Lurie column July 27- Civil War battles close to home

Last weekend we toured the site of Ground Zero in NYC looking at the fenced in hole in the ground and gawked at the traffic while examining the new design to the Freedom Tower. The much maligned design to proclaim America�s freedom and liberty to the world with a symbolic 1776 foot twisted skyscraper.

Later we saw the Statue of Liberty designed as a beacon of hope to immigrants beckoning in the harbor, then drove south to Philadelphia to walk through Independence Hall and see the famed Liberty Bell. Today, we will be walking some of the battlegrounds of the Civil War in Virginia. Powerful history, strong images. Emotional visions.

The battlegrounds are themselves creating a modern day conflict as shopping center and housing developers crave the site of death to build a site of commerce and custom Corian.

The Statue of Liberty was swarmed, yet highly restricted to visitors in fear of terror. The same terror that drove millions to seek refuge here from dastardly regimes at home, has come to roost in the ashes of the World Trade Center and the back-pack checking transit police now posted at the entrances to the subway and ferries.

Yet horrible, liberty stealing regimes seeking to subjugate people based on their tribal background is not unique to the Middle East, nor to the camps in Germany that put millions to work in slavery conditions, and then killed those unable to work.

Here in America, our own Civil War is a fading, but vibrant recollection kept alive to make us all remember what really happened here just a few generations ago.

Throughout the summer, in Troy, a terrific exhibition at the Overfield Tavern looks closer to home at the impact and effects of the Civil War on all of us and here in Miami County.

Every Sunday through August 28^th, at 3pm, a different guest lecturer will offer a unique look and make a special presentation accompanied by as always, free tours of the Overfield Tavern; a gathering spot for locals to debate the pros and cons of slaves forced to toil just a days� journey south in the fields of Kentucky. Slaves that occasionally, and many would say not often enough, made their way North through the underground railroad through Troy.

Do you know where the underground railroad passed through Troy? There is a secret passageway visible just a block off the Square in the newly renamed Barbel Atkins Family Education and Learning Center; dedicated to the fact that battered women need not be abused or held as slaves in their own home in this day and age

Far away battles for the Union and our nation�s survival were helped by at least  34  African-American's who joined the fight from Miami County during the Civil War joining the 55th Mass. Infantry. Miami County's Freed Slaves who fought for the cause were the subject of last Sunday�s Overfield presentation.

I urge you to visit some of America�s heritage sites, such as the annual stopover at Gettysburg where most of Troy�s sixth graders get a chance to see the battlefields up close and experience a fully surrounding experience of the war en route to Washington DC and a visit at the Holocaust museum; where more recent atrocities and 20^th century slavery are brought to life.

But without leaving home, visit Overfield. The ongoing Civil War displays include period artifacts, original documents and photos from the civil war period (1861-1865) emphasizing Miami County�s participation in the war effort.  Each weekend will include a different  program.  Also on display will be artist�s depictions of the Civil War period provided by B&K Photo & Gallery and others.

July 30-31 �General Lew Wallace and the Troy Connection� by Norm Brown

August 6-7  �The 71^st OVI and Barton Kyle�   by Martin Stewart 

August 13-14            �The 94^th OVI and Camp Piqua� by Brian Sutton

August 20-21            �The US Sanitary Commission (forerunner to the Red Cross) and Relief Efforts� by Karen and Terry Purke

August 27-28            �Home Life during the Civil War 1861-1865� with various Civil War re enactors

please contact Karen Purke at (937)339-7230 or Karenpurke@who.rr.com for more information.

Join me in visiting The Overfield Museum Annex ,121 East Water Street,in Troy weekends starting July 2 through August 28. 

The program is free and open to the public, while Donations are certainly appreciated to keep history alive; because without learning from history, we will be that much more likely to repeat it.

The harsh lessons of war should be branded into every American�s psyche. We owe it to the dead who have defended us, and fought for liberty. We also owe it to them to work as diligently as possible to prevent future atrocities and eliminate the deceptions and unlilateralism that has led to our current Iraqi war. A war where imposition of one�s values, like those of Stalin�s Russia, Imperial Japan and American slave traders all led to horrific loss of life for those who�s lifestyles they were trying to defend.

