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  #1  
Old September 12th 04, 06:57 AM
Tom Farrell
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 9/11, sewing, and off topic thoughts

And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

9/11/2001 began in confusion for me. I was recently unemployed, had
been up late, and overslept. I was awakened by my neighbor knocking on
my door. I grabbed my keys and stumbled blearily to the door, where he
told me two jetliners had flown into the World Trade Center and
knocked it down, and that another had hit the Pentagon. He suggested I
come up to watch the news with him. I told him I'd be up soon and shut
the door. As I showered, dressed, and woke up, I convinced myself that
it was some kind of sick joke, that there must be some overly serious
drama on TV that my friend mistook for reality. As I walked up the
stairs I felt lighthearted, convinced that this would be some kind of
big mistake and we'd have a good laugh about it and go out to lunch
together.

I don't think I really felt anything while I watched the news. It
was... unreal to me. I'd just been at the WTC a few months before. I
could still feel the rough paint over cold steel of the handrails of
the observation deck in my hands. The idea that it was gone was
just... foreign. It had no place in my mind. I knew it was true, and
yet I had no feeling of acceptance of it.

We watched as the networks endlessly repeated footage of airliners
crashing into the WTC buildings about where my office used to be, many
years before. It would be three months before I would know for sure
that none of the people I used to work with there had been in the
building yet.

We watched as Air Force One hopped from airport to airport, and Mr.
Bush made occasional vague remarks that neither told us anything nor
reassured us of our safety.

And, we watched as Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, came on TV.
"This is not a battle between the United States of America and
terrorism," he said, "but between the free and democratic world and
terrorism. We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder
with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them,
will not rest until this evil is driven from our world." My friend and
I were moved to tears, and after a minute or so my friend said "That's
right, they remember how to speak English over there."

At that, I decided I needed a break from watching my former workplace
repeatedly destroyed on television. I walked downstairs to my home,
into my sewing room, and I sewed a United States Flag. I had to take
squares of fabric from my quilting work to make the blue field and the
red stripes. I made a stencil and used fabric paint to paint on the
stars, so they'd be done fast. I hung it on the front of our house
that day. I've never been given to displays of patriotism. However, it
was the only thing I could think of to express my solitude with my
fellow citizens, my grief over what had occurred.

9/11 brought out the best side of Americans. New York's Finest laid
their lives on the line to save others. With calm and dignity,
ordinary people reached out to help ordinary people. Public television
showed children in New York making cookies to hand out to people
fleeing from the wreckage or heading in to provide relief. Chefs of
New York's top restaurants banded together to serve 5 star food three
meals a day to rescue workers. Corporations donated cell phones and
free airtime to emergency professionals. For one shining moment, we
were one people, indivisible, unstoppable, simultaneously the most
powerful people on earth, and the most humane.

A few days later, I took my flag down. I felt that it was time.
Neverending grief would mean the terrorists had won. I had shown my
respect, now it was time for the rest of us to pick up the pieces and
live out our lives as best we can. I was supposed to be in the World
Trade Center the first time it was bombed, but rescheduled my business
trip just a few days earlier. I know what it is to be targeted by
terrorists. I went back to the WTC and went back to work, and thought
that as Americans we would all see it as our duty to stand up and
survive.

But, the rest of the nation didn't seem to see it that way. Before
9/11, business had been picking up, I'd been getting calls about
interviews for jobs, we seemed to be on track for a recovery from the
economic downturn which took place at the end of 2000. After 9/11,
nobody would call back, job listings disappeared, and everyone crawled
into their shell.

Christmas 2001 was marked by hideous displays of "ornaments" which
mixed patriotism and religion in an unholy jumble. I'm fairly sure
most priests and ministers would agree that the baby Jesus was not
holding two American Flags in his hands in the manger.

Within months the French were being villified for not going along with
all of Mr. Bush's warmongering. The jackbooted, jingoistic "patriots"
among us were suddenly talking about "freedom fries", as if renaming
the french fry would somehow make anything better. (The French
Embassy's statement on the matter was that they didn't care, French
Fries are really Belgian anyway.) It made me sick to watch America's
first ally being made the subject of petty jibes. Benjamin Franklin,
who signed our treaty of friendship with France, must be spinning in
his grave.

On the Fourth of July, 2002, I sat on a pier in Marblehead
Massachusetts and was served French food and French Champagne as I
watched the fireworks in Red, White, and Blue - the colors of the
French flag. I remember who my friends are.

On 9/11/2002 I hung the flag I made on the front of the house again. I
took it down at the end of the day, for fear that someone might
mistake it for approval of the jingoistic nonsense that had passed for
patriotism in the past year.

In 2003 I spent some time in New York. I like to go to New York. I
visit my friends there, and I see broadway shows. I use an online
service that lets me bid a price for a hotel room, and I get whatever
location they can find that will give me a room for the price I bid.
One time I ended up at a lovely Hilton downtown... across the street
from Ground Zero. I didn't ever want to see that. In my heart the Twin
Towers still stood, as they had all my life, a testament to mankind's
ability to create ever greater engineering feats. In my memory
tourists still strolled casually through gleaming white marble lobbies
and gazed down in wonder at New York from the improbably high
observation deck. Instead there was a hole in the ground. A gleaming
white hole in the ground, surrounded by a fence in which people stuck
flowers.

