Looking for the truth, in a coffee shop, in the mountains..

...in the scraps of paper on the floor ...

"I gotta tell you the truth, folks, I gotta tell you the truth.

"When it comes to bullshit ... big-time, major-league bullshit ... you
have to stand in awe of religion.

"Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there is
an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every
minute of every day.

"And the invisible man has a list of ten things he does not want you to
do.

"And if you do any of these things he has a special place, full of fire
and burning and smoke and anguish, and where he will send you to burn
and suffer and choke and scream and cry forever and ever, 'til the end
of time.

"... But he loves you."

— George Carlin, Zeitgeist

TWIN PARADOX COFFEE SHOP, Portland, Oregon — "Hey, dude fellow, gimme one a them-there Grandee Motcha Breeve's."

Turn right at E. Burnside St., turn left onto 10th Ave., end at NE 10th Ave.

My car floor is littered with notes from Mapquest and hosts about how to get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes I get there, sometimes I have to scramble from Point P to T to C, then B, but so far so good.

Tomorrow I'm going into the mountains with Joe Beelart, a longtime email Bigfooting friend. We are going looking for Bigfoot, looking for the truth about America. We are going to turn the stone and look beneath it — and also find out who killed John and Bobby and Martin and Malcolm.

It's Sunday. I have correctly followed the directions given me to a funkedelic Portland coffee shop, dogs roam in and out. I ask the guy behind the counter for a Grande Mocha Breve.

You cannot buy black coffee in Oregon. It is against the law.

In Oregon they also pump your gas for you. It's either because they think everyone else is too stupid, or something. I ask the guy to explain the Grande Mocha Breve to me, and after he's done I smile and nod and say okay. I have no idea what he said.

I ask for "one of those bagels" and point.

He asks if I want it toasted and whether I want Brazilian almond spread or Guatamalan Bagel Spread Mocha Shit on it, and I say no, just plain, thanks.

Geezuz.

Yesterday I read at Laughing Horse Books. I met with five members of the local 911 Truth group.

It is the uber-intelligentsia of Portland, is my impression. And here I am reading out of a big children's book with color pictures.

Well, we had a good time, really. I enjoyed listening to them.

Tim Calvert is one of the original founding members of Laughing Horse. He has been with the store since 1985. That is hard-core. Dedication. Serious.

After my thing we go to Nicolas' Restaurant for Lebanese food. It is the best Lebanese food I have ever had. There is humus and pita bread and other stuff.

And Turkish coffee. Farm out. Also the best Turkish Coffee I have ever tasted.

Then we went over to Powell's Books, on 10th Avenue. I guess people do still read. There are hundreds of people looking around.

Geezuz God, that is kinda surprising.

I think of my two books in the trunk of my car and think that these people would like them, but they will never see them.

It is magic — to be able to get a book into a store like this.

Poof!

I am gone, outside, into the rain to call home, talk to Ruth, feel at ease, at home, if only for a while.

Ruth says that Emily has a cold, but she went to work today at Hy-Vee anyway, but now she has a chance to rest.

And it seems Ruth got a postcard from me from Albuquerque, a full-color photo of the back of the ol' brown, rusted '91 Honda and a speeding ticket for $89.

Geezuz.

I wonder if I have sent anymore postcards home without knowing it.

I spoke in Corvallis on Friday night. It was one of the really good nights. It was upstairs at the Odd Fellows Hall, put on by the local Veterans For Peace. About twenty-five people, very nice. And then I got to stay in the back yard cottage of Bart and Leah Bolger for the night.

The next morning Bart went out to deliver mail in the snow in the hills and Leah and I went out for breakfast at The Beanery.

Around the table sat the regular group of gray-hairs, some with pony tails, talking, eating bagels, laughing, passing around petitions.

Leah and Bart are retired from the Navy. Beginning in 2000, they spent three years on a sailboat and two years in an RV — never touching the ground except to pee.

