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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us December 17, 2004 Why I stand with Women in Black When I stand with the Women in Black, I try to cultivate a peaceful mind. But it is a struggle. My mother's mind goes instead to the land of the war dead. I stand and I feel their presence, I see their bright young faces. They won't go away from my mind. I have wondered why I don't also think of the tens of thousands of Iraqis that have died, but I don't. It is as if I only have room in my mind and heart for the young I know. And I do know them. I have two children in their 20s. The young dead of our latest was are no different from them, no different from any child I have watched grow up here, no different from the young people in my living room studying for finals. When you think of it, the 1,270 dead are all the students at our high school. I don't think of these young men and women only when I am standing. They are with me always like a stone in my heart. I read their published last letters home, with all their expressed fear and hopes for their lives. One dad wrote to his young son to stay away from the military. One son asked for his father's strength and wisdom to help him through this fight for his life in Fallujah. I see all of them in the faces of our own sons and daughters every day. I just don't know how we do this to our beautiful children. We fail miserably to find peaceful solutions to the world's ills and then send them to pay for our failures. And we say it has always been this way ... won't change ... human nature. We are miserable failures but take the moral high ground in each of our failures because we are a Christian nation - God's chosen people. What a laugh! Can you imagine Jesus in cammies with a semiautomatic or maybe he wouldn't go but preach the benefits of killing to liberate. I just can't stretch the Jesus I knew as a child In Sunday school to any of these scenarios. Maybe I read the wrong Gospels or just got the wrong message from the Prince of Peace. Two thousand years and we big-brained highly-evolved humans still don't get the basic message of the gentle Jew from Galilee. Such a pity! Diane M. Werich Ashland Peace House is above reproach Marty Barickman's rant (Dec. 8) against Peace House, a wonderful organization and a credit to our community, is totally off the wall, not to get too technical about it. Peace House stands for precisely that, "Peace," and it has never advocated or condoned violence in any way, shape, or form. So what is going on here? Is Mr. Barickman simply out to blacken the reputation of Peace House with falsehoods and wild accusations? Is Mr. Barickman so obtuse as to equate principled, non-violent opposition to war and other atrocities with violence itself? Is he unable to distinguish between what some people may say at an open meeting and what Peace House actually does in accordance with its non-violence principles? As supporters of Peace House who know the organization's leaders and activities, we are sickened by Mr. Barickman's diatribe and astonished that the Tidings would publish such an unconscionable attack on one of our community's finest organizations. Ragan and Gerry Cavanaugh Ashland Need before location on homeless debate "There's no point discussing the virtues of a homeless camp before coming to a consensus on where it will be." (Daily Tidings, Dec. 13). Wrong, wrong, absolutely wrong. It is essential that we discuss the absolute lack of need for a homeless camp in Ashland now, before the discussion moves any further down the road. Yes, there are homeless people. And, yes, we should help them if they truly are homeless and especially if they are helpless. Mayor DeBoer's idea of establishing a transitional housing complex for them, which also includes job training and support services, is a grand idea. But it seems to me that most "homeless" people are either mentally ill people who are not being served by the greater society, or (and this is particularly true in Ashland) they are voluntarily "homeless" and present no real need. The vast majority of so-called "homeless" in Ashland are young people who choose not to work. I'm not concerned for them. I am concerned for the families and children of the truly homeless and the working poor. Let's not waste our time and resources on those who don't need help. If we do, we will become an even greater mecca for hobos and bums. 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