I have never perceived myself as anything more than a concerned observer of the political and international scene - one of many concerned Americans who want our country to be all it believes and professes itself to be.  But for the past many months I've begun to wonder exactly who is reading my journal.  The latest suspect is Senator Arlen Specter, who said today (I paraphrase), "I respectfully submit, Mr. President, that you are not the sole Decider."  Where have I heard this before?  I don't know whether to be pleased that people in positions of leadership have begun in the past few months to start saying the same things I've been saying for so long - or frustrated that it's taken them so long to figure out what an ordinary schmuck like myself has had figured out for some time now.  I have to admit that Sen. Specter wasn't fully echoing my own statements, as he was inferring that Congress might have a say in the decision making process while I take it clear back to the bone and insist that we, the people are the deciders and all these folks are no more than civil servants hired into temp positions to carry out the will of the people...and it's high time they realized it and began acting accordingly.

Where we have legislators who don't understand this, we need to take notes and relieve them of their responsibilities at our earliest opportunity.  I happened on a prime example of such a legislator today through the blog of Ms. Jeeni Criscenzo (thanks, Soozy!), who I hope will not mind if I post an excerpt here.  Jeeni was in D.C. on the 27th and writes of one of her experiences:

"Brian Bilbray was arrogant and rude. When any of the women in our group tried to speak he interrupted them or, as in my case, clearly redirected his attention to the TV that remained turned on, on the wall behind us. Referring to the march on Saturday, his first words were, 'So I guess you folks were here for the hoopla.' HOOPLA??? At least ten more American troops have died in Iraq since masses of American patriots took to the streets last Saturday in cities across the country, and he thinks it's all a party. Bilbray never answered a question, he deflected questions! He blamed the problems in the Middle East on Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He showed no depth of understanding, only bravado, as he declared that he had won the election by a clear majority. 'You people have a right to do what you're doing, but my job is to make the decisions,' he stated."

See what I mean?  People like Mr. Bilbray don't seem to grasp the concept of the word "representative".  How can he be one if he doesn't know how?  On another note, I found myself in the very strange position of being in agreement with both Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan - who found themselves in the position of actually agreeing with each other.  They were discussing Russ Feingold's move to have the OOOO's Justice Department define exactly what it felt the administration's claim to war powers is.  Both of them said, in essence, that this was a weak-kneed tack for Congress to take - these powers are clearly spelled out in the Constitution, and clearly belong to the legislative branch.  They would both like to see Congress acquire some backbone and stand up to the executive branch on the matter.  Anyone know where our legislators can get a spine transplant?  When you get Sharpton and Buchanan to agree on something, I think that may be a pretty clear indication that it could be wise to examine the issue thoughtfully.

January 29: I had a fairly easy day of walking today, although it was sometimes difficult to determine exactly where to walk.  While there has been a frontage road along this section, it doesn't have a berm, so a significant portion of my walking is done in the dirt alongside the road.  I don't know what the weeds are with the little burrs, but they're certainly an annoyance.  They stick in the bottom of my shoes and after a while I have to pry all the little suckers out.  It isn't a walk you'd want to try without sufficient protection for your ankles and calves.

Bob and Mary caught up to me about ten miles into my walk.  Bob joined me and walked along with me to the Petro station, which had an Iron Skillet restaurant, where they treated me to lunch.  Bob is the first person to walk with me for quite a while now, and it was nice to have the company.  After lunch, which we spent taking turns bragging about our dogs, I decided that twelve miles was sufficient for a day's walk right now and rather than calling Anne to have her schlep all the way out here to fetch me, I asked Bob and Mary if they'd mind carting me back into town.  They were happy to provide a ride and dropped me off at Anne's doorstep.

Jonna will be on her way to Chicago tomorrow afternoon to spend a few days with our son, Dietrich.  She's been busy planning home improvements for Nessie, so I'll have plenty to occupy my non-walking hours once she rejoins me.  She got some new curtains for Nessie's side windows as the ones that are there are literally disintegrating.  She also bought some vinyl tile, so I'll be ripping out Nessie's carpet at the earliest opportunity and replacing it with the tile.  It's also quite possible that Nessie will need some plumbing work once she gets down here, as Jonna was able to drain all water supplies but did not have the equipment available to blow out the lines, so we may well have some freeze damage that will have to be repaired.  Oh well, I guess it comes with the territory.

I figure that even an easy pace will get me as far as Van Horn before I have to turn around on the eleventh to get back to El Paso, so don't be surprised if I'm only making ten miles or less a day for the next couple of weeks.  It's not because my energy is flagging at all - it's just that I have to pace myself to remain within range of El Paso for now.

January 28: (Later) I only managed 7.6 miles today, but that was because I spent the morning at the El Paso UU church with many of the wonderful people who have assisted me thus far here in El Paso.  The Channel 9 reporter showed up at the church but I didn't catch any of the news reports tonight so I don't know what they did with it.  I only had a half day for walking and had hoped to make about ten miles, but I had to walk city streets to get around the downtown portion of Interstate 10, which meant waiting for lots of traffic lights and stepping up and down curbs and so forth, so I wasn't able to maintain my usual pace.  I was feeling a bit under the weather when I was done, but got to feeling better as the evening wore on, so I hope to be able to resume my normal pace tomorrow.

I rode to the church with John and Rachel and back with Anne.  They took me on two separate routes that provided beautiful views of both the mountaines to the east of El Paso and the city below.   The countryside is quite beautiful.  I'm staying the evening with Anne and her daughter and I think the plan is for me to stay here another day, but I'm a bit concerned.  One of their dogs, Carly, is a rescue and has not been able to warm up to me.  If she cannot get comfortable it will probably be best if I stay somewhere else tomorrow rather than be a source of discomfort for Carly.

January 28: OK, let's get serious. I want very much for what I'm doing to be more than a three thousand mile, nine month stunt. The two sides of the aisle in D.C. chip back and forth incessantly, challenging each other in a wearisome schoolyard chant to come up with a better "plan" for Iraq as neither side seems able to put forth anything that isn't either disasterously wrong-headed or hopelessly vague. I realize that - especially at this time - I'm sitting in my own little corner of the internet essentially unnoticed by the world at large, but I do believe I have, if not a full-blown plan, at least a rational, humane and potentially successful foundation for one. So if you have places to echo what I'm trying to say, why don't we try to put my little pinata out there and see how successful people are in poking holes in it?

At the base of my plan are two realizations that, I believe, are by now clearly inarguable. They are:

1) There is no possible solution to the problem in Iraq - or in the larger middle east, for that matter - that involves the use of military force. Starting from the extreme and working backward, the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" school of thought, besides being both unspeakably loathsome and functionally impossible, is not a workable solution. One does not end violence with the use of ultimate violence bent on annihilation - one only becomes the evil one professes to oppose - and the balance of the world community would surely turn against any power that stooped to that level of atrocity and would work together to ensure its demise in a deservedly eye-for-an-eye retribution.

