Saturday, July 09, 2005

Everyone quotes the axiom, "... violence is the last resort of the incompetent", forgetting that those wise and mindful of History utilize violence long before it's "too late".

A sharp, immediate smack across the snout was one of first steps in converting the ancient wolf into a well-trained dog.

Monday, July 04, 2005

When in the Course of Human Events...



--And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.






"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. "
--- attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the signing
of the Declaration of Independence, July 1776
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
--- Theodore Roosevelt, (1858 - 1919)

Friday, July 01, 2005

Ghosts and the Living City


The buildings to replace the WTC-complex are not important for memorial purposes. The iconic power of commemorations like the Tribute in Light are. The Germans have a word that translates as "places to throw wreaths" for memorials with no soul. Rebuild lower Manhatten as a living city, concentrate on that. But bid every year in September the Ghosts of the WTC return, as the Tribute in Light or in other forms of cutting edge technolgy or brute-force engineering. Let them revisit the City and Nation annually and yet fade away into memory til next year until the pain fades too.... Let the Ghosts come but once a year in reproche' for all that we still have to do, and a time will come when we'll say as a Nation "it's time to let go." As we have other wounds and traumas, as we have either forgiven or at-least accepted, old aversaries when we gather.




The Ghosts don't live in a hole in the ground, they live high over our heads in the clouds.