Reflections on 9/11

September 11th is America's tremendous bug-a-boo day.  Fifteen years ago, the nation realized that it really was not as secure and tranquil as we believed it to be.  I was seated with my husband in a courtroom in Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia, when the news first broke.  We were witnesses in an accident case.  We gave our testimony, and within 30 minutes, the courthouse closed.  We went home and watched the seemingly crazy news reports for several days.  I had to scramble to find a way to work, four days later, because I normally took the subway at the Pentagon - but no trains could stop there.  The stories, videos, and photographs were shocking.  I was very lucky that I was in court, and not at work on that day.
   Fifteen years later, I live 2,000 miles to the west of the east coast madness. I did not know anyone who lost their life in the multiple tragedies that occurred on that day - but I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who did lose family members.  I still grieve with them and for them.  I believe that all of those who lost their lives - innocent victims and first responders - should always be remembered with love, sadness and dignity.  I remember my feelings of horror and disbelief on that day, and in the first few weeks that followed.  America has never felt safe since then.  It feels safe to me, but not to the majority of our citizens.
  At the age of 60, I now wonder whether I feel safe because I have lived for this amount of time; if I feel safe because I am, primarily, a historian; or if I feel safe because I am (I think/hope) a pragmatist. As I look at things happening in the Middle East, and the rising tide of jihad in Islam, I feel as if I'm looking at the time period before the Crusades in the eleventh century.  Are we going to have a "Holy War" -  Christian versus Muslim, again?  But what about all the other great religions of the world, and their followers?  I do not want to see the world at war in my life time - over religion, over food and water, over natural resources, over any belief system.  I don't believe that religion can rule the world, nor do I believe in a dictatorship, either.
  It is a sad thing that the United Nations are neither united, nor representative of all the people on our planet.  We, the people of the world, of all nations, of all colors, of all creeds and beliefs, need to unite and be heard and moderate a way to mutual understanding and trust.  Otherwise, our world and it's knowledge will be lost....

Weather and Parental Warnings

So I'm sitting in Rosie's dining room, having just eaten a meal of scrambled eggs and sausage.  It's a few minutes after six in the evening, and I've been up and going for twelve hours plus.  I had a chocolate iced doughnut at 8 this morning, and a navel orange at 1 this afternoon.  I feel stuffed and full of food, but I want something sweet.  I say that's "Momma's Curse" since the Swedes were the first people to build a candy factory....
   At least I was only skittering between four places today - the ABCs returned yesterday, so I didn't need to be there to give Pounce thyroid medication every 12 hours.  Today, it was Rosie, Finn, Seek, Carter and Xuxa; not to mention seeing my own kits twice for an hour each time today.  Everyone is inside and has been fed supper.  I'll need to leave just before 8 to pick my roommate up from work and take her home.  The weather forecasters are calling for an inch of snow tonight - but Boulder weather patterns are very difficult to predict.  Rosie's folks will return Sunday evening; and Seek, Carter and Xuxa's two families will return Tuesday morning.  I'll be with Finn until Friday, when I switch over to staying with Maggie May.  Home again in my own bed on 8 February....   And, of course, I'm walking Rosie and Tess every weekday.  Staying busy, I am.
   I have the feeling that senile dementia is getting hold of Rosie.  Usually she sleeps the night through, unless she has an upset stomach.  Last night, she was up every 90 minutes, barking to be taken out.  Each time, she did not go to the bathroom, she just walked calmly over to her bed on the deck and settled in.  I roused her out each time and took her back upstairs...  I hope she doesn't pull this tonight, as I need to sleep.  I think I'll bring Finn over to spend the afternoon, until Rosie's folks return tomorrow - they get along well, and maybe Finn's presence will get Rosie to eat her meals in a timely manner.  We'll see.
   I still can't believe that my hair has grown out so much...  if the wind blows, it's constantly in my mouth.  I pull it back and pin it up on top of my head when I'm at home because I'm so hot and sweaty.  I don't know if I can stand another summer of sweat running down the back of my head and my neck - I might have to chop it off again.  It scares me at night when I wake with unknown fur all over my face (my hair); and Lovey constantly parades back and forth across my chest when I'm sitting at my desk.  Her weight pulls on my hair unbearably...   I have a tender  scalp and tender feet soles.  Guess I'm a wuss.
   I'll need to check with Finn's folks and find out what vehicle I'm supposed to drive while they are gone...  I hope it's the Audi, because if it does snow, the MiniCooper is useless.  And I'm afraid to take the Tesla out on the road...   Forecasters are saying an inch of snow tonight, rain tomorrow changing to snow in the evening, and anywhere between three and thirty inches of snow Monday and Tuesday.  At least I know how to use the snowblower at Finn's - that'll get me down the quarter-mile driveway to the gates and the local residential road.  I've stocked up with food, drink, books, and a new coloring book just in case the 30-inch prediction is correct.
   When my sister and her husband had supper with me Thursday night, to celebrate our Mom's 94th birthday, we were discussing how our parents would tell us not to do something, but not give a reason for not doing whatever.  Kathy and I discussed how, at 83, Great-Uncle Ray went on a tour of the western states on a motorcycle; he sent us fantastic postcards from the places he visited.  Kathy and I thought that would be the coolest thing in the world to do- but Mom and Dad both told us that riding motorcycles was dangerous.  We were never to get on a motorcycle, period.  When Kathy was in 8th or 9th grade, she rode as a passenger on a motorcycle - and, the very first time she rode, they were involved in a wreck and Kathy was on crutches for several weeks.  Mom and Dad just said, "See? Motorcycles are dangerous."   I thought about that today when I read a local headline - One Killed, Several Stabbed At Denver Motorcycle Expo - and my mind just said, "There you go..."
   Do we ever really get away from things that our parents drummed into our brains?

