I have a vague memory of air raid drills up until I was maybe in fourth grade. We curled up in little balls under our desks and waited for the sirens to stop. I don't remember going to bomb shelters, but I do remember the signs for them outside the cafeteria and along the walkway where we waited for the school bus. It all just sort of disappeared from my consciousness but lately I find myself singing a song written by Donald Fagan (he of Steely Dan fame):

 

 

It's a new frontier and an old one. The cold war was so distant. Mr. Khrushchev may have said that he'd bury us, but I learned that later from a Sting song. I drove around listening to songs about the cold war in an old Volvo, with a "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day" sticker on the bumper. I was anti-nuclear, to be sure, but I didn't feel any fear. I just thought it was a stupid waste. We need how many of those things to create havoc? It really only does take one and we had how many deployed? No, I haven't done my homework, but you get the point. I feel the same way now about the pact with Putin. We decommission how many and stockpile the rest in case we need them?  If one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day, why do we need so many? We could have spent a lot of that money on teaching Russian in the public schools to foster cross cultural understanding. But, as usual, I digress.

 

The Cold War looks like a cartoon compared to the War on Terrorism. The enemy was a big bear with bushy eyebrows dressed in Soviet military gear. We knew who he was and where he lived. He had a giant red button with our name on it. In a bunker deep under Soviet soil, there was a transparent map of the US with targets lit up by circles of LEDs. We danced through the end of the cold war. It was the end of the world as we knew it, but we felt fine.

 

Now we're faced with a shadow. Every week or so we hear of "evidence of a credible threat" but we don't know what - or where - is threatened, nor do we know where the threat is coming from. I lie in bed listening to the experts from Washington discuss the damage a dirty bomb - one that spreads dangerous radioactive material - would cause. I read about the 20 block radius that would be turned to dust by a thermonuclear device. I actually calculated how far I live from downtown to figure out if I disappear in the blast or crawl out from the pile of rubble that the impact would cause, only to die a slow, excruciating death from radiation sickness.

 

 

Last night I watched the World Trade Center go down again. There was a Memorial Day ceremony in Washington DC and I tuned in right when they were broadcasting the unimaginable footage of the plane hitting the tower. This morning, while browsing the Web, I came across an article about the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban after presiding, from their peaceful stone silence for nearly 2000 years.