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Posted by Iris at 1:41 PM 1 comment: Sunday, November 30, 2014

Afterthought #34 Couples Enrichment

Last weekend, my husband and I participated in a workshop to strengthen our relationship.

We joined seven other couples for a Couples Enrichment workshop organized by Whidbey Island (WA) Friends Meeting.  Cathy Walling and Scott Bell led us in this event sponsored by Friends General Conference; click on the link to learn more about it.

Workshops are open to any adult couple in a committed relationship regardless of marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or meeting affiliation. We were a group of Quakers and non-Quakers, couples together less than a year to those married for over thirty years. Cathy and Scott created a worshipful Quaker atmosphere of trust and respect, sharing the joys and struggles of their own relationship and their commitment to growth. They led us to:

•    Take stock, reviewing together what we value in each other
•    Take time to work through differences or unresolved disagreements
•    See how other couples relate
•    Witness the power of God’s healing love.

We learned that, even after 35 years, there’s more to learn, more ways to grow.  Thanks to the Couples Enrichment weekend, we’re doing just that.

“Afterthoughts” are my blog version of a practice followed in some Quaker meetings. After meeting for worship ends, people continue in silence for a few more minutes during which they’re invited to share thoughts or reflect on the morning's worship. I’ve adopted the form here for last-day-of-the-month brief reflections on headlines, quotes, comments overheard,
maybe even bumper stickers.
Posted by Iris at 6:37 PM No comments: Labels: Couples Enrichment, Friends General Conference, Quakers

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Electronic Warfare Training Even on a sunny day, it’s not unusual for the skies to rumble as I walk on the beach near my Lopez Island home.  Much of the island is in the flight pattern of EA 18G “Growler” supersonic jet warplanes flying from nearby Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (NASWI). If the Navy gets its way, the Growlers—electronic attack aircraft that specialize in radar jamming—will increase in number. Additionally, the Navy plans for the jets to participate in 2,900 training exercises over an Electronic Warfare Range that includes wilderness, communities, and cities across Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

The Navy claims that this project (with an $11.5 million price tag) will have “no significant impact” on the environment. In response to community opposition, however, the U.S. Forest Service is accepting public comment until November 28. I’m opposed to this proposal for many reasons, and I’ve sent the letter below to Forest Environmental Coordinator Greg Wahl.

The electronic warfare training would include the use of large RV-sized trucks equipped with electromagnetic-generating equipment along 14 sites in Olympic National Forest and several along the boundary of Olympic National Park. While those trucks wouldn’t be allowed inside the Park, the airspace above the Park will be rumbling with squadrons of noisy warplanes practicing their maneuvers for up to 16 hours per day, 260 days a year. The Navy hasn’t provided any relevant studies to prove no long-term effects to flora and fauna for the proposed 4,680 hours per year of exposure to the jet noise or the electromagnetic radiation from the mobile emitters. The US Forest Service has accepted the Navy’s claim of “no significant impact” and has decided to grant the Navy a long-term permit to use our National Forests for the mobile emitters.

The Forest Service is inviting public input on its decision to grant the permit.
Public comments can be emailed to Forest Service environmental coordinator Greg Wahl at email@example.com or at 1835 Black Lake Blvd. S.W., Olympia, WA 98512.  Comments also can be submitted electronically at https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=42759. I did both; here’s mine.

Dear Greg Wahl,

I’m writing to urge you to reverse your decision to grant the Navy a long-term permit to use the Olympic National Forest for Electronic Warfare Training. I believe this project will result in very real harmful effects— both to humans and to wildlife— from human-made electromagnetic fields. Electronic Warfare Training is not consistent with the public purposes for which national forests are reserved.

The Navy has violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in drafting its Environmental Assessment (EA) by not using the most recent and “best available science” to conclude that there will be “No Significant Impact” from this project. The Navy’s supporting science documents are sorely outdated. Thousands of recent, peer-reviewed studies suggest we can expect harmful effects from this project.

Federal Law requires that the Navy fully analyze and disclose all potential impacts—direct, indirect and cumulative—that this project could have. In particular, the EA did not address: noise from the jets involved in the training; pollution, both chemical and electromagnetic, resulting from the warplanes; the effects of this project on the critical habitat and protected sanctuary for wildlife that these pristine coastal regions and forests provide; the economic and social impacts on this area, long-used by millions of visitors every year for recreation and wilderness experiences.

Finally, if the Forest Service grants this permit, it is in violation of its own management plan and the National Forest Management Act. The Department of Defense does not have the right to override the Forest Service’s own management plan and this act.

Thank you in advance for consideration of my comments.  I hope that the concerns raised by many residents in the region will convince you to rescind the permit for the Navy to engage in Electronic Warfare Training on Olympic National Forest lands.

