Ok, too much depressing stuff in the air lately. I have completed the 4th installment in "Crumpled Dollar Bills - Episodes of My Youth" which will be showing up on my blog late tonight or tomorrow...it's pretty racy (an embarassing conclusion - based on a true incident) so I feel a little funny about putting it on here, but hey - what else would you expect from me?

Get to snuggle up over an intimate dinner Friday night with these adorable bloggers.
Of course I may not be able to face them after the "Crumpled, Dollar Bills" stories.


These two better be whispering sweet nothings about me while holding NYC together. Oh Yeah! Happy Belated Birthday Charlie - this is gonna be your year to shine baby!

Tragically, Mesa, AZ (where I grew up from 10 yrs old to college) was the location of the first hate crime murder related to the WTC/Pentagon bombings. I am embarrassed and disgusted for my state.

Lucky and I were driving around the historic Coronado district looking at properties yesterday and drove right up into a Mosque with a protest and vigil going on for the slain man. They looked very unnerved to see us and we were watched very cautiously as we passed. How sad.

HATE is the most wasteful of all human emotions. It lays waste to that which is tangible and intangible in and around us all. HATE has never built a bridge or brought people together - HATE has one practice and it is destruction. I'm not some girly pacifist, I just prefer THOUGHT to accompany ACTION. I can only hope in the coming days and weeks that we practice tolerance with our fellow citizens of the United States and attempt to not only tolerate differences but embrace what makes them wonderful.

Sorry, there just seems to be little value in what I want to say this week, compared to the enormity of value in the expressions I have read by others better equipped to comment on the devastation.

Very, well written piece (and of course yes I verified it's validity, for more thoughts by this journalist - go here):


This is an article by Leonard Pitts, a columnist
from The Miami Herald. It
appeared, Wednesday, September
12, 2001:
*********************

We'll go forward from this moment. It's my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say,
the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us?

What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we
walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood block-buster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism
in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.