Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor

Today my baby turns 16. It’s hard because she is 2,000 miles away from me. I miss her very much. I’ll be seeing her in a few weeks and we will have a party for her then.

Here is my “baby”:

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(Sources: Peace Buttons and War Resisters League Calendar)

Today is Aids Awareness Day and Prisoners for Peace Day

There does not appear to be anything in the headlines of either of Utah’s major newspapers about World Aids Day.

Stuart Merrill, a local (Salt Lake) gay activist. will appear on today’s KCPW’s Mid-Day Metro from 10:20-10:40. I will be discussing the challenges of living with HIV in Utah. (If you are out of the listening area you can get it on line.)
Stuart has on Op-Ed in this month’s Pillar, a Salt Lake GLBT magazine.
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December 1

1948
Following the civil war in 1948, Costa Rican president Pepe Figueres constitutionally abolished the army and the Constitution prohibits presidential re-election

Money not spent on a military allows for one of the highest literacy rates in the continent. Ninety-four percent of the population is literate.

1955
Rosa Parks Day
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Every year I can’t wait to get my new calendars. I just received my 2006 War Resisters League calendar/planner. Each year the WRL calendar has a different theme (you can also purchase previous copies of them). This year’s them is Peace-Loving Nations: Music of Peace and Resistance.

In their introduction, Gene Blickman and Ellen Davidson say this about the calendar:

We tried to make this calendar as heterogeneous as possible, drawing upon music and musicians from a wide range of traditions. Beyond “the usual suspects” – 20th century protests songs from the Wobbly-era throught teh ’60s-we sought music from Latin America, AFrica, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Antipodes. We found materials from many folk and classical traditions, Eastern and WEsetern. We looked for music from many historical eras, created by women and men of disparate ages and ethnicities, and from different phiolosophicla bents-as long as they and/or their songs were part of the struggle against war and its underlying causes-racism, sexism, poverty, capitalism, and class.

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