Room for a View

Attempts to Silence the Doves:
A Call for Patriotism
By Lorna Tychostup

Photo by Lorna Tychostup

As a photographer, my job is to capture moments. Tiny slices of witnessing caught through the marriage of my eye and camera lens. I had been in Queens that day—Sept 11—camera fully loaded, six rolls of film on hand. I took only a handful of photos and those were taken during one brief moment while driving on the Van Wyck Expressway—one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the camera, as the road ran high enough to allow the sight of the smoke filling the skyline. I was unable to take more. It seemed a reckless act, an irreverent sacrilege to the massive destruction of life.

I drove down to the old neighborhood the night before to attend the funeral of a long-ago friend—Susie had been found in her Manhattan apartment with a bungee cord wrapped around her throat. It seemed like the last two miles I traveled through three countries. The last of which, I was told later, was Pakistan. Tiny men drenched in white from turban to sandal, long flowing beards and twirling mustaches—this, amid the dilapidated homes in John Gotti’s fallen kingdom of Richmond Hill, Queens.

I spent the night with a friend not seen in almost 17 years. A bottle of wine kept us up late as we reminisced about our dead friend and caught up on life. The personal assistant to the retired chairman of the board of the Twin Tower-based Morgan Stanley, she told tales of the generosity of her boss. “He helped me get all this.” Not a bad exchange—13 years of dutiful service for a two bedroom condo in Howard Beach. “He tells me, ‘Cathy, the most important thing is my comfort,’” she said, adding that in addition to paying his bills, her responsibilities included booking flights on private planes and $900-a-night hotel rooms.

So it came as no surprise, really, to behold the fantasy the TV played for us the next morning. The surrealism that had ignited the moment I had heard of my friend’s death and fed by the previous night blazed high as I became a removed yet discerning observer. I watched my friend watch her place of employment fall to the ground—her life possibly spared by a chance diagnosis of shingles the day before. She cried, shrieking in horror, “Those are my people! Those are my PEOPLE!” And when it seemed over, she calmly announced she needed to go get milk and bread. The ritual salve applied while attempting to prepare for whatever loomed in the distance. Its scent firmly in the air. Its approach palpable.
By the time news of the Pentagon crash came across the screen my fear had spoken too. Get home, it said. Get home before more planes desecrate the landscape, before the maiming car bombs, before the looting begins. Get home before my fellow Americans use this as an excuse to vent all that is already inside of them and wreak havoc on their fellow citizens. Childhood memories of growing up in the city brought on visions. I saw people running through streets breaking glass, knocking people down and robbing them. I saw camps filled with the faceless members of whatever group would be blamed. I saw lawlessness sweep across the landscape like a tornado, landing at will, wantonly spewing out innocent lives like glass marbles in a game of chance.

And that’s when the trembling began. It continued throughout the 24-hour trek home. The closed bridges locking off access to all routes except those east. The silence and lack of eye contact among passengers on the ferry ride across the Long Island Sound. When an overwhelming urge to connect with something larger came over me I stopped at a Best Buy to price TV sets, maybe purchase an FM receiver. I was craving the latest news, some connection, a hope to re-attach to something familiar from which I had been severed. Something to stop the trembling.

At home the house seemed the same until the clock radio shattered my sleep with a war cry the next morning, as the face of my America’s complicity tried to hide amidst the rhetoric of its narrowing definition of patriotism.

“Let’s bomb the hell out them!” cried the voice of a call-in.
“I think we need to be real clear about how we define terms when folks are saying we need to go to war,” I dared to call in myself. “This will not be some Nintendo battle fought on the TV set. This will involve high school and college-age sons and daughters of our communities,” I said to the early morning armchair generals.
Still the trembling continued.

Four days later, with my 17-year-old daughter in tow, we traveled to New York City as witnesses to this moment in history. Not able to get more than a few blocks away from Ground Zero, a quick trip across the river brought us to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. We watched a double-plumed shaft of smoke rise up to the heavens, signaling mournfully, the death of American innocence.

A neighborhood candlelight prayer vigil began. Hundreds of people slowly swarmed onto the long avenue which provides a stunning view of the tip of Manhattan.

