Revelation April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Image, Myth
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Bert was uneasy as he tossed in his bed, trying to go to sleep. His encounter with that dying old vet at the hospital had not been a pleasant one, but he needed a good night of rest before he started his new job. Any time now, that drink he had was going to kick in…there it was. As he drifted into sleep, his last thought was of that girl he met in the bar—Lizzy or Libby or something like that.
Startled in his sleep by a thunderous roar, Bert ran out of his new house wearing only a pair of shorts. An orange ripple ran through the clouds in the midnight sky, away from the expanding pillar of smoke and flame that towered over him. The horrifying realization that his house was only a few miles from the lab, on the other side of the town’s namesake wooded ridge, blew the sleepiness out of his mind. As he turned to run, motion on the deserted road into town caught his eye. He realized that it was someone coming from the direction of the blast; he started to yell, then stopped in shock. It was not a fleeing survivor, but a figure with four crossed arms seated on a red horse, riding at the head of a wave of fire. The inferno swept toward him, drawing closer.
The alarm clock buzzed, and Bert jolted awake. It was his first day of work.
Sources:
Slaughterhouse-Five
March 1, 1954 April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Image, Memory
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John stood at his kitchen counter making coffee as the little radio on the table droned away. They didn’t get news very quickly in the Marshall Islands, but there was some available from the military base and from over in the Philippines. John was half-listening to the voice on the radio, which was talking about the new atomic bombs the army had. John had heard about them, knew that they had supposedly ended the war in Japan. He also knew that the Reds had the bomb too; he had even heard they blew a few up in their own country to see what would happen, the barbarians. Tuning out the little radio, he started to go out onto the porch to sit and watch the sun rise—the glow on the horizon was just beginning to show. Light flooded the house, and with a queer suddenness it was a bright morning outside. Bewildered, John walked onto the porch to see a brilliant sunrise in the west.
Pacific Sunrise
Ragtime
War’s End April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Image
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Some people got involved in the arms race during the beginning in World War II, when it was all about winning the war. After Germany surrendered, defeating Japan was the most immediate concern, and all the efforts of America’s research and development were thrown into meeting that goal. The widely-accepted view that the Allies were firmly on the side of good in the war confirmed for many of these individuals that any measures that hastened the end of the war were justified. Although this is a conventional perspective, it can’t be dismissed as insignificant for our purposes. Although it was not a universal motivation, there were certainly those who felt strongly that this was the case. One of those people was Charles Sweeney, the pilot that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Sweeney was very outspoken about the necessity of the bombing, and did not shy away from taking respnsibility for his actions.
Photo of the Nagasaki Bombing, Signed by Charles Sweeney
It Can’t Happen Here April 22, 2009
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Smoky Mountain Mushroom Cloud
The Plot Against America
The Father of the Atomic Bomb April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, Image, Myth
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Part of our cultural lexicon is an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” This quote, associated with the atomic bomb, has found its way into even the most trivial forms of social discourse.
Atomic Shirt
What is less well known is that he didn’t quote the Hindu saying at the first nuclear test, but said later that he was reminded of the passage. Even more interesting is that Oppenheimer’s association of the atomic blast was more explicitly a reference to the first line of the passage, not the end. The translation of the full excerpt is
- “If the radiance of a thousand suns
- were to burst at once into the sky,
- that would be like
- the splendor of the Mighty One—
- I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Sanskrit, from the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita
Monument April 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, Image, Memory, Video
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Memorials exist for all sorts of things. There are lots of monuments devoted to war and death, and most of them follow a predictable pattern. Everyone is probably familiar with the Vietnam Memorial and its wall of names; those who have seen it recall vividly the impact of seeing 58,195 names of dead soldiers engraved on a single surface. The corresponding event for my generation, the September 11th attack, was memorialized in a powerful way that I remember as particularly affective (rampant commercialization notwithstanding).
But what does a monument tell us about the event it memorializes? Names and numbers are important, but something important is missing. Anyone that knew someone whose name is one of those lists remembers them as a person, a collection of memories and experiences that told a unique story. It can’t be boiled down to a saying on a tombstone or an entry on a census form, and it is crucial to preserve those experiences. For an experience that can’t be boiled down to a singular event, maybe it would be more effective to let those experiences stand on their own, to memorialize them not with a mass of identical entries but with a ready-made figure that can represent individuality for each person who engages with it.
Entering the Conventional April 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History, Image
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Nuclear weapons were developed for a specific purpose: to be the most destructive force humanity is capable of unleashing on the world. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb obliterated the city of Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 people instantaneously. The effects of the bombing and the impact of its symbolic representation, the mushroom cloud, would reverberate through the remainder of the twentieth century and into the next millennium.
After Hiroshima, “conventional” warfare like that waged across Europe during two world wars took a back seat to the escalating nuclear arms race. In these weapons was the power of the sun, and their shadows powerfully affected all that they touched.
Only sixty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and less than twenty since the end of the Cold War, this powerful symbol of unconventional warfare has entered the cultural lexicon. What would those who created it have to say about this advertisement?
The Cold War
