The DN

1   Each year I do a three-day tribute to 9/11. I tell the students about it and show an award-winning documentary. I'm having two students who experienced it talk to my last class of the day. One remembers vividly looking out the window of his apartment and watching. Another relates the story of his grandmother leaving New York, and seeing one of the buildings go down in her rear-view mirror. 

2  On 9/8/02 I processed the entire day, week, or however it lasted. It turned into this piece, which I read to my students each year. It is a bit dated, but still honest. Here it is:

     9-11: A Tribute...

  I recall this summer bicycling to an ice-cream parlor 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 his 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 at all when they lie, and when they rattle sabres 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, and 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 thump-thump 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

  

2  Gottago.

3  Peace.

~H~