Windchimes

I meant to say

Yesterday, I considered including some of my thoughts on the London Tube bombings in my journal entry. I heard from a very good friend who lives just outside of London yesterday late afternoon. His first words, after all the standard hello-how-are-you's, "I'm glad I don't work in London anymore." He used to walk to and from work everyday on the street where the bomb on the bus exploded.

News trickled to my attention but slowly, since there's no television channel reception to speak of at my house and I wasn't on the computer very much yesterday (comparatively speaking). I knew very little about all of it before my friend called.

Naturally, I went looking on the internet for all the related news. It seems like all the stories are the same, with different headlines, many times exact sentences over and over again. My thoughts on the matter would probably be echoes of what everyone else is saying, mostly. It's horrible, and look how bravely those Londoners go on with their routine, can't, won't let terrorists make them change anything. Only sensible response, really. Clean up the mess as best you can and go on with life, don't let them draw you into their little hate-filled world. Don't capitulate in any way.

What do you do about the anger and grief? Is there really a good answer? Seems to me there are only not as bad answers and bad answers cleverly rationalized.

We, as a country here in the U.S., couldn't let the 9/11 attacks go unanswered. Now we have the war on terrorism, the department of Homeland Security and a whole lot of our young men and women over in various mid-eastern deserts trying to make our home soil safer. I am convinced that most of this effort involves doing things to try to make life better for the people who live there; building schools, rebuilding hospitals and the like.

Of course, Saddam is a monster who had too much power. Something had to be done. How he came to have that much power? Well, I'm not an eyewitness. I bet it had something to do with getting hold of a lot of weapons. It seems a lot of weapons come from world superpowers, trying to make sure the superpower's "friends" are equipped to defend themselves against that superpower's enemies. It also seems like being an enemy of an enemy makes someone a "friend".

I'm sure that's what a lot of my English professors would call "reductive". There's a whole lot more involved, in other words. There's a whole lot more there. But that, to me, appears to be the base in the whole cauldron of stock. Add various roots and poisonous herbs, and it keeps getting passed in a vicious round.

Last night, we watched some old M*A*S*H* episodes on DVD. At the end of one of them, everyone sang "Dona Nobis Pacem" for Father Mulcahey. I could have listened to it over and over again.

On another subject, as I was reading all the articles on the bombings, I ran across the news of London beating out Paris for hosting the 2012 Olympics. Saw some pictures of what Paris might have looked like if they'd won. Gotta say, I'm a little happy they won't be turning the Champs de Mars into a volleyball court.

Well, we're spending the afternoon with some friends at a lake on their pontoon boat, so I'm off to get ready. But before I stop typing, I wanted to take note of how all this news seeped into my journal entry writing yesterday, even though I didn't mean for it to.



J.H. Larrew
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