The economic recovery never took place. Good, full time, professional
positions have been disappearing, and the recovery of jobs which has
been much touted by the administration has consisted mostly of part
time jobs in retail and food service. An increasing percentage of
everyone I know is unemployed, and I wonder how much longer this can
go on until the shantytowns of the Great Depression return, and I'm
living in one.

The preservation of Freedom didn't take place either. When the US
military locks up hundreds of foreign nations on US soil for years,
violates their Geneva Convention rights, and tortures them, when
American citizens are detained without charge and held without access
to the courts, when the man in the oval office argues to the Supreme
Court that he and anyone acting on his orders are above the law, when
speaking out against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
is considered "disloyal", when legislatures and executives across the
nation are frantically trying to amend state and federal constitutions
to take away the civil rights of the citizenry, Freedom has been
irreparably harmed.

Now the reigning political party rushes to install "black box" voting
machines, fully computerized, which keep no paper trail to prove if
the vote has been recorded accurately or to allow a recount. Until
these machines are eliminated, we will just have to take their word
for it that they accurately recorded and obeyed our vote.

For three years now I've watched as everything I love and believe in
about my country has been slowly destroyed by a so-called "President"
who didn't win the popular vote, whose win in the electoral college
depended on the unlawful disenfranchisement of over 20,000 voters at
the personal order of a governor who happened to be his brother.

For three years now I've watched as that man in the White House made
us much less safe. Frantic "security" in airports takes nail clippers
from elderly women and forces nursing mothers to drink their own milk
to prove it isn't toxic and evacuates entire airports after the
discovery of an innocent microphone in a musician's luggage, yet fails
to address the fact that the hijackers' weapons may have been smuggled
onto the aircraft before they got on. I've watched as my country
started a hundred twenty billion dollar war with an oil-rich
middle-eastern nation on the assurance that they had something to do
with 9/11 and were threatening us with Weapons of Mass Destruction
(insert ominous music here), only to find that they weren't involved
and didn't have said weapons, and now they're a haven for all those
who wish to destroy us. I've watched as my local subway system
instituted random searches of innocent passengers' bags in the name of
"security" and in violation of the bill of rights. I've watched as the
Secret Service closed off half the city of Boston, throwing eastern
Massachusetts into chaos and further harming our already ravaged
economy, in the name of "security".

And 1000 American soldiers have died in the name of that pointless
war, as the administration cuts back on veterans' benefits.

And they're still holding at least several hundred people captive in
violation of their Geneva Convention rights.

And I'm still looking for work that will pay my rent.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

I beg you all to consider, as another 9/11 has passed, has your life
been improved in the last three years? Has anything actually gotten
better? Are your friends and family getting jobs, or losing them? Are
those that have jobs earning a fair wage for reasonable work, or are
they being underpaid and overworked? Do you really believe we are
safer with faux-security in our airports and the entire Arab world
enraged at us for the US's unprovoked attack on Iraq? Do you really
believe our descendents will be more prosperous with a
half-trillion-dollar (and growing) federal budget deficit hanging over
them like the sword of damocles? Is it really more important to you to
make sure gay couples can't marry than to see your children grow up in
freedom in a nation where people can afford food and shelter?

It's time that we all admit that Mr. Bush's policies have not only
been an abject failure, but are slowly destroying all that we hold
dear. In the name of 9/11 he's ruining this nation for his own
political gain. I beg you to please vote against Mr. Bush this
November. As a nation, and as a culture, we must change course now,
while we still have a future.
Ads
  #3  
Old September 12th 04, 11:51 AM
Cynthia Spilsted
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Claire Owen" wrote in message
...


"Tom Farrell" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

Snipped

snip. Although I fear you could be
about to get slated Tom, for some of the political statements in your

post.
However, I have read them and taken them on in the "spirt "I think you

ment
them.

Claire in Montréal, France.

I don't think that many would fault Tom for his political views (although I
am looking at it from a Canadian perspective).
Tom did raise an interesting point though, and that is the hijacker's
weapons were probably smuggled on the planes beforehand. This rings true in
light of the other concealed weapons found on other flights both before and
after 9/11 - and the horror of the innocent children (and their parents and
teachers) killed by terrorists in Beslan. Let's not forget that 20 years
ago, Canada lost 341 people aboard a plane bound for India via Great
Britain. That act of horror was also brought about by weapons (in this
case, a bomb) smuggled on board prior to the flight's departure. It seems
that nowhere in the world is safe from terror and it saddens me greatly.
But, lest we fall into despair - let us look on the up side of these horrid
things (yes: every cloud no matter how dark, has a silver lining): in the
aftermath of the horrors we hear stories of individual heroism, generosity
and the endurance of the human spirit. I was in a craft store today (140 km
drive from home to get to a craft store!) and there by the till was a dish
of beaded 'people' ornaments and a little placard. You guessed it - all
proceeds from the handiwork was to go to the Beslan relief fund. During the
horror of Kosovo, our local Lutheran ladies group made quilts from scraps
and sent them overseas to be distributed by the Red Cross. The list goes on
and on - and while it does, the terrorists will never win!
Cynthia


  #4  
Old September 12th 04, 05:32 PM
dnmgiordano
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

9/11/2001 began in confusion for me. I was recently unemployed, had
been up late, and overslept. I was awakened by my neighbor knocking on
my door. I grabbed my keys and stumbled blearily to the door, where he
told me two jetliners had flown into the World Trade Center and
knocked it down, and that another had hit the Pentagon. He suggested I
come up to watch the news with him.



9/11 for me was my daughters second birthday. As you can imagine I turned
on the tv and forgot about her big day until after dinner.

I was in training in a course called "Police Sciences" where we learnt
things about police work, fire fighting and paramedic training. My class
spent the whole day watching tv.

I did not finish the course. While the rest of the world was very brave, I
was hiding in a hole (so to speak)

Now, every year on 9/11 I don't forget my daughters birthday and thats about
as good as I can do. I would probably be dead if I lived in Iraq since I am
such a wimp.

I am very glad that tom wrote what he did. How do you say it?
KUDOS?!!!!!!!

Michelle Giordano


  #5  
Old September 12th 04, 05:40 PM
Atom1
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Tom Farrell" wrote in message
om...
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

I beg you to please vote against Mr. Bush this
November. As a nation, and as a culture, we must change course now,
while we still have a future.


Great post, I'll be voting for Kerry too.

Thanks again for all your help,


Osama


  #6  
Old September 12th 04, 05:41 PM
Diana Curtis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Here, here!
I see the same things Tom does. Chin up America.. dont let our civil
libertys be eroded any further and lets get this country moving again!
Diana

--
Heart and soul can make up for technical lacking in any form of art, but let
the heart be lacking and all the perfection means nothing.

"Cynthia Spilsted" wrote in message
...

"Claire Owen" wrote in message
...


"Tom Farrell" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

Snipped

snip. Although I fear you could be
about to get slated Tom, for some of the political statements in your

post.
However, I have read them and taken them on in the "spirt "I think you

ment
them.

Claire in Montréal, France.

I don't think that many would fault Tom for his political views (although

I
am looking at it from a Canadian perspective).
Tom did raise an interesting point though, and that is the hijacker's
weapons were probably smuggled on the planes beforehand. This rings true

in
light of the other concealed weapons found on other flights both before

and
after 9/11 - and the horror of the innocent children (and their parents

and
teachers) killed by terrorists in Beslan. Let's not forget that 20 years
ago, Canada lost 341 people aboard a plane bound for India via Great
Britain. That act of horror was also brought about by weapons (in this
case, a bomb) smuggled on board prior to the flight's departure. It seems
that nowhere in the world is safe from terror and it saddens me greatly.
But, lest we fall into despair - let us look on the up side of these

horrid
things (yes: every cloud no matter how dark, has a silver lining): in the
aftermath of the horrors we hear stories of individual heroism, generosity
and the endurance of the human spirit. I was in a craft store today (140

km
drive from home to get to a craft store!) and there by the till was a dish
of beaded 'people' ornaments and a little placard. You guessed it - all
proceeds from the handiwork was to go to the Beslan relief fund. During

the
horror of Kosovo, our local Lutheran ladies group made quilts from scraps
and sent them overseas to be distributed by the Red Cross. The list goes

on
and on - and while it does, the terrorists will never win!
Cynthia




  #7  
Old September 12th 04, 05:47 PM
teleflora
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Tom Farrell" wrote in message
om...
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

9/11/2001 began in confusion for me. I was recently unemployed, had
been up late, and overslept. I was awakened by my neighbor knocking on
my door. I grabbed my keys and stumbled blearily to the door, where he
told me two jetliners had flown into the World Trade Center and
knocked it down, and that another had hit the Pentagon. He suggested I
come up to watch the news with him. I told him I'd be up soon and shut
the door. As I showered, dressed, and woke up, I convinced myself that
it was some kind of sick joke, that there must be some overly serious
drama on TV that my friend mistook for reality. As I walked up the
stairs I felt lighthearted, convinced that this would be some kind of
big mistake and we'd have a good laugh about it and go out to lunch
together.

I don't think I really felt anything while I watched the news. It
was... unreal to me. I'd just been at the WTC a few months before. I
could still feel the rough paint over cold steel of the handrails of
the observation deck in my hands. The idea that it was gone was
just... foreign. It had no place in my mind. I knew it was true, and
yet I had no feeling of acceptance of it.

We watched as the networks endlessly repeated footage of airliners
crashing into the WTC buildings about where my office used to be, many
years before. It would be three months before I would know for sure
that none of the people I used to work with there had been in the
building yet.

We watched as Air Force One hopped from airport to airport, and Mr.
Bush made occasional vague remarks that neither told us anything nor
reassured us of our safety.

And, we watched as Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, came on TV.
"This is not a battle between the United States of America and
terrorism," he said, "but between the free and democratic world and
terrorism. We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder
with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them,
will not rest until this evil is driven from our world." My friend and
I were moved to tears, and after a minute or so my friend said "That's
right, they remember how to speak English over there."

At that, I decided I needed a break from watching my former workplace
repeatedly destroyed on television. I walked downstairs to my home,
into my sewing room, and I sewed a United States Flag. I had to take
squares of fabric from my quilting work to make the blue field and the
red stripes. I made a stencil and used fabric paint to paint on the
stars, so they'd be done fast. I hung it on the front of our house
that day. I've never been given to displays of patriotism. However, it
was the only thing I could think of to express my solitude with my
fellow citizens, my grief over what had occurred.

