I'm struggling with the war. Yet again I feel out of sync. I missed the upheaval of the Vietnam era, despite the fact I was in college. Well actually because I was in college--at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The Vietnam war mostly missed Provo. No political discussions. No protests. No discussion that really touched me. But all the young men I knew quietly trying to avoid the draft.

I encountered the Vietnam era protests in the spring of 1970 at the University of Washington campus. I went there with my soon to be husband who was soon to be a graduate student in Seattle. We arrived in the midst of huge protests; the campus was full of students and many of the buildings had been shut down. I was afraid, but excited.

We married that summer and moved to Seattle and I encountered the sixties--at a safe distance and late enough to keep my head in that city. Co-ops and community gardens and social awareness and dreams of living off the land and living together in a community of the like minded and listening to Watergate on the radio day after day. And finally feeling vindicated for what I had felt in my gut day after day listening.

Now I'm back in Seattle after 30 years. And the protests are happening again. And I'm on the outside again--this time more from choice than accident. The peace movement is ignoring too many difficult issues for me to feel comfortable there. But I don't have any trust of Bush and his gang. What a mess.