A ramping up of military operations a la McCain (or Kissinger in Vietnam) and others to the point of massive displays of force and perhaps renewed bombing and destruction of significant portions of the country is also unworkable. Even if such aggressive tactics succeeded for a time in silencing whatever tattered remnants of a society remained after the application of such force, the "shock and awe" it generated would eventually also generate a backlash that would pretty much guarantee that any nation resorting to such a tactic would never again be able to exist in a state of peace or safety in the world.

Continuation of the present policy of limited or incrementally rising numbers of military personnel attempting to secure specific portions of the country is also demonstrably ineffective. The whole process is akin to a bleeding wound - slowly but inexorably sapping vital strength while allowing time and opportunity for infection to spread. In addition, the spectacle of the greatest military power the world has ever seen being unable to secure and stablilize a city - let alone a smallish nation - becomes a theater of the absurd and damages the future potential effectiveness of the threat of military force in areas or conflicts where it might otherwise have proved to be a viable deterrant.

So to restate my initial point, military force, no matter how carefully or massively applied, is incapable of solving the problem in Iraq.

2) It should also be abundantly clear to all by now that the continued attempt to solve the problem with the application of military force is a primary factor in the exacerbation of the problem. Not only can't we stabilize the country via military options, we make the problem demostrably worse the longer we try.

Since the problem in Iraq cannot be solved militarily, and since it has now become obvious that continuing to attempt to do so only worsens the problem, the only logical conclusion to be drawn from these two observations is that, whatever the solution to the problem in Iraq may be, that solution cannot include a military component. Therefore, if we truly desire to resolve the problem in Iraq, part of the resolution is clearly to remove our military forces from the country as soon as possible.

Immediately we hear the voices crying that in removing military forces we would be abandoning the country to chaos. This is an extremely narrow point of view based on the flawed assumption that the presence or threat of physical force is the only available or effective persuasive tool in the human inventory. I would maintain that this is not only untrue but clearly contradictory to the whole of human experience. While the threat of physical violence is the one we sadly seem to favor, it is but one of many motivators available to us. But the perennial trouble with employing it as a first (or sole) option is that, when other motivators are eventually applied, if the force motivator is not first removed, we remain continually suspicious that it was the threat of violence all along that was the central factor in securing resolution. It is only by turning back from the threat of force altogether that we will be able to observe and learn to have confidence in the effectiveness of the other motivators available to us.

In short, pull the military forces out immediately, clear the table and roll up our sleeves: we have serious work to do here and we haven't even begun to exercise - or even consider - all of our options.

And the other options we have available are numerous. They include - but are not limited to - the use of diplomacy, political persuasion, economic incentives, humanitarian aid, technological assistance, education and cultural comprehension. I want to offer two quick but crucial notes at this point:

First, that in order to illustrate our desire to finally solve the problem we must now demonstrate our sincerity. No matter what we do at this point, there will be those on the other side who will be certain that self-interest is our only motive. To help counter this argument I strongly believe that at the outset of a new, non-military effort to resolve the Iraq situation, we should immediately outlaw not only any form of profiteering, but we should prohibit any corporation outside of Iraq from profiting from the reconstruction of the nation unless Iraq itself specifically invites that corporation to participate and sets the parameters of its involvement.

Second, that if we expect to be successful in producing true and lasting change in Iraq or in the middle east as a whole, we must immediately and permanently abandon the penchant for demonizing peoples, cultures or nations with which we have a disagreement. Portraying those we claim to be trying to assist as members of an "axis of evil" or as bloodthirsty zealots - or using any other religious or moralistic epithets - can only serve to broaden the gap between us, and we cannot hope to bridge the gap if the imagery we employ continually widens it.

Will the violence in Iraq roll out of control the moment we remove our military presence? While our administration is adamantly convinced this is the case - to the point of portraying the ultimate outcome nearly as the end of civilization as we know it - to assume that Iraq would immediately collapse into total chaos neglects one crucial reality that we often seem incapable of comprehending: the Iraqi people are not stupid. They actually think, feel, hope, love, learn and understand very much as we do. Surprise. Once the external threat of violence is removed and it becomes clear that the world as a whole is fully prepared to help them find a place in a continually more intimate global society, the people of Iraq would find themselves in a position where permitting continued internal sectarian violence to destroy their land and decimate their population would now become nothing more than an embarrassment upon themselves - much the same as the embarrassment we brought upon ourselves when we squandered the good will nearly the entire planet offered us after September 11th by rushing headlong into a senseless war. Perhaps Iraq will learn from our own mistake and choose not to waste a golden opportunity. I believe there is real potential for that to be the case. The Iraqi people are a proud, wise and ancient culture. Without the threat of outside force and removed from beneath the bloody fist of a merciless dictator, I do not think they will make the mistake of becoming their own worst enemy.

But we cannot know unless we afford them the opportunity to try. So I will maintain that a concerted, multi-national effort to bring every peaceful motivator to bear on the nation of Iraq is the only course of action that affords a realistic opportunity to see it become a nation that is the beacon to the whole of the middle east we mistakenly believed we could erect with military force. I dare the leadership of our nation - and of the world - to prove me wrong.

January 27: The weather finally turned into great walking weather again and I made over nineteen miles today.  I also got an interview with El Paso's channel 9 news.  They said it would air at 5 and 6 but we missed those.  It's also supposed to air at ten tonight but after a long day on the road I doubt that I'll be up to see it.  I hope they did a decent job with it.  Tomorrow I'll only put in a half day of walking since I'll be going to the UU church in the morning, but a half day should put me the rest of the way through the city of El Paso and out Interstate 10 on the other side.  The forecast is also for great weather for at least the next week and a half so maybe my weather worries are over for a while.  Still with Rachel, John and Lucius tonight and I'm not sure who they'll be handing me off to tomorrow, but we'll take my backpack along to the church and see if anyone wants to claim me.

I did some very rough figuring today and it seems like Dallas should mark approximately the halfway point in my walk.  Dallas is still a long way off, though.  Texas is a big state (Duh!) and of course I have this slowdown coming up right away because I have to be somewhere near El Paso in order to get back to San Diego between the 12th and 14th of February.  The good news is that when I return from that Jonna will be back with me and that will mean I ought to be able to make some really impressive mileage after the 14th.  I sure am missing Jonna and the guys.  I talk to her at least once a day, but that's kind of cold comfort.  The fact is that we simply enjoy each others' company.  Not only that, but I am certain she would love all the people I've been meeting and all the experiences I've been having since she left for Missouri...and I know everyone would love her.  Guess I'll have to take solace in knowing there are many more miles to go and many more fantastic people to meet along the way.