9/11 brought out the best side of Americans. New York's Finest laid
their lives on the line to save others. With calm and dignity,
ordinary people reached out to help ordinary people. Public television
showed children in New York making cookies to hand out to people
fleeing from the wreckage or heading in to provide relief. Chefs of
New York's top restaurants banded together to serve 5 star food three
meals a day to rescue workers. Corporations donated cell phones and
free airtime to emergency professionals. For one shining moment, we
were one people, indivisible, unstoppable, simultaneously the most
powerful people on earth, and the most humane.

A few days later, I took my flag down. I felt that it was time.
Neverending grief would mean the terrorists had won. I had shown my
respect, now it was time for the rest of us to pick up the pieces and
live out our lives as best we can. I was supposed to be in the World
Trade Center the first time it was bombed, but rescheduled my business
trip just a few days earlier. I know what it is to be targeted by
terrorists. I went back to the WTC and went back to work, and thought
that as Americans we would all see it as our duty to stand up and
survive.

But, the rest of the nation didn't seem to see it that way. Before
9/11, business had been picking up, I'd been getting calls about
interviews for jobs, we seemed to be on track for a recovery from the
economic downturn which took place at the end of 2000. After 9/11,
nobody would call back, job listings disappeared, and everyone crawled
into their shell.

Christmas 2001 was marked by hideous displays of "ornaments" which
mixed patriotism and religion in an unholy jumble. I'm fairly sure
most priests and ministers would agree that the baby Jesus was not
holding two American Flags in his hands in the manger.

Within months the French were being villified for not going along with
all of Mr. Bush's warmongering. The jackbooted, jingoistic "patriots"
among us were suddenly talking about "freedom fries", as if renaming
the french fry would somehow make anything better. (The French
Embassy's statement on the matter was that they didn't care, French
Fries are really Belgian anyway.) It made me sick to watch America's
first ally being made the subject of petty jibes. Benjamin Franklin,
who signed our treaty of friendship with France, must be spinning in
his grave.

On the Fourth of July, 2002, I sat on a pier in Marblehead
Massachusetts and was served French food and French Champagne as I
watched the fireworks in Red, White, and Blue - the colors of the
French flag. I remember who my friends are.

On 9/11/2002 I hung the flag I made on the front of the house again. I
took it down at the end of the day, for fear that someone might
mistake it for approval of the jingoistic nonsense that had passed for
patriotism in the past year.

In 2003 I spent some time in New York. I like to go to New York. I
visit my friends there, and I see broadway shows. I use an online
service that lets me bid a price for a hotel room, and I get whatever
location they can find that will give me a room for the price I bid.
One time I ended up at a lovely Hilton downtown... across the street
from Ground Zero. I didn't ever want to see that. In my heart the Twin
Towers still stood, as they had all my life, a testament to mankind's
ability to create ever greater engineering feats. In my memory
tourists still strolled casually through gleaming white marble lobbies
and gazed down in wonder at New York from the improbably high
observation deck. Instead there was a hole in the ground. A gleaming
white hole in the ground, surrounded by a fence in which people stuck
flowers.

The economic recovery never took place. Good, full time, professional
positions have been disappearing, and the recovery of jobs which has
been much touted by the administration has consisted mostly of part
time jobs in retail and food service. An increasing percentage of
everyone I know is unemployed, and I wonder how much longer this can
go on until the shantytowns of the Great Depression return, and I'm
living in one.

The preservation of Freedom didn't take place either. When the US
military locks up hundreds of foreign nations on US soil for years,
violates their Geneva Convention rights, and tortures them, when
American citizens are detained without charge and held without access
to the courts, when the man in the oval office argues to the Supreme
Court that he and anyone acting on his orders are above the law, when
speaking out against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
is considered "disloyal", when legislatures and executives across the
nation are frantically trying to amend state and federal constitutions
to take away the civil rights of the citizenry, Freedom has been
irreparably harmed.

Now the reigning political party rushes to install "black box" voting
machines, fully computerized, which keep no paper trail to prove if
the vote has been recorded accurately or to allow a recount. Until
these machines are eliminated, we will just have to take their word
for it that they accurately recorded and obeyed our vote.

For three years now I've watched as everything I love and believe in
about my country has been slowly destroyed by a so-called "President"
who didn't win the popular vote, whose win in the electoral college
depended on the unlawful disenfranchisement of over 20,000 voters at
the personal order of a governor who happened to be his brother.

For three years now I've watched as that man in the White House made
us much less safe. Frantic "security" in airports takes nail clippers
from elderly women and forces nursing mothers to drink their own milk
to prove it isn't toxic and evacuates entire airports after the
discovery of an innocent microphone in a musician's luggage, yet fails
to address the fact that the hijackers' weapons may have been smuggled
onto the aircraft before they got on. I've watched as my country
started a hundred twenty billion dollar war with an oil-rich
middle-eastern nation on the assurance that they had something to do
with 9/11 and were threatening us with Weapons of Mass Destruction
(insert ominous music here), only to find that they weren't involved
and didn't have said weapons, and now they're a haven for all those
who wish to destroy us. I've watched as my local subway system
instituted random searches of innocent passengers' bags in the name of
"security" and in violation of the bill of rights. I've watched as the
Secret Service closed off half the city of Boston, throwing eastern
Massachusetts into chaos and further harming our already ravaged
economy, in the name of "security".

