Committed and Permitted

We spent Memorial Day weekend in our nation’s capital. The holiday has always raised emotional conflicts for me. While I want to honor those who have died, I really don’t want to glorify war. As we walked past the Vietnam, Korean and World War II memorials on the Mall in Washington, I couldn’t help but think of all the young men and women who gave their lives because they believed so deeply in the values and principles of their nation.

That same day, we also visited again the National Holocaust Museum. At the end of the journey through that amazing space, there were two older women who sat at a table talking to people about their experience as Holocaust survivors. Their numbers are rapidly diminishing, and there soon will be none who remember the event, only those who refuse to forget the history.

As I walked past these lovely women, there were some students talking to them, so I didn’t stop. However, after seeing displays of the atrocities the Nazis committed and the German people permitted, I wanted to stop and ask them what they thought of water boarding, or Guantanamo, or Abu Ghraib, or secret interrogation camps on foreign soil where our agents do things to people that are illegal on American soil.

The haunting thought that followed me around that museum all day was: How on earth had decent German woman and men permitted the holocaust to be committed in their name by their nation?

What was so tormenting to me was the thought of all those beautiful and gifted sons and daughters commemorated by our national monuments who died for a nation that they believed would never commit such atrocities. Obviously they were wrong. Some day history will judge you and me as people who sat silently while our nation committed atrocities and never once cried out for the arrest and removal from office of those who ordered them. This Memorial Day I decided that Germany had nothing on us. Our government might have committed the atrocities, but we permitted them. WHY???

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Dixie Does Dallas!

Hope for Peace & Justice will present the return of “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” for one night only, Friday, June 13 at 7:30 and 10 p.m. at the Starlight Room; 603 Munger Ave.; Dallas, TX 75202. The show, which recently played a sold-out run at Water Tower Theater’s “Out of the Loop Festival,” is a benefit for Hope for Peace & Justice.

Once the number one Tupperware salesperson in the country, Dixie Longate (Los Angeles-based actor Kris Andersson) is desperate to return to glory, so she has packed up her catalogues, and left her children in an Alabama trailer park to journey across America with “Dixie’s Tupperware Party.” Dixie’s take on plastic food storage is like no other. Decidedly not your mother’s Tupperware party, the show includes outrageous tales of Dixie’s failed marriages and run-ins with the law, free giveaways and the most fabulous assortment of Tupperware ever sold on any stage. The one-“woman” tour de force, which garnered a 2007/08 Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance, was originally produced at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival, and played Off Broadway’s Ars Nova last spring.

Tickets, which are $40 for VIP seats, $30 for main floor seating, and $20 for general admission in the mezzanine, are available at www.h4pj.org or by calling 214-351-1432 x134. VIP seating will include the finest in trashy party snacks, and there will be a cash bar. Please note: Dixie has a potty mouth, so this show is not for children!

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