Chapter 54 Vice President Bob Potter passed away recently.   His book of poetry “Poems in Transit” is available online www.BobPotter.org  and an edited version of his production of  “Mother Courage” may soon be available.   We miss him and wish his family and friends well in their loss.  Bob Potter…Presente!

Chapter Cofounder and President Daniel Seidenberg’s new book “Vietnam Ambush”  is now available at Chaucers or online…or from him directly or at our monthly installations of the Iraq Moratorium or Arlington West,  or our weekly installation of the Inconvenient Booth.

Chapter 54 member Professor Thomas Scheff’s film and poem “A Wake on the Pier” http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/main.php?id=39.html  is also available online.

Please join us every third Friday for the War Moratorium (details below this message) or, during the summer, fall and spring semesters every Tuesday  at SBCC West Campus for VFP’s Inconvenient Booth,  a sustainability outreach to the students.  Or join us for our regular setup of Arlington West first Sunday of every month.  You can also join us in our efforts to get equal access in the high schools,  where military recruiters are spreading their propaganda but where they have no alternative view.   We want parents, students, veterans and citizens to attend the school board meetings and insist upon equal access.   Another issue we want to pursue more in the schools is to allow students and parents to opt out of having their private information passed on to the recruiters.  We are also pushing the chapter’s Depleted Uranium project ( open DU Quest at this website) ….a nationally recognized effort to represent veterans suffering from DU poisoning.  We were recently honored as a chapter by the Office of the America’s (see release at bottom of this email) and by UCSB veterans for helping them on Memorial day week 2009.

f you have not been active with your chapter or have let your membership lapse,  we would like to know why.   How can we better work to accomplish VFP’s  mission?
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/our_mission.vp.html. What would you like to see your chapter do?   To maintain our chapter’s and national’s activities,  we need our members and associates to be in good standing…and we need to pay our national staff (chapter 54 is only volunteers).

Going over our chapter roster,  I find that only 40 of our 134 members and associates have remembered to send in their dues to national http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Join_renew.vp.html. Some of our most active members have not paid dues and I want to ask our chapter at the next meeting to pay their dues if they cannot afford it out of AW donations.

Please visit our website at http://www.veteransforpeace.org and see the good work Veterans For Peace is doing!

In solidarity,  Lane Anderson,  LIfetime Member of Veterans For Peace
(ps…if you have trouble remembering dues,  you can do what I did and get a lifetime membership)

This is setup every third Friday at SBCC:

WAR MORATORIUM & TEEN MEMORIAL
AT SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE

A mock cemetery of the U.S. Military Teen casualties is planned in Santa Barbara, California on (every third Friday), part of the National and International grassroots War Moratorium Movement calling for the immediate end of war and occupation from Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

The  actions here, across the country and world mark the continuation of the War Moratorium, to unite individuals and groups who act to end Wars and Massacres, on the Third Friday of every month.

The local mock teen Cemetery will begin @10am in Santa Barbara, California at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) on the West Campus lawn across from the campus library overlooking Ledbetter Beach on the Pacific Ocean.

The event is sponsored by the SB Vets for Peace Chapter 54. The event will consist of a mock cemetery of the U.S. Military Teen Dead, from the Iraq & Afghanistan conflicts. To date we have information on 314, 18 & 19 year old casualties from both conflicts.

The “Tombstones” will be set up by volunteers from the SB Vets for Peace Chapter and SBCC Students. Staff, Students & visitors passing by on the walkway between the East & West campuses will be asked to come down on the lawn to place a placard of the colored photo & information of a teen casualty on the “Tombstones.” Information about the cost of war and the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Palesstine will be shared.

An SBCC Form for students TO BE TAKEN OFF THE MILITARY’S RECRUITMENT LIST, in opposition to the Solomon Amendment will be given out. The Solomon Amendment, passed in 1996 & revised in 1998, 1999 & 2000 by Congress so that federal agencies would be supported by colleges & Universities that receive federal funding. It is seen as a way that colleges & Universities can help the military meet national recruiting goals. Federal Funding will be taken away from Colleges & Universities if they can’t comply with the Solomon Amendment. Colleges supply student names, phone numbers and other private information to 17 components of the U.S. Military Service, each term or semester, for students age 17 & older who are registered for at least 1 unit. If students withhold the release of their “Directory Information” Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, THEN COLLEGES MAY NOT RELEASE IT TO THE MILITARY EITHER.

