The court houses are 1.5 blocks up, and during the week, I've become appropriately comfortable with using one of their many rest rooms as a lav, and even to do some discrete washing up - shirt, hair, undershorts.... but not pants. And the jeans I've been wearing 24/7 for 3 months now are well, yeah....
P____, a 25 year old ex Marine, now in the Secret Service, introduced himself a week ago. He's from the upper South, adores his dad, a carpenter, horrified at what nothing's his contemporaries back home are, either sized me up quick as a citizen of courage, decency, commitment, heard it from others in the service, or both. Probably both. Last night he brought an old pair of his jeans that to his inquiry last week I said I could use, and totally unexpected, his Marine's shirt, that now I proudly wear; his having spotted my most treasured possession, my Marine belt warn in several mideast tours, green, elite Marines, given me by K____, Secret Service, several years ago, easily one of the relationships I most in my life treasure. "Give me a military man to fight alongside any day. Don't give me any cowards." Gandhi.
Since day 1, the one and only group that has respected deeply me and my courage, and unviolent warfare is the Secret Service. We aren't pals. They are professionals. I'm a professional. But the deep mutual love and respect is an extraordinary, shockingly unexpected privilege for me, year, after year.... They worry, fret, watch over me more than you do [a note to a dear friend]. Oh, sure, Embassy is their responsibility, they don't want a corpse on their beat.... But it is way more than that. A. These are our citizens that have sworn to take a bullet for the president. B. They are people of courage and they recognize and revere others of courage, discipline, duty, commitment, cause, seriousness of purpose.... And, small c. More and more they are 'getting' that tragically, I know what the frick I'm talking about regarding the Hell that all the little one's in their lives, and their fellows in arms, face, if we don't stop this criminal use of carbon fuels.
I wear what, Love, the Creator, has given me -
Belt -K, Secret service; Shirt - P, Secret Service;
Pants - Secret Service; Boots - M, Secret Service;
sleeping bag - 32 Yr Peace Vigil Thomas wife Ellen;
umbarella - woman smart enough to divorce me after 50 years;
sandals, backpack... - kids of the nurse/Guardian Angel that numerous times has kept me literally alive thru my campaigns these last 11 years;
rain cape - local museum worker that is grateful for my work....
Oh, and from the local, national anti-global warming and activist communities? I wear, uh, scorn, ridicule, rumor, gossip, innuendo, slander, lies, hostility, fear, shunning, wish for my quiet death? No, this is the Truth. A dwindling few in Occupy being the stunning, hopeful exception.
BTW, the storm last night -
It was a tsunami of Wind, a Wall of wind. I've never seen anything like it. I'd expected to weather it on the sidewalk, by my suitcase, in my makeshift garbage bag / sleeping bag / blue tarp contraption, but the wind was too horrible, throwing big stuff like matchsticks, that I thought better of it and ran with my sleeping stuff up to the top of the Can Emb stairs, and watched it go thru for an hour. Micro-burst? Near-tornado? Was sure my suitcase, that I left, was gone for sure. It stayed. Seems the Creator wants me here, for now.
However, next time I'm more likely to weather it on the sidewalk. Awesome for the cause if my head were bashed in by a flying whatever, in front of the Can Emb, because of our pouring warmth in to the atmosphere. Damn useful press it would be.
Huh. Who woulda thunk? If you put heat under a pan of still water, it, uh, begins to churn, furiously. Huh. Who wudda thunk that if you did the same thing to an ocean of relatively mind air pouring warming gas into it, it would do the same thing? (Answer: Anyone not clinically sociopathic, psychotic, older than 3 years.)
Loving