Leah has long, graying hair and on her sweater she had numbers written on masking tape. They are the number of United States soldiers killed in Iraq and below that the estimated number of Iraqi's killed in the war.

She wants people to ask her what the numbers mean.

Leah was at the recent Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland. If you listen to the tapes you can hear her sobbing when a mother and father describe the process their son went through after coming back from Iraq until he committed suicide.

Leah says that she tried to get the local Gazette-Times to cover the hearings, but the editor said there was no local hook, besides his not wanting to alienate his readers and lose money.

I recall that in my first newspaper job at the Ainsworth Star-Journal in the Sandhills of Nebraska I once wrote a column about the first gulf war that said "I do not support the troops."

That was when the yellow ribbon thing was really getting started up. My column was cancelled and the publisher said he did not want to alienate his readers and thus lose money.

That burst my idealistic journalism bubble.

And I ask Leah if maybe that feeling extends all the way up through the Corvallis Gazette-Times to some fancy wood-soaked meeting room in a big CBS building, and that is why we are stupid.

A guy at the table in The Beanery, from Mississippi, grins when I ask him if Mississippi is like Iowa. His grin says, "you dumbshit."

He says that he once heard of a guy from Iowa telling a friend that he was going to visit Pittsburgh.

"Why," his friend says, "you can see it from Iowa."

It's baseball season, but you would not know it from the rain and the mud and the wood smoke smell. The Oregon State Beavers have won the College World Series the past two years. I love baseball and should go see if they are playing today.

Too cold. No time. I have to get to Portland.

I stayed with Tim & Jan Calvert in Portland. We watched "Something Funny Happened On The Way To the Moon."

Have you seen that yet? Wow.

Have you ever seen the video of the press conference of the three astronauts, Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins — the very first public appearance they had after claiming to walk on the moon.

You would think they would be high-fiving and turning somersaults.

"The freaking MOON, man! Wa-effing-hoo!"

They sit there like they are depressed, like they just ran over their own new puppy in the driveway on their way home, after midnight, after stealing their dad's car, to get drunk, with money they stole from their blind grandmother who lives in the nursing home on the edge of
town — all dimes and nickles.

Dude. We didn't go to the moon.

Dude. Is there a God?

Dude. Did our own government attack it's own country in order to start
a war and get rich?

Who killed John and Bobby and Martin?

Dude. These are things we need to talk about.

Let me getcha a Grande Mocha Breve — my personal favorite — and lets just sit and talk for awhile.

Besides, it's raining outside.



seeya

— Mike


__________________

Upcoming:

April 2nd: Seattle, Revolution Books, 1833 Nagle Place.

7 p.m.

Snowing, rainy, sunshine, icy ... snowing, rainy, sunshine, icy ... snowing, rain..

"Some humans ain't human. Some people ain't kind. If you open up their hearts, here's what you'll find. A few frozen pizzas, some ice cubes with hair, some broken popsicles, you don't want to go there."

— John Prine

BEAVERS CANTINA, Corvallis, Oregon — The forecast for central Oregon today was "light rain, followed by hard rain, with a stint of scattered precipitation, to be followed by a period of general gloom."

This morning I left Bend, headed north on Highway 97, trying to go around the Cascades and not have to go over the summit like I did yesterday and hit the heavy snow. But 97 turned to a total white-out, so I turned around. A few miles later there is a pickup on its top. It wasn't there a few minutes ago. I found my way to I-85, Portland, Salem and down to the land of Oregon State University.

Go Beavs.

Yesterday I read at The Book Barn in Bend, owned by Linda Torres. She came to Bend from southern California in 1972. Bend was cool then.

"I hate it now," she says.

It has grown, one of the fastest growing cities in the country for a while, says my host for the day, Ray Duray. Ray is a one-man peace & justice coalition and 9/11 Truth campaign.

After my talk we go along with the "Save The Badlands" group on one part of it's three-bar pub crawl around the downtown.

