Where were you . . . I expect we each remember . . .
It was just short of a year ago that each one of us was challenged to try to comprehend the intense reality which surrounded us on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Tonight, as I look down the hall at the rooms in which my children sleep, having just watched the late TV news coverage of commemorative events going on around New Orleans and the country, I have an image in my head of the evening of almost a year ago - my 8 and 10 year old daughters in my lap - when I was attempting to explain the events to my children, while not understanding them myself. What I remember cycling through my mind that night was my own parents recollections of the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assasinated. I was then only a few months old. My parents often told me in my youth of their own efforts to make sense of the the nonsensical, but horribly real events.
I suppose what each of us learns from these experiences is that we are indeed human, fragile and falible, and a fact that is humbling, yet important to realize. Despite our knowledge, education, technology and arrogance, the acts of our fellow men can still leave us speechless, uncomprehending and awed. On that day, the acts of our fellows were both horrible (the attack) and uplifting (the rescue effort) and showed us humankind at its worst and its best. A year later I find it no easier to make sense of what happened, but much easier to grasp our loss of innocence as a result of the events. I can only hope that our slow-healing trauma will not cause us to be sluggish in reacting to both the war mongering now going on inside the Beltway and the increasing pressure on our civil liberties which has been brought about by our feelings of fear and vulnerability. We shall see, and at the risk of sounding cliche, we shall also overcome all of this.
10:15:25 PM 
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