Posted on 09/10/2002 12:59:02 PM PDT by shaggy eel
The first country to see the light of each new day, after the Kingdom of Tonga, is New Zealand. September 11 2002 is happening as I write this. Already today, a dawn parade commemorating last year's tragedy has passed in our largest city, Auckland. Yachties will know this city as the present home of the America's Cup. Today though, only one thought was in mind as OLD GLORY was raised to half mast on the most important flagpole atop of Auckland's harbour bridge.
Services of Rememberance are scheduled throughout New Zealand today, one of which will be attended by US Ambassador Charles "Butch" Swindells, at St Paul's Cathedral in Wellington. Additionally, he will plant a tree in the grounds of the American Embassy in the central Wellington suburb of Thorndon this morning with New Zealand's Prime Minister to mark the first anniversary of September 11.
At 8,46am (46 minutes from now), the Orpheus Choir will start a recital of Mozart's Requiem, starting a world recital to be carried on in different cities around the globe as the day unfolds.
Find a reason . do something . It aint about you dag gammit . It's about people . You have a mind and a vision . Step outside of yourself and apply what you have now ! Get pissed off .. Get informed and do something .
Belmont ? Faire play me arse . If 'ya want a change you have to change . Associate with like minded people and cut the doubt's .
Fore me and mine this day we sail on with like minded ..
You know, there is something deeply wrong with you.
If you have a wife or children, I pity them.
Well then, march your little reed-like frame over to the nearest one you see and tell them to stop it. Make sure there are a lot of burly firefighters all near-tears there.
And have someone videotape the results. I think it would be most gratifying to view.
Let's can it with the silly maudlin production values, okay, Laz?
You don't like me, I think your a jerk.
Let's leave it at that.
I am concerned for them, if they exist -- but I doubt it. Everything you write seems very juvenile, very 'young'. I suspect you are a high-school student.
....and this sort of 'Neener neener boo boo' comment merely reinforces my perception.
Grow up.
So those are the ghouls, and ghoulism is a marketable commodity, many wouold have of it. G-d help me, I will ever have AT it.
Don't turn to the dark side, Laz!
I disagree that the one-year mark is that point.
Talk to me in two, three years.
In fact, I think that this one-year mark is an important milestone. I think that the market and the economy will pick up measurably, because nothing terroristic has occurred since. I think we are at the "Let's Move On" stage, but I think we need to commemorate this date, then move on -- to a point. Remember, we still put little flags out for Pearl Harbor day, and that happened decades ago.
Anyone who starkly states that a given position on an issue such as this is 100% wrong, is usually, themselves, 100% wrong.
Let the commemorations go on, unmolested, this year. We need closure. Then we can get busy goosing up the economy.
Nobody was ready for "healing" on December 7, 1942, and "closure" was the last thing anybody wanted. America, on the first anniversary of that other date that lives in infamy — often the benchmark by which September 11 is judged — wanted blood and vengeance, without apology.No flowers, no teddy bears, and no exploration of the national angst. No presidential admonitions to think of Shinto as a religion of peace, no appeals to understand the frustrations that drove the misunderstood Nazis to rape Poland and bomb London.
The front pages of the nation's newspapers were stuffed with news of war: a battle raging in Tunisia, the launch of the USS New Jersey at Philadelphia, and, on the front page of the old Evening Star, a single photographic reminder of the destroyed harbor at Honolulu. On an inside page, Pvt. Joe Lockhard, who had first spotted the incoming Japanese planes at a radar station above Honolulu, was the subject of a small item headlined: "Hero of Navy prefers to forget Pearl Harbor."
"We have to give our time to what's happening now," he said, "and wait for history to catch up with it, when the war is won."
America is crying partly out of sadness, and partly out of relief.
Commemorating this date -- at only the one-year-mark, mind you -- is no sign of weakness, and is certainly permissable.
In 1941, the Federal behemoth was small. Sure it was larger under the populist-socialist FDR policies of the decade of the 40's, but it was small in all comparisons to todays bureaucratic behemoth.
The military, especially, was spartan, cut to the bone.
We were all aware of a war, and nearly all agreed who were the bad and who the good, it was pretty clear. Still -- among the blue-blood elite of the day, and among the followers of Father Coughlin, there existed a fondness for the order and "cut of the jib" of the Fascists, of the Germans. Argentina -- then the new world's exemplar Fascist country -- was the place to go, celebrated in magazines and movies.
When we set our jaws and grew our muscles to the fight in 1941, we grafted them onto the federal bones -- that was the open territory at the time, the place where men and women of vigor and purpose could most easily move to the mark, put things in place, shape, mold and fire. The Federal behemoth was nothing then, it was like a wide open country, a free place where a man of action and enterprise could move it to his will.
When it grew, when we grew it, when we grew, we grew muscle and intellect and spirit all together -- because the task was clear and the space to grow in nearly completely unfilled. It was in Freedom and Liberty that that Federal powerhouse of World War II grew. Strangely enough. Strangely enough for what it is now.
Many would weep, greive, moan and lament now -- today and call it good. Do they see that their tears feed the mold that grows on the gangrene, on the dead flesh that once was a great nation? Their grief -- todays "memorials" are to death, not to life.
Dear friend, there is nothing I hold mor dear than life, for what may be made of it. I see not life's desires in this, but longing for death. I will not and never join such a religious festival. Death is not my religion.
There is something to be said for the grief of closure, my friend. Allow those who need to do this, to do so without molestation. I do believe better times are ahead.
Life goes on. Closure's just another word for suicide. Be pro-life. There is no closure. It is PC/pop-psychology claptrap.
Nossir. Closure exists. It is why, when people lose a loved one, they want the perp to be apprehended and punished. It is why, when a tragedy befalls someone, the family wants to gain possession of the remains. Closure is a phenomenon exhibited in every culture throughout time. A funeral is an act of closure. People need to go through a mourning process, then they can move on.
It is a towards sense of venegance and of Justice and not of closure that give rise to the hunt of a murderer. That is not "closure". It is part of life.
A corpse or its pieces, are they longed for by the family? A family of ghouls -- the rest of us want the dead to be properly buried, the dead to rest. We don't go around like necromancers calling them back for advice and comfort or whatever at any -- much less every -- misfortune or discomfort.
A funeral is an act of closure? Well, yes, let the ground close oer the body and the mouths of the worms close over the flesh. Tie not a soul to rot and death.
Is a funeral an act of closure for the living? Do tears end at the gate of the graveyard? Unbidden a memory of the dear beloved are such memories verbotten by act of leaving the funeral? Never, not ever so.
Do people need to go through a mourning process? It is not a need, it is unavoidable? Do you ask if people need to breath? A person will mourn, and can't avoid it. Shall we force them to mourn in some mucky-muck, hours in the broiler oven, ceremony in the hot sun at Shea Stadium, or at Yankee Stadium, or some other great public venue? There is no closure in that, friend, it is opening up the wound and pouring salt on it.
In quiet and kindness we commiserate the mourners -- those in the immediacy and kin of the dead. As a City and Nation, in 9/11, we are merciless, ruthless, in how we have treated the genunine and unavoidable mourning process. We have surely troubled the mourners and not given them solace and comfort, all to feed a great public hunger for ghoulism and victimhood.
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