I hitchhiked from Bend to Nebraska in 1978, I think it was. Roger and Bob and I came out here after Wayne State College let out for the summer. We worked in a mushroom plant in Salem. We hoped to get jobs in the woods, but didn't. I eventually got lonely for Sarah Sister Golden Hair, and I had a job lined up with the state roads department, so I rode my thumb home.

I see hitchhikers along the road quite often. So far I haven't picked anyone up. I tell myself I don't have room, too much stuff crammed into every corner. The hitchhikers are the hobos of our time. Back in California I thought about the Oakies and the "Grapes of Wrath." I try to write that book every time I start a new novel. I think the Oakies of today are from Oaxaca.

Back in Chico I had a short talk with Marylyn about the movie "Zeitgeist." Marylyn says it doesn't matter if the date Dec. 25 and resurrection, and a bunch of other stuff have been copied in several religions, doesn't mean it's not real, that there's not a God.

I just wonder if when we sit in church with our rosaries we aren't a bunch of pygmies dancing around a campfire in the middle of the woods at night.
__________________________

Everyone is so full of shit
Born and raised by hypocrites
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the middle east
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia
Land of make believe
That don't believe in me

— Green Day, Jesus of Suburbia

__________________________

I came down out of the mountains and saw the Columbia River. That is why there are so many liberals out here. I can see why someone from Nebraska or Iowa wouldn't care that much about nuclear war or the end of the world. If it's ... say January 17, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, you're like, awright, whatever.

But if you were out here you would want to save this shit..

____________________

"It would be so much easier if this were a dictatorship."

— George W. Bush

____________________

If I were king for a day, I would be busy. I would put loggers and hunters in county jail. I would let the druggies go and rich people would take their place.

Yesterday in Bend the discussion came, as it does sometimes, to the question of, if Bush & Co. did 9/11 themselves, how do they live with themselves. Some people think it's because these folks are psychopathic, without a conscience. Maybe, but I'm still not sure.

Linn County Oregon is the "Grass Seed Capital of the World," so this is where America really takes root.

About a block from me, on Fourth Street, between Monroe and Jefferson Avenues, in front of the county courthouse, the longest running protest against the war is now taking place.

People have been standing out there at 5 p.m. every-effing-day for six years. That's a lot. I could be there, but there's a college basketball game on the TV here in this bar, and I have really been out of touch for the past weeks.

I'm not really Joe Protester, to tell you the truth. This book "Cost of Freedom" celebrates the many people who do the stuff like stand on street corners every day for six years, and I am glad to be a part of that, but I haven't really done that much.

I have gone to work and written my books.

Go Beavs.

seeya

— Mike

_________________

Letters from Readers

Mike,

This is getting to be too much spam, please take me off your list. I need to keep this email cleared for important message related to actual organizing opportunities.

Good luck,
— Chris


Mike,
You need a pee bottle for pete’s sake. Just like the truckers do.

— DW


Dude ... you're getting to see all kinds of groovy places.

I dig on Bigfoot. Have since I was in about sixth grade.

In the mid-'70s I saw movie that featured that Patterson film footage that was shown in the Ritz Theatre in Denison. I believe it was called "Mysterious Monstors."

The movie also included the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. My sister and I went.

I remember staring out the window each night at the corn field behind our house, halfway hoping to see a Bigfoot, and halfway hoping I didn't. The movie was sort of scary.

This may have been the same year I saw Jaws in the same theatre. I must have been only eight or nine years old. But they let me in. I left in the middle with hands over my eyes.

— David Namanny


Please take me off this list.

— Jeanne


Mike.

.Enjoy reading you.

Eureka is always cold always raining,that is exactly what you found.

Eureka!..You found it!

On the subject of nuclear missile bases...you will love this.

I have a very good friend in Uzbekistan, he is dean of the university of Sanmarkand. I met him in Iowa City. Really cool guy, tap dances, plays saxophone.

