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Sunday, Apr. 21, 2002 / 8:19 a.m. ~Initial Impressions Written Early in the Morning After~ We made it back on time, almost exactly by the time we anticipated, stopping only for dinner and later for the driver to get coffee, and once later for... er... I think for the driver to step outside the bus and piss, but I'm not sure. Either way, we slept, I slept, I bought a paper to see if my interview and photo are in it, and I am going now to look through it. I got McDonald's breakfast, mainly because I NEVER get up early enough to eat at McDonald's, even to pull through the Drive-Thru on my way anywhere, so when I'm up this early, 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday (which is a great time to be up, by the way!, nothing but dog walkers), I drive on through and get a Sausage McMuffin With Egg, Hash Browns and coffee. Mmmmmmm... cholesterol, salt, it's so good! N and G survived fine, as far as I can tell. I hated leaving them so much food and watching them eat it immedatiely, knowing they spent all day yesterday unable to move, but it was their choice, and they're fine. All is well. I'm really disappointed in the Rally/March itself. It was too many diverse groups, all with different messages, the underlying theme being Peace With Justice, yes, of course, that's understood, but everything I heard, all day, was FREE FREE PALESTINE! All day. And that's not why I was there. I was surrounded by Muslims, surrounded by men not respecting my personal space at the Rally, had to actually step away. Here comes a big stereotype... Arab men don't respect women. Yes, it's a harsh generalization, but think about it, just for a moment (oh, I'm not inviting opinions here, keep them to yourself, I'm not up for an argument). I had to step away from the Rally. Luckily I was with a pretty good group, a couple of guys from our bus - we had three buses, one for the Action Center and two were for Muslims, the men sitting separately on their own bus, and yes, we stopped early Saturday morning for them to pray for 45 minutes. Yes, it held us up, yes, we were late, yes, the whole travel scenario on the way up was a giant pig fuck, and I'll write it later - I spent the day with an older man, another man, 45, with his 11 year old son, and a man who'd traveled alone and didn't want to get separated. He was very quiet. I got asked out by two different men, from the bus, one of whom now has my phone number. Neither was particularly attractive to me, in any way at all, but the one with my phone number is the one with the 11 year old, and he was kind of interesting. The kid is great! Maybe I just like him for his kid. There's a lot to say here, and I have a lot of strong feelings about how it all went down, and watching CNN just now (they had GOOD coverage) I heard the point mentioned that we were too many groups and did we present any one cohesive message, and I say, uh... not really. I think I was in the wrong part of the March - it was so vast, there were SO many people, and my little group lost the rest of our people first thing, so we weren't with the people who were protesting war, on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on terrorism, loss of civil liberties, racial profiling. We lost the War Is Not the Answer people and found ourselves surrounded by Palestinian supporters all day. They were loud and dramatic, and very passionate. I guess that's great, but it's not my issue. I'm on the fence. Don't start yelling at me about how Sharon is another Hitler and so is Bush. I have no idea what Sharon is really doing. I can read any number of articles, but still, what goes on in the Middle East is a religious war going back years and years and years. I find the US' current "war on terrorism" of far more concern to me, personally. I'm feeling I wasted my time. I'm going to go read the paper now. I was photographed and interviewed by our local city newspaper yesterday, right as it started to rain. I was tired, exhausted really, and when the reporter, via cell phone (and I think that's the first time I've ever used a cell phone, ever, I'm serious), asked me why I was there, I could only think of so many things to say, too many really, it was hard to put it into a sentence or two. And because I was surrounded by Palestinians I felt the need to add that I do not condone the US' support of Israel in its terrorist occupation of Palestine, but I still don't know how I feel. Initial impressions, I have many more - after all, I just spent a total of like 25 hours or more on a bus, divided by 6 or so hours wandering around D.C., the Ellipse, the Mall in front of the Capitol, listening, watching, observing, sweating, etc. And we went in the Ronald Reagan Building to pee and brush our teeth. The 11 year old asked how Reagan got his own building, and I said something about when you're president you can even have your own library, being president gets you all kinds of perks. Cost of the War in Iraq
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