To do this weekend

Top of my to-do list is take care of my friend Joan's dogs -- my Goddogs, Munchkin and Barney Bear -- see their pictures in my Furry Friends set on my FlickR page -- linked below and on the side. (Joan's cruising to and around Hawaii, luck her!) I'm therefore running back and forth between her place and mine, because I have my three cats, MacTangelo, Wilbur and Boots to feed and love, too (and clean out the cat box -- ooooh). Yes, there's housework, but instead I started watching A&E's Pride and Prejudice DVD, featuring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle -- gorgeous -- my favorite book (read it five times, maybe 6) and this DVD set is terrific as it is longer than a regular movie and allows time for the nuances and the ambiance. YUM!! And yet I would also like to get into Manhattan to see on its opening weekend, the Al Gore Global Warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. The above title link refers to the related Virtual March to Stop Global Warming, specifically my Virtual Walker's page, now more ever easy to join, walking with me, behind Bobby Kennedy Jr. As I write this the march has 373,723 marchers, but I am going to urge my 11104 zip code friends (with 34 marchers) and others to join me (again). If you go to my page and sign up I would appreciate it -- but be sure to watch for and reply to the confirming email. (And then ACT, change your light bulbs to the energy-conserving ones and conserve other energy -- gas! And write Congress. And ask your friends to march with YOU and urge them likewise.)

And then there is/was my peace vigil "to-do": Yesterday, I joined Betty Lou Hornick, Sam Oast, and Marianne Goldscheider in our little but persistant weekly (almost) Union Square Saturday Peace Vigil, from about noon to 2 PM at the north end of Union Square Park, NYC, by the Lincoln statue. Had some lovely conversations with Guillaume from south France, Ron Evans from England, and Eddy Corbett, NYC chef. Didn't have my camera with me to memorialize folks but I did get to talk about wasting money on war instead of spending money to help people with these folks and some others whose names I didn't get. When you come to realize that ours is the only country of the the 37 industrialized nations without healthcare and that our kids have to go into serious debt to go to college when most (all?) of these countries have reasonably priced or even FREE college/university education, you have to seriously wonder about the state of our nation. We are told that ours is the best country in the whole world, yet we are in an illegal war which kills people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction so that Halliburton with more than 50% of the unbid contracts there can make Bush cronies wealthier while we increase our national debt, and the top 1% of our nation owns more than the bottom 90%. Yes, there is something seriously wrong with this picture. We need healthcare and we need more equitable salaries/wages, including living wages for all working people. I am not talking SAME, I am talking fair. We don't need extremes. And we certainly need peace, justice, nonviolence, AND a healthy planet, and that means stop global warming. Join me in seeing the movie (attendance the first weekend is important in gaining wide release) and in the virtual march.

To the EXXON folk who try to say that global warming is still a debatable issue and not proven, just remind them of the David Brower quotation, "There is no business to be done on a dead planet."

And some of my other to-dos for this long weekend? Well, taking care of pets, cleaning my house, and world peace are quite enough, but I would like to take some more pictures to post to FlickR, update my ignored KateAnne.com site a bit (add books, actions, and a new posting), and it would be nice to finish my Sue Grafton book from the library, S is for Silence, the latest in the Kinsey Milhone series. I have swept off my back porch and it would be lovely to enjoy it. It is a holiday weekend. But it is good to stay or BE in touch with friends and families (so far my daugher Kat and my Aunt Betty Murphy and I have spoken). Yes, as usual, my to-do list overfloweth. And I cannot do it all, but I will do what I can. And I will endeavor to remember to breathe, relax, and be the peace that I seek. Special blessings to anyone who got to the end of this posting, and to all I wish ...

Peace hugs,
Kate Anne