Super Bowl Update

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter will be in Harrisonburg on Monday to accept the Mahatma Gandhi Global Nonviolence Award. The former president will speak to us in the Convocation Center, the same room in which now-President Barack Obama addressed us last fall. Before that, you have to go back donkey's years in Harrisonburg's history to find a presidential visit. And now we're having two presidents come and speak to us within a year.

Former President Carter's topic will be Middle East peace, something with which this brave, quiet-spoken man has involved himself for a long, long time. An uptick of tension in the situation there was caused just a few days ago by a new United Nations report, which makes his visit astoundingly timely. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=UN Study Israel&st=cse).

It is perhaps the most complex, volatile situation our world has to deal with, and one of the major players in the quest for peace there is coming to Harrisonburg to talk about it. I am agog, amazed, in awe at James Madison University's Gandhi Center for allowing us an opportunity to hear Jimmy Carter speak on this subject at this critical time.

Amazingly (to me) I think there are still tickets. You'll find a link to getting some for yourself at WMRA.org.

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