When I managed to make my way back home two nights later, passing through a series of checkpoints, escorted at times by national guardsmen, I found that my neighbourhood shopping street dead-ended in the colossal pile of rubble dubbed Ground Zero.
Angus Bowmer Theater: "The Tempest," "Enter the Guardsman," "Life Is a Dream," "Oo-Bla-Dee" and "The Three Sisters".
To all the men and women in our military -- every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every coast guardsman, every marine -- I say this: Your mission is defined, your objectives are clear, your goal is just.
"If war breaks out," a guardsman told me, "then I'll drive to the armory and assemble my bike".
When her husband, a homosexual Swiss guardsman, threatens to kill him ("Louise, I do believe I am about to be shot"), Merivel returns to Norfolk, along with a bear he has picked up along the way.
I asked whether the Oklahoma Guardsman was correct that the N.O.P.D. was subordinate to the military.
This happened on Interstate 78, in New Jersey, in November of 2003: While listening to a story on NPR's "Morning Edition" about a National Guardsman who'd been killed in Iraq, I found myself in tears.
On the backdrop there's video — a tumultuous collage (by Tobin Rothlein) in which, at various times, I could make out National Guardsmen and Martin Luther King and burning crosses.
In the event, however, even the anticipation of the music played its usual sensory trick: "Before a single guardsman had so much as licked his mouthpiece I was in a flood of tears".
