Spring Steamliners and talking with Iris

Dad starts planning a spring trip home on the Streamliners, I found a site on pbs; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/streamliners-intro/ that has info about these trains. We saw this show, rented it from the library. It's about the Zephyrs the ones that my grandparents would take to visit us each July, not my Dad's folks but my mothers from Chicago and they took us girls back for the summer too. Bonnie and Carol went together one year and I went when I was 11. We stayed in sleepers and ate in the dinning car. Sometime I should ask Carol and Bonnie what they remember of that trip. The timeline on the website is kind of interesting too, seeing the history of the trains and other transportation.
So for me here almost into fall. It is still warm but cooling off at night and into the morning. I called the Irs which I thought I might refer to as Iris, I spoke with a woman who was very nice. I keep finding that few people really know very much about 'frivolous filing'. It would be interesting if a reporter really investigated 'frivolous filing penalties'. So the woman I spoke with had not dealt with this type of issue and kept saying that the penalty was related to my not paying the tax, which is actually not the case. I sometimes make this mistake as well. The penalty has to do with the filing not the paying of taxes. She did clarify for me that if I do not have any state refund coming then the letter saying that Iris will levy the state refund does not really apply to me. She also went over the words that I had read on the penalty which says that in order to appeal the penalty one has to pay it first. I also began to realize that the rules around this penalty are different than the rules around the payment of taxes. So at this point I am looking into finding a lawyer to help understand this and possibly talk with Iris. One thing I felt very good about was that I kept stating clearly to the woman on the phone that 'I am not willing to write the check to pay the taxes that go to wage war' as she wound up the conversation she said 'so you are not willing to write the check for the taxes from 2010'. I said yes, thank you for hearing what I said. We then talked a little about learning to listen to people and I felt that we had made a human connection. I think that at times our institutions are like the transformer toys and we need to turn and twist and search to find the human being who is inside the machine. One of my goals as I am on this journey with Iris is to listen and speak nonviolently and compassionately with the people I connect with. I believe that through our daily contacts and actions we can build a nonviolent world.