Thursday, September 11, 2003

Highly Recommended Reading

My pal Buzz Dixon just sent me a link to the online version of the cover story in the current Esquire. It's called "The Falling Man," it's by Tom Junod, and it's about the attempts to identify a certain victim at the World Trade Center who was caught in one haunting photograph. The article is also about what that photograph symbolizes and about our own complex feelings for the people who died that day and in that way.

Here is a link to the article but I want to warn you: It's a long piece and after you read it, you'll probably be in a very odd mood...not necessarily good or bad but odd. As I am at this moment. Part of me wants to move past the horror of what was done to so many people that day. And part of me doesn't. The "move on" part will inevitably win because it has to, because grief is such a non-constructive human condition and to triumph over it is constructive.

But every so often, you can't help but pause and remember. And shiver.

• Posted at 2:46 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Here's David Corn on how little has been done in the cause of "homeland security."

What I find interesting about this issue is that, apart from a few broadside assurances from folks like Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft, I don't see any rebuttal to this point of view. It's one of those topics where if you confront a Bush supporter with it, they kind of change the subject, cough, attack the messenger and wave the flag for victory in Iraq.

Seriously, I'd love to be convinced this is an erroneous viewpoint. If anyone out there comes across an article not clearly by an administration flack that says we're doing enough to secure chemical plants, nuclear facilities, airports, etc., please send me the link so I can post it.

• Posted at 1:25 PM · LINK

(Mostly) Good Questions

This article in The Philadelphia Daily News asks some simple but largely-ignored questions about what occurred in this country on 9/11/01 and in its aftermath. I think a few of these questions probably have easy, non-controversial answers and to think that they don't is to descend into the crazier conspiracy theories. But I think some of them are good questions, deserving of better responses than we've gotten from the current administration or from the media. And I think we'd all be better off if all of them were answered in full, even the screwier ones. (Thanks to Jim Keegan for the pointer.)

• Posted at 1:14 PM · LINK

Today

Here is a website devoted to the nearly 3000 people who perished on 9/11/01. If nothing else, you might want to just scroll through the list of names to remember just how many human beings that is.

• Posted at 12:31 AM · LINK