On Sunday night November 16, 2008 Veterans for Peace Chapter 54, Santa Barbara was honored at a banquet in Los Angeles with the prestigious Peace and Justice Award for its work in initiating the Arlington West memorial and carrying it forward over the past five years.

Together with actors/peace activists Bill Farrell and Sean Penn, Veterans for Peace were the guests of honor at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Office of the Americas, the international peace organization founded by Blaise and Theresa Bonpane. The award was presented by noted Vietnam Veteran and activist Ron Kovic. A distinguished audience at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel joined in the tribute.

Ron Dexter, Korean War veteran and longtime VFP member, accepted the award on behalf of Chapter 54 and other Veterans for Peace chapters across the country which have followed the local chapter’s lead in creating Iraq War memorials modeled on Arlington National Cemetery. Dexter traced the evolution of Arlington West from a protest to a memorial, reaching beyond the “choir” to bring home to a wider audience the realities of war and the achievable goals of peace.

The official award citation reads as follows:

Office of the Americas Presents its Peace and Justice Award to Veterans for Peace

The Office of the Americas and Veterans for Peace share a common objective.  We both are dedicated to the abolishment of war as an instrument of national policy.  Together with Veterans for Peace we want to see an economy where the bankruptcy of military production is replaced by the life affirming investments in social programs for national and international betterment. We believe a better world is possible.

Veterans for Peace has chosen non-violence as their methodology and the impact of that soul force resounds internationally.

The Arlington West Memorial began with the Santa Barbara Chapter and has spread throughout the United States. News programs have featured these memorials which have drawn respect from the entire political spectrum. Veterans for Peace are out on the beaches before dawn each Sunday to set up markers for the dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also have a special beachside statement on behalf of the peoples of these countries who have died in an unnecessary and illegal holocaust.

Veterans for Peace has a multitude of other programs as well.  In Vietnam they bring medical supplies, build clinics and advocate for victims of agent orange (dioxin).  In Korea they have created the Korean Peace Campaign to investigate massacres conducted by our troops in that yet unresolved conflict.  In Columbia they conduct fact finding missions to educate our citizens about our military involvement, the role of paramilitary death squads, human rights abuses, and the impact of chemical defoliants in the so-called “War on Drugs.”  In Puerto Rico Veterans for Peace has struggled to end six decades of US Navy bombing and shelling on the Island of Vieques.

And every year your members are participating in the huge demonstration to close the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.

We thank you, Veterans for Peace, for your service to your country and for demonstrating  authentic patriotism at a time when our country has lost its way.

With love and solidarity,

Theresa and Blaise Bonpane
for the Board of Directors of the Office of the Americas
November 16, 2008.

Contact:  Bob Potter, Vice President
Veterans for Peace Chapter 54
Santa Barbara

(805) 965-5826

My current read is “Sex and War” by Malcolm Potts.

Most people think they are too busy to read a serious book like Sex and War.   They are in a hurry continuously to arrive at their death,  which will mean a meaningless life at the end.   I drive 55 on all roadways except when I drive slower…I am on interstate 94 now, which follows the Yellowstone River,  and I feel real sorry for the folks that pass me because they have their windows rolled up and cannot smell the newly mowed hay and recent rain…and wildflowers.   They waste their lives hurriedly.  My windows are usually rolled down and  I stop frequently.   My stop at Pompey’s Pillar made me realize that the cottonwood groves along the Yellowstone are all excellent bird sanctuaries and now I stop more than ever.  I am in a small library and will stop again at one in a couple hours.

In addition to following the Yellowstone,  I am following the route of Lewis and Clark.  My next stop is Theodore Roosevelt National Park…and then VFP in Bismark,  Fargo and Duluth!

