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Holy GroundJuly 21, 2006 On holy ground, you better watch your diction. -- Bob Franke, "Holy Ground" I've ranted more than once about the penchant of many liberals, feminists, and lefties for ranting and pointing fingers before they've begin to think and feel their way through whatever they're ranting and finger-pointing about, so here's a stunning example of the opposite. It's titled "Mother of Suicide Vet Flies Old Glory Upside Down." Matthew Rothschild wrote it; it first appeared in the Progressive, and you can find it here on AlterNet. The story is about Terri Jones. And about Terri Jones's son, Jason Cooper, who served in Iraq and came back -- changed. Four months after he returned, he committed suicide. He was 23. “We had a flag out the whole time Jason was in Iraq,” says Ms. Jones. “Once he died, my boyfriend Vince turned it upside down to protest everything that’s happening with our government, especially our soldiers being failed when they come home.” An upside-down flag is an internationally recognized signal of distress. Some person unknown came while she was running an errand and turned the flag right side up. Then she received an anonymous letter that asked her not to "disrespect those who have fought and died on our soil preserving your very freedom and mine." She wrote a letter to the editor about why her flag was upside down. Shortly after the letter appeared, her flag was stolen in the middle of the night. She bought another flag and hung it upside down. When Rothschild's story ends, the other stories start. Veterans, friends and relatives of veterans, telling and listening to each other's stories. Lots of people acknowledging and trying to grapple with their grief at Jason Cooper's death, at all the deaths, at the sad, sad state of this country. Sounds as if Terri Jones isn't the only person who's been flying her flag upside down. Sounds like there are about to be more. I don't own a flag and don't think I could fly one, upside down or right side up, but for years I used to buy flag postage stamps and stick them on envelopes upside down. Then I started telling the postal clerk "Anything but flags." I'm thinking of buying flag stamps again and again sticking them on upside down. I'm thinking of flags flying upside down, on flag poles, on desks, on car windows and antennas. It makes me shiver, like remembering marchers one by one each calling the name of a different soldier killed in Vietnam; like first hearing Fred Small's song about an incident that took place in Billings, Montana, a few years ago. A rock was thrown through the window of one of the town's few Jewish families. It was December; they had a menorah in the window. One by one their non-Jewish neighbors put menorahs in their windows. What's astonishing and inspiring and unbelievably moving is that nearly all the AlterNet readers who've responded to Terri Jones's story have spoken from the heart. They're listening to her, and they're listening to each other. Some of it hurts to read. I'm thinking of one of my favorite feminist writers, the late Nelle Morton, a theologian. She coined the phrase "hearing to speech" after hearing a woman tell her story in a small group they were both part of. When the woman finished, she said to the other women, "You heard me. You heard me all the way. I have a strange feeling you heard me before I started. You heard me to my own story." And I'm thinking of another of my favorite feminist writers, the poet and essayist Adrienne Rich: "When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her." Holy ground.
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