1 It's 9/11.
2 Most of the students I teach have no memory of that.
3 It's history to them. Stuff in a book. A recent book, but a book.
4 Isn't that strange?
5 I hadn't really given 9/11 a thought, to be perfectly honest.
6 I was talking about ones, nines, Heidi trips and all the rest but didn't even think about it until the night before last. I always check the date before I teach. Good policy. The students don't think you're senile when you are on top of the clock.
7 I'll be having a special day for not only my students, but for myself today.
8 Somewhere I have buried a piece I wrote just a few days before the first anniversary of that fateful day.
9 <After hours and hours of searching> I found it.
10 It won't open on my laptop, and I am comfortably stretched out on the Cloud right now, with a good angle on my laptop, delicately balanced on the arm of the Cloud, a teevee tray, and my stomach.
11 Sounds horrid I know, but it is actually a pretty neat fit. No pressure on the leg, which tortured yesterday.
12 I can't sit down and teach. It just doesn't work for me. My leg still functions rather well as long as I keep moving. I think it enjoys the exercise. It also seems to enjoy the attention as well as the companionship.
13 I get what me old friend and confidant Eddie Sessler meant when he called his cancer his "companion."
14 Eddie was always great, a goodly guy with a gracious smile, a witty sort, always quick with a quip, and a devoted follower of the Grateful Dead.
15 He lived for over twenty years with cancer, eventually accepting it as his companion. I get that.
16 I get that.
17 For the record I don't have cancer. I just have a little worry in the leg.
18 Right now it is sitting under the laptop bridge and sleeping soundly. Its companion, my healthy right leg, seems to be enjoying the evening peace as well.
19 Sidebar: I write this nonsense in the afternoon and evening of the day before, and launch it in the morning. I'm not capable of time travel. Not yet anyway.
20 It's only a matter of time.
21 Moving on, Part One: On 9-11: A Tribute I wrote the 9/11 piece on September 8, 2002. I don't recall writing it, but at the time I knew I had to. I had a hazy picture of the American flag opening to a cumulus sky with a faint picture of the Statue of Liberty layered in. Last night I couldn't find that picture.
22 I was going to try to re-create the piece, which had my words written over the picture, delicate and with a lot of feeling.
23 Originally I didn't edit it. I usually edit this thing thirteen gazillion times and I STILL find exotic mistakes, awkward phrasings, and mixed metaphors.
24 I lunched yesterday with a few members of a community organization that I help out. One girl, a current senior, told us of her experience with 9/11. "I was four," she said.
25 And she remembered. She remembered the chaos in her house, the tragic live coverage, the smoke, the confusion, and the heroes. It occurred to me that her class is probably the last class with such vivid memories.
26 That was when it occurred to me that the students that I teach will come in today with no real memories of that day, unless they had family who were lost, and even then, it probably is a different sort of memory than the current seniors might have.
27 Let that one sink in.
28 A lot of the pictures I looked at last night said, "Never forget." We who went through it will certainly never forget it, but we also need to pass the story on.
29 I threw away a short story unit to make room for my 9/11 mini-unit. I think it is that important. Last night I decided to do something about it. This generation has to know. They have to know. This story should never be forgotten.
30 Moving on, Part Two: I couldn't imagine not re-posting my 9/11 piece in today's DN. The trouble is that while it reads fine, it does not include the beautiful graphics of the sky, the flag, and the Statue, all quite understated. I realized that the graphics will never look the same. Not important. The words are important. It was on 9/8/02, just before the first anniversary of 9/11. I watched all the teevee hype and hooplah. Parts of all that hype bothered me: too commercial, too expected. Too prone to propaganda and too prone to jingoism. I needed to get my own feelings down. I needed to put my thoughts and emotions into words that morning.
31 So I will get the words to you. They are important, however small this may seem. They are important. Here is the piece:
I recall this summer bicycling to an ice cream parlour at Camp Richardson, in Lake Tahoe. The sun filtered through the pines; people on bicycles pedaled by at a slow summer pace; over at a picnic table, a little girl giggled to her family, "Got any gwapes?" And in the distance, if you were really listening, a cool mountain wind blew through a canyon.
This is America. I am the son of a family of Irish and Italian immigrants. I often heard Italian being spoken by the older folks at family gatherings. Once, while vacationing in Reno, my Uncle Louie (whom I knew to be a card-carrying member of the Mafia--at least in my young mind!) taught me how to do the illusion of the disappearing finger, and I giggled when the top part of index finger seemed to disappear. He took a sip of Chianti, leaned toward me, and magically made his finger whole again. And then he laughed at my confusion, and at my subsequent delight.
This is America. This is the America I have always known.
I am that Yankee Doodle Boy, I imagine.
I love my country. I love the purple mountains' majesty; I
love the smiles on the faces of children, and the wisdom and worry etched on the faces of old people.
I love kites.
I often criticize my country. I don't like it when they lie, and when they rattle sabers that might result in children fighting wars. I dislike the racism, and the fears of the homeless. Those things I don't like, not one bit.
Still, I stare in silence at the wonderful flag; the flag that symbolizes hope, freedom, and a better world, beginning with our brave forefathers, men of impeccable vision, men who hammered out some of the greatest documents in human history.
"Got any gwapes?"
I love the streets of Harlem, the thumpthump of a basketball on the concrete schoolyard courts. I love the jazz of New Orleans, and the ballpark smells of onions and waffle cones on Coney Island.
I loved the Twin Towers. I don't want to remember that day, not at all. It was perhaps the saddest day in our brief history.
I cried for the families, for the brave people of New York, and for what someone had done to my home, to my country, to my people. I reflect this week in silent mourning, and in remembrance of the families and friends of those who lost their lives on that unspeakable morning. I look up sadly at the flag, knowing that nothing shall ever be the same.
This week let us remember; let us pray for peace; let us vow never to give up our civil liberties just because some shallow politicians wish to take advantage of our united grief. Let us cry, but let us walk on bravely. We may not be a perfect nation, but we do have the respect of the world, the shining dream of freedom that the great Statue in New York Harbor throws across this great land.
This is, after all, America.
This is, after all, the America I have always known.
I am, after all, that Yankee Doodle Boy.
Peace.
bh/9/8/02
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