11 September 2001

Thing that I remember most about September 11, 2001, is that I wasn't at work near the Navy Yards in Washington, DC that day.  My husband and I were in the Prince William County (Virginia) Courthouse in the town of Manassas on that morning.  As we were sitting on the benches, waiting to be called, a man said something about a plane being flown into the World Trade Center.  I cringe now, remembering that I shrugged that report off, saying that planes had flown into the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings in the past.  It was another thirty minutes before we heard that it was a airlines jet that hit the building, and another 15 minutes before we were told about the second plane.  Soon afterward, we were all dismissed from court.  When we arrived at our car, we heard about the crash into the Pentagon, and, from then on, the day was total chaos.
   As we were driving home to Lakebridge, the classical music station we normally listened to was switched over to a "sister station" that gave 24-hour news in the District.  We heard that all phone lines were tied up in the DC, northern Virginia, and southern Maryland areas.  We heard that the subway system and bus systems were closed down.  I was amazed that they aired "unconfirmed reports" that the Mall had been bombed and that part of the Smithsonian Institute had been "wiped away."  We stopped at the local grocery store on the way home and loaded up on items that we thought we might need.
  I think we spent the next 48 hours watching the Cable News Network.  CNN is the only logo that sticks in my mind when I think of those days.  It was a good thing I was not at work that day.  One of my co-workers commuted from Baltimore each day.  It took him 32 hours to return home, once our work force was dismissed at noon.  Two of the ladies I worked with had to walk across the District to get home - they left the office at 12 noon and arrived home at 8:30 that night.  I always took a combination of bus and subway into work, switching from one to the other at the Pentagon.  After 11 September, I could no longer travel that route.  I took a bus into L'Enfant Plaza and changed to the subway system there.
   Today I honor all those who passed away in the planes, and on the ground, and in buildings that day 14 years ago.  I also honor all the people who assisted strangers in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and all of the canines who worked with their handlers, trying to find survivors in the aftermath.  I honor all those who have passed from respiratory failure and cancers they received while simply helping others.  All of your lives were not in vain.  You are all American Heroes.

