RAT To Seattle from Birmingham

[P1d2o3b@aol.com]

Subj:   Re: RAT Hello Seattle
Date:   12/3/99 11:10:05 AM EST
From:   <A HREF="mailto:P1d2o3b">P1d2o3b</A>
To: <A HREF="mailto:P1d2o3b">P1d2o3b</A>

Greetings Dramatists,

I hope some of you saw Tom Hayden's comments about the advances Seattle
represents over Chicago.  (<USAS_listbot.org>, I think). 
 
Survivors and persistors from guerilla street theatre days, 
This is a wonderful tribute.  Seattle was the perfect choice of venue.  
The  curtain is up. 
 
It "feels" subjectively as it should, 
and I hope someone(s) of you will convey it
for Tom Hayden, me, and all the rest of us, 
who placed ourselves under collective discipline, 
our faith in collective creativity, 
our prayers in democratic centralism.  
And then awoke one December morning, 
finding ourselves of a certain age, 
with certainty of nothing but one's very personal and all too individual 
mortality.  
Our enemies dancing on our graves.  Our former comrades dead or among them.  
Our children condescending.

And when finally tired of whining said, "Enough, before I die, I shall do 
what I have known must be done none would do with me.  None of my faith.  It 
pains, it grieves, it pierces, punctures my very soul, en fin it betrays me, 
myself and I to confide:  I am going on alone."  

Then sad  return to learn the one woman show was all the stalwarts I envied 
could do.  Not because  they had become the truly deeply maniacal egotists we 
all were in our youth.  But because it was all the changed times and places 
allow deep truth revealers and revelers.  So my one woman show began, slowly, 
primitively, but oh
so much more easily, and god forbid successfully, then BOOM:

Children, I wish I could claim them,  grown, all our lessons imbibed, 
lept over our errors, and resumed the dance. And restoreth our faith.  We 
shall all overcome(nb:Jim*) 
I dance more slowly.  Punctuated equilibriums.  
Two earthquakes just buried thousands and thousands alive.  
Thousands emailed the mayor of Seattle to remind him he knows
the difference between agent provocateurs and idealists who took the trouble 
to come to Seattle and undergo training in non violent protest.

Tom Hayden was there.  As in Chicago.  I wish I had been.
God bless all who were.  God bless.  It's enough to make one believe in God, 
if one
were so inclined.

The WTO is only 5 years old.  The ILO began, I'm not sure of the date, around 
the time
of WWI.  

Keep on keeping on.  What does RAT stand for?

Peggy from Birmingham to Seattle

*hello Jim, your play is fine! Your lines have sticking power, see.