I did find that standing on the snowy areas was a lot colder on the tootsies than the just plain frozen grassy patches!
Those Sliwa Stalwarts were something. They had those berets on, but NOTHING on their ears. I said to Curtis that he should have berets with ear flaps - he just laughed. You have to hand it to those guys. They took the cold like the he-men that they are.
The interviews I had were from Reuters, The Wash. Post and CBS and ???CCD???(whoever and whatever they are). They all seem to start out with the same question "What are you doing here?" Don't they have a clue?? One wanted to know my opinion on the anti-war people's position. I said "What position?" I said that if there were 10,000 of them, then there would be 10,000 positions, and a lot of them over there had an agenda. I also said that most of them were probably well-meaning people who got caught up in a media movement, but if you asked half of them to pick out Iraq in a map----they probable couldn't! Another reporter ended the interview very quickly when I didn't act like a VRWC fascist. I quietly told her that I was anti-war, too. I said "Who in the world WANTS war?" I said "No one here WANTS war, we just want Hussein out of there and out of power, by whatever means it takes, including exile." I guess that wasn't what she wanted to hear, so she moved off to someone else.
One incident was kind of funny. There were a couple of passing anti-war types on their way to their rally. They saw my poster (BEST DEFENSE? GOOD OFFENSE?) and came up to me and asked what my sign meant. So I read it to them, and asked them what was so difficult about its meaning. Of course they were in their liberal put-down mode, so the guy repeats his question. I decided to have some fun, so I started with the word 'best' and translated that for him. I said the next word was a little harder, but would he bear with me for a bit while I explained it to him. The whole thing went on this way and then I showed him the other side of my poster (PEACE THRU STRENGTH) and asked if he had difficulty with its meaning. He then went into his real rant and talked about the money being wasted on Iraq when there were people hungry in the world. I was tired of this guy by now, so I told him to empety his own pockets and give it to the hungry and to stop bothering me! He left.
All of our speakers were inspiring. Nothing like the screaming I'm hearing on the C-Span re-run.
One thing I was pleased to see on TV was the posting of President Bushs 'war poll' backing, as a contrast to the news about these nation-wide rallies. I hope the socialist leaning of these speakers at the anti-war thingy was not lost on the Ameican public.
I didn't (couldn't) get to the barracks, bu it sure was nice to be with all my friends last night, and sharing the crisp, brisk, morning in the park.
What's a Patti Smith?