And 1000 American soldiers have died in the name of that pointless
war, as the administration cuts back on veterans' benefits.

And they're still holding at least several hundred people captive in
violation of their Geneva Convention rights.

And I'm still looking for work that will pay my rent.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

I beg you all to consider, as another 9/11 has passed, has your life
been improved in the last three years? Has anything actually gotten
better? Are your friends and family getting jobs, or losing them? Are
those that have jobs earning a fair wage for reasonable work, or are
they being underpaid and overworked? Do you really believe we are
safer with faux-security in our airports and the entire Arab world
enraged at us for the US's unprovoked attack on Iraq? Do you really
believe our descendents will be more prosperous with a
half-trillion-dollar (and growing) federal budget deficit hanging over
them like the sword of damocles? Is it really more important to you to
make sure gay couples can't marry than to see your children grow up in
freedom in a nation where people can afford food and shelter?

It's time that we all admit that Mr. Bush's policies have not only
been an abject failure, but are slowly destroying all that we hold
dear. In the name of 9/11 he's ruining this nation for his own
political gain. I beg you to please vote against Mr. Bush this
November. As a nation, and as a culture, we must change course now,
while we still have a future.


Thank you, Tom for writing so eloquently what a lot of us have been
thinking. Could I have your permission to pass your words on to people that
will appreciate them as much as I? With proper credit, of course.

Cindy


  #8  
Old September 12th 04, 08:19 PM
Karen Maslowski
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Thanks, Tom, for eloquently sharing your story, and for putting my
thoughts into words so very well. Your personal story brings these
issues all the more closer to home.

A friend of mine made an incredible quilt using 9/11 as the theme. I
know many people have done this, but it would not have occurred to me to
make either a quilt or a flag; putting your emotions into such a project
was a powerful expression of them.

Karen in Ohio

Tom Farrell wrote:

And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

9/11/2001 began in confusion for me. I was recently unemployed, had
been up late, and overslept. I was awakened by my neighbor knocking on
my door. I grabbed my keys and stumbled blearily to the door, where he
told me two jetliners had flown into the World Trade Center and
knocked it down, and that another had hit the Pentagon. He suggested I
come up to watch the news with him. I told him I'd be up soon and shut
the door. As I showered, dressed, and woke up, I convinced myself that
it was some kind of sick joke, that there must be some overly serious
drama on TV that my friend mistook for reality. As I walked up the
stairs I felt lighthearted, convinced that this would be some kind of
big mistake and we'd have a good laugh about it and go out to lunch
together.

I don't think I really felt anything while I watched the news. It
was... unreal to me. I'd just been at the WTC a few months before. I
could still feel the rough paint over cold steel of the handrails of
the observation deck in my hands. The idea that it was gone was
just... foreign. It had no place in my mind. I knew it was true, and
yet I had no feeling of acceptance of it.

We watched as the networks endlessly repeated footage of airliners
crashing into the WTC buildings about where my office used to be, many
years before. It would be three months before I would know for sure
that none of the people I used to work with there had been in the
building yet.

We watched as Air Force One hopped from airport to airport, and Mr.
Bush made occasional vague remarks that neither told us anything nor
reassured us of our safety.

And, we watched as Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, came on TV.
"This is not a battle between the United States of America and
terrorism," he said, "but between the free and democratic world and
terrorism. We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder
with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them,
will not rest until this evil is driven from our world." My friend and
I were moved to tears, and after a minute or so my friend said "That's
right, they remember how to speak English over there."

At that, I decided I needed a break from watching my former workplace
repeatedly destroyed on television. I walked downstairs to my home,
into my sewing room, and I sewed a United States Flag. I had to take
squares of fabric from my quilting work to make the blue field and the
red stripes. I made a stencil and used fabric paint to paint on the
stars, so they'd be done fast. I hung it on the front of our house
that day. I've never been given to displays of patriotism. However, it
was the only thing I could think of to express my solitude with my
fellow citizens, my grief over what had occurred.

9/11 brought out the best side of Americans. New York's Finest laid
their lives on the line to save others. With calm and dignity,
ordinary people reached out to help ordinary people. Public television
showed children in New York making cookies to hand out to people
fleeing from the wreckage or heading in to provide relief. Chefs of
New York's top restaurants banded together to serve 5 star food three
meals a day to rescue workers. Corporations donated cell phones and
free airtime to emergency professionals. For one shining moment, we
were one people, indivisible, unstoppable, simultaneously the most
powerful people on earth, and the most humane.

A few days later, I took my flag down. I felt that it was time.
Neverending grief would mean the terrorists had won. I had shown my
respect, now it was time for the rest of us to pick up the pieces and
live out our lives as best we can. I was supposed to be in the World
Trade Center the first time it was bombed, but rescheduled my business
trip just a few days earlier. I know what it is to be targeted by
terrorists. I went back to the WTC and went back to work, and thought
that as Americans we would all see it as our duty to stand up and
survive.

