JOHN WILCOCK: Peace on Earth, at Last! The Moment The Pentagon Lifted up Into the Air

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/26/john-wilcock-peace-on-earth.html

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Let’s build a Military Complex where the old Pentagon was, original, I know…

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So it floated up into the air? That’s what we’re going with?

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This is kind of early for Daniel Ellsberg.
Maybe a germ was formed in his mind but it’s not a direct nfluence.

What I’ve read was tgat he went to some weekend War Resister’s league workshop or something, and hearing young men preparating to go to prison against the war, made him feel he had to act. I’ll try to find where I read that before this thread locks.

Let’s not forget that while draft dodgers of various types were very vocal,lots of people went to prison rather than war, and they gotabout 2 years, the same as WWII more or less .

There’s a Playboy interview with Joan Baezin the sixties, reprinted in the sixties, where she says she can understand why some would go to Canada or Sweden, it wouldn’t stop the war.

Joan of course got arrested for blockading an induction centre, with her mother, and ran a non-violence institute. And married David Harris, a leader of The Resistance, many of them went to war. So did David Harris, shortly before Woodstock, and Joan pregnant with Gabe, who must be about fifty years old now.

My friend Rusty went to Chicago in '68, and got out of the draft by emphasizing a previous mental issue. But he added it was easier for him, since his draft board was in Newark, where the large black population coukd fill the quota. Rusty came up to Canada, self imposed exile, he was always able to visit the US. He lived here for about 20 years, then America called him home

I’ve read that actually more women came to Canada at that time than men avoiding the draft, their leaving the US was one way the could protest since they weren’t drafted. Judyth Merrill was one of them.

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Doesn’t anyone appreciate magic realism anymore?

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Hey, I don’t mind magical realism, but I prefer my magic to be more realistic :wink:

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What are the odds that absolutely none of the participants saw the pentagon levitate?

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I dunno. This was the 60s. There were some serious hallucinogens available back then.

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Stay tuned to a future installment where the Yippies threaten to spike the Chicago water system with LSD.

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The main panel was derived from a famous photo called “Flower Power” by Bernie Boston taken in 1967.

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I bet it barely budged.

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IIRC, the initial intent was to levitate the Pentagon about 300 feet into the air. That proved harder than expected. I’m pretty sure when Ed Sanders’s students did an investigative poetry research project about the Pentagon levitation, they determined, by talking to various witnesses, that the Pentagon rose only about six inches. It hovered there for maybe two minutes. It was generally considered a success and various participants pointed out that if they had lifted the building 300 feet, there might have been problems. Six inches was a safe amount for everyone involved.

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My favorite pin in my collection:

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According to the comic from a couple of weeks ago, they only got their permit by promising not to levitate it more than ten feet. Which makes total sense, as they’d probably have needed permission from the FAA to go as high as 300’.

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AND IT WAS LEVITATING!

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People these days have no appreciation for metaphors. :slight_smile:

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