HIROSHIMA: My nephew Tony wants to come!

When I sent out a general invitation to my extended family-of-origin (the one my niece Lisa responded to from Afghanistan), my 49-year old nephew Anthony, a trucker in Harlingen, Texas wrote back, "I wanted to tell you that in answer to your question, would I go to Hiroshima if money were no object. The answer is yes. I would be proud to go to Grandma Barbara's Ceremony. I think its wonderful that they are recognising her. The summers I spent with her were incredible getting arrested at the pentagon, church in south Chicago and Watts. I even shot air rifles at a target range in her friends basement once. I bet not many people can say they went shooting with Barbara Reynolds (except maybe on the Phoenix?). So, it its a real thing I will make the time."

On another occasion he wrote me, "She took me to the most interesting places. Once when she had Dao and her (Vietnamese) family living with her I told her the kids had picked something off the sidewalk and eaten it--and she said, 'You should have seen the things they ate in Viet Nam during the war!' Later she took me to a Vietnamese restaurant and I couldn't eat a thing."

She took me to an anti-nuclear protest when I was four. She got arrested and our picture was in the paper. One of the guards told her, 'Shame on you for bringing your grandson here!' and the sergeant said, 'She did that so my grandson won't have to go through a nuclear war.'"