Sunday, September 11, 2011

On this Day in History

I know I can't be the only person who is getting, to be frank, a bit sick of all the coverage of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. What happened that day was certainly frightening, but so the ten years since have been in terms of civil liberties taken away or given up. I stood in line that day, from late morning to early evening, to donate blood they thought might be needed for victims at the Pentagon. Unlike some others, I wasn't really bothered later to hear that it might have been discarded since more than needed was collected. What happened was so unexpected that I can't fault the Red Cross or any other similar organization for not being spot on in terms of contingencies. And while it was tragic that over 3,000 lives were lost in four related acts that one day, that number is but a blip in terms of the national homicide rate or the number of people killed each year with firearms. (I'm now a gun owner, so that comment can't be taken as the frivolous rant of a gun-hating liberal.) I'm lucky, I guess, that I haven't run into anyone in person lately who has disparaged all Muslims as being evil or bad. I count among my closest friends Christians, Jews, and Muslims (I'm listing those three groups alphabetically here, for what it's worth) and have been known to refer to "our God" in conversations with them. September 11 is now called a National Day or Remembrance and Service (or something like that) or Patriot Day. When can it go back to being just September 11, the day after September 10 and before September 12?

2 comments:

Debi said...

"What happened that day was certainly frightening, but so the ten years since have been in terms of civil liberties taken away or given up." Amen.

Jayne said...

I suspect it will be a long, long time, if ever, before Sept. 11 is just another day - we flew from Bangor, ME to Richmond, VA this year and I was surprised by the amount of heightened security I saw (and wondered what was happening that I could not see). As long as major news media are based in NYC, this day will long be remembered. You no longer hear much about Oklahoma City, but then, major news media are not based in Okalahome City.