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Bombs
Away
I
was in a motel room in New Jersey when the bombs began to
fall. Outside all I heard was the moan of fast-moving traffic
burning gasoline and diesel on a nearby highway. The only
lights in the sky were from commercial airplanes landing and
taking off at nearby airports through high clouds. I turned
on the TV, which lit up to bomb bursts over Baghdad and frontline
news reports. Some of the news coverage made it sound like
the latest TV “reality show” was making its debut—Bombs
Over Baghdad.
I was in New Jersey to teach seventh- and eighth-graders in
the Paterson city schools about poetry. I’ve been doing this
for seven years as part of the poetry performance trio 3 Guys
From Albany. Charlie Rossiter, Dan Wilcox and I usually set
aside two days each year to work in the Paterson schools,
getting the kids excited about the art form. Our school visit
this year had been scheduled to include the last day of winter
and the first day of spring. With bombs flying on the night
before entering the schools, I wondered how the kids in class
the next day would be reacting to world events. What would
we hear in their words?
I watched the war news for about an hour that night as I settled
into the well-worn motel room and its stale decor. As I watched,
I noticed that some of the networks had invested in fancy
new sets and animated graphics for the occasion. An army of
retired generals popped up on the screen as instant consultants,
experts in the technology of mass killing. I wondered if they
had sold advertising spots to military contractors or planned
a future TV movie. Some of the imagery seemed destined to
show up in future video games. War had become entertainment.
It sounded like all the information the TV news outlets were
relaying to the public was what the military gave to them.
There were live reports from correspondents dressed like combatants
who were “embedded” in various military groups. Embedded means
“to cause to become an integral part of a surrounding whole,”
according to my dictionary. What I heard sure sounded like
these embedded correspondents were an integral part of the
cadre of public-relations specialists spin-doctoring for George
W. and his war. They made it sound like the war might be over
by breakfast.
One point I kept hearing repeated by the media’s talking heads
on Wednesday night was that the time for disagreement about
policy toward Iraq was over, and that everyone should now
line up behind George W. and his war. The sense that dissent
is unpatriotic seemed to be implied. I didn’t understand this
logic. Why would I get behind this attack when I didn’t agree
with its necessity? Because Dubya dropped some bombs? I clicked
the TV off, turned off the light and settled toward sleep,
wondering what acts of war would take place before I awoke.
The next morning I did my regular yoga routine on a folded-up
bed cover on the floor. As I went through a sequence of postures,
thoughts about the war and the classes that I’d be facing
kept popping into my head. As I stretched and relaxed muscles,
I wondered what the kids were learning about the previous
night’s events. When I was their age the Vietnam War was heating
up.
Our poetry classes for the first day were in the library of
a school named in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. As we approached
the school, I thought about how its namesake would be an articulate
voice for peace if he were alive today. The second day of
poetry took place in a school with a noticeable number of
Muslim youth from the Middle East and western Asia. They made
me think of the children and youth currently threatened with
becoming “collateral damage” in Iraq.
While we did not bring up the subject of the war directly
in the classes, we did mention a number of related issues:
freedom of speech, discrimination, global warming and the
use of poetry to deal with difficult times. When students
asked about the sneakers I was wearing (hand-painted with
bright fluorescent colors) I noted that they had the word
“peace” written on them and were my “peace shoes.” The kids
seemed to like that.
We had the students write short bits of poetry about how they
knew spring was coming to their neighborhood. We stayed upbeat.
Interestingly, none of the students mentioned the war in their
writings, and life in the schools seemed to go on as usual.
I found this apparent normalcy strangely disturbing.
Following two days of grade-school classes, we had a Saturday
afternoon poetry show scheduled at the Bowery Poetry Café
in lower Manhattan. We headed out for the café early in the
morning. At the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, we saw the
first sign of the security measures to protect New York City:
two cops shouldering huge automatic weapons out in the middle
of traffic. Automatic weapons have never made me feel very
secure.
After checking out the café, Charlie, Dan and I hiked up Broadway
until we met around 200,000 people marching toward us in the
street. It was a march for peace, but unlike the march on
Feb. 15, this one was granted a city permit. It was also about
65 degrees outside this time around, with sunny skies. People
shed bulky, dull winter coats and displayed a dazzling array
of color and cultural diversity accompanied by clusters of
drums, cymbals, signs and chants on the wide and carless avenue.
At first, we just watched the display from curbside. Then,
we simply stepped into the massive human flow to become willingly
“embedded” in the peace march. We became part of a dramatic
exclamation of free speech that made it clear that not everyone
in this country thinks war is the answer.
—Tom
Nattell
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