“On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ (Bloomberg’s voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) ‘What beliefs do you hold?’  ”The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

And on the low-brow end, I’m also enamored of new favorite blog The Awl’s tour of the ho-hum New York block which has spawned the political firestorm.  Not to mention their list of 39 different pundits describing the proposed mosque’s location. Is it two blocks away or three? And what is “ground zero,” exactly, anyway?  I walk past 51 Park Place whenever I transfer from the A or 1/2/3 train to the PATH train on my way home to Jersey City, and it never looked like the end of the world to me either, just an unassuming building on a street that’s seen better days.  Still, I’m starting to develop a fondness for the place, a protective urge I might have felt had I been neighbors to Elian Gonzalez, or Terri Schiavo, or any other struggle that should never have become a political talking point.

The myth of the perfect entrance lurks, just offstage, pacing back and forth, awaiting the cue that may never come.  Sort of the reverse of Waiting for Godot.  I think I might at any point turn into Mama Rose belting ‘curtain up! light the lights!’ and strutting the stage.  Thank God it hasn’t happened yet.  This myth is related to the myth of the neat plotline, the easy ending, denouement and deus ex machina. Shelve this myth next to  The Myth of Eternal Return on your bookshelf. It may in fact be the same myth–I don’t know, I’m out of mythography practice! So stay tuned…and thank you, dear readers, [curtsey] for your patience.

So it surprised me to learn how much of the turn-of-the-century land-preservation efforts in this country were actually inspired by pure idealism–the transcendentalist fervor of John Muir, to be precise.  Muir, a Scotsman who developed a near-ecstatic relationship with American wilderness, was the inspiration for drawing the lines on the map around Yellowstone and Yosemite, not to mention the petrified forest of Arizona and many other national forests and monuments. And he used the words “temple”  and “cathedral” far more than the words “economic boon.”  We should save such places, he thought, simply because they are so beautiful they deserve to be appreciated for generations to come.

It’s a simple idea, but sort of incredible by today’s standards. Of course, developers and ranchers made a fuss when President (Teddy) Roosevelt walled-off the Grand Canyon with one stroke of his pen.  But, as one of Burns’ talking heads reminds us, no one in Arizona would think to protest the park now.  It made me wonder: what else should we be preserving, now, despite the protests that would undoubtedly arise?  Where are the new national parks, and who are the new Muirs?

Several months ago I read a small piece in the New Yorker about a new national park in Paterson, New Jersey, of all places. Though it may sound counterintuitive, Paterson has the 2nd-largest waterfall east of the Mississippi, and is the of Alexander Hamilton’s first planned industrial city.  Obama, Roosevelt’s heir, signed the approval for the park.  Still, it takes serious imagination to see through the post-industrial Jersey haze, and a lot of lawmakers just don’t have it, so they’re still fighting against the designation.  The Muir figure with the imagination is Paterson lawyer Leonard Zax.  Here’s hoping he gets his wish.

With subject matter like this, you can sit in the audience and practically hear the myths being busted as the actors speak.  Even among the highly-informed, well-meaning crowd drawn to the East Village on a Sunday night to see a true play about the Iraqi war, our lack of knowledge about the daily life of those whom our national policy have turned into refugees is palpable. A veiled woman speaks about decorating her Christmas tree and you can hear the audience’s puzzlement. (As her story unfolds, so does the veil.)  An endearingly earnest theatre director talks about how before the invasion, the imams at the local mosque supported what they did, as a way to “enlighten the people.”  Over and over, characters explain that the difference between Sunni and Shia used to be so nominal as to be inconsequential, that despite the horrors of Saddam, people were not walking around in gray suits looking morose–”We’re not Russians, we’re Iraqis!”, and that in the beginning, before things went bad, people wanted to reach out to the Americans.

“Aftermath”is interview-based theater gone way beyond talking heads.  What could have been a broad survey of pathos encompassing the many, many stories of Iraqi suffering, was instead bravely focused on a small group of characters, lovingly portrayed by an amazing cast of Arab-American actors, their stories intercut with one other and bridged by the revelatory addition of a composite translator character, who could address all of the characters and the audience directly.  The most remarkable aspect of this play is that despite its unflinching depiction of the horrors of war, the play still manages to invite you into this world, embodying the legendary tradition of Arab and Iraqi hospitality that the interviewees showed to the playwrights.