January 26: (Late) It seems that everyone I've been staying with has dogs, which is great because dogs are wonderful people.  Janet and Tom have Mozart and Sadie, Xavier has Luna, Anne has Diego and Carly, and Rachel and John have Bella, Stevie and Daisy.  Rachel and John also have Lucius, who is the same age as our oldest grandson and a complete charmer.  He's at that age where he knows a few Tall People words, but most of his vocabulary is completely his own and he uses it with enthusiasm.

A group of these people demonstrate every Friday between noon and one at the Federal building in downtown El Paso, so I went with Anne to participate today.  It was biting cold but the rain held off just until we were done and we all survived.  I was surpised at the number of positive reactions we were getting from passing cars and pedestrians.  In fact, I witnessed only one clearly negative reaction - and that was from a guy in a huge pick'emup truck with a Confederate flag for his front license plate.

This evening Rachel and John had arranged a potluck at their home, inviting friends over to meet me.  We enjoyed terrific company from seven to about ten thirty.  Xavier and his daughter were there and invited me to come to hear a local band play afterward.  I would have loved it, but knew if I went I'd stay up way too late, so I declined.  The weather promises to finally turn decent tomorrow so I should be able to get out there and start making miles again. It's going to be interesting to see what the media do - if anything - with the protests planned for tomorrow.

January 26: I wish those who have just about given up on humanity in general could share the experiences and the people I've encountered as I've walked across the southwest.  It has been more than a blessing to meet so many who care so deeply and who share so openly.  Wednesday night I stayed at the home of Eric and Susan here in El Paso.  Eric has been working tirelessly to make connections and arrange opportunities for me to meet and talk with different people and groups.  Yesterday he arranged for me to speak to a philosophy class at UTEP - over three hundred students - my largest audience to date by far!  The class belonged to Professor Feret (I probably have that spelled wrong) and I think I would enjoy nothing more than taking his class - he was a truly engaging and interesting lecturer.  He turned the last twenty minutes of his class over to me and I introduced myself, talked about what I was doing and why and fielded some questions.  Afterwards several dozen students came up to meet and talk with me.  It was quite an emotional experience.  One of the young women had lost her husband in Iraq in November.  She asked me to please keep on doing what I'm doing so that maybe more won't have to die.  I promised her I would.

The day was cold and damp and I caught one of those chills I just couldn't shake.  I didn't get a chance to thank Eric and Susan for their hospitality but I'm sure I'll meet up with them again before leaving El Paso.  Janet, who had picked me up at the end of my walk the day before, and her husband Tom took over responsibility for my welfare in the afternoon and we ate at a nice little Italian restaurant.  They then handed me off to Xavier, who took me to a gallery showing of paintings by a local priest who is also a dedicated peace activist.  I met many more people there and wound up at Xavier's for the night.

It's morning now and it's also pretty obvious today will be a no-walk day as it's drizzling rain outside.  But that's OK - I know the people here have several more events lined up for me and the opportunity to meet and talk with people is every bit as important as the walking.  Besides, my walk is going to have to slow down in El Paso anyway.  I need to return to San Diego from Feb. 12 to Feb. 14 - if you read my journal entries around December 13 you'll understand why - so I have to be in some sort of reasonable range of the El Paso airport at that time in order to make the flight back.  The good news is that by the time that ordeal is over with Jonna will be back with me and will remain with me for the rest of the walk.  I've been looking forward to that every day.

Xavier has some breakfast ready, so it's time to get geared up for another day.  I hope I'll be able to hit the journal again later this evening.

January 24: I made it into Texas this afternoon - if just.  I hit the zero mile marker, the city of Anthony and twenty miles for the day simultaneously.  I've also made some wonderful contacts here in El Paso who are working feverishly to set up an array of speaking opportunities for me - it's wonderful!  I gather that I will be speaking to a class of 400 students tomorrow at the University of Texas El Paso - wow!  They keep asking me if speaking engagements might interfere with my walking and I keep reminding them that the opportunities to generate dialogue and get people to THINK are what my walk is all about in the first place - if I have to take a day off the road to have the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with people that's no problem whatsoever.

I am thoroughly bushed tonight, though, so I'll keep this entry short.  Jonna told me that Charlie Rose had an excellent program on last night dealing with the State of the Union address and I want to try to find a transcript of that before I call it a night.  I'm staying with Eric and Susan this evening in El Paso and they have a high speed internet connection so I hope I'll be able to do a bit more comprehensive posting after tomorrow's events.

January 23: The weather has been giving me fits for the past several days and the forecasts have been less than helpful. If you were to trust the forecasts, Las Cruces would presently be under several feet of snow with polar bears and penguins sashaying along the freeways. Fortunately, most of the predicted calamitous weather has not come to pass, but it has meant that I pretty much have to check each morning and give my best guess as to what the day holds in store. Yesterday was a certain no-go. At about 8 a.m. it began to let down huge snowflakes and in less than twenty minutes there was a good inch or more of fluff covering the landscape. In addition it was very cold and very damp, so the day was a write-off as far as walking. Today was predicted to be even worse, but it all seems to have missed us, so I was able to start early and get in at least a few miles. The skies looked threatening so I stopped early, but I could probably have done another ten miles without encountering any difficulty. Oh well, we'll see what tomorrow holds.

Gracious folks are passing me around the Las Cruces area. I started off as the guest of Charles and Ruth, retired pastors and members of St. Paul's United Methodist Church. I knew I was in good company when I heard that they have in the past hosted Peace Pilgrim in their home. From there I went to stay with Charlotte and her dog Harry and cat Frank. Charlotte is a New York transplant and extremely active in peace and social justice issues, as well as a cornerstone of the UU church here in Las Cruces. Now I'm with Chuck and Karen, also of the UU church. Each evening I've been surrounded by wonderful company and enjoyable conversation. Jonna is going to be so sorry she missed meeting all these fantastic folks.

We're already making connections with people from the El Paso area and if the weather cooperates I'll probably be bedding down in the El Paso area tomorrow night.

A bit of bad news from Missouri - it seems that our computer is in the process of biting the dust, so we're probably going to have to replace it before long. We haven't lost any information yet, thank heavens, but I guess it's shutting itself down after about ten minutes or so and the CD drive is either shot or severely ailing. This means, as always, your donations will be greatly appreciated to help offset yet one more expense we didn't anticipate we'd have to deal with.

I'm expecting a gentleman from one of the area papers to arrive soon for an interview, so I'll close for now and get this posted on the website. I expect I'll have a few more thoughts to offer after hearing what the OOOO has to say in the State of the Union adress tonight.

January 20: As the Vietnam war lurched to a close we watched its final moments with a mixture of agony and relief: the chaos on the roof of the American embassy as some escaped in helicopters while others were left behind; boatloads of refugees seeking whatever sanctuary they could find; helicopters being jettisoned from the decks of aircraft carriers to make room for yet more helicopters laden with those rescued at the last moment - and, finally, young men in uniform coming home as wives and children raced across the last few yards of tarmac into their open arms.

