Sometimes History intervenes and drives one’s themes.

When the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 hit New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, my husband and I were living in one of those targets—Washington, D.C. From our kitchen window high over Connecticut Avenue we could see, three miles away, the massive Pentagon on fire, filling the morning sky with a roiling, black cloud—a throat-catching sight I can still see. Over and over in my mind ran the headline, “The Capital City has been attacked, the Capital City has been attacked!”

Transfixed by the sight, I tried to fashion a response. History is happening, what do I think? In that moment, and as I dug deep the following weeks, I knew I didn’t want to respond as the playwright I then was, to portray how “throat-catching” was that day and its aftermath; an emotional response wouldn’t suffice. History had dealt America a blow, possibly a mortal one, and I wanted to make sense of it, help us recover. Best tool, it seemed to me, was the great legacy of the Enlightenment: Reason. In chaos, keep your head and think. I could return to playwriting once there emerged what Henry James called “the figure in the carpet”; but first, that figure had to be designed and assembled.

I began writing opinion pieces about the nexus where politics, culture, and the American character intersect—to me, a fascinating spot. To ferret out the deeper meaning I address topics after they have been chewed over by the commentariat. It was after several years, when the misrule of President George W. Bush had cast its own dark cloud over America—a cloud created by unnecessary war in Iraq, departure from rule of law, and, especially dark, our shameful descent into torture—that I realized I was…manufacturing hope. During the Bush years hope had faded and despair took told. I felt useful at the barricades manufacturing, with op-eds, the elixir without which America is not America: hope. This book contains those op-eds, as well as essays and dialogues.

The term “manufacture hope” comes from my experience in the mid-’90s when I had the honor to serve as lifeline, via phone calls, to a man under siege in Sarajevo. When the sniping escalated to shelling and it seemed Vlado might die, when all seemed, as he said, “hopeless,” we began to speak of manufacturing hope. It worked: He survived. I hope it works for us, too. Vlado worried, post-Sarajevo, about what lay in store for America.

I wish to thank especially The Christian Science Monitor, the venerable venue where most of these op-eds were published. The Monitor, a nondenominational paper with international circulation, remains singular in its welcome to moral thought. I prize its characterization of my work as “big-think in a personal voice.” Big thanks to my editors over the years there: Linda Feldmann, Clara Germani, Kendra Nordin, Josh Burek. And, as ever, thanks to my husband Larry—indefatigable manufacturer of hope.

Carla Seaquist

Gig Harbor, June 2009