We live in interesting times

I’m posting this on Friday morning because yesterday was so busy I couldn’t get a Blip up.

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship, for which Sue and I are on the coordinating team, has sponsored a walking meditation circumambulating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Building every second Thursday of the month, for fifteen months now. Initially we wanted to bring attention to the location of the detention center and to raise awareness of what has been going on with immigration since Trump took office. Since the Occupation of the space in June and July, that task has been accomplished. Now we walk because it nourishes us to engage in walking meditation, to remember all those impacted by the heinous policies of this administration, and to remind passers-by that we will not “normalize” these policies by ignoring them. For the first fourteen months, the person introducing the meditation and giving instruction was Alex, who just finished his PhD and is moving, this month, to Massachusetts to take up a college teaching job. The person taking over the introduction/instruction is Sue, whose back (and sign) I photographed for this blip. The march attracted a mass of people in June, but usually it’s just 20 or so people, as it was this time.

Before the walk, I was packing for a trip that begins Saturday, about which more later. After the march I had a mass of photos to process. In the evening we went to a concert by Ferron, a Canadian lesbian singer-songwriter, now 66 years old, whose work we have both loved since the early 80s, long before we met. Back then we were afraid of Reagan, but many of Ferron's songs seem to have been prescient. One of the songs she performed Thursday night is one we both love:

And beware you sagging diplomats
For you will not hear one gun
And though our homes be torn
And ransacked we will not be undone
For as we let ourselves be bought
We're gonna let ourselves be free
And if you think we stand alone
Look again and you will see:

We are children in the rafters
We are babies in the park
We are lovers at the movies
We are candles in the dark
We are changes in the weather
We are snowflakes in July
We are women grown together
We are men who easily cry
We are words not quickly spoken
We're the deeper side of try
We are dreamers in the making
We are not afraid of "Why?"