First, a very good friend of mine had an experience at an airport recently that I think warrants some consideration. She was waiting to board a flight when the invitation was issued via the P.A. system that various groups were welcome to get on the plane, including “active military.” I had no idea that such a practice was in effect. Since leaving the ever-toiling, put-upon private sector, I’ve only flown on Southwest. It’s odd, though, that if this particular manifestation of our country’s vulnerability to uniforms is now standard operating procedure that Southwest – a Texas company, after all – would not partake.
Anyhow, my friend told me that when the “active duty” call was made, a uniformed government employee went to board the plane and a woman shouted out “Thank you for serving!” The response of the other passengers, my friend said, was tentative at best, as if most people weren’t really sure if automatically applauding the nation’s killing agenda was still part of the script or not.
That’s a great sign, I think.
But the following morning – a Sunday – I was brought back to the reality. I got on a bus to go do some grocery shopping on the other side of the river. Scattered about on the floor toward the rear of the bus were several sections of The Oregonian. I picked up the “Community News” section. As an aside, I assume that it was the Sunday paper, but I cannot say for sure, because evidently the dates are no longer printed on each page. Instead, at the top of each page appeared the following (and to me meaningless) words: “Volume 711, Issue 4 E.” A lame attempt at timelessness, perhaps? I have no idea, but I do think it’s strange, not to mention sloppy and irritating.
Anyhow, one below-the-fold headline caught my eye: National 9/11 Flag stops in Portland, by Anne Saker The Oregonian. Here’s the first paragraph:
On its way back to New York City for the coming 10th commemoration of one terrible September day, a large American flag lay in the lobby of the U.S. Bancorp building so that Portlanders could add a stitch to help bind up the wounds.
That’s where I stopped because I’d read all I needed – or wanted – to know. We were wounded one terrible day in September, I learned, just in case I’d forgotten, and now we’re stitching shit up to “bind” those wounds … at a bank. Man, that may be the most honest paragraph I’ve read about that terrible day since it happened.
