In Rememberance of 9/11

[marutidas]

In two days, it will be the 5th anniversery of one of the most horrible events in American history.
Here is a poem written in memory of the week following 9/11, its called

September's Song, A Poem in Seven Days
By Lucille Clifton

1 Tuesday 9/11/01

thunder and lightning and our world
is another place no day
will ever be the same no blood
untouched

they know this storm in otherwheres
israel, ireland, palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one is exempt
the world is one all fear
is one all life all death
all one

2 Wednesday 9/12/01

this is not the time
i think
to note the terrorist
inside
who threw the brick
into the mosque
this is not the time
to note
the ones who cursed
Gods other name
the ones who threatened
they would fill the streets
with arab children's blood
and this is not the time
i think
to ask who is allowed to be
american America
all of us gathered under one flag
praying together safely
warmed by the single love
of the many tongued God

3 Thursday 9/13/01

the firemen
ascend
like jacob's ladder
into the mouth of
history

4 Friday 9/14/01

some of us know
we have never felt safe

all of us americans
weeping

as some of us have wept
before

is it treason to remember

what have we done
to deserve such villainy

nothing we reassure ourselves
nothing

5 Saturday 9/15/01

i know a man who perished for his faith.
others called him infidel, chased him down
and beat him like a dog. after he died
the world was filled with miracles.
people forgot he was a jew and loved him.
who can know what is intended? who can understand
the gods?

6 Sunday Morning 9/16/01
for bailey

the st. marys river flows
as if nothing has happened

i watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad as are we all

so many ones to hate and i
cursed with long memory

cursed with the desire to understand
have never been good at hating

now this new granddaughter
born into a violent world

as if nothing has happened

and i am consumed with love
for all of it

the everydayness of bravery
of hate of fear of tragedy

of death and birth and hope
true as this river

and especially with love
bailey fredrica clifton goin

for you

7 Monday Sundown 9/17/01

Rosh Hashanah

i bear witness to no thing
more human than hate

i bear witness to no thing
more human than love

apples and honey
apples and honey

what is not lost
is paradise

* * *

This thread is to remember where we were 5 years ago, when
the towers fell. To remember those who lost there lives.

I remeber that I was getting ready to go my massage therapy class,
I saw on the news, the towers smoking, and for the first moment I thought it was a movie, that this couldn't be real. And my heart sank when the towers fell. Afraid of what was to come.

And now 5 five years later, have we moved on, to move toward peace?
Are we any safer than we were 5 years ago?
Are we to point fingers, blame those who, are our Borthers and sisters, to let the blood flow?

I ask all,
To remember.

[NonLemming]

I am so sick of our seeming idolatry of September the 11th. We need to move on. Five years ago was a hard day for many of us and many of us gave in to being led like sheep after that and feeling fear when we were told to.

Say a prayer for the vicitims if you wish, but don't watch any tv show making money off of it (way too early for that), don't waffle into victim mindset and go all helpless, and don't watch the countless fabrications of what happened. We will not know in our lifetime.

We knew this would come after Fat Man and Little Boy and it finally did. We need to improve security and move on.

[Daniel]

I cannot watch film footage about the event without getting agitated and have strong emotions about the event, the way it has been portrayed and especially, how it has been used politically.

My husband and I were listening to the radio that morning and heard the announcer break in and say that the airports were closed and the Trade Center had been hit by a plane. We turned on CNN. My guy got on his bike and went down to the new pier south of 68 St here on the West Side of Manhattan. He saw the towers fall from there. I stayed at home and tried to call a friend who was going to be coming into work at the opera at that time from Brooklyn- right under the towers- not knowing that the subways had already been shut down. My mother called and we got cut off. Twice. Then as we were talking the third time, CNN showed people jumping/flying from the building. I think I went numb at that point- told my Mom I was Ok, but I couldn't keep talking. The phones were jammed all day after that. Hours later, we saw people who had walked all the way home- a good 8-10 miles- covered with white dust from head to toe.

The opera season was supposed to start that night with Wagner's Flying Dutchman, which was cancelled. When we did open on Friday, it was as much a protest as it was a healing service. People came to be together, and in doing so, somehow push back the darkness. We sang the National Anthem before we started, and I have never had anything to do that was as hard as that. Everyone was in tears, before, during and after. It was surreal. Everything kept going forward, but we all felt like we were standing still. In many ways, I think we still are.

The firehouse behind Lincoln Center lost 13 of their members. Their pictures are now backstage. I walk by them every day. You'd always see them at 'Fairway', the famous market on Broadway, a few blocks up. They would park 2 or 3 firetrucks out front every couple of days and do a big shop. Great guys.

The skies were silent for a good while after that- except for the boom of airforce jets that circled the city- which came- btw- too late. It took me a long while to get used to seeing planes fly overhead.

[Giancarlo]

I am so sick of our seeming idolatry of September the 11th. We need to move on. Five years ago was a hard day for many of us and many of us gave in to being led like sheep after that and feeling fear when we were told to.

Say a prayer for the vicitims if you wish, but don't watch any tv show making money off of it (way too early for that), don't waffle into victim mindset and go all helpless, and don't watch the countless fabrications of what happened. We will not know in our lifetime.

We knew this would come after Fat Man and Little Boy and it finally did. We need to improve security and move on.

I cannot. I will remember them because it is my right, and I will say I recognize them. I think making this into a political issue as some want to is irresponsible. Whether it be republicans or democrats. September 11th is a day that should be remembered, just as much as Pearl Harbor and the first day of the invasion of Normandy.

Please don't play politics with the lives of those who were lost.

I hold equal anger at both the pro-Bush and anti-Bush people.

[Jennifer5]

In some ways to me this still seems so unreal... I've never had TV so when it happened I only got little clips of it. I've seen where the towers were and still some how it feels unreal. Hearing people speak of 9/11 makes me want to ignor the fact that it ever happened, and I wish I could... but who ever planned that attack was very smart, because forever the United States will remember that on september 11th.. to many lives were lost, and to many families and friends had there lives changed over this... as much as I'd love to be able to say lets move on like NonLemming has, I just can't. People aren't quite ready, we all need some time to heal:love:

[Daniel]

Rich's remarks are...well....very apt. We're both New Yorker's and see things in a similar fashion.

I've posted the article in its entirety for the simple reason that one must be a subscriber to read it on the NYTimes webpage.

September 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?

By FRANK RICH
“THE most famous picture nobody’s ever seen” is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. “In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world,” Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, “the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo.”

Five years later, Mr. Drew’s “falling man” remains a horrific artifact of the day that was supposed to change everything and did not. But there’s another taboo 9/11 photo, about life rather than death, that is equally shocking in its way, so much so that Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos kept it under wraps for four years. Mr. Hoepker’s picture can now be found in David Friend’s compelling new 9/11 book, “Watching the World Change,” or on the book’s Web site, watchingtheworldchange.com. It shows five young friends on the waterfront in Brooklyn, taking what seems to be a lunch or bike-riding break, enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away as cascades of smoke engulf Lower Manhattan in the background.

Mr. Hoepker found his subjects troubling. “They were totally relaxed like any normal afternoon,” he told Mr. Friend. “It’s possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it.” The photographer withheld the picture from publication because “we didn’t need to see that, then.” He feared “it would stir the wrong emotions.” But “over time, with perspective,” he discovered, “it grew in importance.”

Seen from the perspective of 9/11’s fifth anniversary, Mr. Hoepker’s photo is prescient as well as important — a snapshot of history soon to come. What he caught was this: Traumatic as the attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.

What’s gone right: the terrorists failed to break America’s back. The “new” normal lasted about 10 minutes, except at airport check-ins. The economy, for all its dips and inequities and runaway debt, was not destroyed. The culture, for better and worse, survived intact. It took only four days for television networks to restore commercials to grim news programming. Some two weeks after that Rudy Giuliani ritualistically welcomed laughter back to American living rooms by giving his on-camera imprimatur to “Saturday Night Live.” Before 9/11, Americans feasted on reality programs, nonstop coverage of child abductions and sex scandals. Five years later, they still do. The day that changed everything didn’t make Americans change the channel, unless it was from “Fear Factor” to “American Idol” or from Pamela Anderson to Paris Hilton.

For those directly affected by the terrorists’ attacks, this resilience can be hard to accept. In New York, far more than elsewhere, a political correctness about 9/11 is still strictly enforced. We bridle when the mayor of New Orleans calls ground zero “a hole in the ground” (even though, sadly, he spoke the truth). We complain that Hollywood movies about 9/11 are “too soon,” even as “United 93” and “World Trade Center” came and went with no controversy at multiplexes in middle America. The Freedom Tower and (now kaput) International Freedom Center generated so much political rancor that in New York freedom has become just another word for a lofty architectural project soon to be scrapped.

The price of all New York’s 9/11 P.C. is obvious: the 16 acres of ground zero are about the only ones that have missed out on the city’s roaring post-attack comeback. But the rest of the country is less invested. For tourists — and maybe for natives, too — the hole in the ground is a more pungent memorial than any grandiose official edifice. You can still see the naked wound where it has not healed and remember (sort of) what the savage attack was about.