 I’m in Medora North Dakota (entrance Theodore Roosevelt NP)  now at their library.  I don’t have a computer but use the libraries as I go.  I camped last night on the national grasslands along a lovely road from Sentinel Butte to Medora that runs parallel to the interstate but a couple miles away and winds through the valleys and hayfields.  I slept a bit off the road surrounded by great rolls of hay with the rain drumming on the roof of my Luv Rozinante.  Today I will enter Theodore Roosevelt Park and probably take a campsite there for the night.  Tomorrow,  Wednesday,  I may proceed towards Fargo unless something unforseen takes place.  I have about eight VFP members along the way,  several in Bismarck and three in small towns,  I remember Springfield as one.  I will try to call them as I pass through and see if I get a response.

Best wishes, Lane

I am in Colombia Falls, just leaving Glacier National Park.    It is a stunning place and better I think than Yosemite or Yellowstone.   The Empire Builder AMTRAK passes through the park and is one of the most interesting rides.   I encourage those going to the convention in Portland to use it!

I especially enjoyed theTrail of the Cedars….I walked it both days I was there.  I saw an eagle soaring along the cliffs up at Logan’s Pass,  a bear on the way,  a mountain goat just below it, an elk in the meadow and a whole parking lot full of bighorns!  The glaciers are almost gone,  though,  and will be within ten years.   Its second name is the Peace Park so I hope it will take its second name when there are no more glaciers.  One of my questions about the park was regarding the road work.  They are hauling stones several hundred miles for a stone wall along the road to the sun to replace one that was native stone…why?

Now I’m on my way to Helena to contact  the VFP members there…there are quite a few.  I will also visit the VA hospital there although I usually get the same response…they have “protocol” for DU,  Homeless Vets etc.

Montana VFP has good potential!   Montanans are an independent sort and they have created a democratic system that precludes control by money…campaign finance limits etc.  Montana might be the next state to insist upon having their guard home and having the federal govt held responsible!

Bob supported everyone’s dream or aspiration.  He helped demonstrators become better demonstrators and helped aspiring writers become better writers.   He helped me with my writing and when I needed a ride to the Bohemian Grove in Northern California to begin a vets ride to Seattle,   Bob took me.  In turn when he needed a companion to campaign for Obama in Nevada,  I foresook Kucinich and helped him in Las Vegas and in Pahrump…where he and I had the independent voters on the outskirts of town (which turned out to be mostly George Wallace survivalists).

I miss Bob already and began a reading of Don Quixote in his honor.  He always likened me to Don Quixote.

Presente!  Bob Potter

Coming into Stanley I passed many meadows as high and lush as Tuolomne Meadows  and the Sawtooth Range is every bit as dramatic as the vistas in  Yosemite.

I also realize why most environmentalists are from the cities and populated areas.  If they drove across Nevada and Idaho they would be convinced that we have plenty of unspoiled places.

I camped last night next to the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River,  not in a designated campsite but in what we called a “throw down” camp down a 4×4 track. 

I camped in a “throw down” area (non designated) on Thursday night right beside the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River.  On Friday morning I came to hot springs by the road and soaked awhile and then drove along the Salmon River all day.  At one point where the hatchery spills into the river hundreds of fisherman were in and along the river and a man in waders was carrying a huge, probably forty pound, salmon to his car.  Non resident fishing liscences are dear so I continued to North Fork, where I began the climb to Chief Joseph’s Pass (7000 feet) and pulled off to camp at Twin Creeks among the tall pines next to one of the creeks.   I have learned to do the steep grades in the early morning when the truck and air are cool.

 A Montana assemblyman  who is also a Veteran For Peace may meet with  me about issues such as Safeguard the Guard and Federal Responsibility for Federalization Costs.  I will spend tomorrow,  Sunday, calling members to see if I can organize support for him.

I was talking to my neighbor
He said, “When I get to heaven, if it’s not like this,
I’ll just hop a cloud and I’m coming right back down here
Back to this heavenly bliss.”

