Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 09:13:58 -0400
Subject: Re: A few random thoughts.
From: Sean Gallagher <sean-AT-dendro.com>


It was somewhat surreal bundling the kids off to school this morning.  Rum
and ginger ale helped me get to sleep last night, but has left me numb.

Went to church last night. It was more to be with a community of people than
anything else.  The priest who happened to be available to run the service
(notorious for his inability to ad-lib without offending everyone--he's
retired and making extra by covering some masses) said that it occurred to
him that the deaths from this were nothing in comparison to the deaths of
unborn childen every year.  Fortunately, a friend of mine managed to hijack
the service for a few minutes and steer things toward more relevant
territory. 

My 7 year old was turning a round pillow into a bazooka this morning, making
blow-up noises, and my wife snapped on him.

My 10 year old is reeling; he and I had been running around the square at
the base of the towers two months ago, and he had made a game out of
sprinting back and forth between them to touch them and look up.  I think he
feels more connection to the place than the people, but still he's clearly
horrified.  

As they were getting ready to evacuate school here in Baltimore yesterday,
some teacher told her class at my sons' school that it was just in case
someone tried to blow the school up.  Lovely and professional, that.

My company's offices are in New York; everyone's working from home today as
getting into the city is total madness.

Anybody catch the images of people in NY shopping as emergency vehicles went
screaming by?




On 9/12/01 5:02 AM, "ninetyone andy" <andy_91_2000-AT-yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Well, I got through to my father eventually via the
> mobile phone - couldn't get a land line out. He was in
> one of those 'was there the day before but luckily not
> yesterday situations' but remarkably sanguine - then
> again he was Blitzed in the early 40s, shot at by the
> Japanese, landed at Hiroshima 6 weeks after the bomb,
> and spent some months being shelled in Beirut in the
> 80s, followed by Iraq. I guess there's a generational
> thing here about sudden death and mortality.
> 
> I liked Bush's line about attacking States that
> sponsor terrorism delivered without a hint of irony,
> conveniently ignoring the U$ support of ObL in his
> early career [not to mention the Contras, tacit
> support for Noraid  etc etc]. Presumably we will have
> to wait a while for any degree of self-immolation.
> 
> My son didn't sleep last night, and my daughter has
> woken up to the fact that a third of her class are
> Moslems. I didn't tell that at least a couple have
> relatives in potential reprisal areas.
> 
> Going back to more mundane matters over here, Blair
> understandably side-stepped a confrontation with
> public sector trade unions as this went up, and will
> now be able to get away with stuffing the unions under
> the cover of the rightly more newsworthy and serious
> international crisis. He has also diverted all the
> planes away from central London, but they seem to be
> coming over my house on the usual flightpath at more
> frequent intervals, so lets hope air traffic control
> are better than Railtrack.
> 
> BTW what of Mitchell [spammer] Cohen's bid for
> write-in mayor? I hope he's around to spam again.
> 
> Finally, I hope someone's remembering to refuse blood
> from people who've spent time in the UK.
> 
> Andy
> 
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