Education

• Cape Henlopen High School

Favorite saying

• "I am vertical. But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them -- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me. ~Silvia Plath "If there was a wish I and my fallen brothers had, and something we learned too late, is we wish all of those who follow us should be free not to pay for war. You'll be told we died for your freedom, but that's not true. We died because we were fooled as you will be fooled. if we were truly free, we'd be free not to pay for war. We thought if the costs of war accrued to those who support it and away from those who oppose it, eventually those who were left were left to support war would collapse under the financial weight and left destitute, something their spouses and family would not let them do. And by the costs of war, I don't mean the tanks, guns, bombs, and the machinery used to disassemble people. I mean the costs of the veterans mental health, their family's struggles, the horrific medical costs, and the terrible waste of human potential. Nationalism is a disease. It is something put there by our rulers so they can instill and prey on us via the false pride of a particular hymn we sing, a piece of cloth we wave, and to bully each other into paying the taxes that enable wars. They use nationalism to exploit our children to go to war for them. To fight for them. We have more in common with the ruled in other countries than we do with the rulers on our own soil. The violence initiated between nations *CANNOT BE ENABLED* without the prior initiation of violence by each nation against its own citizens by way of taxation. We'll never know if we can rid ourselves of war by first articulating the above arguments in the mainstream narrative and then permitting the citizens to be free not to pay for war. It's an experiment we're not allowed to conduct."