On Memorial Day, I light a candle before dawn and I think of all of the many people in my country and in the world who die, suffer and survive war. I wish they had not died, been injured, separated from their families, traumatized, sacrificed to the barbarism and violence of their fellow human beings, mostly men. I wonder why the people who preach peace have been so marginalized and trivialized and dismissed. Why they are never in Congress beating their fists on their desks or on cable news arguing with the left or the right. The Dalai Lama and some lonely Quakers talk about peace and maintain their vigils but nobody seems to be listening to them or hearing their powerful messages.

First, I honor the dead and those who fought and returned, they went for all of us. Then I think how wonderful it would be to have a Peace Day in America, where we honor alternatives to war, the people who save lives by fighting for peace. It seems an old idea, a fading chant from the 60’s, but it is a big idea to me. Our media has little interest in it, war is so much more profitable all around. I think of it every Memorial Day. It is not just for Buddhists and Quakers and true and equally outshouted Christians, it is a universal idea. I think the biggest political idea in the world for me is feminism, and one of many reasons is that women seem to grasp other ways of problem solving and political idealism than killing machines and sacrificing the young to the hoary, greedy and bankrupt ideas of the old men who rarely go to wars but have so many good reasons to start them.