Candles in the wind

I am asking XXX of the Street Maintenance Division to investigate your concern. George will respond to you once he has completed his investigation. South Saunders Street is a part of the State Maintained Highway System. It is likely that City crews and contractors were not involved in this work.


Public Works Director



I actually got a response. I’m impressed. I guess my decision not to go with referring to the absent crew as a bunch of red neck meth freaks – but that was before he pointed the finger at state employees. So, yeah, if I had known they were State Employees blowing off work and wasting my time, then I would have definitely gone with the “red neck meth freaks” line. I hope I’m not the only person who was annoyed and put out who bothered to complain.

I took Dogger to the candle light vigil. Note to self, explore mini- oil lamp avenue, candle wax is messy! Unlike my treacherous candle/plastic cup combo, because I’ve been to one of these before, I’m no candle light vigil newbie; I brought something to catch the wax. Sadly, as it turned out, it couldn’t catch a cold and the shorts I was wearing are now wax covered. Dogger was a real champ. She wore her little “Dogs for Cindy” sign with pride and resisted the urge to eat the tasty paper treat so close to her mouth. She got her picture taken and everyone who walked past commented on what a good little protestor she was. We were helped with the photo ops because we were sitting next to the cutest child ever who wrote “Pece” on the pavement in front of him using used matches. Dogger must think freckles are the new dog treat because, much to the little boys delight, she licked him like a snow cone. The photogs loved him. Dogger and he got photographed together as well.

I read many, many statements from other participants in other cities and they all talked about singing and reading out loud passages and praying and all these really earnest activities... My group chatted amoungst ourselves comparing and contrasting past protests and networking. The people to the other side of me spent the whole time talking about Poodle/Golden retriever breeders. We did have a cop show up early on and be all Cop-y, but he went away, but not far, two cop cars there the whole time “for our protection”. We didn’t need it. It was just us, no other groups and not a lot of traffic went past. It’s not a well traveled bridge. We did have a lovely view of downtown though and we got to wave at an Amtrak train.

There was a little singing but the handful of singers didn’t know more then the chorus of most of what they tried to sing so that kind of petered out. The signs at the Moveon site were very well represented. I was surprised how many people carried them. My dog was the only dog there with one. I remembered to wear a shirt with a flag on it. In the paper this morning they said there were only 80 people there but the count they gave us was higher. The reporter didn’t stay long, she had other vigils to cover and I think what she might have done is just gone to the site to see how many signed up and got her number from there.

It doesn’t matter how many were “officially” there. It was a great event and everyone went away feeling like they had been a part of something.

To read accounts of vigils across the country go here