I got my plane tickets today.  Unfortunately it seems I will be fighting holiday traffic over and back.  Anyway, I leave on Monday in the late afternoon.  I will send a mass email out to people on my contact list today.  If you don't get the message and want to receive messages from me, you need to comment this post or email me directly so I can add you.  If you want to receive paper mail from me (you know the handwritten messages that you can receive from the US Postal Service a week after I write them), please get your address to me in the next day or so.  I do not know my address while in training.  I will get that once I arrive and I will communicate it to Ted and/or Ingrid.  I won't post it here, you will need to contact them.  

It is very sad to say this, but the reason I fear posting it is because Basic Training is a very stressful environment.  I really would not want to receive letters from the latest crop of anti-war protesters.  As a liberal, I agree with most of their message, but their tactics are an embarrassment.  For example, the group Code Pink has successfully lobbied the Berkeley City Council to throw the Marine Officer Recruiting Station out of the city (although it looks like that will be over turned).  Kicking the Marines out of Berkeley would accomplish exactly what?  How is this approach different from the religious conservatives that try to shut down abortion clinics in their towns?  Please! Let's stop and think.  As liberals, we strongly defend people's right to express their opinions - but you cross the line when you take an action that interferes with my right to make a legal choice...whether that choice is to end a pregnancy or join the military, it's all the same.  If you do not stand for this, you are not a liberal, please do not present yourself as one.  The Code Pink tactics do not turn people against the Marines, they turn people against liberals. 

[P.S. - Let me take a moment to point out the inherent stupidity in closing down the Marine Officer Recruiting Station in one of the most liberal towns in America.  Imagine if instead, we convinced more liberal minded people to become military officers.  Think of the potential!  Or we can keep trying to fight things from the outside looking in...how's that been working so far?]