9/11

I didn't think to write a post on 9/11 here this morning since I don't think about the day in relationship to genealogy, and I have another blog where I post my thoughts on all other topics.

But after reading Randy, Miriam and Jasia,

I decided to write a few thoughts.

First, I refuse to listen to Alan Jackson's song despite Miriam's suggestion. I didn't hear it played today, but I've heard it so much, I don't need to listen to it, and it has always bugged me. I like country music generally, and Alan Jackson has some good songs, but I can't stand the idea of bragging about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran. You can tell me the narrator of the song isn't bragging, but he's setting himself up as the 'common man' because he is ignorant of world geography and events, but somehow the fact that he is 'common' and ignorant is supposed to make his opinions more 'real' or 'valid' and that seems like bragging to me about his ignorance. The recent American phenomenon of actually turning knowledge and learning into something 'bad' and ignorance into something 'good' is very disturbing to me. I would much rather elect a politician - for any office - who spoke with intelligence than one who I felt I could sit down and have a beer with. End of Soapbox.

I won't bother anyone with any more of my political thoughts about the past six years.

9/11: I remember where I was. I was at work. And being at an investment brokerage there was a television playing the Financial News Network in the hallway all day. And every hour or so I'd get up and spend 10 minutes in the hallway with a group of others and see if any more news had come in.

Here's a poem I wrote shortly after 9/11, which I think is appropriate to post here:

Two Photographs

Looking at a photo
on my office cubicle shelf
taken 25 years ago
of my mother, brother, sister and I
standing at the Statue of Liberty,
my sister wearing a bicentennial tshirt,
and the New York skyline in the background
with the World Trade Center
three years old to my seven

I recollect another photo
from my grandfather’s collection
of him sitting on a horse
in front of a partially completed
Mount Rushmore.

© 2001 John Newmark

(Note: I had assumed the date of the photograph from my sister's tshirt, but after writing the poem, I showed it to my parents who told me that the picture was actually taken in 1977. My sister just liked the shirt enough to wear it a year later. I didn't change the ages in the poem, as I preferred the sound of the ages I had. The details in a poem don't always have to be 100% true.)