Jemez

At the last minute in a week of indecision, I decided to go down to Jemez Springs in New Mexico to speak along with my friend Bill at the annual meeting of the Pacific Life Community. Normally, this group follows a faith-based path of resistance to nuclear weapons, but this year's conference cast its net a little wide. Our old friend, Sister Joan Brown, was there from Albuquerque to talk about her trip to Copenhagen for the Climate Summit, and her efforts to link environmentalism and opposition to militarism. Joan was director of Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission years ago, and it was great to see her and hear about her latest work. Here's the first part of her speech, with continuations on my YouTube channel:



Another interesting aspect of this conference was the involvement of many college and high school students in a new group called Think Outside the Bomb. The group will tour the nation, stopping at locations with military bases and nuclear manufacturing sites to conduct skits, demonstrate renewable energy, and develop strategies of opposition. Exciting!

Bill spoke for half an hour on Southwestern military bases and the history of opposition to them. Here's Part 1:



I gave my usual rant on military theory, Part 1 is below and Part 2 is on my You Tube channel.



Saw many old friends and had some dazzling personal experiences. Feelings of discouragement have been banished for the year. Jemez has put me in the spirit.

Two Prayers

Two goofy recitations, one my own, one an excerpt from Laurie Anderson, intended as incantations or call-and-response:



Local Minima

My depth of gratitude for Clint Takeda’s simple words was not evident until the evening we leaned against the Knight Rider pinball machine in the long-demolished 15th Street Tavern, our inclined angles almost in parallel to the careening ball finding temporary traps in the pockmarks of David Hasselhoff’s painted face. Isobel was chanting, whispering perhaps, and it suddenly occurred to me the bardo pond looked just like the oscillating trap that those testing mixed-signal integrated circuits call “stuck-at-fault.” The bardo pond felt just like the point at which the energy daemon in a game of simulated annealing becomes “stuck at local minima.” The energy daemon felt just like the last pinball in the round.

Experts in genetic algorithms tell us that the energy required to overcome a local minimum is at least twice that to begin the process of annealing. From the point of view of the pinball, the valley walls are sheer and high, and the pond is cozy, maybe a bit warm for the mountains. There’s beer and brats for the beachfront property. Only that ominous I-70 sign, warning truckers they have not reached bottom yet, reminds the pinball it is far from its poky little home, where its mother is no doubt greatly displeased. How does the pinball reach the flippers? In the wheel, the minimum quantum of energy is one lifetime. In pinball, the minimum quantum of energy is tilt. Twice the energy at go would suggest cheating at some point.

Western Missouri in 1842? Serb highlanders in 1942? Maybe the jerky pattern of those whispers is the sound of a record skipping. Call upon your gods or siphon some gasoline or split the atom, but escaping the local minimum and leaving the canyon is a matter of chance. And the next annealing may not be the karmic destination you were hoping for. Maybe it’s best to sit by the pond in the bright sunshine and wait for the next streetcar to Pleiku.

The Best Kim Chee in Pyeongtaek

Too tired to blog much now. Here is the front page of Hankyore newspaper in Seoul, with conference speakers at DMZ. Below is a video of some of us sampling the finest kim chee to be found in Pyeongtaek. Will have videos and observations of the conference and South Korea later on.

Iraq Year Six: 'Occupation is a Crime'

We held an Iraq invasion commemoration on Saturday at noon at Colorado College. Excerpts from speeches by Bill Durland and Bill Sulzman are in the video above, as are songs from Mary Sprunger-Froese playing with Buck Buchanan, and from Heidi Cooper.



In Part 2 above, you can hear speeches by me, Grace Yenne, and Genie Durland.



In the final segment above, Tom Kerwin reads a Martin Luther King quote, Ed Billings gets people ready to march, and folks march and chant from CC to Acacia Park.