But even as we celebrate this resilience, it too comes at a price. The companion American trait to resilience is forgetfulness. What we’ve forgotten too quickly is the outpouring of affection and unity that swelled against all odds in the wake of Al Qaeda’s act of mass murder. If you were in New York then, you saw it in the streets, and not just at ground zero, where countless thousands of good Samaritans joined the official responders and caregivers to help, at the cost of their own health. You saw it as New Yorkers of every kind gathered around the spontaneous shrines to the fallen and the missing at police and fire stations, at churches and in parks, to lend solace or a hand. This good feeling quickly spread to Capitol Hill, to red states where New York had once been Sodom incarnate and to the world, the third world included, where America was a nearly uniform object of sympathy and grief.

At the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush found just the apt phrase to describe this phenomenon: “Today we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called ‘the warm courage of national unity.’ This is the unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress.” What’s more, he added, “this unity against terror is now extending across the world.”

The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can’t forget the dead of 9/11, we can’t forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle.

When F.D.R. used the phrase “the warm courage of national unity,” it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Another passage is worth recalling, too: “We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.”

What followed under Roosevelt’s leadership is one of history’s most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties — to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good — with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad. What followed Mr. Bush’s speech at the National Cathedral, we know all too well, is another story.

On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference “how much of a sacrifice” ordinary Americans would “be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines.” His answer: “Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever.” He, too, wanted to move on — to “see life return to normal in America,” as he put it — but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.

This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush’s war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher’s irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding “all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Fear itself — the fear that “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” as F.D.R. had it — was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of “no sacrifice whatsoever.” Speaking in Washington about how it was “the time to be wise” and “the time to act,” he declared, “We need for there to be more tax cuts.” Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

[hankzzz]

Oh, I know the security will be heightened. It's just that I don't look forward to them replaying of the attacks over and over again... If we can make it through this 5 year anniversery in relative peace, that will be just fine with me.

Also, I think that all the media spotlight on bin Laden only makes him more of a folk hero among the radicals. :(

[NonLemming]

I cannot. I will remember them because it is my right, and I will say I recognize them. I think making this into a political issue as some want to is irresponsible. Whether it be republicans or democrats. September 11th is a day that should be remembered, just as much as Pearl Harbor and the first day of the invasion of Normandy.

Please don't play politics with the lives of those who were lost.

I hold equal anger at both the pro-Bush and anti-Bush people.

I certainly did not mean that people should not grieve. They should, especially the people of NYC, the city that was attacked. But the way we are over-exposed to, beaten over the head with it on the television seems like a weekend long jerk-off pity party. My tv will be off on Monday and I will use the day to live life and try to do something good and not buy into any hyping of the anniversary. I will then get a good night's sleep as I'm sure we'll have many going through 9-11 withdrawals on Tuesday.

I wouldn't and have not played politics with any lost lives. I will say that if you are angry at pro-Bush and anti-Bush people, that's a lot of anger to hold on to. Just a thought.

[NonLemming]

Also, I think that all the media spotlight on bin Laden only makes him more of a folk hero among the radicals. :(

Sadly we helped secure his guaranteed folk status by letting him go.:(

[Giancarlo]

I certainly did not mean that people should not grieve. They should, especially the people of NYC, the city that was attacked. But the way we are over-exposed to, beaten over the head with it on the television seems like a weekend long jerk-off pity party. My tv will be off on Monday and I will use the day to live life and try to do something good and not buy into any hyping of the anniversary. I will then get a good night's sleep as I'm sure we'll have many going through 9-11 withdrawals on Tuesday.

I wouldn't and have not played politics with any lost lives. I will say that if you are angry at pro-Bush and anti-Bush people, that's a lot of anger to hold on to. Just a thought.

I actually think this is quite insensitive, and I think people should be constantly reminded. My TV will be on and I will be remembering the people who lost. Someone I know was gravely injured in the attacks.

A lot of anger to hold on to? I think they are both being foolish and don't deserve power in this country. I really hope we get some moderates in power in 2008, because both sides have showed unacceptable behavior.

Besides, this only happens once a year.

[NonLemming]

Besides, this only happens once a year.

We can agree on this, at least. It's only once a year.;)

[Dash]

You know, it's strange for me...I still have a hard time looking at the images that held me in terrible thrall that day. I have not yet read the poem you posted, Maritudas...I don't know why. I will not go see any movie about 9/11, and as interested as I am in the political controversy over ABC's miniseries which begins tonight, I'm not sure I can watch it.

It was an important moment in my life (as in everyone's) but I don't think I have found all of the wisdom that I need from it yet. So, I'm still very shy about returning to that place, but ponder it from some distance and avoid the answers that others offer.

[suzer1013]

My partner and I have watched a couple what I would consider to be the better documentaries about that day, and it's still hard to watch. Though I did not live in NYC in 2001, I did live there in 1993 when the WTC was bombed, and that was pretty awful. I watched the helicopters taking people off the roof from my brownstone apartment in Brooklyn, and we all knew then that those buildings would be a target again.

I do not like the publicity that now surrounds 9/11 every year. It makes me physically ill. My cousin experienced 9/11 first hand. She worked at the World Financial Center, and thank God was late to work that day. Her train was rerouted to Rector Street, and she headed to work thinking nothing was wrong. As she got closer, and saw people were running the other way, she finally realized what had happened. She's a photographer and always has her camera with her, and hardly thinking, she took a few pictures before heading uptown on a long walk back to Queens. No one thought the buildings would come down. She was at Houston Street when the first building fell.

My cousin saw the people who leapt from those buildings, she experienced the screams, the thuds, the death, first hand. She was covered with ash and grime and thankfully got a ride over the 59th Street Bridge.

No, I do not want to see representations of what happened over and over and over again ad nauseum. There's something very sick about allowing ourselves to be retraumatized by this again and again. I agree that we need to pray for those who were lost, and for those who lost friends and family, and for our country and where it is headed. But we don't need to revel in the tragedy, which is what seems to be happening. We will never forget, but we also do not need to relive the pain, in glorified Hollywood form, again and again.

Tomorrow, one of the news stations is apparently running the coverage from 9/11 over again in its entirety. Thank God I'll be at work, busy preparing for a trial.

I've gotten e-mails and read posts about "fly the American flag" on 9/11, but for me this is not a time for patriotism. It is a time of sorrow, a time of remembrance and prayer. I don't need to fly a flag to show my love of my country, and I don't need to relive a tragedy so many times that it haunts me. Frankly, I think Bin Laden and his ilk are probably chuckling over our strange need to continue reliving what he considers his "triumph." I'd rather not give him that satisfaction.

Susan

[pnggrad79]

9/11 is strange and at the same time wonderful for me. It is strange because I was and still am in Houston, Texas when the towers fell and I flew my American flag like everyone else. I thought and still think Bin Laden is a major threat to our security and as long as we are reactive people instead of proactive, I think we will always be scared of when and where the next attack is going to happen, and put countless innocent people through the mill at airports because of a few brilliant but consummately evil people.

It is wonderful to me because my wife and I got married in Niagara Falls, Canada on that day in 2004. It is our second anniversary today. We choose to celebrate it instead of mourn it. It is sad though that in America we don't have that freedom to marry. That very freedom and all freedom is venerated on Sept. 11. Why do we still not have it? :confused:

Notwithstanding, here is a poem and I post it as my remembrance and with the hope that someday, GLBT people will be included in the freedoms granted by our Constitution and for which we are fighting in Iraq .

One


As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.

As we carried each other down the
Stairs of the burning building,
We became one class.

As we lit candles of waiting and hope,
We became one generation.

As the firefighters and police officers
Fought their way into the inferno,
We became one gender.

As we fell to our knees
In prayer for strength,
We became one faith.

As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.

As we mourned together the great loss,
We became one family.

As we cried tears of grief and loss,
We became one soul.

As we retell with pride of
The sacrifices of heroes,
We become one people.

We are:
One color
One Class
One generation
One faith
One language
One body
One family
One soul
One people

We are the power of one.
We are united.
We are America.

(Author unknown)

[marutidas]

I agree with nonlemming, it is time to move on.
But it is not so easy for people who where at Ground Zero.
The wounds, even after five years, are still fresh in our minds.
I do not have family who live in New York, but that doesn't mean anything.
I may not have lost anyone I know, but that my point, we become indifferent after the crisis is over. Those who were not not there, move on with their lives, but those who lost Husbands, Wives, Brothers Sisters,Aunts Uncles, It is as if time stopped.

It is important to move on, to rebuild our lives, to not live in fear.
But it is more important not to forget the Lessons of that fateful day.

We must remember of the way it was on that day, when the lines blurred.
And we came together as one people, just likepnggrad79's poem.
Why does it take an overwhelming tragedy to get that kind of cooperation?

[Daniel]

9/11 is strange and at the same time wonderful for me. It is strange because I was and still am in Houston, Texas when the towers fell and I flew my American flag like everyone else.

It is wonderful to me because my wife and I got married in Niagara Falls, Canada on that day in 2004. It is our second anniversary today. We choose to celebrate it instead of mourn it.


Pnggrad- Your words are a beacon of light in a dark place today. Thank you for sharing them. May you and your spouse be blessed this day! May your love grow and shine for all to see. I rejoice in your joining and happiness.

[Daniel]

http://365gay.com/Newscon06/09/091106churches.htm

"If all the gay organists quit playing on Sunday morning," he said, "there would be silence in Christendom."

La Verita.

Let the silence speak!

