Sunday, May 08, 2005

THESE COLORS DON'T RUN. THEY BLEED. THE WHITE CROSSES PROJECT Dear Friends,   I had an idea the other day. I was driving my daughter to school one morning a few days ago, and I saw one of those roadside memorials to accident victims at a streetcorner, a cross made of two-by-fours painted white, with name and date in black, with a few faded artificial flowers. Those of you who follow my blog may know that I have occasionally posted pictures of such memorials on my "Roadside Attractions" page. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but I was short on time. I thought to myself, "That's okay, I can get it later, nobody ever takes these things down." These roadside memorials have manna, messing with them would be like desecrating a grave; very bad medicine. Then I thought, "What if white crosses with the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq appeared along the roadsides all over America all on the same day? ...Say the anniversary of the beginning of the war in March?" Then I started to think about what I would need to do it.   By this time I had dropped my daughter off, and was on my way to work, tooling along the expressway brainstorming to myself. In Tulsa, the verge and medians of the highways are landscaped, often wide lawns of grass planted with trees. Last July I visited Arlington National Cemetery, and in my mind's eye I saw those lawns with the endless ranks of tombstones. I thought, "What if, on a morning of a chosen day, commuters were confronted by a row of white crosses, each with the name of a dead soldier on it?" I wrote the above and sent it out in an email to many friends and fellow travellers last November. I was hoping to start something. That many people would become involved; that many white crosses would be planted in many places for many people to see and wonder about. I started an elist. In these things I failed utterly. I am not a follower; neither am I a leader, I am more like what Edgar Pangborn in one of his long out of print novels called a "loner by trade." Most of the time, if I have an idea for a project like this, I end up doing most of the work myself, and so it was with this, though several friends offered to help and/or gave valuable advice. Working with available materials in my spare time, I made 30-odd white crosses with the names, ranks, date of death, and age at death of soldiers killed in Iraq, One morning before dawn I planted them in rows six feet by six feet in the green space between eight lanes of a busy expressway near downtown Tulsa. I went to a local lumber yard and purchased a bundle of lathe for ten dollars. There was supposed to be fifty slats to the bundle, but some were broken, and I broke or discarded some in the process of figuring out the best way to do the job. I painted them with a roller using some white "KILLS" housepaint left over from repainting my stepdaughter's room.  I cut the lathe in two pieces with a jigsaw, and fastened the pieces together with a heavy duty electric staple gun.  I made the cross bar 16 inches long, and placed it 9 inches from the top of the stake. Using a stencil and a black Sharpie, I lettered the name and rank of the soldier on the cross bar, and put the date of death above and the age at death below the crossbar on the vertical slat. Since it was April, I chose soldiers who were killed in April of '04 and '05 from the casualty list maintained by CNN. I got up at 5 am on the 16th of April, loaded the crosses in the trunk of my car and drove out to the spot I had picked out, Armed with a long handled shovel, a trowel and a measuring tape, I planted the crosses. Whether or not anyone notices, there they stand, the physical manifestion of my one man meme. The crosses still stand. The grass was getting high and when the municipal mowing crews went to work, I thought that would be the end of my small memorial to the soldiers who have died in another unnecessary war.  But I drove past the other day and not only had the crews mowed around my rectangle of white crosses, they had mowed between the crosses. An act of respect? City policy? I don't know. Also I saw someone  pulled off the highway, taking pictures.   I wanted to do it, I did it, and I may do it again. Once a month, with names of soldiers killed in that month.  I already bought another bundle of lathe.   You can do it too. I don't have a patent on white crosses.     Thanks again to Ms. Candide 3:27:17 PM    comment []

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR... 12:51:32 PM    comment []

MOTHER MAY I? NUN OF THE WEEK 8:27:14 AM    comment []