Amy last saw her 41-year- old husband, an assistant vice president and project manager for insurance brokerage Marsh McLennan, at their Oceanside home, drinking coffee with Hershey's kisses and checking his e-mail before going to work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
This year, as with the seven previous 9.11s, I'm just not in the mood to give it a go today. Seven years later, and what, really has changed? Though I love my country, and I make every reasonable effort to be optimistic, but it's tough today. We're still mired in the same pointless, emotionally-laden, directionless finger-pointing and rhetoric that has paralyzed since 9.11.01. We still enable an Administration that dragged us into a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with terrorism. Seven years later, and really, NOTHING has changed.
I will spend this 9.11, as I do every 9.11, and most every day, thinking about my late friend Tim Haviland, who went to work at New York City's World Trade Center on that beautiful clear morning as he did every weekday. That he, and 3000 other Americans, is no longer with us, says more than I ever could about why we are where we are.
I could go on at length about my anger and disillusionment, and my resentment that 9.11 has been turned into a virtual product line of fear by this Administration, the Republican Party, and John McCain. Yes, I surely could, but not today. My heart is heavy, and I simply don't feel like beating that horse today. Instead, I'm going to do something positive in Tim's memory. I'm going to donate blood. I have no idea what, if any good, this will do, but I don't want to spend today feeling frustrated and powerless...so I'm going to do something that will hopefully have a positive impact on someone somewhere. I hope that those of you who read this will be able to find within yourselves to do something, anything, to give today added meaning
In my stead, I'll leave you with Keith Olbermann's special comment from last night's Countdown. Olbermann shares my outrage and disillusionment, and if you listen to his entire virtuoso performance, you'll hear a barely-contained anger that closely mirrors my own. I just don't have it within me to go down that road today.
