Last weekend was very busy. On Friday I saw the play "In the Mirror" by Pangea Theater. It was directed by Dupankar Mukherjee, the man who directed a play I was in last year. The play examined media, but not in the superficial ways that have become popular in the blog word: love/hate Dan Rather, celebrity profiling, etc. There's a pretty good review here. I enjoyed the show and it has stayed with me over the past couple of days. Not bad for a couple of hours on a Friday night.

Saturday night and Sunday I went to events sponsored by Veterans for Peace. The local chapter brought in one of the co-founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Jimmy Massey spoke about his years in the Marines. It brought up memories of talks I'd had with returning Vietnam War veterans 30 years ago. Massey wanted to talk less about Iraq and more about his overall experiences in the Marines and how those experiences had led him to distrust the military altogether. He especially needed to talk about his years as a recruiter and some of the underhanded techniques he used to meet his quota of recruits.

The audience, I suspect, wanted to hear more about Iraq and his experiences there. However, when veterans start to talk and reason out their experiences, it seldoms results in discussion that meet the needs of the audience. Soldiers need to talk -- they have to talk -- about what they have learned and what they have experienced. And I am torn between wanting to help this one man heal and wanting to know that his story can help somebody else come to understand what is happening in Iraq and what the soldiers are dealing with over there. I want his talk to motivate people to get active and to do whatever they can to bring this occupation of Iraq to a close. We're not there yet. But Jimmy Massey does have important things to say. Readd more about Iraq Veterans Aginst the War here.

Also, I've been reading about Andrea Dworkin, the feminist, who died last Friday. She was an amazing fighter for women who had suffered violence in a world that tolerates violence against women. A memorial site is here and does a great job of describing the effect she and her writing had on women around the world. She allowed herself to become a stereotype of the angry feminist in order to remind the world that the violence continues and that much of our culture still glorifies the victimization of women. Many blogs linked to a comment posted on Susie Bright's blog about Dworkin. I was disgusted by how many commenters posted about the way Dworkin looked. She was hairy and fat in comparison to our culture's absurd standards. So the fuck what? Why is her appearance fodder for commentary, even in her obituaries? Bah!

Dworkin made the world stand up and look at itself and the war that continues against women throughout the world. We have come a long way since the days when women were expected to stay home and shut up. And yet, there is still much to do. More than a million women currently live in sexual slavery. We are still living in a world where one in four women suffer sexual abuse in their lives. Dworkin wrote about this world and her words deserve to be read and read again.