But during the cold war he was in the Soviet army and his job was to calibrate all of the Russian missiles on American targets. Cool huh?..my pal, Kamol.

One day we were driving to Pella Days, and he was looking at the Iowa map, and laughed.

For all of the crap we were fed about Soviet surveillance systems?

They used FREE maps from the Triple A to aim the missiles back at us!

Drive good.

— Tim Tafco


Hey Mike ...

Well, it was good to have you! Too short, though. I keep thinking of other things to say. Like ... re: Bobby Kennedy ...I saw a very well-done documentary (BBC?) about Bobby which highlighted his "conversion" from what he was as Attorney General to what he became when campaigning for the presidency. Seems he was pretty hard-nosed as AG, but when he started his campaign and found himself in direct contact with the poor, his heart really softened.

Also about faith in God ...
It's always difficult for me to put this in words, but I have a sense of the fact that from the very earliest times, human beings have KNOWN that a Mystery beyond our ken has not only posited a creation, but has somehow penetrated the boundary between Thing and NO-Thing and become one with this creation. And from the earliest times, we finite human beings have tried and tried to explain this to ourselves and others by means of stories. Some do a better job than others. And always we know it's impossible for our puny little minds to understand because it would have to be a puny little God (and, therefore, no God at all) if our little minds could comprehend this Mystery.

— Marylyn


Dear Mike-

Recieved a letter this am from Tom Wodetski via email telling that only two people showed at your appearance at Cheshire Books. I couldn't make it because of another commitment, but would have loved to have been there. I've been busy trying to put together a benefit for a small shelter for children in Baghdad and working on the details; ie.- posters, tickets, PR, on my computer.

This is an unusual area in that we have a long-time, blue collar working class contingent, "resistant to change" and people who moved here in the late 60's-early 70's "back to the landers" and now the recently retired, rich folks who used to come up for vacation, who've
driven the price of property sky-high. So- it's a mix. Mostly Democrats though. A few sprinklings of Greens, Libertarians, and Whatevers--and GOP.

I have been standing against the Illegal Invasion of Iraq since before it happened, here on the coast. The mood has certainly changed towards us in the last two years toward the positive. Friends and I have organized a few rallys, marches and I stand with Women in Black every First Friday. I have worked to educate young folks about the Draft for many years. And--I'm on The Single-payer Healthcare Board for this Chapter for SB840 in CA. I am 61 and getting tired...I'm only sorry that I can't do more or be at every event possible. I am sorry I had to miss yours. Don't blame Fort Bragg tho--blame the diseases: apathy, greed and fear.

My best to you on you sojourn,

In Peace,

☮ Nancy Milano


Mike,

Good, just got back from a hike around Topanga Canyon with the family. Warm and sunny in the canyon, but socked in with luscious fog here in Santa Monica. For some reason, dense marine layer coastal fog, the kind that drips from the eaves, has become a rarity. This isn't so mushy,
but it's nice. I used to live in the Mission in SF, so I enjoyed picturing you having a drink at a rooftop bar. It was less trendy in those days, but unless it's all been bulldozed, I'm sure it still
retains funk. As is so often the case, I'm listening to Sun Ra. Hope alls well.

— Rex


Mike, I've heard you comment so often about the stress of needing to pee in traffic, and as a voluminous cross-country coffee and beer drinker, I do understand the crises you've experienced.

NO PROBLEM MAN!

Get yourself a pecan .... (heh, down in some parts of Oklahoma, the pronounce it pee-can). I don't travel anyplace without a pecan in my old truck. When the bladder gets full, I pull over even in heavy traffic, pull out the pecan and use it. At the earliest opportunity, I take the opportunity to empty it. Sometimes even at the spot where I used it. Just open the door a bit and dump it on the assfault.

— Larry Hicks


Mike,

I've been getting your travel notes via email from a friend.