Those of us who have come to understand the ultimate futility of war in general - and who recognized the travesty of that war in particular - breathed a huge sigh of relief. Finally, we thought, our nation has learned a lesson it will never forget. If there was one bright hope that we could salvage out of all the devastation, all the insanity, all the needless human sacrifice that was Vietnam, it was that we would surely never permit our country to go down that road again.

Some of us, in fact, did not forget. And a scant thirty years later, when those in positions of power began capitalizing on our fear, our anger and our confusion to whip us once more into a warlike frenzy, we initially thought that people surely would remember what we had so recently learned and would not let this happen. And when it became clear that people weren't remembering we took to the streets in protest to remind them. But fear and anger are powerful tools - and they were wielded deftly. And we soon found ourselves back once more in a place that we had been certain we would never find ourselves again.

We are still trying to extract ourselves from that place and, while it may take us longer than we want - and certainly much longer than it should - we can at last begin to envision the day when this horrible chapter will also come to an end. As it does, it is not too soon to begin thinking ahead. Once, we had assumed that our history would enlighten us and surely keep us from repeating tragic errors. We now see clearly our assumption was wrong. The analogy was not drawn precisely enough. The example went unheeded. The memory failed. The old adage our president did not quite have the capacity to fully iterate has come to define our situation: "...fool me twice, shame on me." The shame is indeed on us for not having learned from our history and for allowing ourselves to be duped - once again - into an unnecessary war.

And now we know that we cannot rely on the lessons from our past to prevent us from making the same mistake in the future. Now we know just how easy it is to make us forget what we should never forget. Now we know - and must confess - how easily we can be misled. And knowing that, it is now time - before the current chaos has even ended - to try to make sure that this does not happen again. We cannot wait. Before we are even able to extricate ourselves from the present morass there are those who are dressing up a fresh batch of bogeymen for us - Iran, North Korea, Syria, China...if none of these frighten us they'll be more than happy to trot out a few more, paint "Evil!" on their foreheads and present them as the next great threat to our safety and security.

But this time we have to jump the gun. Before it can happen again - and since we now know that history alone is insufficient to keep us out of the snare - we must begin establishing an operational framework that codifies the lessons of our past in a procedural pathway that will help to prevent future lapses in judgement and foresight.

We thought we had sufficient safeguards in place. But we have now encountered an executive branch that, in its lust for ever greater power and authority, has repeatedly and blatantly lied to us in the pursuit of its totalitarian ends. We have witnessed a legislative branch which, when confronted with its central task of being the calm, cool, deliberative body that would prevent such excess, has been not only willing but feverishly eager to abdicate its responsibilities for oversight and reason. And we have seen that the system we expected to prevent the very sort of situation in which we now find ourselves mired can collapse like a house of cards in a brisk breeze.

Unfortunately, this is where my severely limited wisdom fails me. While I believe I can illustrate the why - history and memory are insufficient to preclude us from making catastrophic mistakes - and the what - an unyielding system that mandates the conscientious pursuit of every alternative to war; a structure that requires a transparent, truthful analysis of the necessity, cost and consequences of war; and a fully binding procedure that permits war only as a truly last resort - I confess that I am unable to offer the how.

Perhaps the answer lies in a Department of Peace that must sign off on any future rush to war. Perhaps it lies in a strengthened system of checks and balances that cannot be overridden, relinquished, subverted or ignored. Perhaps it lies in some other direction. But I do know that however we are to redesign our country's approach to war, we must begin to do it now, while the lessons are fresh and the consequences of not having such safeguards in place are still so painfully clear. I wish I could offer a solution, but I am certain that we should be able to find one if we try - and if we care. I do hope that, in offering these observations as a contribution to the discussion, I will be able to help in some small way to achieve that goal.

January 19: Weather has kept me off the road today and promises to do the same tomorrow. In fact, it may be as long as Tuesday until I can resume walking if the local forecasts prove to be accurate. Fortunately, I have some good people taking care of me and, as has often happened along my walk so far, some wonderful bits of serendipity.

I'm staying right now with Ruth and Charles, retired Methodist pastors here is Las Cruces. They were alerted to my walk byt the secretary at the Deming United Methodist church. Meanwhile, Roland, from the Sierra Vista Unitarian church, had been feverishly working his contacts as well to try to provide support for me. He came up with Charlotte, who will take over for Ruth and Charles tomorrow afternoon and provide a roof over my head. As it turns out, Charlotte lives less than a block from Ruth and Charles...and they have been active together in previous protest activities. A small world indeed.

Some thoughts I've been working with while walking for the past week or so: I've met a broad spectrum of people since I began my walk...not just people who support what I'm trying to do, but a truly random representation of our country at motels, RV parks, restaurants, gas stations and on the streets of tiny towns and larger cities. And it has occured to me that, as a general character trait, one could truly say that the people who make up the soul of this country are peace loving people.

The people I meet are loyal to their nation, and are more than satisfied with the scope and shape of that nation as it is. Nobody wants to annex Iraq or Venezuela...or Canada, for that matter. We are not in the least hungry for territory that is not already ours. Nor, for that matter, are we as a people hungry for resources that are not already ours. Some may argue this point, but I will maintain that the typical American would much rather work toward energy and resource self-sufficiency for our nation than continue to exploit and depend upon the resources of other countries. The people I meet are not greedy people.

And while we may have the most powerful, sophisticated military forces in the world, these people have absolutely no desire to use those forces for any other purpose than to defend our country or to assist other countries which may not have the capability to defend themselves. As a people, we are not warlike and we are not aggressive toward the rest of the world.

We are also prone to trust those in positions of authority or leadership. We assume that those we place in power understand the American soul and that their actions will reflect our vision of who and what we are and hope to be within the global comunity. And that may be our one great fault.

Because it seems that we have a conglomerate leadership at this time among the executive and legislative branches that has lost any clue as to the nature of this country's soul. The executive branch capitalized on our moment of national outrage and fear to convince us that an unnecessary war was necessary, and it is now incapable of comprehending that, being at heart a people of peace, we will not condone the continuation of such a misbegotten enterprise. The legislative branch sat staring at its collective navel for so long that, as it just begins to awaken, it will have to start nearly from square one to figure out what they are supposed to be doing and why.

Meanwhile, the people continue to sit with ever waning patience and watch as their elected representatives persist in trying to justify unjustifiable actions, excuse inexcusable moral and ethical lapses and devise irrational rationales for sending yet more of our sons and daughters into the killing fields. Our representatives need to be reminded, at last, that we are a peaceful people. We do not shed the blood of our sons and daughters for any other reason than the defense of our country and our allies. And now that we have seen clearly the lie that brought us to where we are today, we will not permit the continuation of this debacle.