 

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Lurie column 2005-7-20 - Terrorists and Traitors flock together

Monday, July 18, 2005

Leib Lurie�s Column for TDN: To run WEDNESDAY, July 20, 2005

 

TITLE: Terrorists and Treasonists flock together

Last Thursday England came to a standstill. Loriies stopped along the highway. Busses pulled over to the curb. Cars stopped on the street. People flocked out of offices and stores to stand in the street in solidarity as Big Ben�s chimes tolled and echoed against those belles peeling from hundreds of church steeples across the Kingdom. The Call-to-Prayer bells and speakers at every Mosque in London were just as strident. This was a universal call to inaction.

On the stroke of twelve, all went silent. Two minutes of inaction; silence in prayer and respect for the 54 dead and 700 injured by terrorists bombs that scattered limbs, gore and metal shards throughout rat infested subway tunnels. Four back-pack bombs triggered by Islamic terrorists born and living in London their whole lives. Forty pounds of explosives made at home in a London suburb.

George Bush repeatedly says we are fighting the Terrorists in Iraq to keep them from attacking us at home. Tony Blair gave a similar upbeat talk in Parliament. He spoke just 8 blocks from what was the nearest bomb site eight weeks later.  Putting extra armor on Humvees in Baghdad may save soldiers lives, but seemingly does little to protect us at home, whether that home is Edgeware Road where my sister lives, a Bali nightclub where a former colleague was dancing, or The World Trade Center where I used to work as a New York messenger boy.

This weekend, whilst in London, the press rabidly reported every move of the police, and showed security pictures of the four terrorist recruits paying their fare and seemingly whistling on their way to �work�. They all bought round trip tickets, left families at home, and failed to shout �Allah Is Great� when the Nail Polish Remover chemical bombs were triggered. These are suspicious activities for fanatics.

The Fleet Street Tabloids were rife with stories that these terrorists probably expected to set a timer and a few hours later say �Honey I�m Home�. Instead, they were four of the 54 dead; their recruiters seemingly had even more deadly plans. Maybe this form of �workers compensation� will make recruiting sleepers a bit harder in the future. Yet even if 99.99% of Muslims decry what happened, that leaves 100,000 recruits available in the bomber pool. Scary thought.

It pleased me to see that the hundreds of Muslim clerics and leaders that gathered last week, in a meeting scheduled before the bombing, voted overwhelmingly to deny the granting of �Atwah� status by extremist leaders. This status labeled people �unworthy of life� and has been used to justify kidnapping and assassination throughout the middle east in recent years. Even the whisper of �Atwah� was used to justify torture or death. They also derided terrorism as traitorous.

Our Constitution defines only one crime that the founding fathers deplored more than anything else. Traitors that aided the enemy were labeled as American �Atwah�s� and shot.

Two years ago, in the rush to start a war with Iraq, our government tried to create a link between Iraq and enriched Yellow Uranium claimed to be purchased from Nigeria for a Nuclear programme. A sensible government analyst objected and showed that the links were false, the evidence unfounded, and the purchases never even negotiated.

This rational objection, and patriotic duty to his intelligence assessment job was seen by senior members of the administration as treason. It clearly was not. But they shouted �Atwah� and declared him and his family unworthy of life.

Karl Rove and Cheney's deputy in a series of carefully managed phone calls told news reporters that his wife was a CIA agent involved in WMD research. A move that, if spoken a few months earlier, when Valerie Plame was still in-country under deep cover would have been a successful �Atwah�. If one can call setting up a US agent to be killed by the enemy a �success�. All because Rove, someone very much in the know, revealed secret identities and assignments in an attempt to shamefully discredit a member of the national security team.

Fighting terrorism should not mean having to watch your back as the President�s Attack Dog commits acts of terror on his own, acts that the civilized world call traitorous, but that our White House waffles on in the name of loyalty to the President. To hell with loyalty to the citizenry or the Constitution. When Bush and Rove engineer a lie based on nefarious acts that blow up in their faces, they shouldn�t be shocked when these traitorous acts, and post act cover-ups, shatter our reputation abroad to the point where extremists feel the need to blow up buses in retaliation.

