Hey, all.
First I want to give y'all this year's goose update.
For those of you who don't know, there is a little pond just down the road from my house, I pass it every day, at least twice a day. For the first couple of years here, the pond was unoccupied. Then one day I noticed a Canadian goose there. Soon, that goose had a friend, and for the next couple of years, it was just them. Before too long, one of the geese disappeared, and I feared the worst - until one spring day, I saw three little grey balls of fluff waddling around them and realized that they'd had goslings. I watched those goslings grow, though they soon lost one of the three. The other two spent the summer eating bugs and before fall, they looked just like their parents. The next spring, only two geese came back, and I worried, but then soon there were two more, and by the height of summer, they had a family reunion of SEVENTEEN geese! The next summer - last summer - there were lots of grown geese, but no babies. Then this year, as soon as spring began, I started looking for geese, but sadly, only one came. That one goose floated around alone for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly, one day, there was another. Then, the very next day, I looked for them and there were SIX teeny tiny, just hatched yellow goslings huddling near the parents! I've now watched those six grow for the last couple of weeks - and they are growing fast (they are all now the size of the first three I saw year before last, just before they lost #3). I check every day to make sure there are still six (holding my breath as I count) and there are. (I keep thinking that maybe, if all six get big enough, they'll all make it.) And this week, they had eight other big geese grandparents and aunts and uncles visiting them and their goose-parents.
In other - yesterday's rant-related - news, I had a really bad, sad night last night. I thought a lot about all of this that is bothering me, and before I settled down to paint (sleeping is pretty much out of the question unless I'm just too exhausted to move) I talked to Chris. I told him what was happening to me, and he suggested that I write a letter to George Bush every day. So, I am.
For those of you (silly people) who feel compelled to warn me not to say "certain things" (*sheesh*, HELLO. This is Sam, remember? I may be crazy, but I am not STUPID.) I have decided to print a copy of my first letter here. I also encourage you to write to him yourself. You may not want or need or be able to write every day, but even one letter may help.
His e-mail address is: president@whitehouse.gov, his mailing address is:
George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
and his phone numbers are:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
all of this information - as well as a lot of really stilted news - is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/
and here is my first letter:

"Hello, Mr. Bush.
My name is Sam (Samantha) Lovelace. I am a public librarian in a small town in the not-so-rural South.
I don't watch the t.v. news - I gave up t.v. eight years ago, because of my strong empathic response to the suffering of others. Since the Gulf War, the insurgence of "reality t.v." and shows about people being arrested and suffering natural disasters, as well as the graphic media coverage of my own cousin's violent death at the hands of serial killers [nine years ago tomorrow], I cannot help but imagine everything I see and hear and read in the news very viscerally. I imagine the faces, their fear before they died, I feel the grief of the families, I can smell the blood.
In my job, however, I do have to see all of the major newspapers each day as part of my job, and I read the news on the internet and listen to public radio. Needless to say, the things that I am now seeing and hearing every day (for a few years, now) have led to a lot of physical and emotional problems for me. Especially the way in which things in the Middle East and here have accelerated in the last few weeks. I have lost the ability to sleep at night, I can not eat meat anymore because the smell of it reminds me of death and blood, it has become difficult for me to drive because when I am alone anywhere I am overcome by grief and cannot see the road for crying. I have fibromyalgia, a condition which causes intense muscle pain throughout my body. This condition is worsened by stress and sleeplessness, so I am also living in constant pain. This is affecting my job, and needless to say, any kind of real social life is simply not possible. I want to try to make the most of each moment, enjoy the spring and the sun, but I can't do that any more either, because I feel so guilty that so many people are suffering. I hold my friends' children and I think: Will they have a world to grow up in? Will it all be destroyed by then? Will they even be free by the time they are grown?
I try to enjoy my food, and then I think of the father of Nicholas Berg, lying crumpled on the ground, held in the arms of his surviving son. I smell the odor of fresh blood, and I collapse, too.
So why am I writing to you about all of this? Well, for several reasons. First, I hope that I can convince you that I am not some 'over-sensitive liberal'. I grew up in a Republican household, Trent Lott visited us often when I was small, and when my grandfather was dying of cancer, he came to see him often, despite the fact that he was very busy in Washington. He is a kind man, who helped me as a grown woman, too. I am not a "party" person, I believe in voting for whoever has the good of the people - all the people that they affect - in mind and heart.
As for being sensitive, I feel as though what I am feeling is the correct thing. How anyone can shut out the pain of the world right now is beyond me. I wonder how anyone can sleep at night now. I am finding that my friends agree with me. They are waking up to the pain and misery that the world is feeling and they are all trying desperately to find some way to make a change. I myself, wish that I could put my arms around Michael Berg and tell him that I understand the way he feels. And then go to the homes of every grieving mother, father, wife, child, and do the same. I have family there, too, and every day, I fear that they will be shot, beheaded, tortured, and that my dear cousin and her children will be grieving this decision for the rest of their lives, too. I was part of the local "Veterans for Peace" vigil, where we all got together to read the names of all our deceased soldiers on the steps of our local t.v. station that had the gag order put on them by Sinclair. The station let us come and pray and read the names by candlelight. That list was so long, and I could imagine the former lives and families of each of those men and women.
Still none of this has been enough. My conscience is heavy, my heart is heavy, and I fear that we are reaching a point which, if we cross it, we can never go back. The world and the future of all my friends' children and the children I work with every day, and all the children of the world seems in terrible jeopardy. Instead of feeling that freedom is being defended, and that terrorism is being stomped out, we feel that an ancient vendetta (going on since before the Crusades) is continuing and that our friends and families and freedom are just the latest batch of casualties.
If this "eye for an eye" mentality continues, then soon the whole world will be blind.

The main reason that I am writing to you is that I need to feel that I am doing something - anything - to try to make a difference. My impotence over the situation and my own fears is too much for me. I cried to my boyfriend on the phone last night about my desperation, depression and exhaustion, and he suggested that I write to you, every day, if i needed to, until I felt better. You are the 'Big Dad' of this country, you are the man with the power over all of this, and you are the only one who can really make a change. It is not too late for you to still be a REAL hero, and try to make a sort of peace out of this horrible wreckage, it is not too late to save lives, and make amends to the families of the dead and injured. It is not too late to excise the cruel and blind from your cabinet and perhaps confer with some others on the matter. Maybe Mr. Lott would be a good man to talk to. I don't know. I am just a citizen, worried over the division of our nation and our world, worried over the loss of military and civilian lives, worried over the apparent downhill slide to a world war, one that we cannot recover from. I thought it would make me feel better if I talk to you about my concerns. My own father is dead, nine years now, or I might have talked to him about my fears, but you are the Father of this great Nation, and we have lost our trust in you. You can give that back.
It's not too late to try to make this right, or at least better. Please.
My Aunt Sue gave me this line from one of her favorite gospel songs, and I have decided to make it my mantra in all that I do toward this cause:
"Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."
Perhaps you will consider the same.
Sincerely,
-Sam Lovelace
samarei7@gmail.com"

God(dess) bless us, every one.
-sam