But, the rest of the nation didn't seem to see it that way. Before
9/11, business had been picking up, I'd been getting calls about
interviews for jobs, we seemed to be on track for a recovery from the
economic downturn which took place at the end of 2000. After 9/11,
nobody would call back, job listings disappeared, and everyone crawled
into their shell.

Christmas 2001 was marked by hideous displays of "ornaments" which
mixed patriotism and religion in an unholy jumble. I'm fairly sure
most priests and ministers would agree that the baby Jesus was not
holding two American Flags in his hands in the manger.

Within months the French were being villified for not going along with
all of Mr. Bush's warmongering. The jackbooted, jingoistic "patriots"
among us were suddenly talking about "freedom fries", as if renaming
the french fry would somehow make anything better. (The French
Embassy's statement on the matter was that they didn't care, French
Fries are really Belgian anyway.) It made me sick to watch America's
first ally being made the subject of petty jibes. Benjamin Franklin,
who signed our treaty of friendship with France, must be spinning in
his grave.

On the Fourth of July, 2002, I sat on a pier in Marblehead
Massachusetts and was served French food and French Champagne as I
watched the fireworks in Red, White, and Blue - the colors of the
French flag. I remember who my friends are.

On 9/11/2002 I hung the flag I made on the front of the house again. I
took it down at the end of the day, for fear that someone might
mistake it for approval of the jingoistic nonsense that had passed for
patriotism in the past year.

In 2003 I spent some time in New York. I like to go to New York. I
visit my friends there, and I see broadway shows. I use an online
service that lets me bid a price for a hotel room, and I get whatever
location they can find that will give me a room for the price I bid.
One time I ended up at a lovely Hilton downtown... across the street
from Ground Zero. I didn't ever want to see that. In my heart the Twin
Towers still stood, as they had all my life, a testament to mankind's
ability to create ever greater engineering feats. In my memory
tourists still strolled casually through gleaming white marble lobbies
and gazed down in wonder at New York from the improbably high
observation deck. Instead there was a hole in the ground. A gleaming
white hole in the ground, surrounded by a fence in which people stuck
flowers.

The economic recovery never took place. Good, full time, professional
positions have been disappearing, and the recovery of jobs which has
been much touted by the administration has consisted mostly of part
time jobs in retail and food service. An increasing percentage of
everyone I know is unemployed, and I wonder how much longer this can
go on until the shantytowns of the Great Depression return, and I'm
living in one.

The preservation of Freedom didn't take place either. When the US
military locks up hundreds of foreign nations on US soil for years,
violates their Geneva Convention rights, and tortures them, when
American citizens are detained without charge and held without access
to the courts, when the man in the oval office argues to the Supreme
Court that he and anyone acting on his orders are above the law, when
speaking out against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
is considered "disloyal", when legislatures and executives across the
nation are frantically trying to amend state and federal constitutions
to take away the civil rights of the citizenry, Freedom has been
irreparably harmed.

Now the reigning political party rushes to install "black box" voting
machines, fully computerized, which keep no paper trail to prove if
the vote has been recorded accurately or to allow a recount. Until
these machines are eliminated, we will just have to take their word
for it that they accurately recorded and obeyed our vote.

For three years now I've watched as everything I love and believe in
about my country has been slowly destroyed by a so-called "President"
who didn't win the popular vote, whose win in the electoral college
depended on the unlawful disenfranchisement of over 20,000 voters at
the personal order of a governor who happened to be his brother.

For three years now I've watched as that man in the White House made
us much less safe. Frantic "security" in airports takes nail clippers
from elderly women and forces nursing mothers to drink their own milk
to prove it isn't toxic and evacuates entire airports after the
discovery of an innocent microphone in a musician's luggage, yet fails
to address the fact that the hijackers' weapons may have been smuggled
onto the aircraft before they got on. I've watched as my country
started a hundred twenty billion dollar war with an oil-rich
middle-eastern nation on the assurance that they had something to do
with 9/11 and were threatening us with Weapons of Mass Destruction
(insert ominous music here), only to find that they weren't involved
and didn't have said weapons, and now they're a haven for all those
who wish to destroy us. I've watched as my local subway system
instituted random searches of innocent passengers' bags in the name of
"security" and in violation of the bill of rights. I've watched as the
Secret Service closed off half the city of Boston, throwing eastern
Massachusetts into chaos and further harming our already ravaged
economy, in the name of "security".

And 1000 American soldiers have died in the name of that pointless
war, as the administration cuts back on veterans' benefits.

And they're still holding at least several hundred people captive in
violation of their Geneva Convention rights.

And I'm still looking for work that will pay my rent.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

I beg you all to consider, as another 9/11 has passed, has your life
been improved in the last three years? Has anything actually gotten
better? Are your friends and family getting jobs, or losing them? Are
those that have jobs earning a fair wage for reasonable work, or are
they being underpaid and overworked? Do you really believe we are
safer with faux-security in our airports and the entire Arab world
enraged at us for the US's unprovoked attack on Iraq? Do you really
believe our descendents will be more prosperous with a
half-trillion-dollar (and growing) federal budget deficit hanging over
them like the sword of damocles? Is it really more important to you to
make sure gay couples can't marry than to see your children grow up in
freedom in a nation where people can afford food and shelter?

