Fiddlers for Peace rally against Measure S, the anti-sitting law, at 12:00 noon on Sunday, November 4, 2012, at the corner of Haste and Telegraph in Berkeley.

Where Did It All Come From...
When President Bush decided to bomb Afghanistan in 2002, we took our fiddles and walked and played from Dolores Park to the San Francisco Civic Center in a huge peace march.

It's important to take a break between protests on unilateral assaults on sovereign nations, as Pat and John know.

People kept taking pictures of us. Perhaps it is the delicacy of a fiddle in the protest chaos. Perhaps we sounded good. Perhaps we personified the fragile nature of life. Perhaps we just looked incredibly stupid. If ever there were an instrument designed for a long, loud, chaotic march, the fiddle is not it.

Perhaps we look as determined as we are to do our perhaps futile best to stop the war.

We played through the 150,000 strong January 18th, 2003 anti-war march in San Francisco with seven fiddlers and a banjo. It's possible that we were beautiful.

Photograph on the right by Manuel Samaniego, whose illustrated walk through the January 18th, 2003 peace march in San Francisco is delightful and available at www.buddhabellystudio.com.

Join us. We don't have to play well, we just have to play. All you need is a fiddle, and anyone who plays another instrument, a garden tool, or just wishes to walk with us is welcome. We are not a political party or a religion. We have no set list and we don't rehearse. We show up and we play.

And if you don't yet have a personal permit to stop the war, here's one free from us. Give one to all your friends.

You can email Carol Denney ( or call at (510) 548-1512) and ask to be on the "Fiddlers for Peace" alert list here at: " cdenney@igc.org ." Everyone is welcome. But better still, start your own local group and just make it happen. Cheers, Carol.