nicollo, my good friend. I finally had a chance to read your post. I especially enjoyed the paragraph which begins
"When will our college adolescents...smoke a genuinely radical thought?".
You back from the road? I just got back from a weekend getaway in Vermont. I'm still here in Jersey, looking to make it through yet another round of job cuts. There should be a few people in my area getting whacked pretty soon. It's still rough "out there", or, at least that is the impression I have gotten from the street level.
9-11 coming up. Hard to believe it's been a year. I remember where I was that day, and I remember where I was 6 months to the day, in Battery Park, at 8:46 AM when the church bell rang for one minute, in rememberance of the people who died that day. I stopped and took my cap off right there on the sidewalk, closed my eyes and prayed.
When I got back from Vermont on Monday night, it hit me just how nice the time in Vermont had really been. For those few days, life was really simple and beautiful. But it didn't really sink in until I got home. Since 9-11, I have come to appreciate how safe and peaceful times had become since 1990 or so, after the Cold War ended. I didn't really appreciate it until after 9-11. But I also realize I have no right to complain, because the peaceful years we experienced are the exception, not the rule. You look back over history and it's pretty clear.
Great to hear from you! Glad you enjoyed VT. My parents just returned from Bennington where they were looking up some family history. They learned how an ancestor tasted it in 1775. Seems my great-great-great-whatever, "Remember Baker" (ain't that a great name!) took it in the head from an Indian. He was fighting under Gen. Schuyler in the Champlain region. Baker pulled the trigger first, but his gun misfired. Oops.
So I called up a buddy in NJ who is a Schuyler descendant and told him I'm filing suit. He replied that I ought to take a bullet for him, instead. This I agreed to, if he's ever attacked by Indians.
Good luck dodging the corporate guillotine...
Oh, thanks for sharing on the 9-11 anniversary. Chatting on the phone this morning, I walked outside and remarked how beautiful a day it was. Then I stopped silent, for it reminded me of taking just those same steps and thinking the same thing at about 8:30 am on a certain day in early September last year. The person on the line said, "You there? You ok?" I didn't explain.
Yes, prayers.