Friday Morning News

Good morning Conflucians! Today is September 11, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of focus on that grim anniversary in the major newspapers. The New York Times has a couple of articles. The first is about fears that never materialized:

Remembering a future that many feared

So much has been said and written about what happened on 9/11. The following day is forgotten, just another dulled interlude in the aftermath of an incoherent morning.

But New Yorkers were introduced that day to irreducible presumptions about their wounded city that many believed would harden and become chiseled into the event’s enduring legacy.

New York would become a fortress city, choked by apprehension and resignation, forever patrolled by soldiers and submarines. Another attack was coming. And soon.

Tourists? Well, who would ever come again? Work in one of the city’s skyscrapers? Not likely. The Fire Department, gutted by 343 deaths, could never recuperate.

If a crippled downtown Manhattan were to have any chance of regeneration, ground zero had to be rebuilt quickly, a bricks and mortar nose-thumbing to terror.

Eight years later, those presumptions are cobwebbed memories that never came to pass. Indeed, glimpses into a few aspects of the city help measure the gap between what was predicted and what actually came to be.

The second piece is about therapists who dealt with mental health issues that arose for people after 9/11/2001:

A trauma that rippled outward

Dr. Kane is a psychologist. She works a great deal with the dying and the grieving. It was thus not surprising that people, dozens of them, would turn to her after losing relatives or friends at the World Trade Center.

“I always try to leave some space in my practice for nice, normal neurotic people, so that my whole day isn’t just death and dying,” Dr. Kane said. That was not possible after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. “It was death, day in and day out,” she said. “I would be in the office from 8 in the morning till 8 at night dealing with dead people and bereaved people — all day long for more than a year.”

Her work took its toll. It was nothing like what her patients endured, but it was no walk in the park, either. She would cry on the way home from work. Pain crept into muscles and bones. And she came to understand that, for all her training, “I was ill equipped for how to deal with that kind of trauma that I saw.”

At the Washington Post, there is a really depressing article about teaching high school kids about 9/11–kids who have no memories of that day only eight years ago.

Blaming a Generation

One outrage after another. Obama’s recent defense of DOMA leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I won’t continue, I may start to blub again if I do, and I don’t feel like being smug anyway. Claiming that banning Gay Marriage is good for the federal budget, and then invoking incest and pedophilia does not warrant comments that aren’t X rated in nature, and this is a family blog.

But while I’m at it, I want to talk about something that I won’t be scoring any points for. In fact, I’m likely going to get Hell for this, but it needs to be said, and Little Isis can’t be polite and sweet all the the time when she has something to say.

It’s like this: since Bam’s victory in the General Election, there has been talk of “The Obama Generation.” Voters of my age group who tended to vote for him have been dubbed “Obama’s Youth Army.”

Well, for one thing, that sounds so militant. Who wants to be part of a “Youth Army?” Can you say cheesy? Besides, that is a loaded phrase with violent imagery, and I detest violence.

But I digress.

Thankfully, all this talk of “The Obama Generation” and “The Obama Era,” is dying down. Sadly, not because of the incredible corniness of those phrases, but because of what a disappointment my Generation’s alleged savior is turning out to be, only five or six months into his administration.

That’s the thing about Demi-Gods. They’re just human narcissists who are full of themselves, and the messianic imagery gets old after a while. My female friends who voted for the Chosen One will no doubt abandon their “Chocolate Fudge Sunday” in favor of the next big thing when it is no longer cool to like him. It’s like having a boyfriend who is great at first, because he’s, you know, so cocky and good looking. But then eventually you just cannot stand the sight of his smug mug anymore, because every time he opens his mouth to utter something stupid you must resist the urge to backhand him.

No see, there is a point. Since all this talk of “Youth Armies” and “Obama Generations” and “Obama Nightlights” and “Obama Thongs” and “Obama Midnight Movies,” there has been a trend among … people of a certain age group, I guess, to put the blame of Obama on us, that is to say, my generation.

Well, I take issue with that. (Note: I am not referring to most of the commenters here in this post. I have noted that you are all mature adults, and good parents to boot, and you seem to have a strong enough sense of history to realize it is a little more complicated than that.)

In the Dust of the World Trade Center

We can’t help remembering:

On September 9, 2001 I made reservations for an October trip to New York City. If I’d waited a couple of days I would have undoubtedly cancelled my trip. As it was my stepson and I spent the first 2 weeks of October 2001 in NYC.

While my other visits sort of blend together my memories of that visit stand alone. For one thing cars and other vehicles didn’t casually honk. When people saw me taking pictures, they talked to me. Asked me where I was from, “Did the rest of the country care.” And often (as when we took the Staten Island Ferry) cried with us as many of us saw the city’s new skyline for the first time: