10th Anniversary of 9/11

The 10^th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States have been (surprisingly) sober, calm, and reflective, with only minimal jingoism (and that being mostly surrounding the various sporting events, which I’m sure felt the need to tie a patriotic bow around their making millions of dollars exploiting the remembrance). What strikes me about the various TV specials and newspaper commemorations is the sense – sometimes explicitly stated – of “never forget,” that 9/11 will be forever in our national consciousness, that the ceremonies and memorials we gathered around today will be gathered around year after year, decade after decade in perpetuity. But of course that won’t be the case. We remember now because we are so close to the horrific events of that day and are still living the effects lingering from that day. The survivors and the families of the dead are still alive, as are the politicians and others of authority on that day. The memorials are fresh (and some not yet even completed). The images are from our memory, not history. But in time the images and memorials will be history, as those of us who experienced the day, directly or from an all-to-near distance (most of us now living), are gone. That’s just the nature of time, of history, of memory. On December 7^th or June 6^th, we as a nation pay little notice anymore to the memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Normandy invasion, and haven’t for at least several decades. What makes us think that in 50 years, or 100 years, when most all of us are gone, September 11^th won’t be just another day in the week for most Americans (assuming there are still Americans 50 or 100 years from now). Time and history move forward, and memory fades. That’s not to lessen the import of September 11^th. But all is transient, and what seems so permanent and forever now (“never forget”) is actually only blowing along the surface of a shifting sand.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stream of Consciousness

Writing whatever comes to mind. The sounds from outside – the cicadas (or are they tree frogs? I never know), the occasional passing car. Nothing else. I’ve been watching the football game on TV for an hour but really don’t know the score because I haven’t really been watching it but rather reading while having it on in the background, as I usually watch sports on TV, as background noise. I’ve been aching more of late, sitting too long or getting up, walking stairs. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s just age again – how can you tell? Last weekend I had three days in a row with a bad sore throat, thought I was coming down with a bad cold or sinus infection. But I went fishing and biking for three days and the sore throat disappeared altogether. I have no idea how the human body works. Or doesn’t. I walk three to four miles most every day. Used to jog that long, but had knee replacement surgery three years ago, so have backed off to walking. But fast, a hard walk, with walking sticks to take pressure off the joints and increase the cardio. The Saints just scored and are apparently “right back in it,” 21-17. I’ve been coughing this evening for some reason. Why am I writing this? It’s just an exercise. I’ve been told it has some purpose. But I don’t know what that purpose might be. Maybe I’m supposed to stumble upon a topic, a subject of some interest or significance. If so, it doesn’t seem to be working. No stumbled upon topics or subjects of any interest or significance whatsoever. Maybe that’s why it’s called “free writing” – it’s free of any purpose or significance or interest – free of any meaning. Or reason for reading? But if there’s no reason for reading, why would there be a reason for the writing? Might there be a topic of interest here? A sort of meta-topic? No, this is just drivel. It’s an exercise I used to years ago have my students engage in at the beginning of most every class. I think it was something I read about in a textbook, or maybe something one of my colleagues recommended. Get the juices going, and all of that. But neither I nor my students ever found it to be anything other than an empty exercise. Nothing much ever came of it. And nothing much is coming of it now. There’s a timeout with 2:44 left in the half.

Spring Valley Creek

On days like this it doesn’t matter whether or not you catch fish. Just being out on a spring stream, in the post-summer, pre-fall weather, clear and comfortable, blue sky and 70, light breeze – it’s enough. A multi-hued green stained-glass canopy shrouds the stream. The water, shallow as usual for this time of year, rushes over the moss-covered rocks, a hymn of small crashes, indistinguishable by themselves, but rising to a gushing chorus in its total. The sunlight off the riffles is like endless, bright, dancing diamonds, here and in an instant gone again and again replaced forever it seems, hypnotic, like soft fire, flames of reflected sunlight. Mayflies and butterflies hover like tiny rainbows in the stream of light. The songs and screeches of birds I’ve vowed in vain for years to be able to recognize rise all around me, invisible in the shadows of branches, taunting, cruel. Five miles above, a jet passes, a faint anachronism, a brief intrusion. And then, of a sudden, a 14” brown trout rises from nowhere, breaks the water, engulfs a #14 Elk’s Hair Caddis, and loses all but the fight in the moment of the water. Perhaps it does matter whether or not you catch fish.