[suzer1013]

Elizabeth Kaeton offers a powerful commentary on 9/11 on her blog. Read it, if you get the chance.

http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/

Susan

[tdogg]

I have a very difficult time watching any footage of 9/11 - especially the planes going into the buildings and the people jumping/falling out of the towers. just too much for me to handle. I did watch a documentary Monday evening, the one with Robert DeNiro narrating. I thought it was well done, gave a very different perspective on what happened and brought a personal touch into the events. It was the only thing I could bring myself to watch. It breaks my heart to think of those who experienced this horror firsthand and died, it breaks my heart to think of those alive who's loved ones perished this way and who are without them.

My sister's birthday is 9/11 - since 9/11/01 it has not been easy for her to share that day with what happened. It's like a blow to an otherwise happy time. With all the shows, newscasts, articles, remembrances, memorials, etc., that's what she hears and almost wishes she could forget her birthday every year. It's very hard for her.

I'm not saying to forget or not remember in your own special way. But I think that perhaps this whole thing is a bit overboard as far as the media is concerned. We don't ever have to forget, but it would be nice if we could do this type of remembrance on positive events at least as well. And if the media exploitation could be lessened, it might be beneficial to those who are still alive.

[Steven E. Webster]

My sister's birthday is 9/11 - since 9/11/01 it has not been easy for her to share that day with what happened. It's like a blow to an otherwise happy time. With all the shows, newscasts, articles, remembrances, memorials, etc., that's what she hears and almost wishes she could forget her birthday every year. It's very hard for her.


I am sure it is very hard for your sister. Maybe it might help to know (as someone must have already reported elsewhere on this board) that 9/11/2006 also marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Gandhi's Satyagraha ("truth force" or "soul force") campaign in South Africa on 9/11/1906. I believe that in the long run Gandhi's movement will be more remembered than the tragedy of 9/11/2001.

Steven Webster

[Giancarlo]

If you know any Chileans, September 11th is not a good day at all in history. Ironically, September 11th, 1973 marked the military coup in Chile.

I find it difficult even watching anything related to September 11th, and I refused to watch United 93. I just couldn't do it. I knew someone who was severely injured in the 9/11 attacks, and that really had a personal impact on me.

[tdogg]

thanks Steven, I'll have to do some research on that and pass it on to my sister. Something positive to relate to her birthday will surely help! Although, we will actually be celebrating it this Sun - Tue in Vegas with my niece and partner (all 3 have Sept birthdays) so that will be a bright spot for her! :aparty:

[Jamie McDaniel]

I came across this photo essay today. It is powerful, with the photographers sharing their experiences while also questioning our country's decisions following that day five years ago.

http://www.soulforce.org/images/wtcrip.jpg

Magnum Photos essay on 9/11 (http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essays/september11.aspx)

[Mia14]

I'm not sure how I feel about everything surrounding 9/11. I do think the media is capitalizing on the tragedy, but at the same time it's important to remember what happened.

My uncle was an NYC firefighter. That day, his firehouse received the call 10 minutes before he was scheduled to start his shift. A young firefighter named Mike told my uncle that he'd go out and for my uncle to enjoy the last 10 minutes before his shift started. That truck with Mike and 10 other men never returned. When they all realized what was happening, my uncle went to Ground Zero to help rescue people. For weeks afterward, he worked there picking up the pieces and putting body parts into black bags. Last year, he was forced into early retirement because of a respiratory problem that nobody is admitting is due to 9/11.

My mother was working in Manhattan that day. She saw the towers fall, but was not in any way physically injured. At school, I remember calling frantically trying to find out where she was.

The day has many mixed emotions and hard memories for me. It's an extremely touchy subject in my family.

[kara speltz]

I just happened to notice this thread. The day before the anniversary, I wrote this reflection. Kara

Sept. 11th marks three important anniversaries that reflect on issues of violence and nonviolence.

Five years ago, the U.S. experienced a staggering and disturbing attack. It has been said by some, that because the U.S. hasn't experience a modern day war on its own soil, the American people don't comprehend the devastation of war. Five years ago, we Americans did experience that devastation. It left us stunned but unfortunately it did not deter our national will for revenge.

Thirty-three years ago today, the first democratically elected Marxist, Salvador Allende was overthrown and murdered at the instigation of the U.S. government. The Chilean people suffered at the hands of a vicious dictator, General Pinochet for 17 years, finally ousting him in 1990. The number of Chilean's murdered at the hands of Pinochet is staggering. After such an oppressive government the will of the people finally prevailed and Chileans are regaining their freedoms.

100 years ago today, saw the launch of one of the most successful nonviolent movements of all time . Gandhi's resistance in South Africa. It started a movement that is still going today. Gandhi & M.L. King helped us understand the awesome power of love and resistance together.

As I thought of these 3 anniversaries, I thought of something my friend Jim Loney wrote just months after his rescue from captivity having been held for four months. He wrote, "I am confronted with a great paradox. I, the Christian pacifist peacemaker, am alive, am free because of the very institutions I believe are contrary to Christian teaching.

"Christ teaches us to love our enemies, do good to those who harm us, pray for those who persecute us. He calls us to accept suffering before we inflict injury. He calls us to pick up the cross and to lay down the sword.

"We will most certainly fail in this call. I did. And I'll fail again. This does not change Christ's teaching that violence itself is the tomb, violence is the dead end.

"Peace won through the barrel of a gun might be a victory, but it is not peace. Our captors have guns and they ruled over us. Our rescuers had bigger guns and ruled over our captors. We were freed, but the rule of the gun stayed.

I'm learning that there are many kinds of prisons and many kinds of tombs. Prisons of the mind, the heart, the body. Tombs of despair, fear confusion. Tombs within tombs and prisons within prisons.

"There are no easy answers. We must all find our way through a broken world, struggling with the paradox of call and failure. My captivity and rescue have helped me to catch a glimpse of how powerful the force of Resurrection is. God seeks us wherever we are, reaches for us in whatever darkness we inhabit. May we reach for each other with the same persistence. The tomb is not the final word."

Thank you Jim for your persistence and commitment to nonviolence. I hope you find his words as inspirational as I did.

[Emproph]

Bush's Seven Minutes of Silence
5WztB6HzXxI

Transcript of Bush's words (toward the very end):

STUDENTS: The girl and the goat were playing in the back yard.
TEACHER: Go on.
STUDENTS: They did not see the car robber. More to come.
TEACHER: More to come..[inaudible]
BUSH: What does that mean, more to come?
STUDENT: [inaudible]
BUSH: That’s exactly right. Whew, these are great readers.
TEACHER: Yes they are
BUSH: Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills. I bet they practice too, don’t you?
TEACHER: Oh yes, that’s a requirement. Homework, reading homework.
BUSH: Reading more than they watch TV?
TEACHER: Oh yes, oh yes.
BUSH: Everybody do that, read more than they watch TV? [students raise hands] Oh that’s great, really good, very important to practice.
TEACHER: Yes it is.
BUSH: Thanks for having us.
TEACHER: Thank you.
BUSH: Very impressive... ‘Read this book..
TEACHER: Boys and girls close your readers, place them under your chairs. And thank you so much for ____ing with us.

Edited:
Ok, I took off the hysterically funny vomit images (http://www.soulforce.org/forums/showthread.php?p=40827#post40827) (to my personal chagrin). I realize everyone is not as adept at emotional vacillation as me. Especially in regard to the tragedy of 9-11.

That's bad enough for all of us, but then there's the complication of the information above. Which is an entirely 'nother tragedy.

In a sense it's almost worse than the direct terrorist hit, at least long-term-wise. How can we feel protected if the people in charge aren't capable of taking this seriously?

How many people in that room knew of the danger and did nothing to stop proceedings and get the president to safety? Not just for his sake, but for the sake of the power of his decision making ability -- for the safety of the rest of us.

In the face of imminent national danger he looked like a lost little lamb. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the most damning evidence against the leadership of this country is the book "My Pet Goat."

Those children's lives were in danger. His own life was in danger. Your life, my life, everyone we loved was potentially at risk. And he SAT, and then he read, and then he took the time to banter.

What if 9-11 had just been a distraction for a nuclear strike?

What kind of a person in charge of 300 million people does not see the importance of this? What kind of a person approves of not seeing the importance of this? And how much more secure are we today?

Half a trillion on Iraq, in the name of security, WASTED. Arguing over whether or not to build a fence between us and Mexico of all places, to stem the "tide" of terror? And then those evil monogamously coupled gays who want to be legally recognized, literally so that they can be left alone to live in peace.

Six years have passed, and how many decisions have been made, at every level, in blind irrational fear since then, in the very name of eliminating the blind irrational fear of terror?

I've never felt less safe.

[Daniel]

I have about zero tolerance for politicians who use the remembrance of this day to fight a war that never should have been waged.

It's a fine mess we're in. And the this day just rubs it in but good.

I'm not watching the news today. Just not going there.

Know what? This day was the the primary here in NY on 9/11. And the legislature decided to postpone it a week. Like one commentator in the NYTImes, I think this would be a great day to go out and vote.


A Day of Respect, Except for the Ballot

By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: September 11, 2007
On this, the sixth anniversary of the city’s longest day, most of New York will carry on as usual. Stores will be open. So will government offices. Broadway will put on its shows. The Mets, weather permitting, will play ball. Traders at the New York Stock Exchange will buy and sell.

