QOTD: "A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." - Sir Barnett Cocks
Reading: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide
Listening to: the news, of course
Decluttering accomplishments: Can I persuade anyone else that doing math puzzles counts as cleaning my bedroom? No? Well, I did wash a whole bunch of nylons.
Note that the re-design is modified due to Robert being a quasi-Luddite who won't update his browser. Blame him for my prose being less purple. Or thank him.
A few months ago, I got email from my cousins in israel. "We are trying to live normally," they said. The phrase angered me. I understood how they felt, but I hate it that people have to make an effort to go about their normal lives.
There are several times that I have been in a city in close time proximity to a terrorist attack. Last summer, we were turned back from walking down a street in Moscow and later found out that there had been a bombing in the subway station there. Less than a month later I read my email from a net cafe in Ulan Baatar and heard John tell me about being in a parking lot near Cape Town when a car bomb went off. I walked past the American embassy in Nairobi at least a dozen time just weeks before the 1998 bombing there. My very first overseas trip alone found me leaving Antwerp, Belgium days before a bomb blast two blocks from where I had been staying. (Incidentally, at the time, there were more terrorist attacks in Belgium than anywhere else in the world. That isn't all that surprising when you realize how many international organizations are headquartered in Brussels. But it also was never a place people think of as dangerous.)
I don't usually think about terrorism. Even when I travel.
During the Los Angeles riots, I was scared. I watched the TV and saw car windows being smashed on the street that I normally drove home on. Many of the looters were mere opportunists, but I saw the looks of hatred on some of the faces on my television. I smelled smoke from buildings burning less than a mile from where I lived. I'm not used to being hated.
A few years before that, there was a lot of news about random drive-by shootings on the freeways. My mother asked me if I drove on the freeway. "What do you expect me to do?" I asked. "If you make yourself a prisoner in your house, the bad guys win." I don't mean you should rashly stroll into tough neighborhoods alone at night, but I do think you should be able to get around without worrying constantly. I still think that it's possible to balance the risks you take.
I don't turn on the radio or television before I leave the house. So the first news I heard was when I got into the car. I heard a mention of the World Trade Center and, at first, I thought they were talking about the 1993 bombing. Then they mentioned a plane crashing into it. I thought it might be a hoax story so switched stations. Only then did I realize that there was a real story. On my way down the 405, I flipped a few times between radio stations, hearing about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I stopped at the post office to mail a package. When I walked out, a plane was landing at LAX. That's ordinary, but my reaction was a moment of fear.
We've been out of the office because of a training class. I drove over to the building where the class is and all people could talk about was what news they'd heard. Before the class started we heard that the Air Force base (where my office is) was locked down. We tried to go ahead with the class, but were ordered to go home. The major concern was that the Air Force officers, who are likely to be experiencing some busy days ahead, should spend time with their families while they can.
I called my mother and reassured her as best as I could. She told me about her neighbor, who'd had a friend come over and ask her to join in some prayers. The friend's son works in the World Trade Center and she'd been unable to reach him. After they finished their prayer, she tried calling him at home again. "Why are you calling?" he asked. He'd overslept and decided not to go into work.
About five years ago, I was on my way from New Delhi to London. The security people there checked every pocket of my day pack. Every person was frisked. Every person walked past bomb-sniffing dogs. The on-going violence in Kashmir was real enough that nobody questioned this. On my way from LAX to Denver not long after, I was annoyed to hear people complain about having to show picture ID.
There has never been a time in history when there hasn't been a war within three hours of Heathrow Airport.
There weren't attacks in Los Angeles today. But three of the hijacked planes involved in the attacks were bound for LAX. It would be easy to know someone who was on one of those planes. Our colleagues who were in from Colorado Springs and Huntsvile for the training class are just hanging on, waiting until they can go home and realizing it could be days.
Mary Joan asked what she should tell her 12 year old daughter. All I could say is "there are evil people in the world." That doesn't sound very reassuring.
In the meantime, we're trying to live normally.
Copyright 2001 Miriam H. Nadel