Summer 2001
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2001 2000 1999
National AFSC
NERO Office
American Friends Service Committee
Peacework Magazine
Patrica Watson, Editor
Sara Burke, Assistant Editor
Pat Farren, Founding Editor
2161 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
Telephone number:
(617) 661-6130
Fax number:
(617) 354-2832
Email address:
pwork@igc.org
Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as
a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice
and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary
to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience
and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building
and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local
community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation,
introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and
issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the
generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices
of the disenfranchised.
Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.
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I Gave Away That Kid
I gave away that kid like he was an old button
Here old button get off of me
I don't need you anymore
go on get out of here
go into the army
sew yourself onto the colonel's shirt
or the captain's fly jackass
don't you have any sense
don't you read the papers
why are you leaving now?
That kid walked out of here like he was the cat's pajamas
what are you wearing pj's for you damn fool?
why are you crying you couldn't
get another job anywhere anyways
go march to the army's drummer
be a man like all your dead uncles
then think of something else to do
Lost him, sorry about that the President said
he was a good boy
never see one like him again
Why don't you repeat that your honor
why don't you sizzle up the meaning
of that sentence for your breakfast
why don't you stick him in a prayer
and count to ten before my wife gets you
That boy is a puddle in Beirut the paper says
scraped up for singing in church
too bad too bad is a terrible tune
it's no song at all how come you sing it?
I gave away that kid like he was an old button
Here old button get offa me
I don't need you anymore
go on get out of here
go into the army
sew yourself onto the colonel's shirt
or the captain's fly jackass
don't you have any sense
don't you read the papers
why are you leaving now?
--Grace Paley
Photo © Ellen Shub |
Readings: Grace Paley
Thursday, September 20
Reception, 6:00 PM, Program, 7:00 - 9:00
Friends Meetinghouse, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge
Benefit for the Pat Farren Memorial Fund, established
to ensure that Peacework maintains the quality and influence
to which founding editor Pat Farren had built it
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