Greetings to you on this fifth day of October, 2009 -

Thanks to the hard work of many exhausted guardian angels, I have arrived at this, my fifty-sixth birthday. I feel keenly mortal and contemplative and grateful beyond words as I am still here breathing and singing together with you in this most challenging time on our shared planet in distress.

I am inviting you to share in my birthday meditation - one I would share with Phil Berrigan (RIP), also an October fifth baby and in whose name dozens of my friends are risking arrest at the White House today to protest the escalating "war on terror" and to demand the shut down of Guantanamo Bay and the entire network of other such detention camps.

I have spent the better part of the past eight years (and far beyond) bearing public witness to the unfolding crimes against humanity that have grown to be business as usual here in this globalized gladiatorial theater of carnage we have come to accept as the "never ending war".

As part of my response to the persistant affront and constant call to conscience, I helped to organize and sustain a once a week public speakout called the "no time to be silent vigil" where many have met for over five years (since May, 2004) to draw attention to the crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration.

We gather where we do to draw attention to the role that our former Supreme Court Justice, Frank Williams, plays as a judge in the military commissions trials at Guantanamo Bay. Our vigil still continues on now during the Obama administration and will continue on for the foreseeable future. God willing that is, and. as Hank Williams and my Mom always said, if the creek don't rise.

We meet in Memorial Square across the street from the Providence County Courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island in numbers sometimes great and sometimes small - every Saturday - from noon to one - rain or shine. We advocate persistant, courageous and creative non-violence as we stand in solidarity with brothers and sisters around the world speaking to the tyrants of our own time and place.

I am attaching a link here to a statement calling for the closing of Guantanamo that was sent to Bush and Blair from a collection of jurists and international bar associations.
http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Documents/Advokatsamfundet_sv/Nyheter/Brev_advokatorganisationer_Guantanamo.pdf

If you agree with this statement, I hope you will make three copies - send one to President Obama and the other to Prime Minister Gordan. The third, keep for yourself.

I'm heading out now - out for a walk. I'm carrying a white rose wrapped in a copy of this statement over to the local national guard camp. That would be the 169th military police battalian. The men and women from this little town have been sent repeatedly to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. I'm leaving this flower and statement tied to the barbed wire fence after I stand vigil for a while.

That, is just part of how I'm spending my birthday as I wander through this day in this smallest town in the smallest county in the smallest state. I hope you will join me in my wishing today. Take a deep breath in.....

Out walking and wishing....

Your sister in perpetual hope and song,

Joyce Katzberg

(for an explanation of why the white rose see the thread on Tattoos...why?)

For my song of the day, please check out "A Lullaby in War Time" at my page here: http://www.myspace.com/joycekatzberg