Our politicians should have known better. Whatever their motives for the actions they have taken and the wars they have wrought, they should have known that, while they could initially rely on our intrinsic trusting nature to allow them to undertake their scheme, they would not ultimately be capable of continuing on this path indefinitely. They counted on our trust. They capitalized on our fear. They manipulated our anger. But there is one thing they could not change. We are a peaceful people. We do not like war, and we will neither support nor condone an endless war against a faceless enemy. We hope the rest of the world will forgive us for how those in power have misrepresented who we are for the past many years. We promise you that we will end this sorry, bloody, lunatic chapter of our nation's history very soon - because we are a peaceful people.

January 18: I'm finally out of Deming!  What's more, contacts are becoming established (thanks to the concerted efforts of Roland, Vince and others) and it looks like I'll have people to assist at least through Las Cruces and into El Paso.  It was a bit iffy starting out today - especially since the weather forecasts have been so terrible here.  But by the end of my walk I had people to pick me up, people ready to help tomorrow - and the weather behaved itself nicely.  It could be warmer, but I'm not complaining as long as I'm staying dry.  Tomorrow and Saturday could be problematic as the forecasts are even worse than those for today.  We'll just have to play it by ear, as usual.

Again I want to apologize that I haven't answered everyone's emails.  They're all there, waiting for me, but it takes all the time I can find at the end of a day to update the Route and Journal and take care of other housekeeping items (not to mention things like laundry).  So until nasty weather does in fact hit (and I hope it doesn't!) or Jonna rejoins me (and I hope that's very soon!) it's going to be very hard to find time to answer everything...but I promise that I will get caught up at some point not too far down the road from now.

I'm also sorry I haven't been able to post pictures for a while.  I've been taking a few, but probably won't be able to get them online until Jonna catches up with me again.  Stay focused, everyone...and don't stop speaking up!

January 16: When I stepped outside this morning the wind chill here was 10 degrees.  With no contacts presently and no arrangements for anyone to come for me when I was done walking, I had no choice but to take the day off from the walk.  When Jonna and I planned this portion of the trip we knew this particular leg would be fairly desolate - but we had not anticipated the really nasty cold temperatures.  If temperatures were normal I could go ahead and walk and use the equipment I have to sleep out under the stars if no support was available.  But with the cold temps I have to be concerned for my health, so I really had no choice but to wait it out.

It wasn't a day of goofing off, though.  I called every organization I could find a number for to see about securing a little logistical support.  I know that Roland back in Sierra Vista is doing the same for me on his end.  No success as of this evening, but I'm hoping that either I'll hear from someone tomorrow morning or the weather will be warmer...or both.  The good news is that I've been making really great mileage so if I have to wait for weather and/or support it's not putting a major dent in my schedule for now.

January 15: Once again I have very limited computer time, but I made it the rest of the way into Deming today - three 20+ mile days in a row and I'm pretty pooped.  I've been extremely fortunate in finding rides when I've needed them and am worried about pushing my luck, especially when the temperatures are getting as low as they are.  Either I look particulalrly non-threatening or the folks passing through here are mighty friendly, because I've even had to turn down a number of offers of rides from people who just see me walking along and stop to see if I want a lift.  Since most of them happen when I haven't yet completed my target miles for the day, many people are quite surprised when I politely turn down the offer of a ride - and I'm often thinking as they drive away, "Come back around when I'm another ten miles down the road!"  Still trying to make some contacts in the Deming-to-El Paso corridor, but nobody has returned any of my calls yet.  Perhaps I'll get lucky tomorrow and finally make a contact or two.

January 13: Very limited computer time again tonight.  I wasn't sure I'd get any walking in today as the forecast called for rain, but the morning skies looked clear so I decided to chance it.  Trouble was, I had no contacts so I had to walk with a full pack, not knowing what would happen when I was done with the walk.  Not to worry - I made over twenty miles even with a full pack, and as I was walking down the exit ramp at the 42 mile marker there was a couple sitting at the intersection in a minivan who asked if I wanted a ride.  They took me in to Deming where I'm holed up at the Motel 6 tonight.  All I have to do is find a way back out to my starting point tomorrow to do it all over again.

The couple who picked me up were Barbara and Adam from Woodstock, New York.  They were doing some cross country sightseeing and were on their way back home again.  I actually had three other people stop on the Interstate and ask if I needed a ride, but they were all before I reached my goal for the day so I thanked them and politely declined.  One was a couple of guys in a pickup - Sergeant Eaglefeather and Lieutentant...didn't catch his last name.  When they wondered why I didn't want a ride I told them what I was doing - and they both asked if they could sign the petition - so I pulled it out of my pack right there along the highway and they signed and wished me luck.

I watched George McGovern and William Polk in front of the Washington Press Club last night on CSpan.  Boyoboyoboy.  Everyone is beginning to sound like me!  Mr. McGovern really raked the OOOO (Opportunist Occupying the Oval Office) over the coals.  They've recently collaborated on a book called - I believe - Out of Iraq, which outlines a strategy for getting out of the mess we're in.  They're saying pretty much the same thing I've been saying - pull the military out immediately.  There will probably be some intitial escalation of violence which should die down quickly, after which the Iraqis either will or will not find the strength to resolve their internal conflicts - but they will never do it while we're there, no matter how long we stay...and the longer we stay the bloodier it will get and the more enemies we'll make.  I don't think I can add much to that.

I have to get off the computer now.  I should walk into Deming by Monday afternoon if the weather and my feet hold out.

January 12: I took a chance today and it paid off.  Even though rain was predicted along the route I decided to go ahead and try to get a day in - and was fortunate enough to make it all the way to my intended destination bone dry.  There was rain to the north and south, but it managed to stay clear along the freeway.  Tomorrow may be a different story and I may wind up with another unwanted day off, but forecasts indicate the sun should come out Sunday and stay out.

With the continued hubris and blindness of our administration I fell that my walk and my petition are becoming more important day by day.  I know a number of you have found my site via Michael Moore's website.  I want to ask you, if you know of any way to get the website noticed by more places and more people, please do so!  There are many people who are upset and confused right now - perhaps the things I've had to say here will help them see things more clearly and give them some motivation to stand up and speak up.

And I want to ask all of you - especially right now - to do everything in your power to make yourselves heard.  Write or email your members of Congress - all of them.  Make a phone call.  Lend our legislative branch some backbone to help them oppose this insanity.