It's time that we all admit that Mr. Bush's policies have not only
been an abject failure, but are slowly destroying all that we hold
dear. In the name of 9/11 he's ruining this nation for his own
political gain. I beg you to please vote against Mr. Bush this
November. As a nation, and as a culture, we must change course now,
while we still have a future.


  #9  
Old September 12th 04, 08:21 PM
small change
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Tom Farrell wrote:
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.


thank you Tom.


Now the reigning political party rushes to install "black box" voting
machines, fully computerized, which keep no paper trail to prove if
the vote has been recorded accurately or to allow a recount. Until
these machines are eliminated, we will just have to take their word
for it that they accurately recorded and obeyed our vote.



This is a serious issue. If you vote by absentee ballot, you can be assured
that your vote will be counted.
http://www.truemajority.org/actionre...olkit_html.cfm

has good information on how to make sure your vote counts, and voting by
mail.

Penny S


  #10  
Old September 12th 04, 08:25 PM
Poohma
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"teleflora" wrote in message
news:_4%0d.45315$wu.43009@okepread04...

"Tom Farrell" wrote in message
om...
And so another 9/11 has come and gone.

9/11/2001 began in confusion for me. I was recently unemployed, had
been up late, and overslept. I was awakened by my neighbor knocking on
my door. I grabbed my keys and stumbled blearily to the door, where he
told me two jetliners had flown into the World Trade Center and
knocked it down, and that another had hit the Pentagon. He suggested I
come up to watch the news with him. I told him I'd be up soon and shut
the door. As I showered, dressed, and woke up, I convinced myself that
it was some kind of sick joke, that there must be some overly serious
drama on TV that my friend mistook for reality. As I walked up the
stairs I felt lighthearted, convinced that this would be some kind of
big mistake and we'd have a good laugh about it and go out to lunch
together.

I don't think I really felt anything while I watched the news. It
was... unreal to me. I'd just been at the WTC a few months before. I
could still feel the rough paint over cold steel of the handrails of
the observation deck in my hands. The idea that it was gone was
just... foreign. It had no place in my mind. I knew it was true, and
yet I had no feeling of acceptance of it.

We watched as the networks endlessly repeated footage of airliners
crashing into the WTC buildings about where my office used to be, many
years before. It would be three months before I would know for sure
that none of the people I used to work with there had been in the
building yet.

We watched as Air Force One hopped from airport to airport, and Mr.
Bush made occasional vague remarks that neither told us anything nor
reassured us of our safety.

And, we watched as Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, came on TV.
"This is not a battle between the United States of America and
terrorism," he said, "but between the free and democratic world and
terrorism. We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder
with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them,
will not rest until this evil is driven from our world." My friend and
I were moved to tears, and after a minute or so my friend said "That's
right, they remember how to speak English over there."

At that, I decided I needed a break from watching my former workplace
repeatedly destroyed on television. I walked downstairs to my home,
into my sewing room, and I sewed a United States Flag. I had to take
squares of fabric from my quilting work to make the blue field and the
red stripes. I made a stencil and used fabric paint to paint on the
stars, so they'd be done fast. I hung it on the front of our house
that day. I've never been given to displays of patriotism. However, it
was the only thing I could think of to express my solitude with my
fellow citizens, my grief over what had occurred.

9/11 brought out the best side of Americans. New York's Finest laid
their lives on the line to save others. With calm and dignity,
ordinary people reached out to help ordinary people. Public television
showed children in New York making cookies to hand out to people
fleeing from the wreckage or heading in to provide relief. Chefs of
New York's top restaurants banded together to serve 5 star food three
meals a day to rescue workers. Corporations donated cell phones and
free airtime to emergency professionals. For one shining moment, we
were one people, indivisible, unstoppable, simultaneously the most
powerful people on earth, and the most humane.

A few days later, I took my flag down. I felt that it was time.
Neverending grief would mean the terrorists had won. I had shown my
respect, now it was time for the rest of us to pick up the pieces and
live out our lives as best we can. I was supposed to be in the World
Trade Center the first time it was bombed, but rescheduled my business
trip just a few days earlier. I know what it is to be targeted by
terrorists. I went back to the WTC and went back to work, and thought
that as Americans we would all see it as our duty to stand up and
survive.

But, the rest of the nation didn't seem to see it that way. Before
9/11, business had been picking up, I'd been getting calls about
interviews for jobs, we seemed to be on track for a recovery from the
economic downturn which took place at the end of 2000. After 9/11,
nobody would call back, job listings disappeared, and everyone crawled
into their shell.

Christmas 2001 was marked by hideous displays of "ornaments" which
mixed patriotism and religion in an unholy jumble. I'm fairly sure
most priests and ministers would agree that the baby Jesus was not
holding two American Flags in his hands in the manger.

Within months the French were being villified for not going along with
all of Mr. Bush's warmongering. The jackbooted, jingoistic "patriots"
among us were suddenly talking about "freedom fries", as if renaming
the french fry would somehow make anything better. (The French
Embassy's statement on the matter was that they didn't care, French
Fries are really Belgian anyway.) It made me sick to watch America's
first ally being made the subject of petty jibes. Benjamin Franklin,
who signed our treaty of friendship with France, must be spinning in
his grave.