“This Place” by Joni Mitchell
Watch on YouTube

In 2004, I first met Bob Potter when my volunteering began with the Veterans For Peace project envisioned by Steve Sherrill and called “Arlington West,” whereby crosses were set up each Sunday for U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq so as to bring home to the public the terrible cost of war. Back then when I helped with take-down of the crosses each Sunday, I initially knew Bob mostly as Chair of the monthly VFP Chapter 54 meetings which he was excellent at presiding over; always respectful and seamless flow that made the business pleasant, orderly, and productive. In 2007, after hospitalization precluded my heavy lifting at AW, I instead began greeting the public there. Since then, I had the pleasure of working Sundays with Bob Potter at Arlington West. Along with respective chores, always lively dialogue on movies to musicals, books to politics, travels to cuisine, and issues far and near and about everything between. Away from AW, I loved Bob’s marvelous plays, so timelessly creative, whose content always moved and freshness always amazed. It never ceased to amaze me how someone so gifted and extraordinarily accomplished could be so wonderfully ordinary and funny and caring. That someone so remarkable and marvelously talented and vital as Bob Potter should now be gone from us is heartbreaking. My deepest condolences to his family and friends and profound gratitude for having enjoyed the pleasure of his company. With Bob Potter, may we have the courage and the grace and the genius to make this a better place.

Elizabeth Colon
15 July 2010

Exactly three thousand white crosses
Symmetrically fixed in rows of forty-eight
Aligned at attention across a sandy beach
Vastly understate the reality.

Fleeting symbols of a Sunday afternoon,
Garnished with California seagulls, and a soft breeze
Coaxing tiny sailboats from the yacht harbor,
They shine in the sunlight, astonishing the tourists.

Bypasers from LA and the Valley, gawking New Yorkers,
Aussies and Londoners, Dutchmen and Turks,
Gabblers in Farsi, Japanese, Hindi
And all varieties of Spanish pause to contemplate
The irresistible photo opportunity of Death.

As the digital cameras whiz, zip and flash,
Catching the poignant sight, disposing of its brief shock,
Children wonder if there are bodies in the sand,
Then, reassured and disappointed, are led off for an ice cream.

If there were three thousand deaths here
Instead of these chaste memorial place markers,
Three thousand rotted blood-soaked dismembered corpses
Of former American boys and girls from the small towns and barrios,
The squandered assets of bemedaled Generals
Riddled with bullets, blown to pieces, mouths agape,
Strewn chaotically, catastrophically across an invasion beach
Of reality, crashed in our midst in a terrible tsunami
Flooding the beaches and the streets, dashed
Across our suburban lawns, stinking up the schoolyards,
Polluting the supermarkets, poisoning the churches,
Assaulting our ears, offending our nostrils, raping our eyes
With an obscene actuality not seen on TV -
This atrocity dutifully unleashed on our orders – well then,
Something would have to be done about it.

But as it is, the crosses and the grizzled veterans
Who tend them like a flowered garden of regret
Are the matter of a brief moment
For onlookers with other destinations,
And the ignorant carnage grinds on,
Eleven time zones away, receding
Into the forgetful future of a careless empire.

Bob Potter
Arlington West, Santa Barbara
October, 2007

It is with a sense of great loss that I have heard of the passing of Bob Potter,  Chapter 54’s Vice President and a prominent playwright and poet.  If you have not done so, look at Poems in Transit, available online and at the website www.BobPotter.org. It is my hope that a plan to edit and produce a film from his production of “Mother Courage” will be forthcoming.   Bob was always ready to help anyone in a project of peace or progressive action.     Rest in Peace Bob….Presente!