My internet time is again very limited tonight and I won't be able to get to responding to emails yet - but I thank each of you once again and ask you to continue to have patience until I can get more online time.  To the person who asked if it would be alright to have a garage sale on my behalf - by all means!  We continue to need your financial support almost as much as we need your courage to speak up and speak out.  As of this moment, I have absolutely nothing lined up as far as accommodations or assistance beyond Lordsburg.  If you know anyone between Lordsburg and El Paso who might be willing to put me up for a night in the near future, please give them my phone number (you'll find it on the Contact page) so we can make arrangements.  My needs are very simple: 1) Pickup at the place I end my walk for the day (usually between 2 and 3 p.m.), 2) A warm place to bed down for the night, and 3) Transportation back to where I was picked up the next morning (usually around 9 a.m.).  It's forecast to start getting pretty cold down here and I'm really not looking forward to the prospect of sleeping out in the open if I can avoid it.  I'm equipped to survive it, but I'd much prefer to spend my nights somewhere warm!

Lastly for tonight, please don't back off now.  The latest move by the OOOO is so egregious, so arrogant, so mindless that it represents - I believe - the first opportunity in a long time to really begin to turn this thing around.  Do what you can - I'll keep walking.

January 11: This is probably going to be a long entry because I've been away from the computer for so long and there is so much to say.  I want to get a couple items of business out of the way immediately:

First of all, I have a day off today.  I promised Jonna I would not walk in the rain while she's gone and today is the first time I've had to honor that promise.  Trouble is, rain is forecast clear through until Sunday!  I'm hoping tomorrow might be clear enough that I can walk, but Saturday and Sunday are almost certainly going to be days off.  Rats.  Well, at least it might allow me to catch up on emails.

Secondly, I've decided on my first major route change, which I will reflect on the Route page as soon as I can.  Instead of heading for Alamagordo after Las Cruces I am now going to continue on Interstate 10 through to El Paso, then Interstate 20 up to Fort Worth.  This will keep me farther south for a longer period of time and hopefully provide better weather.  It will also include a couple of significant media markets that may help people find out about my walk.  I apologize to the folks in the Alalmagordo area who have been waiting for me to mosey on through, but I think this route will serve the walk better and hope you understand.

With those two items of business out of the way, I next want to thank the incredible folks from the Sierra Vista Unitarian Church who have been shepherding me over the past week.  John has been coming out to pick me up after my walk every day for nearly a week now - and I'm getting way, way past Sierra Vista.  This evening, Roland will take over and I guess they're going to watch over me until we can make some connections on the Las Cruces end.  Once Jonna is able to rejoin me - which should be somewhere east of El Paso - my having a place to stay when I'm done walking won't be a problem anymore, so this help is truly appreciated as it comes at the most crucial time for me.

My health has been just fine.  I did have my first close call yesterday: I was walking the shoulder of Intertstate 10 when a semi had a tire begin to disintegrate just as it passed me.  I was clipped behind the left ear by a chunk of flying tire, but other than a bit of a sting no damage was done.  The semi continued on without even slowing down as his tire blew apart, taking a mud flap with it and sailing it across the road.  Scared me!

I've had some easy days and some rough days lately.  Yesterday was easy - partly cloudy but warm and calm with smooth, level roads.  The day before was terrible.  It was reasonably warm, but there was a strong, cold wind blowing directly in my face all day long.  It made the walking difficult and the day miserable.  But I take what I get and work with it.  Fortunately, good day or bad, I've been able to make my target mileage nearly every day lately and that feels good.

On to recent developments in the political arena.  There's so much to say that I don't even know where to begin.  As the OOOO dives even deeper into his Imperial presidency, at least I am beginning to hear a few people say some of the things that sound like what I've been trying to say for so long.  As it became clear that he was going to unilaterally toss another 20,000 of our sons and daughters into the Iraq morass, someone actually raised the point that, if this was about securing a "victory" in Iraq, haven't we already accomplished everything we said we were going in there for in the first place?  Don't we already have that victory?

I watched the speech last night of course.  There are so many things I'd like to ask him:

Sir, you maintain that if our military leaves Iraq now, its government will surely crumble and the situation will worsen.  First of all, how can you know that to be true with any degree of certainty?  Secondly, could you not use that same argument a month from now or a year from now or ten years from now?  How long will you try to keep us there by holding this threat over us?  Would it not be better for us to stop playing the part of occupying force as soon as possible rather than continue to accrue hatred for years to come?

You claim to have explored many possible options.  Did it ever occur to you to explore options that don't involve a military presence?  Did it ever occur to you to explore options that don't involve U.S. contractors?  I didn't think so.

There's much more - but I'll leave it at that for now.  Then early this morning I heard Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates promoting this on the early news - and Mr. Gates held forth with a truly chilling statement.  He was saying that we need to increase the size of all branches of our military in order to be equipped to fight the "continuing war on terror".  There it is, folks.  The Secretary of Defense is now selling the snake oil directly.  The war on terror is an official war like any other war - except that it has no end.  If we don't begin waking up right now, your grandchildren's grandchildren will be fighting the war on terror under a commander in chief who has unrestrained power to do literally anything he or she wants.  Our leaders will press us with the assertion that failure is not an option, while never bothering to make it clear to us what success looks like.  We will be cowed by the assertion that victory is vital to our very survival, but will never be told what constitutes victory.  And our sons and daughter will contnue to die.

I also happened to catch Mitch McConnell being interviewed about the OOOO's speech.  Of course, he thought it was wonderful, but in a four minute sound bite, he managed to work in at least three times how brilliant Donald Rumsfeld's tenure had been, based on the observation that we haven't been attacked on our home turf for the past five years - and certainly Mr. Rumsfeld's brilliant strategy is responsible for that fact.  Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.  Has it occurred to you that terrorists have been too busy high-fiving each other over the past five years as they watch us eat ourselves alive to bother attacking us again?  Why bother concocting any more suicide missions when we're doing a better job of dissolving our own democracy than they could ever have dreamed of doing?  And even if what you say is true - even if Mr. Rumsfeld's brilliant strategy is responsible for keeping us safe over the past five years - can we look at what that strategy has been for a moment?  Usurp another sovereign country's territory, toss our disposable sons and daughters over there so we can bring thousands of them home in boxes, kill untold hundreds of thousands of citizens of a foreign land and foment a situation that continues to spread hatred and prejudice throughout the world so that we'll keep our enemies too busy to soil our own doorstep again?  Is that what you're calling brilliant?  It seems to me a better term might be Mind-numbingly Arrogant.  If this is what we define as brilliance then it's no woder that most of the civilized world is beginning to look at us as if our hair was on fire...and will surely grow to hate us passionately if they don't already.

That's enough rant for now.  To those of you who have donated lately - thank you so much.  We continue to need your support and hope you will be with us all the way to Washington D.C.  And for those of you who have emailed since Christmas - I receive all of your emails and appreciate them more than you can know - but I just have not had the computer time to reply.  If the coming weekend is as bad as they are predicting, I am going to use the time I'll have to take off the walk to catch up.

