open Mind
“I say ‘work to keep an open mind’ because it takes conscious,
constant striving to be open-minded. The person with a
closed mind sees and hears what he wants to… only that which
substantiates what he already believes to be true. Too
often he stumbles on the barriers of his own prejudice, thereby
losing sight of the real issue and blinding him to the truth.
His mind must be open to what’s best for ALL the people of
America.”
The writer of
these words? No politician, this one; no high governmental
official or university professor. But a good,
understanding, intelligent American.
The writer?
Mrs. Peggy Hanna, who won first place for her essay in the
Springfield Jaycees’ patriotic essay contest on “What It Takes
To Be a Good American Today.”
“It takes
more than warm patriotic feelings and flag waving to be a good
American,” Mrs. Hanna wrote. “Today especially, in this
time of dissent, demonstrations and extremes, a citizen must
work to keep an open mind before coming to any conclusion.”
Then Mrs.
Hanna wrote of responsibilities Americans have to the Bill of
Rights and said, “No one has the right to wave his flag and yet
turn away from his responsibility in problems such as
segregation and poverty. It takes courage and honesty to
admit to our country’s failing. This is not to deny one’s
love for his country but, on the contrary, comes from a genuine
concern for its present and future welfare. At the same
time the citizen must act in a positive way to correct these
wrongs. America is a great country because it listens to
its citizens. And the good American today speaks out.”
Mrs. Hanna
didn’t say it, but we do have segregation today because of the
prejudiced with their closed minds, we do have demonstrations
and riots because of bigots, we do have poverty and suffering
because there are those who don’t care.
We do have
people who work against fair housing because they do not have an
open mind, we do have people who work against fluoridation
because they do not have an open mind. And there are the
extremists, both to the left and to the right, who do not have
open minds.
“The person
with a closed mind,” Mrs. Hanna wrote, “sees and hears what he
wants to… only that which substantiates what he already believes
to be true.”
Amen.
I welcome
any feedback on my book or my web page. You can e-mail me at
peggy@peghanna.com
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