Iris Graville
Posted by Iris at 12:04 PM 1 comment: Labels: activism, Lopez Island, peace testimony, war

Veterans Day

As a pacifist, I don’t know what to do about Veterans Day. On this year’s November 11, I drove down the main street of a town that is home to a naval air station. Five days earlier I’d travelled that same route the opposite direction on my way to a writing workshop. That morning, winds had gusted at 35-45 miles per hour and whipped the American flags that lined the street in a wild dance. But on Veterans Day, the sun shone, and the red and white stripes fluttered in a light breeze as I drove toward home. I tuned the car radio to NPR and listened to how some people across the country were honoring veterans. The station played an excerpt of Vice-President Joe Biden’s speech at Arlington Cemetery. I pictured the rows of white tombstones lined up over the burial ground’s 624 acres; over 400,000 veterans have been buried there since the Civil War.

The words and mental images got me thinking about those veterans and about the new poetry book in my backpack, Nothing Saved Us - Poems of the Korean War by Tamra J. Higgins. Intrigued by the title and the subject matter, I’d ordered the book a few weeks earlier when a friend posted a notice online about it.

Over the course of two years, Tamra interviewed her father about his experiences as a Marine on the front lines in the Korean War. She turned the results of those conversations into poems to show how soldiers cope with war’s absurdity. She used short and abrupt lines to reflect the rhythm and syntax of her father’s voice.

Although I’d had time to read at the workshop, I hadn’t even opened the book. The author’s exploration of this “forgotten war” had compelled me to buy a copy, but it was also what made me resist reading it.

My stepfather served in the Marine Corps in Korea. That was nearly ten years before he came into my life when I was six. He never talked to me about his time in the Marines or about the war, but my mom was proud of his service and told me he’d received a purple heart medal. All that I remember is the tattoo on his left forearm—a ferocious-looking bulldog wearing a helmet with the letters USMC inked underneath. When my stepfather died twenty years later at age 54, that medal he’d been awarded entitled him to burial at Arlington Cemetery, a thousand miles from our home in southern Illinois. Instead, my mom arranged for Marines to preside at our small town cemetery; they presented her with an American flag crisply folded into a tight square. Earlier this year I visited the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC. Tears choked me as I walked among the 19 stainless steel, larger-than-life-size statues representing a squad on patrol. I looked for one that resembled my stepfather and tried to imagine him over sixty years ago, among those soldiers trudging through Korean villages. I walked the length of the 164-foot-long black granite memorial wall. Photographic images were sandblasted into it depicting soldiers, equipment and people involved in the war.  I was grateful that no matter how long I searched, I wouldn’t find my stepfather’s likeness, because he had survived.

In this past week I’ve read all of the poems in Nothing Saved Us, admired and appreciated those stories by another daughter of a Marine. A daughter who could listen, did listen, to her father’s stories. Tamra Higgins’s dad sounds like someone my stepfather would have liked.  He received a purple heart, too, for injuries he sustained that cost him his right leg.

But the soldier’s life is only part of the story of war Tamra wanted to portray through her poems. As she researched the Korean War, she read several memoirs of Korean women who had been trapped in the throes of that battle. In the second section of the book, Tamra explores the impact of war on civilians through the voice of a Korean woman. In these poems, Tamra used long lines, based loosely on sijo, a traditional style of Korean poetry developed more than 750 years ago.  That story is heartbreaking, too.

So, where does this exploration of Veterans Day and the Korean War leave me?

Tamra’s poems and the flag-lined street don’t evoke for me pride or even gratitude for the veterans’ service.

Instead, I grieve.

I grieve for my stepfather and Tamra’s father and all the other men and women—military and civilian—who experience the violence of war.  I grieve for the children who lose parents, the parents who lose children, the spouses who are widowed. I grieve for the land, the homes, the businesses, the places of worship, and the national treasures that are destroyed.

And as I drive along flag-lined streets, I pray that someday we’ll put an end to war.
Posted by Iris at 11:52 AM 2 comments: Labels: pacifism, peace testimony, poetry, prayer, war, writing

Afterthought #33 QuakerQuaker – A Resource for 21st Century Friends Labels: Afterthoughts, journals, Quaker testimonies, spiritual journey, writing For most of my adult life, writing has been a vehicle for me to understand what I believe, feel, question, and know. For the past fifteen years, I've recognized writing as a Spirit-led creative process through which I come to know God, to understand God’s presence in my life, and to minister to others. It is both my work and my spiritual discipline. As a writer, I strive to give voice to the untold stories of ordinary people. Those stories are often the most extraordinary and the most meaningful. I never know who or what might call to me for telling, but I’ve learned to heed those stirrings of a good story. My first book, Hands at Work, was inspired by a showing of Summer Moon Scriver’s black-and-white photographs of hands. They suggested to me a passion for the kinds of work that have become rare for many Americans and that these were people nourished by manual labor. I immediately wanted to give voice to their stories and to others who work with their hands. www.handsworking.com
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