Finally for today - the nature of the OOOO should now be crystal clear to you.  He believes he has the only solution.  He believes he has unchallengeable power to enact whatever he decides regardless of what anyone else says.  There is only one person who can set him straight.  Until that person speaks up and makes it clear that this insanity must stop - and it must stop now - he will not listen. 

Who is that one person? 

You. 

January 9: Update from Becky -- Bill has made it to San Simon, AZ today. He is ten miles from New Mexico. He walked into a strong head wind all day today. He is still having trouble getting on to a computer for an extended period of time. He will be updating the journal as soon as he is able to get a computer with a good connection.

January 8: Update from Becky -- Bill's daughter. Bill is doing fine. He has made it to Bowie, AZ and will probably make New Mexico tomorrow or the next day. He will update the Journal when he is able to get back to a computer. He is planning on responding to all emails as soon as he can.

January 6: I have exactly 15 minutes on the computer tonight and have already used five checking emails.  I will reply to all emails as soon as humanly possible, but for now I am safe and well in Willcox, had a very good hike today and will be spending most of tomorrow in Sierra Vista at the invitation of the UU church there.  More as soon as I can!

January 5: For the past couple of days I've been in places where there was either no internet access or *Very* *Slow* dial up access, so I haven't been able to get things updated here.  But today I'm in Willcox at the library.  Actually, in walking terms I'm still a day's walk west of Willcox, but I have decided to take a day off from the walk and am sitting in the library at Willcox working on the website.  After my night's stay with Rocky and Boo in Vail I was handed off to Tom, from Ridgecrest Farms in Dragoon.  I'll tell you more about Rocky, Boo and Tom the next time I get a chance.  I stayed at Tom's place Wednesday night and he got me to and from my starting/ending points and finally picked me up at The Thing yesterday afternoon and drove me into Willcox.

For the past several days I have been completely exhausted at the end of my walk.  My feet have been fine, but I've had zero energy left.  I suddenly realized on Wednesday that I haven't really taken a day off since I resumed walking back on Decmber 18th, so I decided I just have to take a day off and completely relax, get my vitamins and electrolytes and such all balanced out and just let go for a bit.  Today is that day off, and while I'm spending a good part of it with the website, I still think it will be helpful.

Over the past couple of days the website traffic has picked up noticeably - and I think it's primarily due to Vince and Rocky and their efforts on my behalf.  Thanks, guys - I have the world's greatest PR team, even if they didn't know they were my PR team.  I had another brain drizzle this morning and have already implemented it.  I realized that, as new people discover my website, one of the things of greatest significance to them is, naturally, where I stand on the war and on various other current events.  While that is all contained in my Journal, the Journal is becoming quite lengthy and filled with lots of travelogue, personal experiences, etc. that are not necessarily germaine to what my walk is all about.  So this morning I began by creating a new page where I have extracted various statements I've made in the Journal and put them all in one place so people can get a handle on what I'm all about.  I think it was a good idea.

And while we're on the subject - I really don't like to be in the position of being able to say, "I told you so," but...well...I did, you know.  Since I had the opportunity to watch some TV last night I was watching the coverage of the opening of the 110th Congress.  As I had predicted, our freshly elected leadership is delicately backpedaling away from Iraq, declaring that they wish to focus on things like minimum wage, medicare reform and such.  These are good and worthy causes, BUT...

I did some thinking the other day about numbers.  You are probably not going to want to hear this.  Using my GPS, I calculated my normal stride, which turns out to be about 2.4 feet.  This means it takes me about 220 steps to go a tenth of a mile, or 2,200 steps to walk a mile.  Then I got to thinking about other numbers.  Like the number of our sons and daughters who have been killed in this misbegotten war.  It is now over 3000, as I hope you know.  How many people is that?  How many - mostly young - lives have we lost?  Good, strong, caring men and women who have had their normal span denied them?  Well, here's one way I really didn't want to think of it.  If the bodies of all of our sons and daughters who have been killed so far were placed shoulder to shoulder along the route I am walking, I would have to walk nearly a mile and a half to pass by all of them.  Shoulder to shoulder.  A mile and a half.  Can you grasp that?  And are you realy for another one?  If you were able to line the road in the same fashion with the bodies of all the Iraqi and Afghani citizens killed to date - men, women and children - I would have to walk 227 MILES to pass by all of them!  Ladies and gentlemen, DO NOT LET you representatives slide Iraq onto the back burner.  This MUST STOP!  You and I both know the only reason for not ending this TODAY is some perverse need on the part of our officials to put some sort of pretty face on it.  The thing is, what I'm saying in my petition allows them the ability to do just that.

You want to claim a victory?  You have it!  We said we were going into Afghanistan to depose the Taliban.  We did it!  Victory!  It's time to leave!  We said we were going into Iraq to find WMDs and/or to liberate the Iraqi people from Hussein and/or to establish a democracy.  We did it!  It's time to leave!

But, you say, we must now stay in Iraq to (a) stabilize the situation, or (b) clean up the mess we made.  Let me tackle those:

(a) Stabilize the Situation: We are messing with a culture and a tribal system of government that has been around for thousands of years.  Whether we leave Iraq today or ten years from now or a hundred years from now, we will not have changed either their history or their culture.  Whenever we leave, the Iraqi people will either decide that this democracy thing might be a good idea and be willing to give it a chance, or they will immediately slide back into a continual cycle of tribal conflicts that will ebb and flow throughout the region.  And - Get This - the longer we stick around forcing our ideas of governance on them, the LESS likely they will be to see those ideas as a viable way of governing themselves.  Therefore, the sooner we leave the better chance they have of establishing a representative government.

(b) Cleaning Up the Mess: One of my wife's favorite sayingsis that it's alright to make a mess - as long as you clean it up when you're done.  That we have made a mind-numbingly monumental mess in Iraq is self-evident.  I am  not opposed one bit to cleaning it up - in fact, I insist on it.  But here's the way to do it:

First, get the military forces out completely.  The only thing you're going to do with guns and bombs is make more of a mess.  Abandon any ideas of setting up permanent military presence in Iraq.  Get out.  Leave.  Now.

Next, get ALL of the American contractors out of there.

Now that you have the two elements gone that are continuing to create the mess, we can start to clean it up.  Bring in as much humanitarian aid as the world can muster.  Use the funds we're using to destroy the country to rebuild it - by awarding contracts to Iraqi companies and Iraqi citizens.  Let the Iraqis use our resources to rebuild their world - schools, hospitals, utilities, roads.  But the only U.S. personnel who should be involved in any way in the rebuilding should be organizations such as the Peace Corps, the Red Cross and other NON-PROFIT humanitarian organizations.  Not one single American corporation should see another cent of profit from this war or its aftermath.  Period.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen of Congress.  We can get out of Iraq tomorrow - victoriously, productively, peacefully.  WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

January 2: A very scenic walk today, if a little frustrating.  There is no frontage road along most of the rest of Interstate 10 so I've been having to find alternate rutes that still keep me near the freeway.  The upshot for today was that while I walked almost 15 miles, I only took about 10 off my projected route.  Not only that, but the last third of the walk was on railroad tracks, which really tear up my feet, so I didn't go as far as I wanted to or would ordinarily have gone.

