My friend Colin posted about Howard Zinn’s passing yesterday. I’m not sure when or from whom I would have found out otherwise. (Update: Oh wait, it’s all over my Facebook)

Most folks are familiar with Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, and I congratulate all the high school and college history teachers who have assigned it over the years. It’s an important book, and it should be read.

My fondest Zinn memories are related to a different, much smaller tome of his: Artists in Times of War.

I read it my senior year at Geneseo, a couple years into Bush’s Iraq war. My friends and I were regularly waking up at the break of dawn to write the body counts of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians all over the campus sidewalks in chalk. It was “illegal” to use sidewalk chalk on campus, and we always ran the risk of getting into trouble or having our masterpieces hosed away before classes started. More often though our chalk pieces stayed up and, if my sources are correct, it’s now acceptable for people and groups to use sidewalk chalk on campus.

Some of my best conversations about the Iraq war and our country’s foreign and domestic policies happened while or because of my “chalking.” One morning outside the library my friend Serena and I met a fellow student named Mosen. He was back on campus after a tour in Iraq and was scheduled to return at the end of the semester. At first he approached Serena and me with hostility but soon we were all engaged in a productive and (for me) meaningful conversation about the war. I followed up with him a few times after that and thought a lot about his stories in the months to follow.

Here’s an excerpt from Artists in Times of War:

During the Vietnam War, there were meetings of historians. While the war was raging in Southeast Asia, the question was, “Should historians take a stand on the war?” There was a big debate about this. Some of us introduced a resolution saying that “We historians think the United States should get out of Vietnam.” Other historians objected. They said, “It’s not that we don’t think the United States should get out, but we are just historians. It’s not our business.”

But whose business is it? The historian says, “It’s not my business.” The lawyer says, “It’s not my business.” The businessman says, “It’s not my business.” And the artist says, “It’s not my business.” Then whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the business of the most important issues in the world to the people who run the country? How stupid can we be?

Rest in peace, Howard Zinn. Fortunately for us, your words live on.

The above portrait of Zinn is from the Americans Who Tell the Truth series by Robert Shetterly. The quote used in the painting is as follows: “The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.”