Alternatives to War|Second Saturdays

February 9, 2008

Legendary guitar-playing composer and singer of topical songs Jim Page of Seattle will perform for February’s Second Saturday concert Feb. 9 at SunnySide-Up Café, 116 NW 3rd Street, from 6 to 8 p.m. He’ll be performing with Citizens Band of Olympia, Washington. Bringing in regional artists is a first for the Second Saturdays benefit concerts and the beneficiary also breaks new ground. For this concert, funds will go to a local veteran, Bryan Puckett, who saw action in Iraq and came home with numerous physical and emotional scars. (More)

Jim Page’s travels with his music and his natural way of telling stories with the guitar – stories about people, politics, nature, and human nature – have earned him references to Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, but his style nonetheless is his own. He’s been a regular at the Oregon Country Fair, NW Folklife Festival, is well known in Europe, and has toured widely for decades. He has a big fan base here, so come early to get a seat. Jim has a number of excellent recordings which will be for sale, including his new song "Petroleum Bonaparte." See http://www.jimpage.net for more on this remarkable artist.

He has a big fan base here, so come early to get a seat– we suggest coming at 5:00 or 5:30, ordering food, finding a seat, and enjoying the band warming up and adjusting the sound system!

Picture of Jim Page

Jim Page

All members of Citizens Band are vocalists and instrumentalists: Jim Cubbage, guitar; Eliza Welch, fiddle and mandolin; Harry Levine, multi-instrumentalist; and Grace Cox, bass. Together since 1984, Citizens Band formed to prove that good people making good music could create laughter, inspiration and social commentary all at the same time. Honesty, humor, and understanding flourish in that better world. But a Citizens Band show is far from a stuffy political diatribe. Citizens Band is often outrageous, always entertaining. Whatever else happens to the audience at a Citizens Band performance, they learn a little and laugh a lot. See http://www.citizensband.org to get ready for this treat, and check out their CD "Just Desserts."

Citizen Band

Citizens Band

Second Saturdays is sponsored by Alternatives to War, Veterans for Peace chapter 132, and The Troubadour Music Center, which features compact discs of performers in the series. Past musicians include Absolute, The Free Range Chix, the Childers-Carson Duo, Rhino Madness, Madera, the John Bliss Xtet, Susan Peck, The Flow, Critical Mass, Fred Towne, Crooked Kate, Smyth and Brown, and Cassandra Robertson; beneficiaries include Lt. Ehren Watada, Agustin Aguayo, Catalysts of Hope, the Rural Organizing Project, Military Families Speak Out, Corvallis’ Counter Recruitment Program, Corvallis-Albany Assisting Iraqi Refugees, Oregon Peace Works, and PCUN.

A donation of $5.00 is suggested and all funds are presented to the concert beneficiary.

The final event of Corvallis-Albany Assisting Iraqi Refugees, a major fund-raising drive to help refugees from Iraq who now live in Jordan, takes place at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, beginning at 7:30, the same night -- Feb. 9. This Celebration Extravaganza offers music, singing, folk dancing, a rug raffle and refreshments. Second Saturdays concert-goers may wish to attend both events, which aid victims of the war on two continents.

Bryan Puckett enlisted in the National Guard in Wisconsin in spring of 2001, expecting to be assigned to safeguard his state in times of emergency. Instead, after the attack on the twin towers in New York City in September, 2001, national guard units began to be pulled into the war. Not a supporter of the war, he nonetheless had worked with many people who had been sent to Iraq, as was his own unit, so when he got the call in spring of 2006, he felt obliged to go. In April he was sent for three months of training in Mississippi and in July to Iraq, where he was assigned to be part of convoy security, in which his group checked for explosive devices on roads that convoys were to travel.

A few months before his year of duty was up, his job changed to convoy escort, which involves fast-paced protection of convoys at high speed. During one of these runs, his vehicle was hit with just such an explosive device, and he got shrapnel through his leg, was sent to a hospital in Iraq and then to one in Kuwait; he returned to the U.S. in July, 2007.

After returning from Iraq, Bryan moved his family back to Corvallis where he and his wife Tara had lived when his daughter Caroline was born, and he was transferred to the Oregon National Guard. Unlike some military personnel in Iraq, Bryan Puckett had an opportunity to meet and work with Iraqi people, and to learn a bit of Arabic. He became very interested in the history and culture of Iraq; now, back in the U.S., he is reading and learning more about the Iraqi people.

Like other veterans, however, he has received little help in re-adjusting to U.S. life. After 15 months of intensive involvement with the army, in training and in Iraq, he had to re-learn many aspects of civilian life. He is recovering and feels fortunate to have survived his injuries and to have the help of his family in recovering from PTSD, which all veterans experience to greater or lesser extent, some sooner, some later. Without the support of his wife and family, he feels he might well be another veteran living on the streets, like so many others. He’s held temporary jobs while applying for long term jobs. He’s had some preliminary interviews and is sure one of these jobs will come through, but the family, expecting another child in several months, needs a bridge to get to that future.