In short, New Yorkers will go about their normal activities — with one exception. They won’t vote. That most basic element of American democracy, the ballot, is the one normal thing forbidden them on the Sept. 11 anniversary.

And our political leaders will reassure us that the terrorists haven’t won.

Customarily, Primary Day in New York State is the second Tuesday in September. That would be today. But in May, barely noticed by most New Yorkers, the Legislature and the governor delayed the primaries until next Tuesday, Sept. 18.

So we can shop, and go to a ballgame, and make money. But allow our democracy to function normally? Nope. That is somehow incompatible with Sept. 11.

Lawmakers reached this conclusion in virtual lock step, some no doubt fearing the potential wrath of 9/11 families. The State Senate voted for the delay unanimously. In the Assembly, the vote was 136 to 9, the tiny minority consisting of 6 Democrats and 3 Republicans.

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, called it “critically important that we reserve Sept. 11 as a day when the world looks back and remembers the many heroes who lost their lives.”

But couldn’t we remember and vote at the same time? Some might even say that democracy’s normal processes would honor those heroes while telling the terrorists in a powerful way where they can go.

“Yes, you can make the case for that,” said John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno. “But I think there was a consensus all the way around that it was preferable to go this route.”

Much the same was said by Dan Weiler, a spokesman for Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker. He was asked for Mr. Silver’s reasons for seeking the postponement. As relayed by Mr. Weiler, the speaker’s response was, “We felt it was the appropriate thing to do.”

Well, that explains it.

Granted, this will not be much of a Primary Day, especially in New York City, which has nothing more exciting than a judicial race or two. Granted, some people still have bad memories of the aborted Primary Day that was Sept. 11, 2001.

Even so, did Albany bow to a new form of political correctness at the expense of respect for democratic tradition? Linda B. Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat who was one of the nine dissenters in the Assembly, seems to think so. She called the postponement “misguided.”

“The best way to recognize the significance of this attack on America and on its values,” Ms. Rosenthal said, “is not by postponing the opportunity to participate in the most fundamental democratic process we have.”

John A. Ravitz, executive director of the city’s Board of Elections, said that he and other election officials around the state had made a similar point to the Legislature. “We said, ‘What better way to prove that we had recovered and we’re not intimidated by what happened on 9/11 than to hold an election?’ ” Mr. Ravitz said. “But we were told that this” — the change in dates — “was a done deal.”

By now, it has become axiomatic among those in the political class that they alone among New Yorkers must be untrue to themselves on Sept. 11.

“I’ve given up,” said Jerry Skurnik, a political consultant. “We should vote on Sept. 11, but the problem is that people are going to attack candidates for campaigning.” Fernando Ferrer’s experience in the 2005 mayoral race is proof of that. You’d have thought that he had spit on the Constitution the way he was fiercely attacked for accepting the Rev. Al Sharpton’s endorsement on Sept. 11, two days before the Democratic primary.

What New York requires now is “a healthy public discussion about the need to move on and get back to the business of democracy,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens Union. “There are many ways in which to show respect and honor that day,” he said, “but not at the continued expense of delaying the exercise of our democracy.”

It may be worth noting that Sept. 11 will fall next on a Tuesday in 2012, a year when major offices will be at stake. Perhaps by then New York’s political leaders will get their democratic groove back.

If it would help, we could all dye our index fingers purple that day.

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com

I'm afraid that fear is ruling the day- as did the response to it in the past.

[Jennifer5]

Bush's Seven Minutes of Silence
5WztB6HzXxI

Transcript of Bush's words (toward the very end):



You'll have to forgive me. I have so many thoughts on the matter, I couldn't pick just one to express them all...



http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb71/BeautifulRoses11/Smilies/vomit.gif

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w153/cR4zYxxx/rv.jpg http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i81/satoglan/FamilyGuyVomit.gif

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb183/RAhavatar/Smilies/vomit2-1.gif

Really??:confused: I'd say for sure that it's the family guy scene... with the entire family being ill over these words. Not just one or two people but several... infact, all of Petoria.

[Progo35]

Regardless of what is going on in Iraq, I wouldn't see the NY times as being any more respectful of 9/11 than Bush or anyone else. The NY times has a serious axe to grind and enacts a double standard toward issues that serve or do not serve their own agendas.

[dsdrane]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/jaccuse_b_63783.html

[Jennifer5]

Originally Posted by NYTimes
A Day of Respect, Except for the Ballot

By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: September 11, 2007
On this, the sixth anniversary of the city’s longest day, most of New York will carry on as usual. Stores will be open. So will government offices. Broadway will put on its shows. The Mets, weather permitting, will play ball. Traders at the New York Stock Exchange will buy and sell.

In short, New Yorkers will go about their normal activities — with one exception. They won’t vote. That most basic element of American democracy, the ballot, is the one normal thing forbidden them on the Sept. 11 anniversary.

And our political leaders will reassure us that the terrorists haven’t won.

Customarily, Primary Day in New York State is the second Tuesday in September. That would be today. But in May, barely noticed by most New Yorkers, the Legislature and the governor delayed the primaries until next Tuesday, Sept. 18.

So we can shop, and go to a ballgame, and make money. But allow our democracy to function normally? Nope. That is somehow incompatible with Sept. 11.

Lawmakers reached this conclusion in virtual lock step, some no doubt fearing the potential wrath of 9/11 families. The State Senate voted for the delay unanimously. In the Assembly, the vote was 136 to 9, the tiny minority consisting of 6 Democrats and 3 Republicans.

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, called it “critically important that we reserve Sept. 11 as a day when the world looks back and remembers the many heroes who lost their lives.”

But couldn’t we remember and vote at the same time? Some might even say that democracy’s normal processes would honor those heroes while telling the terrorists in a powerful way where they can go.

“Yes, you can make the case for that,” said John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno. “But I think there was a consensus all the way around that it was preferable to go this route.”

Much the same was said by Dan Weiler, a spokesman for Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker. He was asked for Mr. Silver’s reasons for seeking the postponement. As relayed by Mr. Weiler, the speaker’s response was, “We felt it was the appropriate thing to do.”

Well, that explains it.

Granted, this will not be much of a Primary Day, especially in New York City, which has nothing more exciting than a judicial race or two. Granted, some people still have bad memories of the aborted Primary Day that was Sept. 11, 2001.

Even so, did Albany bow to a new form of political correctness at the expense of respect for democratic tradition? Linda B. Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat who was one of the nine dissenters in the Assembly, seems to think so. She called the postponement “misguided.”

“The best way to recognize the significance of this attack on America and on its values,” Ms. Rosenthal said, “is not by postponing the opportunity to participate in the most fundamental democratic process we have.”

John A. Ravitz, executive director of the city’s Board of Elections, said that he and other election officials around the state had made a similar point to the Legislature. “We said, ‘What better way to prove that we had recovered and we’re not intimidated by what happened on 9/11 than to hold an election?’ ” Mr. Ravitz said. “But we were told that this” — the change in dates — “was a done deal.”

By now, it has become axiomatic among those in the political class that they alone among New Yorkers must be untrue to themselves on Sept. 11.

“I’ve given up,” said Jerry Skurnik, a political consultant. “We should vote on Sept. 11, but the problem is that people are going to attack candidates for campaigning.” Fernando Ferrer’s experience in the 2005 mayoral race is proof of that. You’d have thought that he had spit on the Constitution the way he was fiercely attacked for accepting the Rev. Al Sharpton’s endorsement on Sept. 11, two days before the Democratic primary.

What New York requires now is “a healthy public discussion about the need to move on and get back to the business of democracy,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens Union. “There are many ways in which to show respect and honor that day,” he said, “but not at the continued expense of delaying the exercise of our democracy.”

It may be worth noting that Sept. 11 will fall next on a Tuesday in 2012, a year when major offices will be at stake. Perhaps by then New York’s political leaders will get their democratic groove back.

If it would help, we could all dye our index fingers purple that day.

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com

I'm afraid that fear is ruling the day- as did the response to it in the past.

Wow... that article bother's me for so many reasons... I'm not even going to go into it. But what does everyone else think of it? :headbang:

[Jennifer5]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/jaccuse_b_63783.html

I like him..... I love this,
America is today under the steady gaze of billions of the world's citizens and even more under the examining lens of history. Nothing is more difficult than to admit that we made a tragic mistake in selecting our leaders. But that is the first step toward redemption. Absolute rejection of those who lay claim to ownership of security is the next.

[Jennifer5]

I'm not a patriotic person... but this far beyond that.

[Jennifer5]

In July 2006, National Public Radio and The New York Times reported that a decade-old CIA unit named Alec Station – whose mission was to hunt bin Laden and his top lieutenants – was disbanded in late 2005. While a former official in charge of the unit, Michael Scheuer, calls the move a mistake, a CIA spokeswoman said “the efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever.”

Interesting.

[RedneckDyke]

I rmember last year during the 5 year anniversary. I was listening to a call-in show. A woman said "It should be required that everyone watch that footage of those planes hitting the buildings. If you don't watch you are doing people dishonor."

I thought "How is my not watching television dishonoring anyone? how is watching it honoring anyone? watching tv is a passive act that only effects me."

I can't listen to all the stuff they air today. It's too sad. That does not make me a bad person. And listening to it would not make me good.

