a placeless world

Developments in Salt Lake City involving the disappearance of Lori Hacking have kept me too busy to post recently. Please accept this humble offering from my past...

It's cold.

Rainy.

And Bill Glassmire is struggling to light a candle. He crouches under the open canopy of a pickup truck and tries to strike a match.

It smokes and fizzles.

Behind the lean, aging man, a woman shakes her head and smiles.

"Just let the candle go, Bill," Leslie Glassmire says, gesturing to the half-dozen other flames still flickering in the glass jars along the curb.

A car passes. Its high-pitched horn echoes against the great white courthouse that dwarfs the four protesters, their handmade signs and tiny candle lights.

Benton County Courthouse was built in 1889. At 112 years old, it is the oldest courthouse still in use in the state of Oregon — a testament to functionality and effectiveness, some say.

And perhaps for that reason, it seems to stand in such stark contrast to the anti-war protest that has paraded before it every day since Oct. 7 — the day American bombs began falling on Afghanistan.

"We're probably not being really effective," Bill Glassmire says. "Actually, there are probably more effective ways to get a message across. Most of the people who drive pass us drive past every night."

Another horn wails out in support of a sign that asks commuters to "Honk for Peace."

Chances are, the woman in the car — a white 1980s-era Honda Civic with an empty baby seat in the back — passes every night. Honks every night.

As bombs fall in Afghanistan and rain falls on Corvallis.

Leslie Glassmire thinks popular opinion is starting to move away from the United States' "War on Terror." She's reading more letters to the editor that suggest that some people are getting fed up.

Fellow protester Chris Foulke thinks so too.

But their protest? Everyday from 5 to 6 p.m. — rain, shine or snow.

Is it turning popular opinion of the Fourth Street commute?

"I don't know," Bill Glassmire says.

The group of Corvallis-area anti-war activists that has staged this protest — and ones like it during every military conflict since the Gulf War — has spoken about ending the street-front protest.

"It comes up at our Sunday meetings," Bill Glassmire says. "We keep on evaluating whether or not we want to keep on coming out here."

He says he'd like to see tables set up for people to come and talk about the war -- like Charles Schultz's Lucy in her famous doctor's booth.

"We wouldn't charge five cents, though," he says.

And they wouldn't interrupt — just listen to what people have to say about the military response to the events of Sept. 11.

A silver Toyota halts behind a few other cars at the Monroe Avenue stop light. A woman wipes the foggy glass of her passenger-side window, taps her driver and the shoulder and points.

The couple shares a laugh. The light turns green. The silver car guns its engine and disappears past the Benton Center tower.

The protesters remain.

It doesn't take people laughing — or flipping the bird, or getting mooned, as has happened a few times — to make Leslie Glassmire understand that people are angry.

"Sometimes they yell at us — they're obviously very angry about something," she says.

But the idea on this cold dark stretch of sidewalk isn't to make friends.

"I don't think we're making friends in the world by waging war," she says.

Even if the war itself isn't getting less popular — its play in the media is. By most accounts, the number of stories dealing with Sept. 11, its ramifications and the military action that followed in Afghanistan is getting less news play by the day.

Chances are, the people driving down Fourth Street past the Benton County Courthouse from 5 to 6 p.m. are back to listening to top-40 country or jazz — not picking up the latest developments on the war in Afghanistan.

"If that account is correct, the need for us to be here is greater and greater," says Mike Creighton.

Lest the commuters forget that the nation they commute in is at war, Creighton said.

The protest will continue.

Or it won't.

The commuters will honk.

Or they won't.

The rain and sleet and snow will stop.

Or it won't.

But until the bombing stops — and regardless of whether people support it or not — it shouldn't be something people can put out of their minds, Creighton said.

Above the protesters and against the streets and buildings of downtown Corvallis, the courthouse chimes announce the six o'clock hour.

Bill Glassmire bends to pick up the candles.

A few still flicker, defying the rain.