How may I get on your email list to receive these wonderful missives?

I've shared them with various political people on my email list and most are thoroughly enjoying your take on life, the world, the road.

BTW, I work for the actor/ activist Ed Asner and he's been enjoying too.

— Patty Egan
Personal Assistant to
Ed Asner


Mike,

We want to accept your article but it needs a bit more work, as described below.

You submitted an article titled:
Wealth is a Very Dangerous Thing To Hold in One's Hand

— Op Ed News Administrator

P.S. You need to remove "shit," and substitute something else. While foul language may be appropriate to impart strong emotion, it is just gratuitous as you have used it here. The same may be said with your described urinary tract urgency.

Your Original Submission is attached to this email

Please do NOT reply to this email; no one will see it.



Dear Mike,

I enjoyed your book very much. Thanks for your daily dose of e-sanity in a world gone mad.


Stay cool,

David

* * * * * * * * *
— David Mathison
BE THE MEDIA


On March 19, I dragged my friend Kim, a special ed. teacher, to a war protest held in Memorial Park in Omaha, NE, and organized by moveon.org. Earlier, Friends for Peace, held a rally in the same location. It was cold and damp and got dark quickly. The speeches were too long and the wind got stronger as each speech got longer. We held placards protesting the war and flashlights or glow sticks. Kim and I shared a blanket I’d brought as the rain began to fall. When the wind rushed up the hillside like an attack of shrieking, suicidal banshees, we caved and headed for the car. We were followed by the remainder of the protesters and a few lightweight lawn chairs! Where was the press to cover the protest? Where was the follow-up reporting in the next day’s newspapers? No one cares because the media is keeping it out of the news. And who owns the media?

— Kathleen J.


Hey Mike-
You’re in the best part of the state now. Someday I will move back there, not sure I should have left.. But I did. I’d be glad to unblock Namanny, if I knew what that was, or how to do it. He emailed me and replied a couple of weeks ago. I’ll email him again. I doubt you’ll find anyone that remembers me, it was almost 20 years ago.
Jesus – that’s a long time – who’d a thunk?
Take care, stay out of trouble and try to avoid the body casts

— Lundquist


Well, Holy Easter Crap, Auto-Crusader!

Careful of all those nerves you're touchin' Out There! And just remember, when Zinn was in MN a few years back, here's what he said:
You try and you try and you try and you try; and you try and you try and you try and you try; and nothing happens.
Then, one day, it does.
It's all about process, putting in place an alternative vibe, sending an alternative message, as we keep heading toward a better way of being, while hoping we don't blow ourselves up, or completely wreck the planet, first.

— Leigh


Dear Mike,

We're still aglow from the other night with yr powerful presenation & encourage us to try to harmonize. Onwords!

— David & Judy Ray


Mike, thanks SO MUCH for the copy of IOWA TERROR -- it's even better than I remember it from the file. I very much like the presentation -- the cover slightly reminds me of a coloring book, which I like, and the illustrations extend that feeling. And though the sans serif font
is not supposed to work for longer documents, it seems to do well here, maybe especially because the paragraphs are short. Just excellent all around.

— Phil Hey

San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair

Some thoughtful commentary on the San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair, by Paul Corman Roberts. Paul, Mike Palecek and Dan Benbow recently Cost of Freedom at the fair.

In northern CA, amid the mountains, the redwoods, the beer, bait ...

..& Bigfoot.

"Well how do ya do, young Willie McBride, do you mind if I sit down here, by your graveside?"
— Erik Bogel, The Greenfields of France

LOST COAST BAR & CAFE, Eureka, CA — It's cold, rainy, and the good ol' boys are lining the bar. We are not in Santa Monica anymore.

One of the guys comes up to me and slurs in my ear, seeing me with my computer, "you must be the only intelligent person in town."

I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.

"When we came upon the creature it was standing still by the creek. It immediately turned and walked away."

