Kenders' Musings

Rollinsford — Grammy-winning musician Robert Cray spent yesterday standing in a hayfield surrounded by shoes while his wife ordered him around.

Cray has toured the world, played with icons of music and been recorded on nearly 40 records, but he was fine with the arrangement. The world-class bluesman was in this 3,000-person town off Route 4 near the Maine border to film a music video for “Twenty,” the anti-war title track from his latest album.

“I just want people to see what I deem as a war for no reason, but only for greed,” Cray told reporters during a break in filming. “There’s been nothing proven about weapons of mass destruction or anything like that and all these boots out here are of innocent victims.”

The 2,027 pairs of black military boots spread behind Cray were courtesy of the American Friends Service Committee traveling exhibit “Eyes Wide Open.” Each pair represents a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. To date, the exhibit has traveled to more than 60 cities. Organizers call it a memorial to those killed and “a witness to our belief that no war can justify its human cost.”

Spread in neat, tombstone-like lines in front of a leafless hickory tree in Todd and Kristin Adelman’s field, the boots took more than six hours to set up. They covered about 32,000 square feet, according to Marq Anderson, the “Eyes Wide Open” tour manager.