Operation "Bearing Witness"

You know how, every once and a while, someone comes up with an idea that takes your breath away and? Well, last week, Stephen e-mailed me to suggest that instead of sending out holiday cards this year, we write just the name, military branch, home town, age, and date of death of the 2,000 soldiers who had died in Iraq, on plain cards and mail them to the White House.

After talking about how to take on this project, we decided that instead of creating cards with the names of the 2,000 people who had already died and sending them in one mailing, we would start with the 96 people who had lost their lives in the month of October, and at the end of each month, would gather the names from the New York Times' "Roster of the Dead" to create and mail cards.

Here is what the card and envelope look like (the back flap of the envelope reads "Opeartion Bearing Witness":



And here are tonight's cards:



There is incredible power in names, in writing by hand in the act of bearing witness. We do not hold out hope that receiving the names of the dead will make the war stop. But we do hope that whoever at the White House opens these envelopes will read the names and reflect for a moment on the impact of our country's actions.