Traitors are terrorists, it�s painful to mourn loved ones whether killed by desk pilots with whispered state secrets or young terrorists with back-pack explosives. However justified, I doubt the former will ever be detained at Gitmo.

Leib Lurie is a CEO of Troy based phone message service One Call Now. He welcomes comments at Leib@Onecallnow.com

 

Lurie column July 13: Underground Carnage Exposes Emotions

Underground Carnage Exposes Emotions

As you read this, I am on a big bird flying to London�s Gatwick airport. Into the latest terrorist target fray. Last year, we went to Madrid shortly after the train bombings there, that trip was deliberate- to show solidarity and support for a country attacked for principles and action. The Spanish government fell as the people huddled in fear awaiting the next apocalypse.

Tonight's trip to the UK was not predicated on fear, or planned out of spite; but a pre-planned business expedition to launch our company�s service to football (soccer in Troy�s vernacular) coaches, churches and schools to the millions of Brits on the other side of the pond.

We are taking an American bred product, built by American software engineers, supported by Troy, Ohio USA people, and exporting it to Europe. Bringing, we hope, money and profits back to America.

Yet the specter of fear and the pallor of death will cast a shadow over the trip. My London-living sister e-mailed us last week that all was well. Except the schools, inexplicably and unannounced, dismissed students early. With the Underground shut down and busses parked, the journey home for my niece was a 5 mile walk instead of a 10 minute tube trip. School administrators globally sometimes have similar myopic outlooks on how to respond to crises major and minor.

Hopefully, her school will soon take advantage of our phone message delivery service that calls thousands of parents every day to inform and communicate when tragedy strikes or warnings are needed (as have local school districts Troy, Piqua and Covington).

The backpack bombs that spread shrapnel through dank tunnels and death and destruction through the Underground caused the world to stop for a moment and think about the causes and effects of terror.

Londoners were whip sawed with emotions last week. On Tuesday, the city won the competitive bid to host the 2012 Olympics. In Singapore, the Olympic committee insisted that a large part of each country�s application be based on their ability to protect and secure the Olympic Village and game sites. After all, In Munich we saw Israeli athletes assassinated by terrorists; and a terrorist backpack blew up visitors at Peachtree Plaza during Atlanta�s games. The day after winning the 2012 Olympic bid for the honor of hosting the global games, Rescuers pulled 49 bodies and hundreds of injured Union Jack citizens from the debris and ashes of rush hour bombs.

In neighboring Scotland, Tony Blair put on the archetypical British resolute face pledging to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Strong words, but similar words here at home by our government has not located Osama Bin Laden, and fewer than 40 minor henchman have even been brought to trial of the hundreds detained for years in prisons in Iraq and Cuba. Terrorism has shown itself to have few boundaries, even fewer globally recognized rules, and nary a hint of what we call western rationale.

Here at home, Congress called immediate hearings into ways to bolster security for rail and bus transportation. To date, 84% of Homeland security dollars to protect our transportation grid has gone to airports and the hundreds of thousands of daily flyers, while the tens of millions of daily straphangers on the ground, like those in London, are just as vulnerable as before 9/11. Maybe it�s part of the our western irrational rationale that Montana gets 200 times as much money per capita for homeland security as New Yorkers. I presume the Senators who voted for that spending formula believed the terrorists would see the logic in attacking Blue Sky Country when they next plan a subway attack.

Nonetheless, I will travel to London tonight with head held high, and meet with thousands of football coaches this weekend as we seek to expose them to a bit of American technology, and reach out with compassion to those who have lost loved ones or know those who did. I will visit the ad hoc memorials that, like those for Princess Diana, have sprouted at the sites of the carnage. The Tube Bombers will not bring down England nor its� people. The goal of terrorists is rarely to convert, but simply to destroy, yet in this case, the presumed goal of the bombers was to cause England to de-couple itself from association with the US occupation of Iraq. They will not convert Britons to their cause. They simply will be reviled and despised by civilized nations and people around the globe.