Chincoteague and Assateague Are Barrier Islands

People who do not live on or near water usually don't have a real grasp of what a barrier island is.  During hurricane season, these people watch the flooding and washing away of barrier islands during big storms without much understanding.  Chincoteague and Assateague Islands, in Virginia and Maryland, are barrier islands.  They came about from wind and tide, and probably will be undone by wind and tide.  To understand barrier islands, and how they work, I suggest reading a short, but sweet article, which includes a map of changes to the northern end of Assateague found at:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/barrier-island.htm
  People have lived year-round on Chincoteague since 1650, and the island known as Chincoteague today would not be recognized by the sailors of older days.  With each heavy north-easter and hurricane, the sandbars and channels change; there are wash-throughs that break islands up, and there are silt-ins that join smaller islands together.  Chincoteague Island itself is made up of more than one island; the secondary part is Piney Island, and I'm certain that more have merged over the centuries.  Assateague Island has broken into several pieces over the years, reformed, broken and reformed a myriad of times.  It's a part of being a natural barrier island...
   And barrier islands have multiple ecosystems, which make them wonderful places to live and visit - but these ecosystems are very delicate, and all it takes is one large storm or hurricane to wipe all traces of settlement away.  In my grandfather's house on Chincoteague, I always remember the high tide marks on the wall paper.  I always called the specific room I'm remembering "the dining room" - my Mom always hooted with laughter when I called it that and said it was "the big kitchen..."  If you enetered the house via the front porch, the front door was a little to the left of the front left corner...  you walked straight down a hall to the little kitchen, which held the stove, refrigerator and sink, and then stepped up into the big kitchen, where there was a built-in china cabinet.  The wall paper was an Edwardian rose print - a pale blue-gray background, with tiny golden yellow vertical trellises, and gigantic old fashioned pink roses on pale green stems with leaves.   The floor boards in the corner opposite the china cabinet were permanently warped from so many sea water immersions, and my favorite rocking chair which sat there, was normally in a rocked back position....  And then there were the five horizontal high tide marks on the wall paper.  I know the highest mark was from the Ash Wednesday storm in 1962, and the next highest mark was the hurricane of 1938 - but Mom couldn't tell me the dates of the other water marks...
  More tomorrow.

With Lovey, and Memories

At home, with Lovey in my lap. I need to go pay a bill this afternoon, watch NCIS and then I can collapse in my own bed with Lovey. The red kids were super today - we ran into Rio, and I had had Remy and Rosie sit and listen to me, and Rio passed within ten feet of us, and the kids ignored him. That felt good. Aiko and Yoshi had a skip around the block this morning also, which made Yoshi take a long nap afterwards. A neighbor in Githens' Acres asked me in to see her new chicks - she's got ten babies, aged 1 to 3 weeks; now she has to hurry and construct the chicken coop. And this person's next door neighbor has also made inquiries about raising her own hens, too.
Feeling nostalgic, I looked up the house I spent 20+ years in on Google maps. I felt lost. I recognized the house's street position from the satellite view, but freaked out when I got the street-side view. That wasn't the house I grew up in! It was the wrong color! And most of the trees in the yard were gone - it looked .... naked. I finally took in the fact that an owner (later than my mother) had enclosed both the porch and the carport; that there was now an HVAC unit under what had been my bedroom window, which explained why the propane tank in the back yard had disappeared; I saw that the big pine in the northeast corner of the yard was still there, as was one of the magnolias and the bay tree we had planted as a family; and that a row of gardenia bushes along the back property line was still there. But there was a palm tree in the southeast corner of the yard! And all of the carefully tended rose bushes were gone, too.... Then it struck me as funny that I had expected the house and yard to stay the same after a 30 years' absence. I certainly have changed in appearance in those 30 years. Why should a house and living items in a yard stay the same? But I still remember the absolute ... shock ... of seeing something different from my memory.... It was weird.