Austin, Texas

Columnist Brad Buchholz wrote Sunday in the Austin Statesman:

"Zilker Park felt a lot like a grieving field last week. And though "Eyes Wide Open" is gone now ˜ packed up and on its way to Dallas ˜ the American Friends Service Committee's exhibit left us with an enduring gift.

In this divided America, there is something that unites us when it comes to the Iraq war, transcending red state or blue state, Republican or Democrat. It's the pull within all of us to grieve the dead."

An anthropological study of a Pacific Islander culture that was experiencing an exorbitant amount of suicides found that there was no word for grief in their vocabulary. So Brad's point about grief was right on target. We are in this nation, in less dramatic ways, destoying ourselves if we do not grieve and then act to stop this insanity of war.