[Jennifer5]

I rmember last year during the 5 year anniversary. I was listening to a call-in show. A woman said "It should be required that everyone watch that footage of those planes hitting the buildings. If you don't watch you are doing people dishonor."

I thought "How is my not watching television dishonoring anyone? how is watching it honoring anyone? watching tv is a passive act that only effects me."

I can't listen to all the stuff they air today. It's too sad. That does not make me a bad person. And listening to it would not make me good.

I deinfately agree. I think remembering these people, thinking of them, thinking of their families and friends is what's important. You know what happened, you don't need to see it again. :love:

[Jennifer5]

Edited:
Ok, I took off the hysterically funny vomit images (http://www.soulforce.org/forums/showthread.php?p=40827#post40827) (to my personal chagrin). I realize everyone is not as adept at emotional vacillation as me. Especially in regard to the tragedy of 9-11.

That's bad enough for all of us, but then there's the complication of the information above. Which is an entirely 'nother tragedy.

In a sense it's almost worse than the direct terrorist hit, at least long-term-wise. How can we feel protected if the people in charge aren't capable of taking this seriously?

How many people in that room knew of the danger and did nothing to stop proceedings and get the president to safety? Not just for his sake, but for the sake of the power of his decision making ability -- for the safety of the rest of us.

In the face of imminent national danger he looked like a lost little lamb. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the most damning evidence against the leadership of this country is the book "My Pet Goat."

Those children's lives were in danger. His own life was in danger. Your life, my life, everyone we loved was potentially at risk. And he SAT, and then he read, and then he took the time to banter.

What if 9-11 had just been a distraction for a nuclear strike?

What kind of a person in charge of 300 million people does not see the importance of this? What kind of a person approves of not seeing the importance of this? And how much more secure are we today?

Half a trillion on Iraq, in the name of security, WASTED. Arguing over whether or not to build a fence between us and Mexico of all places, to stem the "tide" of terror? And then those evil monogamously coupled gays who want to be legally recognized, literally so that they can be left alone to live in peace.

Six years have passed, and how many decisions have been made, at every level, in blind irrational fear since then, in the very name of eliminating the blind irrational fear of terror?

I've never felt less safe.

The truth in those words gives me the chills. :shield::earth:

The way I see it, our nation has forgotten the very thing we stand for. "United we stand" but "divided we fall". People are living in fear.

[pnggrad79]

I feel like as a lesbian that while my rights are being deprived of and we can't get married, we don't need to celebrate Patriot Day. Until this country does what it says it believes in freedom and justice for all, I refuse to pledge allegiance to this flag because it does not represent me.

9/11 was a horrible event, but my wife and I chose this day to get married in 2004 to make it a good day to remember. :) I choose to remember it as my anniversary and not a day of mourning. It was tragic that so many people died, but I still feel for the gay people who lost partners and were injured even more when they were denied benefits because of the lack of recognition of their relationship. :(

[Daniel]

Regardless of what is going on in Iraq, I wouldn't see the NY times as being any more respectful of 9/11 than Bush or anyone else. The NY times has a serious axe to grind and enacts a double standard toward issues that serve or do not serve their own agendas.

Megan- I'm not interested in being 'repectful' of those like Mr. Bush who send American's to die so that other Americans can put gas in their tanks. I really think you have your priorities muddled here.

Axe to grind? And what would that be?

The NYTimes, in case you didn't know, made a HUGE error - and error which they later admitted to- in publishing Judith Miller's article about alluminum tubes which played into the hands of an administration which was intent on going to war in Iraq on September 11th. Like all media at the time, they did little to ask the hard questions- another matter which they have acknowledged. If they had done so, we might not be in the situation that we are in now.

And in case you aren't aware, the article I referenced is ONE opinion our of many in the Times. It may not be the Wall Street Journal (a very conservative paper), but they do have their share of conservatives in the Op-Ed page, David Brooks being one of them.

Would it be disrespectful to go out an vote today? I don't think so. My feeling is that 9/11 is all the more reason to be involved in the democratic process.

We are wayyyyyyy too comfortable in this country of ours.....

[Emproph]

I have about zero tolerance for politicians who use the remembrance of this day to fight a war that never should have been waged.

It's a fine mess we're in.

I'm afraid that fear is ruling the day- as did the response to it in the past.Know what? This day was the the primary here in NY on 9/11. And the legislature decided to postpone it a week. Like one commentator in the NYTImes, I think this would be a great day to go out and vote.the Legislature and the governor delayed the primaries until next Tuesday, Sept. 18....That is somehow incompatible with Sept. 11.

Gee, why not just postpone the "war on terror" for a week?

Imagine conservatives in a world without a week of Fox News. http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m252/RiverIsMyGoddess/icons/smiley_omgomgomg.gif

[Progo35]

Daniel-
I do think that it should be clear from my post that I am talking about respecting the FAMILIES of those who died, NOT Bush. Using the 9/11 victims to bash Bush isn't very respectful, either. By the way, I am not pleased with the Wall Street Journal, either, because it has published articles demonize learning disabled people as subverters of intellectual rigor and tradition. The New York Times is a very liberal newspaper, just as the WSJ is a conservative one.

Axe? They HATE Bush. They BADLY want a Democrat to be elected in the next election. For instance, when there was a terrorist threat that involved the Kennedy airport, that incident ended up on the 13th page of the paper. On the front page was a story about puppets. This is not the first time the Times has downplayed terror threats or practically accused America of inciting the Semptember 11th attacks. It's not just them...lots of papers and newscasts do that. In this article, the Times calls for an election ON SEPTEMBER 11th so that PEOPLE'S EMOTIONAL PAIN AND ANGER CAN BE USED TO INFLUENCE HOW THEY VOTE. That is manipulative to the highest degree. November 8th is when we vote and that shouldn't change so that people who hate Bush can use that tragedy to their advantage when people go to the poles.

[dsdrane]

Regardless of what is going on in Iraq, I wouldn't see the NY times as being any more respectful of 9/11 than Bush or anyone else. The NY times has a serious axe to grind and enacts a double standard toward issues that serve or do not serve their own agendas.

Progo, I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Please explain.

[dsdrane]

I rmember last year during the 5 year anniversary. I was listening to a call-in show. A woman said "It should be required that everyone watch that footage of those planes hitting the buildings. If you don't watch you are doing people dishonor."

I thought "How is my not watching television dishonoring anyone? how is watching it honoring anyone? watching tv is a passive act that only effects me."

I can't listen to all the stuff they air today. It's too sad. That does not make me a bad person. And listening to it would not make me good.

Redneck --

Of course this does not make you a bad person. What an awful thing to imply.

Gore, violence, cruelty, horror edify no one. Implying they do is grotesque.

As a former New Yorker and a former Lower Manhattanite, I take deep umbrage at this notion of "visual witness".

Bullshit!

You get it or you don't. The people who impart some sort of patriotism onto this event make me sick. Do not listen to them; they have no idea what they are talking about. They are using this tradegy for their own political purposes.

Shame on them.

[tpdncr4christ]

I can feel this thread is very angry, and if I am correct it was created as a remembrance of those who died on that beautiful day. It breaks my heart, this anger, this is not the place for it.

I wrote this a year after it happened, and I read it every year after that, and every time the clock turns 9:11 I say a prayer, "Always remember, never forget."

A Beautiful Day

It is a beautiful day. The sun dances across the morning water, skipping over the statue of liberty’s torch. There is this man, looking out the window of the 93rd floor. He is smiling. He is wearing a pinstriped three-piece suit, complete with necktie (Windsor knot), silver wristwatch, and wallet full of portraits of his family. They are smiling; ignorant blissful smiles. You see, something is wrong with them. They know a secret. This man’s daughter has been diagnosed with cancer. Leukemia. But, he is smiling. This man was smiling. You see, he is standing outside of a door. On the other side of that door, however, was hope for his daughter. He is smiling because he is about to receive a long awaited promotion. He is smiling because he can now afford the bone marrow transplant. He is smiling because he has felt the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. He is smiling because it is a beautiful day.

But then, on the other side of the world, and there is another man. He is in this cave, hunched, dirty, and hiding, like a rat. He is watching the television. He watches stunned news reporters and fear stricken anchormen tell a horrid tale. He watches as plane after plane hit the Trade Center. He watches as two swirling towers o f smoke and dust consume once glorious models of modern engineering. He watches as encroaching clouds of dust and debris engulf terrified and fleeing people, covering their mouths to keep from breathing in the noxious fumes. He watches as lives are torn apart; fathers ripped from sons, mothers from daughters. He watches, and he smiles. You see he smiles because he knows years of planning did not go to waste. He smiles because he knows he will be remembered. He smiles because he know’s he will be feared. He smiles because he knows he will be hated. He smiles because it is a beautiful day.

[Jennifer5]

I can feel this thread is very angry, and if I am correct it was created as a remembrance of those who died on that beautiful day. It breaks my heart, this anger, this is not the place for it.

I wrote this a year after it happened, and I read it every year after that, and every time the clock turns 9:11 I say a prayer, "Always remember, never forget."
A Beautiful Day

It is a beautiful day. The sun dances across the morning water, skipping over the statue of liberty’s torch. There is this man, looking out the window of the 93rd floor. He is smiling. He is wearing a pinstriped three-piece suit, complete with necktie (Windsor knot), silver wristwatch, and wallet full of portraits of his family. They are smiling; ignorant blissful smiles. You see, something is wrong with them. They know a secret. This man’s daughter has been diagnosed with cancer. Leukemia. But, he is smiling. This man was smiling. You see, he is standing outside of a door. On the other side of that door, however, was hope for his daughter. He is smiling because he is about to receive a long awaited promotion. He is smiling because he can now afford the bone marrow transplant. He is smiling because he has felt the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. He is smiling because it is a beautiful day.

