Gary at Mickey's Farm 2002 

I don't know why, but this is my favorite picture of me, taken by cousin Rickie at my cousin Mickey's Wisconsin farm during the summer of 2002.

Gary as a Baby 

They say I was a cute baby. I don't remember anything before I was 3 years old. Here's a thought: If I live long enough to be a cute old man, I might be waiting for someone to change my Depends.

Bubbie and Zadie Plotkin 1953

We used to go to Bubbie and Zadie's, my mother's parents' apartment, in Englewood. Things I remember about this include the overstuffed furniture and the quiet, stacking and wrapping the coins from the newsstand, the 63rd Street streetcar and electric sparks flying from the line, and the visit always being the same time on Sundays. When my grandfather died, my Bubbie moved in with us. I was 10 at the time and had to give up my bed to my grandmother, so she and my sister shared the one bedroom. My parents slept in the sun-parlor, and I would be sleeping for the next 3 years on a roll-away bed in the dining room. The light coming off the kitchen and the rattle of my dad's breakfast dishes waking me temporarily every morning about two hours before I needed to wake up for school.

And this from the desk of Wade:

I have no words for this current situation. My only words are to live life and create things that are outside the mainstream pursuits dictated by mass media and corporations who don't care if our brains go to mush or we get fat or die of some premature death. Actually, they want our brains to turn to mush so we'll consume more and more mindlessly.

And eat blood sausage and herring.

Several observations:

You can call it anything you want, give it any name, and it's clear just what you are talking about.

If I were any more lucid I'd have the runs.

My brain is at war with the hour. It is active, wanting more of the day, while the control agent checks itself against the time and demands that I shut down. Damn the regulator.

Sleep can seduce me as well as any coquette can.

"In Vietnam the tipping point came when reporters at White House briefings, students at universities and the American people in general suddenly found the confidence to ask the hard questions. Under intense daily scrutiny, the official, rosy version of the war suddenly dissolved, revealing an ethical and strategic quagmire. We may be reaching a similar kind of tipping point on Iraq, perhaps later this year." (Culture Jammers Network)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono protested the Vietnam War by having a Bed-in during May 1969. They wrote Give Peace A Chance, which was released on July 4, 1969. During the same year John and Yoko put up the billboard message "The War Is Over (If You Want It!)" around New York City. Two years later for Christmas 1971 he released Happy X-mas (War Is Over).

Perhaps war doesn't end, just by willing it to end or by proclamation in a song. But consciousness is lifted by acknowledging not denying. Let's acknowledge for this July 4, 2005 that this war in Iraq is wrong. Next to all the ribbons we have on the back of our cars that say: Support Our Troops, let's add: Bring Them Home Now