I got the following in an email (I’m on a Howard Dean local email list), and — since I had similar feelings back when the Peace Corps was instituted, I thought I’d pass it along here.
Expand the Peace Corps. Did you know that without a bachelors degree, you can’t even get into the Peace Corps today? Let’s devote 1% of the military budget to the Peace Corps. Restructure it so that, as in the military, you have officer and enlisted ranks. Also like the military, make enlistments binding and create a GI bill for Peace so that kids can work for a college education.
Imagine if we had done this in Afghanistan 20 years ago – if the Peace Corps had educated the Afghan people, do you think they would have gone Taliban? JFK had a great vision when he created the Peace Corps – it would be a truly effective way of projecting American values to the developing world – creating friends instead of jealousies and suspicions.
Hey, I realize that with the Governer’s position on the Iraq war it may not be a politically salable issue for the center of this country that supported the war – it may cause people to look upon the campaign with greater suspicion… but… 1% of the military budget could save a lot of military lives and a lot of money if it prevents just one war a decade… 4 billion dollars a month in
Iraq… it doesn’t always have to be this way…
Personally, I don’t like the military hierarchy as a model for the Peace Corps, and I believe there should be a flatter kind of management structure and, certainly, a more humanistic training program. But the idea of giving people this kind of opportunity to make a real difference and get a college education always seemed like a really good idea to me.

Myrln says:

I

So much for my intention to read at an Open Mike poetry event tonight. Too much to do to get ready for my grandson

During the 40s, after the war, everyone was having kids, and I grew up in the midst of an extended family of cousins and pseudo-cousins. Every Sunday, all summer long, caravans of these nuclear families would head out to the Long Island beaches or up to lakes in the Catskills, where blankets would be spread, beach umbrellas set up, and ice chests unpacked with enough food to keep the cousins running and splashing, digging and giggling until the setting sun sent us yawning for home.
That was when we all lived within three blocks of each other. Now many of us don

Over on b!X’s Portland Communique, he remembers the July 4 event he organized at the Millennium Cafe, the ownership of which he took over shortly after.
And shortly after that, I went out and visited him. Remember when I took that photo of you, b!X?

It was so hard to leave, hard to head back to this deadening place.
My daughter and her son are so full of life and love.

I slept better on their couch than I do in my own bed. I ate less and better. I laughed and hugged a lot more.
It was so hard to leave. I was finally establishing myself as someone the little one knows and likes. The three of them will be coming here to visit for his first birthday in a couple of weeks. I wonder if he will remember me.
It bothers me how much about my kids

….I just have to point to this one:
U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders.
Read the Washington Post story here.
Get that idiot out of the White House and his cronies out of their posh posts in Washington!!

My mother’s mobile enough. My brother says that he’s coming up for a couple of days. (That always remains to be seen.) The food is ready. Her refrigerator is packed and my friends are on alert. I’m packed. I leave for Boston tomorrow morning. Gonna hug the little guy and his cool mom. Gonna sit on their deck and drink tea and take deep breaths while the work gets done on their kitchen and they head for the park. Be back Thursday. 🙂

Not that long ago, I blogged about being good at beginnings and good at endings, but not being so good at middles. So I have to try a little harder to hang in there through the ordinary times, including ordinary blogging times