But then, on the other side of the world, and there is another man. He is in this cave, hunched, dirty, and hiding, like a rat. He is watching the television. He watches stunned news reporters and fear stricken anchormen tell a horrid tale. He watches as plane after plane hit the Trade Center. He watches as two swirling towers o f smoke and dust consume once glorious models of modern engineering. He watches as encroaching clouds of dust and debris engulf terrified and fleeing people, covering their mouths to keep from breathing in the noxious fumes. He watches as lives are torn apart; fathers ripped from sons, mothers from daughters. He watches, and he smiles. You see he smiles because he knows years of planning did not go to waste. He smiles because he knows he will be remembered. He smiles because he know’s he will be feared. He smiles because he knows he will be hated. He smiles because it is a beautiful day.


Thank you so for that! I agree that this thread was becoming unfriendly.

Love you and your words :love: :love: :love:


Today, hold in your hearts and pray for the families who grieve because they have lost the one they loved. :pray:

[Daniel]

I can feel this thread is very angry, and if I am correct it was created as a remembrance of those who died on that beautiful day. It breaks my heart, this anger, this is not the place for it.

I wrote this a year after it happened, and I read it every year after that, and every time the clock turns 9:11 I say a prayer, "Always remember, never forget."

tpdncr- It's a very challenging- and clarifying- piece that you've written. Thank you for posting it here. You must be aware- are you not- that it is not without it's own expression of anger? The contrast between the two paragraphs sets up sympathy for one party and animus towards another.

Look. I'll get to the point, but please don't think I'm being patronizing. That is not my intent.

Your post, while not specifically identifying anyone, is addressing two members of this forum who lived through the the falling of the Twin Towers- one from a distance of blocks- and the other from further uptown- myself actually. And we're not exactly happy campers regarding 9/11 and what followed.

Imagine smelling death when the wind would change every evening for the next six months. Imagine watching nearly 3000 people die firsthand -as my husband did. Imagine watching politicians say all the right things and then do all the wrong things. Imagine being startled by the sound of any jet that flew overhead for the next two years. Imagine having 12 firefighters who worked 2 blocks from your house never come home again. Imagine going to work and seeing those billboarded faces greet one every day. Imagine watching people walk home for miles and miles from ground zero covered, head to toe, in dust. The same dust that would give ground zero workers serious lung problems.

Imagine 3000 more dead for a war that should have never been waged. The dead heaped upon the dead.

All this makes one very sad- and very angry.

Anger.

It's not nice. It's not pretty. It's not easy to swallow, sticking to every surface, scraping one raw as it goes down. But like the rest of the emotions we have as human beings, it is a normal response to stress, death, destruction and the ignorant actions of those who only seem capable of thinking of self-interest.

What you may not understand at your young age is the blinding rage that can accompany the sorrows that come with life. And there is a reason why idealism is often left to the young- and why they are convinced they must go off and fight wars, strap bombs on their bodies, and join militia's.

Through not fault of their own, they haven't lived nearly enough, or lost enough, of loved enough to know that all that we see is passing passing passing- and because this is so, must be cherished more than anything.

This thread isn't just about the people who died. It is about the people who survived. It is about people who care very deeply about everything that happened and did not happen on 9/11, and in the days, weeks, months and years after.

Some of us mourn by sitting quietly. Some of us mourn by crying. Some of us mourn by allowing ourselves to become angry. And getting busy. Very very busy.

[Daniel]

Progo- You don't know what you're talking about.

This is not the first time the Times has downplayed terror threats or practically accused America of inciting the Semptember 11th attacks. It's not just them...lots of papers and newscasts do that. In this article, the Times calls for an election ON SEPTEMBER 11th so that PEOPLE'S EMOTIONAL PAIN AND ANGER CAN BE USED TO INFLUENCE HOW THEY VOTE. That is manipulative to the highest degree. November 8th is when we vote and that shouldn't change so that people who hate Bush can use that tragedy to their advantage when people go to the poles.

The writer- a Mr. Haberman- was talking about local elections- not the general one on November 8th.

[Daniel]

A little perspective...


90th Floor Frozen, Even as Ground Zero Changes

By JIM DWYER
Published: September 12, 2007
Anne Foodim, Manhattan apartment dweller, lighted three candles on her dining table yesterday morning, then switched on the television to hear the name of a slight man in a sport jacket. With a few soft words, some gentle squeezes to shoulders, that man, a colleague, helped save Ms. Foodim and others on the 90th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center in 2001.

His name — Ed Emery — would be somewhere around the 700th on the list of 2,750 read at the Sept. 11 memorial service. So Ms. Foodim absorbed the stately pace of the event, taking note of its scale six years after the attack.

On the first anniversary, she had been chosen to read names as a representative of those who had escaped. The city stood still. Thousands crowded the site, and others who could not get in stood on sidewalks, listening to the ceremony on the radios of parked cars.

Yesterday, on a showery morning, no more than a few hundred relatives and friends of the dead gathered on Liberty Street. Ahead of them, a grove of construction cranes rose from the pit of ground zero. Behind them, traffic heaved along Broadway, the soaring notes of a flutist’s “Amazing Grace” dueling with the diesel wheeze of buses.

The families hiked down a ramp to drop flowers into a pool. No one will make precisely that memory walk again; the ground will be built over next year.

Sept. 11, as a public occasion, has shrunk to life size: potent as ever for people holding photographs of fathers on their wedding days and mothers in their backyards, but unlikely to start wars again.

Babies are in first grade, children have graduated from high school, teenagers have finished college. Ms. Foodim, now 63, has effectively retired. She had been fighting cancer, and could barely get down the stairs that morning.

“In some ways, strange as this is to say, Sept. 11 was good for me,” Ms. Foodim said. “I didn’t know what I had in me. In certain ways, you could say Ed saved my life.”

The personal narratives of that day in 2001 were almost immediately overtaken by the cosmic. The initials N.Y.P.D. and F.D.N.Y. were stenciled onto T-shirts and hats, then onto the sides of munitions that were launched first into Afghanistan, where the Taliban had sheltered Al Qaeda, and later into Iraq, which had no connection to the attacks.

“I don’t know how the country could buy into it to begin with,” Ms. Foodim said. “Whatever happened to Osama bin Laden?”

Two presidential candidates, both New Yorkers, attended the memorial yesterday. One of them, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, was scarcely seen; the other, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, briefly spoke, quoting the writer Eli Wiesel on the need for a moral response to evil.

Other members of Mr. Giuliani’s administration were present, including his business partner and protégé, who was then the police commissioner: Bernard B. Kerik, who pleaded guilty last year to accepting $165,000 in home renovations while in office from a company suspected of ties to organized crime. In his path to the stage yesterday, Mr. Giuliani, whether by design or chance, kept well clear of Mr. Kerik, who was standing in a section reserved for dignitaries.

Ms. Foodim recalled the day six years earlier. She had gone to work, at the end of a long siege of chemotherapy for breast cancer; she was just starting the ordeal of radiation.

That morning, she said, “I struggled up the steps out of the subway at Fulton Street, and said, ‘I am so glad I’m alive because look at that blue sky.’ ”

She worked for Fiduciary Trust, which had offices in the south tower. When the first plane struck the north tower, she felt the heat through the windows.

Mr. Emery arrived with a sense of calm and command, she said. “Ed came running out of his office, and he said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ ” Ms. Foodim said.

He ushered a group from the 90th floor to the staircase, and led them down to the 78th floor, where they could take an express elevator to the lobby.

AS she walked down the stairs, Ms. Foodim felt the weight of the moment, and the cancer treatments, wearing on her.

She paused on landings, exhausted. Through her illness, Mr. Emery had coaxed her along, encouraging her to get rest when she needed it, but welcoming her company at work. He had given her a book on tranquillity for her birthday a few weeks earlier.

Now, she said, Mr. Emery was talking her down the stairs. “Ed said, ‘If you can finish chemo, you can get down those steps,’ ” she recalled.

At the 78th floor, one of their group, Elsie Castellanos, who had also been working at the trade center when it was bombed in 1993, became upset. Mr. Emery patted her shoulder, and urged her onto the elevator with the others.

As they approached the elevators, they heard an announcement. “Exact words: ‘The building is secure, please return to your desks,’ ” Ms. Foodim said.

“I had been out the day before. I was always a good little girl. How could you go home, if the building is secure? Ed said, ‘You know what, it’s O.K., go ahead.’ ”

The Fiduciary group boarded the express car. “He promised to be down directly, but had to go back up for something or someone,” Ms. Foodim said.

Ms. Foodim and her group got clear of the building. Somewhere between 14,000 and 17,000 people escaped from the two towers, investigations later found.

Not Mr. Emery. He climbed to the 97th floor with another Fiduciary employee, Alayne Gentul, to evacuate a group of people who were working on the computer systems. They were trapped by the second plane.

For months after, Ms. Foodim worked as the Fiduciary representative at a family center set up by the city on Pier 94, helping with benefits and death certificates for the survivors of nearly 100 people. After two years, she had had enough; she attributes her own psychic survival to a therapist she continues to see.