My camp for the past three days after leaving Winnemucca, Nevada, was at Lye Creek in the Santa Rosa Mountains just south of the Oregon/Idaho border.  I was camped at about 8000 feet in a grove of aspen trees next to the creek.  An aspen grove is really one tree with many shoots,  the root system is interconnected.  My truck Rocinante and I are cradled in the web of roots of one of natures largest living beings.  Wildflowers are incredible here, it is just spring at 8000 feet!  There are both brilliant yellow and blue lupines,  bright yellow composites as well as pink ones,  and an elaborate red one with five parts that become yellow tubes at the stamen.  There is also tiny white morning glories mixed with pink ones and blue flowers on bushes too small to bear them!  Surrounding the aspens that cradle me are mimosidae with large fragrent catkins.   The creek bottom and mountains in general are also well endowed with butterflies and birds.   As I sat next to the creek and listened to a warbler repeating the same ditty,  I wondered if he had other melodies, so I whistled a tune for him.  He hesitated a moment and then replied with the same ditty followed by an extended warble and hopped from branch to branch exitedly.   I think he was asking me to show some leg but I declined.  The drive out of the mountains to highway 95 was another amazing mountain road!

Rocinanate has a defective starter that fails to engage about every twenty times…usually when cold.  The bearings in the front hubs are also singing loudly and I have ordered new bearings and seals for Boise.   She overheats easily and now I have a rat sharing the truck with me.  I heard it last night and spent hours in the dark trying to catch it without luck.  This morning before I left I tried again and may have chased it out but not sure.  I would not mind sharing the truck with him if he would eat a granola bar and finish it and then go elsewhere to crap and pee…but no, he chews several and then craps and pees on them!

I have distributed the DU and Homeless Vets outreach documents at the VA Clinic and VFW halls in Reno and will look around in Boise as well.

I visited the groves of ancient trees at Sequoia and was impressed by my own insignificance….and humanity’s. The trees may likely stand until we are gone…or we may finally kill them with our pollution. I learned from a ranger that cell phones are the cause of the die off among the bees. Their radiations disrupt the bee’s navigation system. My cell phone is off for good! This could disrupt the food system so severely that global starvation could follow.

Y0semite Valley was a joke, traffic jams during the entire afternoon and fifteen minute lines to use the outhouse. After gettting a ticket for sleeping in my truck (all the campgrounds were full), I drove to Toulomne Meadows and spent three days there. It was lovely and I was able even with bad knees to hike up the river and to soda springs in the meadow. I also hiked to the timber line from Tioga Pass.

Next stop is Reno and I hope to find some veterans for peace there. I will be at the Motel 6 at 866 N Wells phone 775 786 9852 . I will leave the following documents at the veterans buildings and clinics:

Best wishes, Lane

Dear veteran, organization or concerned citizen!

 As a counselor for the Santa Barbara Vet Center , a VA outreach program, I became aware of the PTSD and “survivor guilt’ in that community and of things that are useful therapy for those veterans who suffer from PTSD. A key need is to take care of your fellow combat veterans. In today’s military recruits are trained to bring everyone along and leave noone behind. For these reasons many of the returning veterans will find a career helping veterans to be both helpful and fulfilling. I think I can propose such a career path.  The Obama administration will make 3.2 billion dollars available to end homelessness in veterans with 150 million available in the next fiscal year at their Homeless Grants and Per Diem page http://www1.va.gov/HOMELESS/ GPD.asp it seems that there is still 12 million for this fiscal year! Veterans have priority and it could be combined with a non profit management curriculum on the GI bill and used as tutorial/practicum. Help at all levels can be gotten from Community Partners in the LA area or with organizations listed in the directory in the correspondence below this: Community Partners provides fiscal sponsorship to qualified projects, as an alternative to incorporation as an independent nonprofit organization, mainly in the Los Angeles area. I would encourage you to channel veteran leaders who might be interested in fiscal sponsorship to carefully review the information on their website (http://www.communitypartners. org/fiscal-sponsorship.html). If after review an individual leader feels that s/he is ready and willing to make a commitment to fiscal sponsorship as a means for realizing their project for housing veterans, I would encourage them to submit a full proposal to Community Partners Incubator Services (see: http://www.communitypartners. org/incubator-services/how-to- apply/) . Veteran leaders may be interested in seeking out fiscal sponsors in other cities. You can find a directory of other fiscal sponsors in other parts of the country at tides center  http://www.tidescenter.org/ become-a-project/additional- resources/fiscal-sponsors/ index.html  

The way it works, or could work is that the vet gets most of the funding and per diem through the VA Homeless Grants and Per Diem program: http://www1.va.gov/HOMELESS/ GPD.asp  and the rest via community partners or foundations…see http://foundationcenter.org/ collections/ You can also get legal advice to start non profit if you want one: http://www.publiccounsel.org/ overview/cdp.html  Many vets and organizations have already opened facilities for the homeless veterans and are receiving grants and per diem already…making it an example of good works that pay. Veterans will have priority with the VA and most other foundations. People in general are eager to see vets work in this realm!