On the Fourth of July, 2002, I sat on a pier in Marblehead
Massachusetts and was served French food and French Champagne as I
watched the fireworks in Red, White, and Blue - the colors of the
French flag. I remember who my friends are.

On 9/11/2002 I hung the flag I made on the front of the house again. I
took it down at the end of the day, for fear that someone might
mistake it for approval of the jingoistic nonsense that had passed for
patriotism in the past year.

In 2003 I spent some time in New York. I like to go to New York. I
visit my friends there, and I see broadway shows. I use an online
service that lets me bid a price for a hotel room, and I get whatever
location they can find that will give me a room for the price I bid.
One time I ended up at a lovely Hilton downtown... across the street
from Ground Zero. I didn't ever want to see that. In my heart the Twin
Towers still stood, as they had all my life, a testament to mankind's
ability to create ever greater engineering feats. In my memory
tourists still strolled casually through gleaming white marble lobbies
and gazed down in wonder at New York from the improbably high
observation deck. Instead there was a hole in the ground. A gleaming
white hole in the ground, surrounded by a fence in which people stuck
flowers.

The economic recovery never took place. Good, full time, professional
positions have been disappearing, and the recovery of jobs which has
been much touted by the administration has consisted mostly of part
time jobs in retail and food service. An increasing percentage of
everyone I know is unemployed, and I wonder how much longer this can
go on until the shantytowns of the Great Depression return, and I'm
living in one.

The preservation of Freedom didn't take place either. When the US
military locks up hundreds of foreign nations on US soil for years,
violates their Geneva Convention rights, and tortures them, when
American citizens are detained without charge and held without access
to the courts, when the man in the oval office argues to the Supreme
Court that he and anyone acting on his orders are above the law, when
speaking out against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
is considered "disloyal", when legislatures and executives across the
nation are frantically trying to amend state and federal constitutions
to take away the civil rights of the citizenry, Freedom has been
irreparably harmed.

Now the reigning political party rushes to install "black box" voting
machines, fully computerized, which keep no paper trail to prove if
the vote has been recorded accurately or to allow a recount. Until
these machines are eliminated, we will just have to take their word
for it that they accurately recorded and obeyed our vote.

For three years now I've watched as everything I love and believe in
about my country has been slowly destroyed by a so-called "President"
who didn't win the popular vote, whose win in the electoral college
depended on the unlawful disenfranchisement of over 20,000 voters at
the personal order of a governor who happened to be his brother.

For three years now I've watched as that man in the White House made
us much less safe. Frantic "security" in airports takes nail clippers
from elderly women and forces nursing mothers to drink their own milk
to prove it isn't toxic and evacuates entire airports after the
discovery of an innocent microphone in a musician's luggage, yet fails
to address the fact that the hijackers' weapons may have been smuggled
onto the aircraft before they got on. I've watched as my country
started a hundred twenty billion dollar war with an oil-rich
middle-eastern nation on the assurance that they had something to do
with 9/11 and were threatening us with Weapons of Mass Destruction
(insert ominous music here), only to find that they weren't involved
and didn't have said weapons, and now they're a haven for all those
who wish to destroy us. I've watched as my local subway system
instituted random searches of innocent passengers' bags in the name of
"security" and in violation of the bill of rights. I've watched as the
Secret Service closed off half the city of Boston, throwing eastern
Massachusetts into chaos and further harming our already ravaged
economy, in the name of "security".

And 1000 American soldiers have died in the name of that pointless
war, as the administration cuts back on veterans' benefits.

And they're still holding at least several hundred people captive in
violation of their Geneva Convention rights.

And I'm still looking for work that will pay my rent.

This year, I didn't fly the flag I made on 9/11. I don't feel so proud
this year, I just feel hurt.

I beg you all to consider, as another 9/11 has passed, has your life
been improved in the last three years? Has anything actually gotten
better? Are your friends and family getting jobs, or losing them? Are
those that have jobs earning a fair wage for reasonable work, or are
they being underpaid and overworked? Do you really believe we are
safer with faux-security in our airports and the entire Arab world
enraged at us for the US's unprovoked attack on Iraq? Do you really
believe our descendents will be more prosperous with a
half-trillion-dollar (and growing) federal budget deficit hanging over
them like the sword of damocles? Is it really more important to you to
make sure gay couples can't marry than to see your children grow up in
freedom in a nation where people can afford food and shelter?

It's time that we all admit that Mr. Bush's policies have not only
been an abject failure, but are slowly destroying all that we hold
dear. In the name of 9/11 he's ruining this nation for his own
political gain. I beg you to please vote against Mr. Bush this
November. As a nation, and as a culture, we must change course now,
while we still have a future.


Thank you, Tom for writing so eloquently what a lot of us have been
thinking. Could I have your permission to pass your words on to people

that
will appreciate them as much as I? With proper credit, of course.

Cindy



I would also like to share what you wrote with some people. I work for the
government and am smothered some days with the flag-waving. Anytime I make a
negative comment, I am attacked as not being "patriotic enough." What is
that, anyway? I didn't know there was a contest! Anyway, I am glad you
posted your honest feelings and don't worry about the brickbats. At least
you haven't been completely stifled-yet...
--
The Vegas Beth P
(STILL missing Georgia)
Remove "removethis" to reply


 




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