Our former colonial masters have learned that exporting an attitude is far more difficult than exporting products and services. If only life, and justice, and global cooperation were that simple.

 

Leib Lurie is a Troy resident and CEO of global phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

 

Lurie column July 6th: Pursuit of Happiness a tough journey

Leib Lurie�s Column for TDN: To run WEDNESDAY, July 6th

Pursuit of Happiness a tough journey

This week, Troy holds the funeral for Barbel Adkins, the founder of the Miami County Family Abuse Shelter. Monday thousands of spectators and happy families watched fireworks on the Great Miami River to celebrate �Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness� promised to all in the Declaration of Independence.

Barbel was a special person, who recognized that every person deserves life, liberty and happiness along with value and dignity, even if their spouse or partner doesn�t treat them that way. Even if the women who dragged themselves to her Franklin Street shelter were at risk of life, liberty and wished to god they could be in a situation that remotely allowed them some semblance of �pursuit of happiness�.

Last year, her shelter took in over 800 people; giving them unfailing love, food, safety and a shoulder to cry on. 800 people who needed to escape from an abusive relationship or dangerous environment. Women mostly, many with young children and teens- who have already seen and been part of traumatic situations that will bear physical or emotional scars for decades to come.

To believe that a few nights of shelter can reverse the trauma was never Barbel�s belief. Yet these women seeking shelter and safety knew that they would be on the start to a better place and a better life for their children and themselves by taking the first step across her threshold.

One in Five women will be involved in an abusive situation in their lifetime. It is one of the most hidden epidemics on the planet; as Miami County is far from alone, or far from being aloof above the fray. Men beat women. Men physically and verbally abuse women and their children.

A few weeks ago, Michael Reagan wrote on these pages that unrelated men are more likely to be abusive. That drink and drugs make it more probable that a women will be beaten or their children sexually abused. He urged women in these relationships to avoid pregnancy and avoid bringing more children into the world only to suffer at the hands of demonic men who have what is euphemistically called �issues� but legally called a rapist, predator, abuser or batterer.

Michael Reagan without using the word, urged these women to have an abortion rather than subject unborn children to danger, suffering, and abuse. A rather drastic and fatalistic assessment of situations with men who are unable or unwilling to learn how to love and care for those around him.

Barbel Adkins did not put labels or assign fatal diagnosis� to people who came to the shelter. All she did was try to offer hope, care, counseling and a safe haven while the families worked through crisis times.

Many came for just an evening or two. Dozens just needed cooling off periods; but far too many needed long term care and housing; something that was difficult to find here in Miami County when the chips are down, and the only way out was often a hazardous trip back to the source of abuse.

Mrs. Adkins pointed out that not all shelter victims were women and children, some men also needed and received help. There are so many people, so many stories and too much pain.

Barbel worked tirelessly, and for a pitiful compensation; often giving away the stipend she received.

Last year, friends of the shelter, including my wife, several close friends and employee put on a performance of �The Vagina Monologues� an uncomfortably emotional performance that asked everyone of the women performers to step outside their comfort zone in order to highlight and emphasize the issues affecting women and of families in relationships gone bad. The language was called crude, yet realistic. The stories of abused girls, sexual assault by step-dads, drunken brawls at home, growing up being scared to talk in front of Mom�s boyfriend; or discovering the missing joys of love when the right relationship is exposed like a petal blooming. The monologues made many in the audience uncomfortable; and many or our neighbors as actors were initially just as awkward or shy.

Yet like Barbel�s Family Shelter, tough issues need to be brought into the open and dealt with honestly and effectively. Hiding behind polite verbiage or drawn blinds does not stop abuse.

Barbel Adkins understood that; and built a legacy to help thousands, sadly our county has thousands who need this type of help.

The Miami County Family Abuse Shelter will continue without Barbel, but it always has and always will need financial and volunteer help. Family Abuse Shelter,16 E. Franklin St. Troy, OH 45373

Many of those most in need were not part of Michael Reagan�s final suggested solution. Those who believe in life or choice should come together to support this institution after Ms. Adkins� death, one that provides a choice for women in trouble, and works to build a better life for their children.

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net