That's Bob Gimlin describing finding Bigfoot near Willow Creek, California in 1967, along with Roger Patterson.

I passed through Willow Creek today while coming through the northern California mountains on my way from Chico to Eureka.

Yesterday I spoke at Chico State University, then stayed the night up on the mountain with Marylyn Felion in her cabin. Marylyn is an old friend from the 1980s when we were both in Omaha working on various peace and justice projects.

One of the things we did was go to Offutt Air Force Base and "cross the line," which is trespassing, in order to speak out against America's military machine, in hopes of stopping the United States from destroying the world and also in hope that the money might rather be spent on the poor of north Omaha.

On one occasion Marylyn was due to go to federal court along with another friend to face trespassing charges at Offutt.

Rather than show up in court they decided to take sanctuary in the Cathedral of the Omaha Catholic Church, and make it very public, in order to try to get the Omaha Catholic Church and Archbishop Daniel Sheehan to speak out against the targeting of nuclear weapons taking place at Offutt.

So, weeks before the date, the church knew about it, the press knew about it, and apparently the FBI knew about it too.

They raided Marylyn's home at five in the morning and also the home of the other defendant, Kevin McGuire.

Kevin and his family were not home. They lived with Ruth and I and Sam at Greenfields, a resistance community in north Omaha, named after the Irish anti-war song, The Greenfields of France. Kevin and Laura were out at the lake. Ruth and Sam and I were in Norfolk visiting my mother.

At Marylyn's her housemates were able to lock the doors before the FBI could get in, and they thought the feds had departed. But when Marylyn's dog had to be taken outside to do its duty the FBI cars swooped down the street from all directions.

Marylyn's 70-year-old landlady, Jean Petersen, tried to block the way but was shoved to the side. Another roommate, a young man, blocked the steps. Marylyn demanded identification and a warrant, and one agent said they did not need to provide any.

Marylyn then hurried upstairs to call the press and also the Omaha police, saying strangers were in her home claiming they were the FBI.

The police and the press arrived and Marylyn was taken away on camera. It was the lead story on television and radio for days in Omaha. Friends then crossed the line in protest of the treatment of Marylyn — then Kevin, in hiding until a few days later, was able to undertake the
original sanctuary action, with additional press coverage.

So, the FBI and the Omaha Catholic Church were not able to hush up the sanctuary action with their early morning raids. They only served to give it even more attention.

Well, Marylyn's cabin is up in the big woods near Cohasset, outside of Chico. We have a great late-night old-home session, remembering the days of the '80s in Omaha, and lots of old friends.

In the morning I head off toward Redding and then turn east on 299 to go through the mountains.

Around and around, up, up, down, down. It's raining, then foggy.

The puffs of clouds and fog look like dozens of little fires in the forest.

I pass the Bigfoot Campground, Bigfoot Rafting, Bigfoot Burger, and Bigfoot Bait.

Must be some sort of theme.

I see the sign for Willow Creek.

Another I-can't-believe-I'm-here moment.

I think I saw a Bigfoot on two occasions. Once was in southern Minnesota in the '90s driving along the interstate late at night. The other was in the '80s while I was walking up on a hillside in Spearfish Canyon in South Dakota.

Anyway, I love the woods. I think it's the mystery. You can't see what's there, you can only imagine.

I'm following the beautiful Trinity River. At the top the rain becomes snow and ice, then rain again at the bottom.

Off to the left I see some black things on the mountainside. I pull over in a parking area and stare. They are a long ways off, but I definitely see about ten black things on the mountainside. I don't have binoculars. I'm thinking Bigfoot because I have Bigfoot on the brain — but they look like they are on all-fours.

Cows? Cows way up in the mountain? Where is the farm? Why way up there?

As I drive away I think bears maybe. Do bears hang around in packs of ten? Elk? Are elk black? I didn't see antlers, but I was a long way away.

I just don't know.

