My first response, essentially, was to shut myself off; go back home and do my reading. It took a while for the significance of these events to sink in (not that it has yet; of course it hasn't for anyone.) I find radio coverage of such things trying. Everyone is listening earnestly in hopes for more news, or a better way to understand what is happening, and the newscasters can't do much more than reiterate the same sentiments over again. I tend to avoid television news coverage in general. I'm confused about how best to be, as my mom put it "part of the process." In a way, coming home and turning off the radio was the right thing to do: I did need to get my reading done, and did it, and have just written a message to the Melville class discussion list about it. And whenever I did turn on the radio all that I heard was reports of closings and cancellings: transportation networks, commercial buildings, baseball games, schools, a screening of Citizen Kane that I was planning to see tonight; and I thought: why do the events of this morning, no matter how disturbing, need to be allowed to disrupt our lives in these irrelevant ways? Why not watch a movie tonight? I'm still not entirely clear how many of these closings were due to worries about further violence and how many are just expressions of grief and mourning.

Before I went back to the barn for lunch and the afternoon, I had had few interactions regarding the attacks; just a jokey interchange with Ester, Ben, and Jonah at McCabe, none of whom seemed particularly upset. Joel was talking to his grandfather, who worked at the World Trade Center since the day it was open (no longer works there), and who described the crash as the most horrible thing he had ever seen. Then the two of us played a sprawling, disjunct guitar/accordian/cello rendition of Billy Bragg's Pearl Harbor saga "Everywhere," in response to "today's Pearl Harbor." Rebecca came home with a bag of groceries and a radio in her ear, and Ester not much later; the two of them had been keeping abreast of developments far more than I. I listened to NPR for a while longer and began to realize some of the implications which were less obvious when the discussion was more about our moronic leader and the Hollywood-esque drama of the events. I called home, more instinctively than anything, where my mom was focused on the possible repercussions as the American public internalizes these events. The inevitable heightened intolerance of Middle-Eastern and other ethnic Americans; a reevaluation of our place in the world and the meanings of peace; a heedless acceleration of military spending at the expense of what is truly important; the lurking significance of the selective service card I submitted not twelve months ago. Family talks at the dinner table expanded on these themes; Joel's prediction is that this signifies the beginning of "the downfall of the US as a major power." I'm not sure about that, but it does seem in many ways indicative of the trends that have been occuring, and I have much less doubt now that this is indeed a day that will join the annals as a major turning point. Ben and Ester have written touching and insightful entries on their experience of the tragedy. I am sobered.

I saw a man build a shelter in his garden today
And we stood there idly chatting
He said: "No, no I don't think war will come"
Yet still he carried on digging.