Storm Warnings

We’re approaching the height of the end-of-summer storm season (we’re into the middle letters of the alphabet) and the news media – especially the TV news media – is in full-bore batten-down-the-hatches, run-for-your-lives, we’re-all-gonna-die fear mode. Last week it was Hurricane Irene, a category 1 hurricane that did significant damage along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina all the way up to Maine, though it wasn’t half as bad as warned and predicted (but much worse in Vermont after the not-predicted or not-hyped flooding after the downgrade from hurricane to tropical storm). This week it’s tropical storm Lee, bearing down on Louisiana with a forecasted 10”-20” of rain over the next 3-4 days (but no real threat beyond local flooding). And then “lurking” out in the Atlantic is hurricane Katia, which looks like it’s going to stay out over the ocean, but you just don’t know, do you?

The purpose of TV news is to entice eyeballs and ears to sell to advertisers, and a sure-fire way to do that is to scare the bejesus out of viewers into thinking their lives are just about to end in some massive tempest of apocalyptic proportion – it keeps us glued.

But the media are toeing a very thin line. If they don’t hype the danger of some impending storm (can anyone say Katrina?), they’re condemned for ignoring the threat that caused the suffering and death of people. But if they overdo their warnings, and the storm doesn’t materialize or veers off beyond harm’s way, they’re condemned for over-hyping the threat. It’s not a decision I’d care to make. But it does seem to be one that if you’re going to err, it’s best to err on the side of over-hyping: You don’t die if you escape a storm that doesn’t live up to the threat. You might well die if you hang around not thinking it’s going to be all that bad.

And that’s the media’s conundrum – if they downplay a storm’s threat, they run the risk of being accused (properly) of not warning the public, but if they overplay a storm’s threat, they’re accused of hyping the danger and (unduly) panicking the public. And then there’s the “cry wolf” syndrome: If you keep warning of danger that never comes, no one’s going to heed the warning when the threat’s real. Of course, given the option, the media are going to hype the danger – it just keeps the eyeballs glued. But if it’s erring, it’s erring on the side of safety. I can go with that.

That said, once the storm has passed, the media could return to a more reportage mode: This is what happened, and this is the way things are now. But following these storms, the media drumbeat of disaster keeps its rhythm steady. They search as search they can for the worst effects of the storm, even if the worst is a few inches of flooding in an unoccupied intersection or an empty boardwalk. One correspondent last week said she was reporting from onsite in a diminished area of the storm and was told by her producer in the studio to find a better shot because another channel had “more wind on camera” – that is, find something more visually dramatic. Another reporter I saw was standing in her waders (they all now seem to wear waders while standing in the rising flood waters, warning us not to venture into the rising flood waters), just up to her knees, saying in all earnestness that the water must be “three to three-and-a-half feet” – “Yes,” I thought, “if you happen to be about ten feet tall.” It seems that because they’ve predicted and warned that this could be a really big if not catastrophic storm that they have to find what they can that is (at least somewhat) big and catastrophic to validate their predictions and warnings.

The Downside of Downfall

For at least the past half dozen years or so, I’ve noticed in my students’ writing a prevalent confusion between the terms downfall and downside, as in “The downfall of this game is the cost,” when it should be “The downside of this game is the cost.” Downfall means a cause of decline or ruin. Downside means a negative quality or aspect. I’ve even found this misuse at an online paper mill that boasts it “offer[s] reasonable prices and deliver[s] top quality papers,” and then posts an example of one of these “top quality papers” that includes the sentences “One downfall of gambling, for instance, the sale of lottery games to minors is illegal in every state; yet, by all measures, there sales are commonplace” (could we also clean up the syntax and spelling in this “top quality paper”?) and “Also growing evidence reveals another downfall.” But this error is growing beyond student papers. In an article in the online journal Cash, Money, Life!, you can find the sentence “There are several downfalls to escrow accounts.” There are obviously more common confusions I see (“everyday” and “every day” come to mind, or “its” and “it’s”), but I’m curious about the source of the confusion of “downfall” and “downside” (I understand the confusion of “everyday” and “every day” or “its” and “it’s”). I don’t recall ever seeing the confusing going the other way: “Hamlet’s indecisiveness was the cause of his downside.” No, it always seems to go downfall instead of downside. Perhaps it’s just that the term “downfall” appears more often in our culture, being the name or title of a ska and punk band, a metal band, a funk metal band, a cover band, a board game, an online game, a game show, and one recent (very good) film, and thus is just more familiar. (There are no “Downside” bands, games, or films.) Or it might just be another inexplicable tic in current usage.