The mountains and the woods.

Beautiful. Mystery.

seeya

— Mike
____________________

Here is an excerpt from Looking For Bigfoot, Howling Dog Press, 2006.

Bigfoot is about a man, Jack Robert King, who leaves his Iowa home to go west, in search of the truth about America.

... from Looking For Bigfoot ...

"They shot down or lasered-down Wellstone's plane and they really did attack their own Pentagon.

I see this and I have zero documentation. I don't care. I have all the proof I need from the glazed look in your eye as you struggle to attach the American flag to your car antenna.

I understand America by watching you.

I know it from growing up in the Midwest of America, from playing baseball and football and riding down the middle of the street with no hands eating an ice cream cone. The strawberry drips on my T-shirt and I don't care. Mom will wash it, clean it up, just as she rinses the blood of a thousand Chileans from her hands. A lemony spray makes everything smell fresh.

I see more than I want to in the referee's face as he prepares the jump-ball toss and the smile of the drive-up teller as she helps another customer.

Would evil men and women kill in order to gain absolute power? Pretty darn near impossible to believe when they look just like us and sound like us, tell the same tired jokes and watch the same TV shows.

I do know, because I saw it myself over the top of my SuperSize Diet Pepsi, that while children are being bombed to gooey bits, the mail still arrives at our house at ten, and the garbage is picked up at one, school dismisses at three-thirty and Raymond comes on at seven.

I see the banality of evil old Mrs. Schwartz using her tongs to set another fish square into a slot on a lunch tray at St. Mark's elementary as a child in Baghdad has his nose blown off by a bomb he thought was a toy.

I do not have a leaked file or a tidbit of information or an inside source.

I know all I need to know from seeing your guilty face staring out into the night while you wash dishes, or leaning out the car window to order an A&W root beer, or chasing your children into the school house with one last admonition.

I don't need to know George Bush or Karl Rove.

I know you."

________________________


Upcoming:

www.mikepalecek.com

March 26: Eureka, CA
100 Fires Bookstore
www.100fires.com

730 p.m.

Why I Still Heart Ralph Nader

I want to break from my usual mode of posting on Cost of Freedom and Mike's tour (which, if you've missed his updates, can be found to your right in the archive -- worth checking out! stay safe in Oregon, MP!), to post about something more personal.

Ralph Nader. And why I still love him.

From an interview in this week's Newsweek:

Howard Fineman: You've done more than one life's worth of work. Why go do this at this point?

Ralph Nader: Well, you're asking a personal question. So I will give you an unusual personal answer. I have a very deep well of empathy, and I take my motivation from what I see around the country. And I'll give it to you just briefly, statistically: 47 million people who make less than $10.50 an hour—six and a half, seven, eight dollars an hour before deductions; 45 million people without health care, 18,000 of whom die every year, according to the National Academy of Sciences, because they can't afford health care; 13 million children who go to bed hungry every night; 45 million people in dire poverty; 58,000 people who die from workplace-connected diseases and trauma every year, according to [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration]; 65,000 people who can't breathe, and die because of air pollution. I mean, do I have to go on? I mean, just what more evidence is needed that each and every one of us who has an ability to improve his or her country has got to do what they have to do within the confines of the Constitution and rule of law and freedom of speech?

I don't need to go into the politics, or the issues, or the 2000 election, or all the boring stuff we make a pretense of caring about, even though we ignore those Common Dreams or Save Darfur alerts that clutter our inboxes.

This is the reality: we're in this because we know (we know) this is wrong.

We don't have to justify it -- it just is. If you are a human being, and you live on planet earth, you know that it is wrong that people live in crushing poverty; that children go to bed hungry at night; that mothers have to lose their children because of corporate greed.

Ralph Nader knows it, I know it, you know, we all know it. As Nader says, if you have the ability to change these statistics, how can you not do everything in your power to do so?

This is what it means to pay the cost of freedom.