She lives with two dogs and has a network of friends, women she has met over the last six years. Most of them are from her neighborhood on the Upper East Side. “I don’t keep in touch with anyone from Fiduciary,” she said.

She gathered with some of her friends at her home yesterday morning. She wept a little when the Brooklyn Youth Chorus sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” at the memorial. And she lighted the candles, one for her lost Fiduciary colleagues, one for Ms. Gentul and one for Ed Emery.

[tpdncr4christ]

Your post, while not specifically identifying anyone, is addressing two members of this forum who lived through the the falling of the Twin Towers- one from a distance of blocks- and the other from further uptown- myself actually. And we're not exactly happy campers regarding 9/11 and what followed.

I had a very dear friend who was supposed to bring me back pictures from her New York trip. She never came back. We had a memorial service for her yesterday, and it was just as painful as when my family found out she wasn't coming back. I don't believe that you are wrong in being angry, or in debating with a clear head, I just don't believe you should express your anger here.

What anger you read from my piece is your interpretation, and I will not deny it is there, but the pain is there. The anger is not bad, this is just not the place for it. Take it to another thread.

[Jennifer5]

A little perspective...
Wow... :pray:

I had a very dear friend who was supposed to bring me back pictures from her New York trip. She never came back. We had a memorial service for her yesterday, and it was just as painful as when my family found out she wasn't coming back. I don't believe that you are wrong in being angry, or in debating with a clear head, I just don't believe you should express your anger here.

What anger you read from my piece is your interpretation, and I will not deny it is there, but the pain is there. The anger is not bad, this is just not the place for it. Take it to another thread.

:love: Sorry Daniel, but I agree with Austin. Just because this doesn't seem like a place for it, we can do a different 9/11 thread and talk more about it in that way, but here... I don't know.

[dsdrane]

I had a very dear friend who was supposed to bring me back pictures from her New York trip. She never came back. We had a memorial service for her yesterday, and it was just as painful as when my family found out she wasn't coming back. I don't believe that you are wrong in being angry, or in debating with a clear head, I just don't believe you should express your anger here.

What anger you read from my piece is your interpretation, and I will not deny it is there, but the pain is there. The anger is not bad, this is just not the place for it. Take it to another thread.

Austin, I respect and honor your feelings and your loss. And I respect your opinion.

What I do not respect and, frankly, will not regard is your self-appointed role as editor on this thread.

[dsdrane]

tpdncr- It's a very challenging- and clarifying- piece that you've written. Thank you for posting it here. You must be aware- are you not- that it is not without it's own expression of anger? The contrast between the two paragraphs sets up sympathy for one party and animus towards another.

Look. I'll get to the point, but please don't think I'm being patronizing. That is not my intent.

Your post, while not specifically identifying anyone, is addressing two members of this forum who lived through the the falling of the Twin Towers- one from a distance of blocks- and the other from further uptown- myself actually. And we're not exactly happy campers regarding 9/11 and what followed.

Imagine smelling death when the wind would change every evening for the next six months. Imagine watching nearly 3000 people die firsthand -as my husband did. Imagine watching politicians say all the right things and then do all the wrong things. Imagine being startled by the sound of any jet that flew overhead for the next two years. Imagine having 12 firefighters who worked 2 blocks from your house never come home again. Imagine going to work and seeing those billboarded faces greet one every day. Imagine watching people walk home for miles and miles from ground zero covered, head to toe, in dust. The same dust that would give ground zero workers serious lung problems.

Imagine 3000 more dead for a war that should have never been waged. The dead heaped upon the dead.

All this makes one very sad- and very angry.

Anger.

It's not nice. It's not pretty. It's not easy to swallow, sticking to every surface, scraping one raw as it goes down. But like the rest of the emotions we have as human beings, it is a normal response to stress, death, destruction and the ignorant actions of those who only seem capable of thinking of self-interest.

What you may not understand at your young age is the blinding rage that can accompany the sorrows that come with life. And there is a reason why idealism is often left to the young- and why they are convinced they must go off and fight wars, strap bombs on their bodies, and join militia's.

Through not fault of their own, they haven't lived nearly enough, or lost enough, of loved enough to know that all that we see is passing passing passing- and because this is so, must be cherished more than anything.

This thread isn't just about the people who died. It is about the people who survived. It is about people who care very deeply about everything that happened and did not happen on 9/11, and in the days, weeks, months and years after.

Some of us mourn by sitting quietly. Some of us mourn by crying. Some of us mourn by allowing ourselves to become angry. And getting busy. Very very busy.

Thank you for writing this.

What some here fail to understand is that there are many ways to remember, and to honor, and that emotions aren't something easily tidied up and compartmentalized.

If a more pious or solemn remembrance thread is desired by some, perhaps another can be set up, complete with rules about what is and is not appropriate behavior or language.

[Zerbie]

I had a very dear friend who was supposed to bring me back pictures from her New York trip. She never came back. We had a memorial service for her yesterday, and it was just as painful as when my family found out she wasn't coming back. I don't believe that you are wrong in being angry, or in debating with a clear head, I just don't believe you should express your anger here.

What anger you read from my piece is your interpretation, and I will not deny it is there, but the pain is there. The anger is not bad, this is just not the place for it. Take it to another thread.

Austin, you wouldn't like being told not to express your pain here. Please. dont' tell Daniel not to express his anger here. Your note seems to imply Daniel is doing something "bad" by expressing anger about 9-11. Gee, being angry at the murder of 3000 - bad? Disrespectful of them? Hardy.

Anger is a genuine grief response. It BELONGS to a memorial thread.

If I read you right, you want to keep this thread clear of "bad" stuff so it can honor the lives lost, but genuine emotional reactions do no dishonor. Otoh, it does read as you giving Daniel orders when you tell him "take it to another thread." He shouldn't. The suggestion is out of place because the response BELONGS here.

[Progo35]

To all those who lost loved ones in these attacks, I am so deeply sorry. I sincerely pray that each day will continue to bring healing and edification.

Daniel: Whether or not the paper is talking about local elections is not the point. Regardless of what elections are taking place, my analysis still stands as a valid interpretation/criticism. Re-scheduling any election to take advantage of this tragedy is wrong. That is my interpretation of this man's post. You may not agree with it, but that does not mean that I "don't know what I'm talking about."Moreover, I am only able to respond to what you, yourself, post. If you want people to read the more conservative articles from the NYT or expect people to be aware of every factor that may play into this article, than you should also post those links.

Drsdane: What I mean is that from my experience, the NY times endorses a one-way view on most things and that this view typically leans toward the left. Christianity is repeatedly attacked at the first opportunity, while other religious displays are encouraged. It is wrong to tap people's callls but it is okay to starve disabled people to death. The way they present the facts manipulates their presentation of the story so that only one side is presented as valid. For instance, the NYT is not likely to give equal/objective consideration/presentation of Bush's analysis when compared to Hillary Clinton's analysis of anything, let alone 9/11, elections or the war in Iraq. Another example of their lack of objectivity and fairness was when the Passion of the Christ came out.

The NYT RUSHED to call Mel Gibson an anti-Semitic jerk: because he portrayed first century jews as causing Jesus' death. They felt that this should not have been done and that it incited anti-Semitic feelings. The fact that the Gospels record Jesus coming to the Jews and that Jesus' own people (who just happened to be jews) rejected him as part of the Gospel story did not seem to concern them. I got the impression that they didn't care what the Gospels actually said: they felt that Gibson should have doctored them and/or not used materials from another source, a Catholic mystic, because of the horrendous attrocities that were traditionally committed against Jews after Medieval Passion plays: HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. Yes, I know about what Gibson allegedly said when drunk, and its a real shame. But, the NYT attacked him LONG before this happened and NEVER said that before this movie came out. This kind of behavior only numbs people to real anti-Semitism when it occurs. Frankly, because I have no idea of what he actually said and the whole secular world seemed to be out to get Gibson after the movie came out, I wonder if the policemen involved manipulated Gibson's words or made it up. Why? Because of the bias I see in how Gibson is portrayed. If people portrayed other things, like this movie, as a piece of art/religious expression, I would be more inclined to listen to such publications in more serious matters.

It angers me. I expect honest reporting that gives both sides a fair shot in complicated issues. Right now, I feel like the NYT is telling people what to think. So, that's what I mean.
I don't feel that people have to agree...and I don't think that the NYT can't be seen as a reliable source of information: I just think that it needs to be balanced out with other sources. For instance, Daniel, you made a comment about the Wall Street Journal. If you are truly interested in considering all sides of issues we face and you see that paper as conservative, why not include an article from them to give a conservative viewpoint? You don't HAVE to do this, but I think that it is fair to expect people to disagree with you when you post things and to hold strong opinions on them that differ from your own.

[Daniel]

But we're not reading the same article.


Daniel: Whether or not the paper is talking about local elections is not the point. Regardless of what elections are taking place, my analysis still stands as a valid interpretation/criticism. Re-scheduling any election to take advantage of this tragedy is wrong.

The article I read by Mr. Haberman talked about how the NY legistlature moved voting day FROM september 11th to September 18th- that is- it was rescheduled- and not for nefarious motives. It's been NORMAL for NY to vote on the second Tuesday of September, only THIS year, that day fell on 9/11.