“Jews For Peace,” one sign said. “We Mourn Together With Arabs and Muslim Americans—And Together We Fight Racism, Reject Hatred, Wage Peace,” said another. I took out my hidden camera and began capturing these moments. As the crowd thickened an anonymous hand held up another sign, “Mourn Our Dead, Don’t Kill More” while “Brooklyn Parents For Peace” walked proudly behind their life-size banner.

The antidote to my trembling had arrived as I noticed its absence. I had finally arrived home. Home to my America. Feeling good for the first time in days I realized I had found the missing familiarity. Not everybody wanted blind retribution in the wake of the destruction. Hurting of the innocent would not be tolerated among these folk. In the face of all the reactive flag waving, my fellow Americans were waving flags of their own, practicing their faith in freedom and justice of the highest nature. Surely these people would fight. Against a true enemy, to protect their country, to protect the foundation of their Constitution. They were already fighting and already putting themselves at risk. And the witnessing of this patriotism deserved to be documented and shared. To make others feel better. To make the 10 percent who had chosen to not follow along with the instigated retaliation against a faceless enemy.
And so I snapped away. I snapped away a few weeks later as 10,000 people gathered in Union Square at the “NY—Not In Our Name” rally for peace. I snapped away in Kingston on October 12 as 300 people rallied for peace. An intention formed to document these actions and get them shown in public places. To hang them in galleries and in restaurants that show artwork. Because I knew my fellow Americans weren’t going to catch these images on their TV sets or in their newspapers. Reporting certain truths had suddenly become anti-American in certain circles. And yet I sensed people needed to feel this connection, just as I did.

And so, despite my fear—yes, of course there is this fear. Gnawing gently at the insides. Groaning at my audacity. How dare I go against the lock-step that has so quickly infiltrated my America? How dare I choose not to fly two flags from the windows of my truck? Will they accuse me of being anti-American?—despite my fear I hung them at a local eatery. A place where all the local “cool” people frequent, seated alongside the influx of tourists coming to soak up the “cool” energy of my community.

It took only 12 days. Twelve days for the owner to succumb to his brand of fear. I quickly offered to remove them—grateful they had been “allowed” to be viewed at all. Who can blame him? Two called him anti-American. One wrote in one of the “please comment” notebooks I had left hanging at each table, “I support America and Freedom. The anti-American theme of the pictures disturbs me. I will not patronize [this restaurant] again.” One objected to the “one-sidedness” of the pictures, while another said, “It seems that these ‘photos’ are of people who are not aware of the fact that we live in America. Take these artful photos to the Middle East and stay there with the people you love the most.”

This, in my America?

Of course. This still is, after all, the home of the free and the brave. And it was determined from the onset of the fight for this, our America, that the differences we all are, would be allowed to exist and be voiced. Not that this has always been the practice...we can’t forget the innocent Japanese locked up during WWII or the ruining of innocent lives due to McCarthyite blacklisting.

I certainly won’t add to these dark moments of our history and abandon those folks—the not-so-silent majority in the comment notebooks—who said, “It’s nice to see some attention brought to the fact that not everyone wants war,” or “I am sooo glad that people are protesting this ‘war’”. I particularly like, “Well done, even though I don’t agree with [the] viewpoint.”

You raised me too well, my America. Please don’t ask me now to forget my heritage. Don’t allow your fear to ask me to forget my Constitution or my Bill of Rights. I don’t know what George, not Bush, but Washington, would say to all of this “anti-American” mud being flown, but I am compelled to continue with my patriotic duty—even in the face of your threats.

So I plan on continuing to photograph the peace movement. The show will be up in April at another local eatery. In the meantime, six of the photos are hanging at the New Paltz Town Hall, in full view of our continuing democratic process. I don’t plan on flying a flag to hide my fear behind, but you can count on me to defend the principles my America was founded on. Be advised: I will fight, I am fighting, I will continue to fight—not some economically concocted enemy in some foreign land—but to defend all that you, my America, have taught me to hold dear.

And I am in the process of hunting down other sites for this touchstone which seems valuable to some. Why? Because, as Tina, a 13-year-old from NJ wrote, “I like the pictures because they show freedom of expression from all different ethnic backgrounds. It is important to show how different people react to tragedies as the WTC crashes. Another thing I like is that this restaurant is very artsy and has a unique atmosphere to it. I will come back someday.”