Live Highway Blogging featuring Crosses4Peace
During peak commute time from 4:30 to 6:00 on Friday night, March 2, at the busy intersection of Highways 29 & 12, outside the Napa Airport, volunteers with UNCOIL's (United Napans Concerned Over Iraq Lunacy) Crosses4Peace.org project created a memorial to the fallen, both soldier and civilian, using 50 white crosses. Organizer Summer Mondeau, who calls the event Live Highway Blogging, hung large banners from the back and driver side of a hearse-like SUV asking, "How many more?!" The American flag (from Pearl Harbor) flew at half staff. Volunteers held white crosses and two-finger peace signs for passing cars who frequently responded with honks, waves and thumbs up Truckers were often the most emphatic, including the man who said his son is serving in Afghanistan.
John Stephens held his cross silent and still on top of a grassy cross-covered hill, mutely calculated how many cars passed the site. He said he'd conservatively estimated the blog was seen by drivers and passengers in 4,500 cars in just an hour and 1/2. "Not bad, for just 6 people," he announce cheerfully.
During peak commute time from 4:30 to 6:00 on Friday night, March 2, at the busy intersection of Highways 29 & 12, outside the Napa Airport, volunteers with UNCOIL's (United Napans Concerned Over Iraq Lunacy) Crosses4Peace.org project created a memorial to the fallen, both soldier and civilian, using 50 white crosses. Organizer Summer Mondeau, who calls the event Live Highway Blogging, hung large banners from the back and driver side of a hearse-like SUV asking, "How many more?!" The American flag (from Pearl Harbor) flew at half staff. Volunteers held white crosses and two-finger peace signs for passing cars who frequently responded with honks, waves and thumbs up Truckers were often the most emphatic, including the man who said his son is serving in Afghanistan.
John Stephens held his cross silent and still on top of a grassy cross-covered hill, mutely calculated how many cars passed the site. He said he'd conservatively estimated the blog was seen by drivers and passengers in 4,500 cars in just an hour and 1/2. "Not bad, for just 6 people," he announce cheerfully.
Unlike the Crosses of Lafayette memorial, the Crosses4Peace *Live* Highway Blogs don't violate local sign or display ordinances because there are live people attending the displays. After the event, the participants remove the crosses from the site and return them to their front yards. They are part of a movement of single white crosses displayed in front yards radiating from the Napa Valley across the Bay Area.
This movement is generating some local buzz as seen in Jill Decker's column:
Glad You Asked: Cross examined
By Jill Decker
Thursday, February 15, 2007
What are all of the white crosses on everyone's lawns? Do these people have loved ones who died in Iraq?
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2007/02/15/columnists/jill_decker/doc45d467431b60b762290401.txt
followed by an LTE on 2/27/07
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2007/02/27/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc45e43e7a4b6e0107573680.txt
Crosses on lawns send wrong message
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
A response should appear soon.
Meanwhile, the Mt. Diablo Peace Center is planning to create their own grave markers intended for individuals to display
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