Mr. Haberman simply questions the need to change NY's normal voting process.

Are there those who still reel when this day comes around every year? You bet. And I'm one of them as this thread can attest. Does that mean I should sit at home and not do my civic duty because I'm afraid to face the day?

I hope to God not.

Would going out to vote mean that somehow, everyone is this city is going to vote democratic and our boys and girls in Iraq will be brought home tomorrow?

(And even those on the far right could make the case that New Yorkers are caving in to the terrorists- who are winning by interrupting the normal course of our lives. What were we told in the weeks after 9/11? Go back to the theatre. Go shopping. Don't be afraid! Live your life!)

I have news for you. This city is by-and-large already democractic. And if our mayor was up for election (he switched parties- from Democrat to Republican and is now an Independent), he would get elected regardless of his affiliation.

Now. Can you name the candidates and issues that are facing my fellow citizens here? Can you tell me how they would be coerced into voting a different way if they had to vote on 9/11?

I fear, as is said in the Mikado, that you are looking for a punishment to fit the crime. Of course, one of your imagination.

[Progo35]

Daniel:
That is just my point. I HAVE NO IDEA about what is going on OTHER THAN WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO PUT OUT THERE. Please don't expect people to magically know all of the factors that relate to articles you post or expect them to go and look them up, unless you yourself plan to look up everything to verify it the next time someone else posts an article.

When I opined about the NY times, I was not attacking YOU. The comments contained in your last post seem very attacking to me and it hurts me that you don't have enough respect for me not to talk to me (or others) like that. This is just a forum. Not life and death, and not worth attacking people over.

[Daniel]

Daniel:
That is just my point. I HAVE NO IDEA about what is going on OTHER THAN WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO PUT OUT THERE. Please don't expect people to magically know all of the factors that relate to articles you post or expect them to go and look them up, unless you yourself plan to look up everything to verify it the next time someone else posts an article.

When I opined about the NY times, I was not attacking YOU. The comments contained in your last post seem very attacking to me and it hurts me that you don't have enough respect for me not to talk to me (or others) like that. This is just a forum. Not life and death, and not worth attacking people over.

Is this your fallback position when you don't - or aren't able- articulate things to your satistfaction?

You used the word 'analysis'- not I. A word that implies a level of study that leads to a well-thought out conclusion. I don't think your assertions are worthy of the term.

Perthaps it was is an unfortunate use of language on your part. But for someone who routinely inserts life and death matters into her posts at the drop of the hat....well....the ironies abound, don't they?

But I'm sliding dangerously towards sarcasm here.

Oops! I fell in!

You're gonna have to find some else to spar with.

[dsdrane]

Daniel: Whether or not the paper is talking about local elections is not the point. Regardless of what elections are taking place, my analysis still stands as a valid interpretation/criticism. Re-scheduling any election to take advantage of this tragedy is wrong.

Ok, this goes to a larger point of mine that people outside New York have taken ownership of this event.

And it pisses me the hell off.

Oh, boy howdy, it pisses me off.

You know what: we don't need your breast thumping and your flag-belt-buckle-wearing and your my-way-or-the-highway platitudes.

Ms. Progo: the reason the primaries were called off on September 11, 2001, was because the voting was f@cking interrupted by the goddamn terrorist attacks of f@cking September 11th.

What else, exactly, do you need to understand!?!?

Are you that dense!?!?

There is no conspiracy here, just some goddamn logistics that a child should be able to understand.

[Daniel]

Ms. Progo: the reason the primaries were called off on September 11, 2001, was because the voting was f@cking interrupted by the goddamn terrorist attacks of f@cking September 11th.


A bit crude perhaps, but I think you've stated the case accurately counselor. You make my blather read like Gone With the Wind.

And I f@cking love you for it. :D

[dsdrane]

A bit crude perhaps, but I think you've stated the case accurately counselor. You make my blather read like Gone With the Wind.

And I f@cking love you for it. :D

...and damn my 12.5% Irish temperament.

[Daniel]

...and damn my 12.5% Irish temperament.

I hope you said that with an accent.

You know....there's a Irish Pub around the corner. Meet me in 15 minutes!

[dsdrane]

I hope you said that with an accent.

You know....there's a Irish Pub around the corner. Meet me in 15 minutes!

...and don't you tempt me, Daniel! It's cruel!

Loving you...you old so'n'so, you!!!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

[Daniel]

...and don't you tempt me, Daniel! It's cruel!

Loving you...you old so'n'so, you!!!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Oh.......cruel fate! I call you laddie and I get old......sigh.....

I think I'll go sing Dido's Lament now.

Remember me! Remember me! But ah....forget not my fate!

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I love you back bunches. And we will go round the corner.....

And toast new love and brighter futures for our respective towns.

[dsdrane]

Oh.......cruel fate! I call you laddie and I get old......sigh.....

I think I'll go sing Dido's Lament now.

Remember me! Remember me! But ah....forget not my fate!

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I love you back bunches. And we will go round the corner.....

And toast new love and brighter futures for our respective towns.


Oooooo, you know it!

And I know exactly where we'll go: there's a pub on 2nd Ave...in the low 20's...it's perfect! Musicians wander in....

Chi-town, on the other hand, this I need to research....

[Emproph]

Lawmakers reached this conclusion in virtual lock step, some no doubt fearing the potential wrath of 9/11 families. The State Senate voted for the delay unanimously. In the Assembly, the vote was 136 to 9, the tiny minority consisting of 6 Democrats and 3 Republicans.

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, called it “critically important that we reserve Sept. 11 as a day when the world looks back and remembers the many heroes who lost their lives.”

But couldn’t we remember and vote at the same time? Some might even say that democracy’s normal processes would honor those heroes while telling the terrorists in a powerful way where they can go.

“Yes, you can make the case for that,” said John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno. “But I think there was a consensus all the way around that it was preferable to go this route.”

Much the same was said by Dan Weiler, a spokesman for Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker. He was asked for Mr. Silver’s reasons for seeking the postponement. As relayed by Mr. Weiler, the speaker’s response was, “We felt it was the appropriate thing to do.”

Well, that explains it.

And that pretty much does explain it, but not in the explanatory sense. More in the 'it has nothing to do with the liberalness of the NYT sense.'

There’s not even a merit there to argue with the article or it’s author:

“preferable to go this route.”
“appropriate thing to do.”

I don’t know how much more ambiguous one can get than that to state one’s “case.”

Last night I bought tuna fish for dinner. I felt it was the “appropriate thing to do.”

The next night I had guests over, so I bought chicken salad for dinner, feeling it was “preferable to go that route.”

It seems to me that if there is an argument to be had regarding the article, it would be this:

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, called it “critically important that we reserve Sept. 11 as a day when the world looks back and remembers the many heroes who lost their lives.”

That, above, in bold - with the caveat that it’s ONLY in regard to the democratic exercise of voting.
-But is there even a counter conservative argument aflight in regard to this?

Otherwise it seems they should have made the date an off work holiday. At which point I don’t even think we’d be discussing this.

[Daniel]

That, above, in bold - with the caveat that it’s ONLY in regard to the democratic exercise of voting.
-But is there even a counter conservative argument aflight in regard to this?

Otherwise it seems they should have made the date an off work holiday. At which point I don’t even think we’d be discussing this.

Patrick- thanks for your post.

Interesting how things can boil down to symbolism and the appearance of things, and not the thing itself. What I mean by this is that, in the big scheme of things, moving voting day may not be such a big deal. I get that. However, the appropriateness of its being changed is much the same as the appropriateness of anger as expressed in this thread. Apparently, there are those who believe that one must avoid unpleasantness at all costs. One must NOT allude to present realities, political or otherwise.

Like the minority of those who voted to keep voting day as it was, I am mindful that my perspective may be- for some- as unwelcome as the guest who shows up for a formal gathering (read: funeral) wearing a red dress.

It's not the cut that offends, but the color.

[Progo35]

I do not feel embarassed at my position, nor do I feel compelled to apologize for it. I do recognize the validity of Daniel's argument: let's not change the voting day because its September 11th. But, despite this oversight on my part, I maintain my position that the NYT is an extremely liberal paper that WOULD use 9/11 to influence an election if it had the opportunity. And, moreover, Daniel and Drsdane, when you post an article about an NY election on an international website, it is a fact that the contents of that article become fair game for the commentary of those who live outside the state of NY and do not participate in your elections. If you feel that people who live outside your state should not opine in regard to when you have your elections, then I would suggest that you avoid posting articles that deal with NY elections on international websites.

No, that is not my fall back position. You can talk down to other people, Daniel, but the only person that looks bad when you do that is yourself.

I agree with Patrick: September 11th should be a day off from everything to give our country time to reflect.

[Progo35]

P.S.
I have an Irish Temperment, too, AND a Cuban one, so watch out.... :D

[Progo35]

"I hold equal anger at both the pro-Bush and anti-Bush people."

Giancarlo states perfectly how I feel about all of this.

[Daniel]

No, that is not my fall back position. You can talk down to other people, Daniel, but the only person that looks bad when you do that is yourself.


Seems to be the order of the day today.

I'll take this as a compliment Progo. And like Scotty, I won't be engaging you any further on this forum. Why? Well....I hardly know where to begin, but know enough not to start.

I wish you happiness in your chosen endeavors.

[Progo35]

Whatever!!