BLUE SKIES, BLACK SMOKE

     It was a glorious blue that day, the week of school opening and a beautiful beginning . Or so we thought. Little did we know that at 8:46 AM our world had changed forever and life as we knew it was no more. We went from blue skies to intense red fires to a deep and dense black smoke and finally to white ashes and huge piles of smoking rubble under which were the buried bodies of so many. Nearly 3,000 people died that day, 6,000 wounded, and the hearts, minds and souls that were broken are beyond counting.
     "Today is the greatest
       Day I have ever known.
       Can't live for tomorrow.
       Tomorrow's much too long."
                                   (Smashing Pumpkins - Today)
     For so many the tomorrow was too short, cut off forever and the tomorrow's of the living were changed, drastically and unbelievably. I remember reading almost obsessively about that day, every newspaper, magazine,  a shelf's worth of books, all trying to understand what had happened. And the conversations held with survivors or with their kin were even harder. I felt the relief of knowing that someone I knew, a friend or family member had been delayed and thus was safe. I cried over the stories of heroism and selflessness and I highly recommend the book 102 Minutes - and a box of tissues.
     The hardest, most difficult moments of that day and the days to follow were the moments when I knew that someone I knew was now dead, unbelievably so, when I tried to explain it to the kids in school, when I opened my office for calls from teachers to family members in the area and the shocks that came on one after the other with the Pentagon and  Shanksville, Pa.
     But the one that was visceral, the one that I still have the most difficult time dealing with, internalizing its reality, perhaps because of my own fear of heights, is the sight and The Sound - the sound of bodies thudding to the ground after falling from floors on high. The sight of these bodies, the sight of so many people literally hanging on to the outside of the building as they tried to breathe, to get rescued. Anyone there as a first responder or caught in the horror speaks in a whisper about that Sound.
     So what do we do to insure that this is not a recurring sight or sound, that no more buildings are heaps of terrorist generated ashes, of bodies broken, of families bereft? I really do not know; I only hope that there are people who do and yet terrorism has only grown in the 15 years since and today there are kids who really are unsure of what happened, its impact on our lives - and theirs- who never knew life before and what has been lost since. So they take off their shoes and put their stuffed teddy on the table and move thru nonchalantly while we adults still are unsure of this all. And yet, and yet, one did try to blow a plane up using a bomb in his underwear and one with a bomb in  his shoe so who are we to complain when we are sent thru scanning machines and must take off our shoes and jackets.
     This is life today and personally, I see no change for the better as terrorism is urged on benighted victims of those who export terrorism to the world. It is a world that is confused, almost obscured by the ashes that keep falling in our memories, blurred by our tears that we cry when we think of those lost to us.
     Today there is a field called futurism, its workers called futurists. It is concerned with the events and trends of the present especially as they portend of the future. They look at the world and warn us or congratulate us depending upon what they see and understand. I read the best explanation of their motivation in a book and it is a definition or statement that we must all read and believe and change our thoughts and behaviors accordingly.
     It is up to us. I have been saying that for a long time and what is frightening to me is when I see much of what I say reflected as well in the writings of important people of the world. I wish for these people to come up with the answers and not just raise the same questions. It is what frightens the bejesus out of me when I read an article stating that some people will be spoilers and vote for the Libertarian slate, not understanding that this will allow Trump - dear G-d!!! - to win the election. The thought of him as President is a soul shaking quake and where is there to run, to hide, as we lose what has made us a country as we continue to lose any remnants of the unity we found within us after 9/11? And what will we do as we lose our civil rights all in the name of law and order and promises that oh yes, just some sacrifice on our part and he will fix all the woes of society? People, please think carefully before you fill in that ballot or pull that lever. Every vote has a consequence.
     So become a futurist. Think what one wishes the future to be, one of war and hatred or perhaps one where the hatreds have at least somewhat cooled and people can begin to hear each other again. Read the following and think.
     "The future is a door.
       Two forces - forces that we drive...race to that door.
       The first force is evolution. Humanity changing, growing, becoming better than it was.
       The second force is ruination. Humanity making its best effort to demonstrate its worst tendencies. A march toward self-destruction.
      The future is a door that can accommodate only one of those two competing forces.
      Will humanity evolve and become something better?
      Or will we cut our own throats with the knives we made?"
                   (stated by a character, Hannah Stander, in Invasive, by Chuck Wendig)

Watching and crying. The memorial service still stirs the pain and the hurt, the rage and the shock. May G-d bless us all.     And we have people who threaten to refuse to honor the national anthem?! They should be thrown out of the game and let them exercise their freedom of expression elsewhere other than where they are getting paid millions for playing a game. Shame on them!