9/11
So. Ten years ago, everything changed. At least for Americans.
I... don't really have much to say. I mean, I suppose each of us could write a book, "Where I Was On 9/11/01" - most of us were in school or at work (I was studying Latin), we all felt flabbergasted and helpless. Most of us knew somebody who might be there. (I didn't.) But, as far as anything beyond "one kid's story"... I got nuthin'.
Well, mostly nuthin'. I wrote something like this a couple years ago. I like it.
"Some hundred-odd years ago, a schoolteacher named Katherine Lee Bates wrote a song, the third verse of which made very little sense in its intended context. O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, she wrote, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.
She was writing - she thought - about the soldiers of the American Revolution. In that context, 'scuse me for saying, that last line is sheer nonsense: a soldier who loves mercy more than life is not going to win any battles or liberate any countries.
Ten years ago today, that verse came true. We saw heroes fight to liberate people from fire and rubble and shattered steel; we watched them climb the stairs when everybody else was going down; we saw cops and firefighters and Port Authority security guys and off-duty Marines give their lives trying to bring mercy and hope to the victims."
This is classic JT nonfiction writing in that it doesn't have a conclusion. Neither does the story of post-9/11 America. We're still way too close to even know how-all it changed us, let alone whether we've gotten any good out of it. But we do know everything changed.
I... don't really have much to say. I mean, I suppose each of us could write a book, "Where I Was On 9/11/01" - most of us were in school or at work (I was studying Latin), we all felt flabbergasted and helpless. Most of us knew somebody who might be there. (I didn't.) But, as far as anything beyond "one kid's story"... I got nuthin'.
Well, mostly nuthin'. I wrote something like this a couple years ago. I like it.
"Some hundred-odd years ago, a schoolteacher named Katherine Lee Bates wrote a song, the third verse of which made very little sense in its intended context. O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, she wrote, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.
She was writing - she thought - about the soldiers of the American Revolution. In that context, 'scuse me for saying, that last line is sheer nonsense: a soldier who loves mercy more than life is not going to win any battles or liberate any countries.
Ten years ago today, that verse came true. We saw heroes fight to liberate people from fire and rubble and shattered steel; we watched them climb the stairs when everybody else was going down; we saw cops and firefighters and Port Authority security guys and off-duty Marines give their lives trying to bring mercy and hope to the victims."
This is classic JT nonfiction writing in that it doesn't have a conclusion. Neither does the story of post-9/11 America. We're still way too close to even know how-all it changed us, let alone whether we've gotten any good out of it. But we do know everything changed.