On the plus side was some great countryside.  Small canyons, some riparian forest and a nice clear day made the walk quite enjoyable.  And now I have a confession to make: I am a lifelong, incurable rockhound.  I have always been fascinated by the great variety of minerals, crystals, fossils and so forth scattered all over this wonderful countryside.  Thus far in my walk I have exercised almost superhuman restraint and refrained from picking up so much as a single rock along the way or wandering off course to examine some interesting area.  Until today.

It's unfortunate I can't post pictures right now, but at about the 7.5 mile mark of my walk today I was passing by some inactive pit mines - almost certainly copper, judging by the green tint of the rocks.  But then my eye caught splashes of bright white running in rough lines along one exposed rock face, and I knew right away they had to be the mark of seams of dissolved selenite.  So for the first time in my walk I drifted off the road for a bit to examine the rocks.

Jonna, my love, this is a place we will come back to some day.  We will pull Nessie in and get comfortable, you'll drag out a lawn chair and a book and work on your tan while I scramble all over these old pits collecting specimens until Nessie groans on her springs.  There were seams of selenite crystals everywhere!  This may not excite many people, but it's the kind of thing I wander all over the desert looking for - and here it was, right along the roadside!  Even so, you will be pleased - and at the same time amazed - to learn that I did not collect one single specimen.  Not one.  Honest.  I just can't bring myself to do it while I'm walking this walk.  Sigh.

The exploration only lasted about twenty minutes and it had been time for a break anyway, so no harm done.  A few miles later the road I was on merged back to Interstate 10 and I had to start searching for another way to continue my walk.  I began walking down the exit ramp to 10, looking for some sort of parallel road along the north side of the highway.  This was when an Arizona trooper pulled up beside me in his squad car.  "Do you have a problem?" he asked.

It is fortunate that I still have a bit of a censor of sorts between my brain and my mouth, because the reply that instantly jumped to my brain was "I didn't until you pulled up."  But my seldom used or appreciated censor jumped right up there, grabbed that sucker before it could reach my mouth and replaced it with, "No sir, I'm just walking."

"Well, you can't walk on the Interstate."  "Yes sir, I know.  I just came from the road back there and am looking for some route that parallels the Interstate."  The trooper turned out to be at least marginally helpful, telling me there were tracks that ran along the south side of the Interstate that would cross back under the highway a few miles ahead.  I thanked him and headed in that direction.  What he didn't mention was that before the tracks made it back to the Interstate they executed some inexplicable sweeping bend that wound up adding about three miles to my route.  Oh well.

Vince was waiting for me with a cold bottle of water - thanks to cell phone contact - when I made it back to the highway.  Vince has been nothing short of incredible.  He drove me to Rocky and Boo's place - friends of his - in Vail where I'm spending the night.  Rocky and Boo are, as have been nearly everyone I've met so far, wonderfully hospitable and enthusiastic people who are feeding me and giving me a very comfortable place to sleep tonight - as well as letting me use their washing machine and monopolize their computer for a while.  When I am through with this walk I am going to have accumulated more debts of gratitude - as well as new and true friends - than I had ever imagined possible.

Jonna is safely ensconced in Missouri.  When they went to clean out Nessie this morning the guys jumped right in, settled into their nap places and were ready to go again.  Jonna had to drag Spoof out.  I guess you could say that the guys have now become accustomed to the camper life.  But they're also having a blast with our youngest granddaughter.

For now, my feet have taken a pretty good beating today and I am truly exhausted.  Soozy sent me a copy of Keith Olbermann's latest commentary which is, as usual, spot on.  Log onto MSNBC.com, go to Countdown and read it.  Keep it up, Mr. Olbermann - keep it up.

January  1: Today was one of my more, um, interesting walking days.  I ran out of frontage road early on and wound up having to do several iterations of the barbed wire limbo in order to find trails that would keep me off - yet near - the interstate.  So there I was, walking along a dirt trail only about a couple hundred yards north of Interstate 10.  I have been expecting throughout the trip to encounter all sorts of critters, but suddenly, no more than a hundred feet or so in front of me, a couple of wild boars crossed my path.  Then another.  Then another.  In all, about 8 to ten of them, moseying through the desert scrub.

I was not prepared for wild boar.  What little I know about them is that they are not particularly shy about people - but are particularly nasty.  I stood there quietly for a while, practicing being invisible with great dedication.  It seemed to work, because apparently none of them noticed me and went on their way, snorting and grunting quietly.

As I was breathing a sigh of relief while simultaneously swiveling my head to survey the surrounding brush, I hadn't gone another quarter of a mile when I found myself in the middle of about half a dozen longhorn cattle.  I don't know anything about the disposition of longhorn cattle...but they do have impressive horns, and they are very large animals.  Fortunately, they seemed as alarmed by my presence as I was by theirs and moved off quickly - out of sight in the brush.

Later I came across one more longhorn - sans horns.  She was just standing there in the trail in front of me.  I approached carefully and even had the presence of mind to snap a picture of her, which I'll post when I get the chance.  I asked her politely to let her friends with the horns know that I was really a very friendly sort of guy and as I approached closer, she moved quietly off the trail to let me pass.  The rest of the time I spent on the trails today involved many supplications that I encounter no more critters of any size, shape or temperament.  I began to wonder if I had stumbled into the Tucson Zoo.  Judging by the size of some of the meadow muffins I was encountering I'm certain there were a few mastodon lurking somewhere nearby.

It was with tremendous relief that I finally picked up a frontage road again about eleven miles into my walk.  I had hoped to make closer to twenty miles today. but with the added weight of carrying the backpack today and the time I spent wandering through the shrubbery, I think I did pretty well.

Vince picked me up at the end of my walk and took me back into Tucson, where we spent some time - along with his daughter Alana - at a local cafe and picked up quite a few more signatures for the petition.  I'm sure we could have gotten more, but I was completely bushed and had to call it a night.  Vince and the UU social action committee put me up for tonight in a much fancier room than I need, but I really appreciate it.

Jonna had an equally, um, interesting day.  I don't have all the details yet, but somehow she got locked out of Nessie and went through several circles of hell trying to get in touch with Becky or myself and trying to get our new insurance to get someone out there to open Nessie for her.  The insurance people said they don't have us on their roster yet so she got no help there, but did finally get back into Nessie and is now at her destination.  The insurance folks are going to get some choice words from me - and even choicer ones from Jonna - at our earliest opportunity.  But in the end, we are both safe and warm tonight, albeit completely worn out.