Respectfully submitted,

Andersonlane47@yahoo.com andersonlane47@gmail.com

Rowland Lane Anderson, Adjutant, Disabled American Veterans Chapter 37

Lifetime Member of Veterans For Peace, Veterans of Foreign Wars and VVA

For VA clinics, veteran organizations and Vet Centers:

Veterans Exposed to Depleted Uranium

We are offering to help represent veterans who have been exposed to depleted uranium munitions, dust or radiation and are suffering from cancer or other side effects. We have expertise in medical, legal and administrative law.

We as a chapter of the VFP have started a program and done research to develop a brief for presentation to the VA rating board to obtain service connection disability for the affected veteran. Gulf war I and II vets are encouraged to get in touch with us for information on this project and to register at the Depleted Uranium Registry:

http://www.afip.org/consultation/environmental/du/

Update Oct. 2009: Download the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ “Evaluation Protocol for Gulf War and Iraqi Freedom Veterans with Potential Exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU)” handbook (pdf format).

PLEASE CONTACT US WITH ANY QUESTIONS:

Veterans For Peace DU Quest TEL 805 9843322

info@vfpsb.org

or lalapapa@ix.netcom.com , lalapapa4@gmail.com

FURTHER INFORMATION:

http://www.veteransforpeaceny.org/vfpduvets.htm

http://www.afip.org/consultation/environmental/du/

Veterans For Peace Santa Barbara DU Quest: http://www.vfpsb.org/projects/depleted-uranium-quest/

R. Lane Anderson, Adjutant, Disabled American Veterans Ch 37

Lifetime Member of Veterans of Foreign Wars and Vietnam Vets of America

andersonlane47@yahoo.com andersonlane47@gmail.com

to confirm: DAV Ch. 37 Commander (805) 568-0020 ejprice@yahoo.com

For DU workshop in Portland and peace vets along the way::

Veterans Exposed to Depleted Uranium

We are offering to help represent veterans who have been exposed to depleted uranium munitions, dust or radiation and are suffering from cancer or other side effects. We have expertise in medical, legal and administrative law.

We as a chapter of the VFP have started a program and done research to develop a brief for presentation to the VA rating board to obtain service connection disability for the affected veteran. Gulf war I and II vets are encouraged to get in touch with us for information on this project and to register at the Depleted Uranium Registry:

http://www.afip.org/consultation/environmental/du/

Update Oct. 2009: Download the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ “Evaluation Protocol for Gulf War and Iraqi Freedom Veterans with Potential Exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU)” handbook (pdf format).

A. I. Holtz, MD, FAAP has had seven years experience on the VA rating board in the Los Angeles office. He is a Harvard trained physician and has worked for all the branches of the military.

PLEASE CONTACT US WITH ANY QUESTIONS:

Dr. Albert Holtz, MD, FAAP
POB 7107
OXNARD, CA 93031
TEL 805 9843322, email lalapapa@ix.netcom.com , lalapapa4@gmail.com
info@vfpsb.org

FURTHER INFORMATION:

http://www.veteransforpeaceny.org/vfpduvets.htm

http://www.afip.org/consultation/environmental/du/

Veterans For Peace Santa Barbara DU Quest: http://www.vfpsb.org/projects/depleted-uranium-quest/

R. Lane Anderson, Adjutant, Disabled American Veterans Ch 37

Lifetime Member of Veterans For Peace

andersonlane47@yahoo.com andersonlane47@gmail.com