the day after a day of days
My father told me November 22, 1963, that I would remember JFK’s assassination
vividly for the rest of my life. “It’s a day of days,” he said, like the stock market
crash in 1929 and the attack on Pearl Harbor were for him.
He was right. I can give you a precise account of that autumn day, down to the
movie I saw after helping out for several hours as a copy boy at the Shreveport
Times (“McClintock!”, starring John Wayne). Subsequent days like that include
the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in ’86 and, of course, 9/11.
I could have continued cleaning out the shed yesterday afternoon, but I chose to
watch the 49ers play the Seahawks. That should be far enough away from the in-
cessant coverage of the 10th anniversary of that horrific day of days, I reasoned.
I was wrong. The game was pervaded by references to the event.
I don’t have any pithy conclusions about the blitz of information and emotional
responses that ran all week. I’m still sorting it out. I know that I’ll die with un-
answered questions about what really happened, because I still have questions
about JFK’s death. Events of such magnitude quickly enter the realm of myth and
facts become secondary.
I did have two takeaways I wanted to share, though. First, I found out that after a
decade to address the problem, New York still has no integrated communication
system for first responders. That means, in a similar attack today, the various
agencies like the police and fire departments still couldn’t talk to each other.
The second is a comment from a survivor or family member of someone killed in
the chaos: “It’s hard to believe how those people could be so hateful.” At once I
thought about the U.S. drone missile that obliterated 30+ Afghanis in a wedding
party. How difficult can that be to understand?
A few days after 9/11, I was sitting by a lake crying and I asked myself “how could
they do that?” But I already knew and said aloud: “blowback”. The American re-
sponse of a war in Afghanistan with no end in sight, coupled with the invasion and
occupation of Iraq, seems to insure further resistance.
These are my scattered thoughts this day. I would really like to know yours.
