Nightmare Portends the Future? Two days after Election Day I awoke from a terrible nightmare.  A torturer had just cut off my legs and was forcing me to walk on the stubs of my legs. I woke up screaming.  Who was my torturer? Why this dream? Why now? In August 2001 I experienced repeated waves of doom that something dreadful was coming.

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(Editor’s Note: Today we welcome Andrew Himes, founder and Executive Director of Voices in Wartime, an Education Project dedicated to educating high school and college students about the experience of war. The Project has produced a film (Voices in Wartime) an Anthology of Poetry, and a curriculum for use in high school and college classrooms.) Q: Was there a particular event that fueled your desire to make the film Voices in Wartime?  What fueled the passion in the film, the anthology and the project, to create a less violent world and to heal the trauma caused by war? AH: In the beginning 2003, as the Bush administration was on the verge of invading Iraq, I was on the verge of despair. I had protested the war and seen millions of others oppose this bizarre and misguided invasion, but it appeared to be going ahead no matter what was said or done to oppose it. I was one of an international movement called Poets Against the War, which gathered and published over 13,000 poems written in a global outcry against the impending war. But somehow the war proceeded.

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In the Valley of Elah.  (2007) Written and Directed by Paul Haggis.  Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon   and Charlize Theron.                                                                                                                                                                                 A Missing Son Retired soldier Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is notified by the Army that his son Mike, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, has gone AWOL from his base in New Mexico. Hank immediately drives there to find him. What might have been a standard mystery thriller, becomes a meditation on life, death and the cost of war in this beautifully written and acted film.  Even though he has been out of active service for some time, old habits die hard and Hank Deerfield is still every inch a career soldier.

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To Hell in a Handbasket “The world is going to hell. Why bother?” If you live in Iraq or Zimbabwe this may be true, I grant you. Last week, listening to Earth Day speakers on the radio I wept as I heard about the loss of rainforests, wetlands and fisheries, all accelerating so fast we cannot stop it. There is much to despair about. There is so much violence, hate and greed on the planet. I’ve been up close to some of it.

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