Ever hear John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change"? You might remember the part that goes, "If we had the power to bring our neighbors home from war / They would have never missed a Christmas, no more ribbons on their door."
Or this bit of bomb-disposal dialogue from the Academy Award-winning movie "The Hurt Locker" may sound familiar -- "What's the best way to go about disarming one of these things? / "The way you don't die, sir."
You might have cruised the Brian Montgomery Memorial Highway in Willoughby or visited the Cpl. Brad Squires Memorial Plaza in Middleburg Heights.
Attended a "Rally for Troops" on Public Square or a local anti-war demonstration.
For seven years, the war in Iraq has drifted on the home-front airwaves, flashed on movie screens, stacked up in books, been documented on the Internet and packaged in care packages for the troops.
And even if you weren't directly affected by the war, you still might have felt its impact on popular culture and everyday life in America.
That impact hasn't been as pervasive as that of World War II or the war in Vietnam, according to Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
But it's still there, to some extent.
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Its presence in such areas as music may be as fragmented as listening tastes nowadays, Thompson noted. Your iPod may have Public Enemy and Bruce Springsteen railing against the conflict on the "Body of War" soundtrack, but the guy next to you could be tuned into Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" or Chely Wright defending the U.S. Marines sticker on the "Bumper of My S.U.V."
Pro or con, if you want to make a point, you still say it with music.
When Clevelanders Paul Schroeder and his wife Rosemary went on speaking engagements to talk about the war and their son, Edward, who was killed in Iraq in 2005, they took along a video featuring a photo collage of their son's life set to music -- "A Million Miles Away from Home" -- by folk singer-composer Bob Stewart of Athens.
To him, "that song touched all the emotions that somebody back home goes through," Schroeder said. He has seen other music videos about the war. "They're very 'proud to be an American' type music, and frankly, those don't move me at all," he said. "They don't speak to the emotions that I've felt."
Joining popular music on the airwaves, television -- beyond news coverage -- has done much more in depictions of the conflict in Iraq than it did during the war in Vietnam when TV entertainment practically "pretended the war didn't exist," Thompson said.
Iraq has had cameos in such regular series as ER, Days of Our Lives, Grey's Anatomy and Arrested Development, was the subject of the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, and had its own prime-time series Over There.
The war has battled its way into other forms of popular entertainment with mixed results.
Plans for the video game "Six Days in Fallujah" that was drawn from the Iraq conflict were scuttled in the face of public criticism, but another combat action game based on the war in Afghanistan is in the offing.
Google "war in Iraq" and you will get 4,870,000 results. Do the same on amazon.com, the Internet bookseller, and you will get 7,933. On YouTube, you could view 683,000 entries, including videos made by troops serving in Iraq.
The war's burgeoning presence on the Internet is a "huge technological revolution that has really changed the way America experiences war," according to Brett Holden an assistant theater professor at Bowling Green State University who teaches the course "War, Film and the Soldier Experience."
Films and documentaries produced about the war may have hit a critically acclaimed peak with "The Hurt Locker," but generally they have not been blockbusters at the box office, and Holden suspects it may reflect an increasingly disenchanted and war-weary public.
He also noted that unlike the mythical soldier-hero war films of the past, Iraq war movies have explored such issues as the impact of combat on those who serve and their relationships at home. A positive, in Holden's view, but not exactly hot "date night" material as one popular culture expert quipped.
In the unsung, unscripted impact of war, people have mobilized to both support the troops and protest the war.
The protest started even before the war began, a pre-emptive effort perhaps never seen before, according to Greg Coleridge of the Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition, an association of local peace groups that has staged marches and rallies throughout the conflict, reminiscent of those seen during the war in Vietnam.
Coleridge said the movement has been through peaks and valleys during the past seven years -- starting strong, then "shocked and awed" when the Iraq invasion bulldozed over all questions and objections. He said the resulting disenchantment among many anti-war activists lingered until revelations regarding Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and an increasing casualty count revitalized public support and involvement.
The current economic crisis also has strengthened their cause as people are questioning the billions spent on war, Coleridge said, and he believes the anti-war movement's presence and visibility has kept the U.S. military from expanding the war to Iran.
Mary Powell, president of the local Veterans for Peace chapter, which also formed just before the war, said the group's members -- mostly Vietnam vets like her -- saw fewer middle fingers and more peace signs flashed at them during public demonstrations as the war progressed.
But she said that in recent years she has also noticed "a measure of despondency and fatigue among our members. I think there is a need, almost, to disengage and recover, because our members are carrying varying levels of trauma from their own experiences."
The war also prompted some homemade support for the troops. People baked cookies to send to deployed GIs. Collected and donated items for care packages sent overseas. Kids contributed toys and school supplies for U.S. troops to distribute to Iraqi children.
Every April for the past eight years John Kikol, 66, of Avon Lake, has organized a "Rally for Troops" on Public Square, inviting people to show their gratitude to the latest generation of combatants and their families.
He isn't a vet, and donates his own time and money to stage the event. But that's OK. He said it's like a MasterCard moment -- priceless. "I'm blessed and honored to do it," he said.
Kikol also contributes to the emotional support of military families as a member of the Patriot Guard Riders, a national motorcycle group formed as a result of the war to shield grieving families from protesters at funerals for loved ones lost in the war.
A new veterans group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, also was created by the war, and a few historic organizations were revived including the Blue Star Mothers whose blue-star flag, symbol of a loved one in the service, has hung in America's home-front windows for every conflict since World War I.
To moms like Barbara Bower Heinz, 50, of Strongsville, with two sons in the Marines who have been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, the group can be an incredible source of support for times like when she got a phone call last year, telling her that her son had been injured by an improvised explosive device.
"If it hadn't been for the Blue Star Mothers, I honestly don't know if I'd been able to handle it," she said. "The mothers were the only ones who understood."
They are the moms who meet to pack care packages for the troops, share military news and walk around glued to cell phones so they can replay messages from their deployed kids over and over, just to hear their voices, said Dawn Woodings, 53, of Elyria, whose son just got back from a tour with the Army in Afghanistan.
Woodings, who just started a new Blue Star Mothers chapter in Norwalk, also credited support as the group's chief benefit. Having a loved one in the service nowadays is "a scary thing, and you just need to know you can pick up a phone and talk to somebody who understands why you're scared," she said.
The blue star changes to gold when a loved one is killed in combat, and though those stars aren't seen as often as they were in World War II, there are other visible reminders of the cost of war. Signs note designation of memorial highways for the fallen. An Ohio Fallen Heroes Memorial has been established in Sunbury, northeast of Columbus, with markers representing each of the state's losses during the war.
Those names also show up at the Brad Squires Memorial Plaza at the Old Oak Bible Church in Middleburg Heights, created by the family of Marine Cpl. Brad Squires who was killed in Iraq in 2005.
The plaza, and matching scholarship fund and youth softball team sponsorship, is a way of keeping her son's name and legacy alive, said Donna Squires of Middleburg Heights.
"It's taking a negative and making a positive," she added. "It's like anything in life. If you want to keep on moving, you've got to do positive things. "