BACK IN COOL, GREEN MAINE

I got home at 4:00 am and slept til noon today. There was a big storm in the New York City area yesterday and the plane I was on had to circle for an hour and then sat on the runway for another hour waiting for the JFK airport congestion to ease a bit. Then my plane back to Portland got delayed twice making it a long trip back from Las Vegas.

My two older sisters and I successfully got my mother into her new place in Las Vegas where she will be close to my oldest sister Karen who is a nurse. Mom is 81 and has been suffering from cancer and heart problems the last couple of years. My major contribution to the effort was the 5-day drive from Titusville, Florida to Las Vegas with the rental truck loaded down with ma's belongings. Then unloading the truck in 100 degree heat......and unpacking. But I was glad to be of help to the family effort.

It was a long, hot drive but I took notes of things that struck my fancy along the way. In a day or two I will write something about what I heard and saw during the trip.

Obviously I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the direction of our anti-war organizing, especially following the Cindy Sheehan resignation announcement. It seems that Cindy has caused some level of reflection across the land and that is a good thing.

One thing that I saw in my long list of emails waiting for me today was the story about Secretary of War Robert Gates saying we are going to be in Iraq as long as we've been in Korea. When I saw this I remembered hearing dear Hillary about two years ago on Faze the Nation one Sunday morning saying, "The American people need to relax. We've been in Korea for 50 years. We are going to be in Iraq for a long time." Today she'd probably not want to say that considering it wouldn't do much for her presidential campaign, but I know that if elected to the White House she will govern that way.

What I see happening right now is that Bush is putting out there that we are not coming home from Iraq. Then once in charge of the White House, the Democrats will say, "Well we can't pull the troops out now, if we do the Republicans will say we are weak on terrorism." That's how they play good cop - bad cop with our heads.

Anyway, it's great to be back in Maine where it is green, it rains, and it is not 100 degrees everyday. I could not live long in Las Vegas. More on all that later though.