Only God can make a tree

I got up earlier than usual this morning and put my flag out.

Here is a column by Breeanne Howe entitled “Hope Of A Tree” that appeared on RedState.com today.

It says, better than I could say it, what I’m feeling today on the anniversary of 9/11.

Putting a comma where it doesn’t belong is not some life-ending tragedy

In the Afro Briefs section of a website called AFRO on September 6, 2013, the headline read “Miami Heat Udonis Haslem & Wife’s, Unusual Wedding Announcement” and apparently no one batted an eye at the unneeded comma.

And when Miami Heat player Udonis Haslem and his wife, Faith Rein, were married recently (after living together for 14 years) , no one -- well, hardly anyone -- batted an eye that their wedding announcement included ... well, here, just read it for yourself.

I’m hoping you are shocked, but perhaps you won’t be.

The thing that shocks me most is not the fact that the couple included information about an abortion in their wedding announcement. It’s that one pro-choice blogger reportedly was appreciative that the couple “discussed their decision like it’s not some life-ending tragedy.”

If abortion is not a life-ending tragedy, then what is it exactly?

There may be an ongoing debate about whether a fetus qualifies as a human being (what is it, reptilian?) or exactly when it becomes a human being (the CCNCW -- current conventional non-Christian wisdom -- seems to be when it is “viable,” capable of surviving outside the womb) , but -- and correct me if I’m wrong -- has there ever been any doubt as to whether it is life? Any at all?

Maybe in the hallowed halls of The New York Times or the locker room of the Miami Heat or the bridal parties of the rich and famous, but not where I live.

There’s no question whatsoever.

An abortion is a life-ending tragedy, period.

Case closed.

Now if we could just get journalism schools to teach people where commas are not needed, life on this planet would be almost perfect.

I hope you caught the lack of sincerity in that last sentence. When everything is said and done, today is still September 11th.



(Photographs above from “Days of Terror” at nymag.com)


(Photographs above from www.theblackday.org by navexpress)

A remarkable addendum to 9/11/2001

I have been saying for years that the thing television does best is show human joy and, conversely, human agony. Recently a newspaper also managed to do this.

The Stamford Advocate, a newspaper in Stamford, Connecticut, has published an article and a photograph of a piece of paper that bring the unimaginable horrors of 9/11/2001 down to a personal level. Read the article here, all three pages of it.

Then multiply this story by nearly 3,000 variations on the same theme and it becomes truly mind-boggling.

Anniversary

[Editor's note. This post is a composite of two earlier posts, one from September 2011 and one from September 2009. Having just written negatively of celebrity worship in my last post, I thought it strangely appropriate to find a reference to celebrities in a solemn post written three years ago. --RWP]


My thoughts are somewhat disjointed today, but I am going to try to blog anyway.

Back in the early years of television, CBS-TV had a weekly program called You Are There in which famous historical events were re-enacted as though television reporters had been present at the time. After introducing the event for the week, the announcer would solemnly intone, “All things are as they were then, except YOU ARE THERE.” It was usually quite informative, sometimes unintentionally ludicrous -- at least, I think it was unintentionally -- but always entertaining. History, as they say, came alive.

I thought of that line today as our nation observed the eighth anniversary of what has come to be known, simply, as 9/11. Most of us lived through it in real time eight years ago. We were there, over and over and over, as television brought it to us, and brought it to us, and continued to bring it to us. It was almost too horrible not to watch. We wanted to make sure that it was real, that what was unthinkable had actually happened. The unimaginable had occurred.

I dislike the idea of recalling tragedies because going through them once is enough, but I suppose it is necessary to remind ourselves of what was lost and to educate the young about their own past. In my parents’ generation, the remembered day was December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. For my generation, the events seared into memory are the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and of both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, the Challenger disaster in 1986, and 9/11 in 2001. Thanks to television, we were there for all of them.

Some people know exactly what they were doing and where they were when they heard that John Lennon had been killed. Some people will feel similarly about the death of Michael Jackson, I’m sure. Some people watch far too much television.

The cult of celebrity is all around us. It’s in the very air we breathe. And although what poet John Donne said is true, that any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, I prefer to save my grief for more important things than the passing of entertainers.

Today, I grieve.



(Photographs above from “Days of Terror” at nymag.com)


(Photographs above from www.theblackday.org by navexpress)