American People's Poll on Iraq (AKA Peace Rally) in Fort Worth, Texas.

There was a time when I protested the Vietnam War, marched for Civil Rights, and considered myself an activist. It's just since we've retired that I've picked up the "activist" label and stuck it on my forehead again. SO MANY YEARS passed inbetween! There was work, school (forever the student I was) dogs, child-rearing, gardens, divorce, travel, loss of my dad, Lucky, a move to Texas, loss of Lucky, new marriage, etc.

Feels kinda good, though, to pick it up again. Em's right there with me on whatever I feel I need to do. He's not sayin' he's gonna do it, too; he's just said that he's right there with me on whatever I feel *I* need to do. So, we went together to the American People's Poll on Iraq yesterday. It was a Peace rally held in Fort Worth, Texas.

I packed a lunch for us of tuna salad wraps with grapes and brought a few bottles of water in a small cooler. I still need to buy the reusable water bottles, as I'll not buy bottled water again, but I had a few bottles of water that we also needed to drink and recycle, so it's not yet environmental guilt-time.

'twas a GREAT day for a rally, and we had really good luck getting there and back. We left with just a little more than enough time to drive to the train station to catch the offering that would get us there at 12:30pm, waited through not one, not two, but THREE wrecks on 360 getting to the train station, and caught that train by a hair. Rumor had it that the folks from Texans for Peace someone would meet us at the station at that particular time and walk us over to the Convention Center where the rally was being held, but it looked like that hadn't been shared with the Texans for Peace folks local people in charge of that function. (Thanks for the correction, Alyssa!). Ran into a few folks we'd met before on the way to the rally. Heh. Most of us are too old to remember WHERE we met before, but we can at least recognize familiar faces, if not the names that go with them.

Arriving a little too early for the speakers, we checked out some of the booths:




I was Jonesing on some of the offerings, but hadn't brought any money to spend.

We sat ourselves down in some of those chairs that collapse into over-the-shoulder bags that Em had just bought that morning at (hiding head in shame) Walmart! I know; I know. My indoctrination program isn't working on him. In his defense, though, he doesn't ROUTINELY shop at Walmart. He looked the day before for some ant killer, because someone online said that it would free up our kitchen faster than my homemade stuff, at Home Depot. When they didn't have it, he checked at Walmart. Hey, he was out shopping by himself and had nobody to stop him! I guess he saw the chairs at that time. Anyway, we sat down in the shade maybe 200 feet from the podium. We didn't have a view of the podium from where we sat. We had THIS view:



The view from in front of the podium looked more like THIS:



So, while we could HEAR what was going on, I walked around to SEE what was going on, and found:

This last one was the group sent to protest the protest.

Apparently, I have a "Loves Sidewalk Fountains" sticker on my forehead that can't be seen when I look in the mirror, because THESE two women approached me, saying that they were gonna go 20 or so feet from where we were sitting to avail themselves of the cooling power of the sidewalk fountains, asking if I'd like to join them. DUH! Of COURSE (Heh!)!







Those "over the shoulder" chairs absorb water, so when your butt's wet it's gonna stay wet, and when your underpants are soaked, your butt's gonna start to itch. /Just sayin'. We caught the 4pm train home. We had NO obstacles on our way back home, and an easy dinner of garlic/chicken/herb ravioli baked with sauce, spinach, & grated cheese accompanied by refrigerator biscuits, which tasted great! Life is good!