Then and now

Fine, everyone else is posting on it, so I'd probably be remiss not to do so myself.

Five years ago this morning I woke up, flipped on the radio and heard what had happened. As I got into the shower, I looked at Mr. T and said, "You ever heard of Osama bin Laden? You have now." This had to be him.

I went to work, where nothing was going on except lawyers wandering the hallways aimlessly, stopping in to one office or another to exchange blank stares or short words. The courts closed that morning, and the federal building in town closed as well. I remember worrying about Wasteland, who was working in a federal government office at the time, Mr. T's brother, who's always traveling to NYC, and all my law school classmates who'd gone to work in New York City.

Two senior partners took me and another associate to lunch; lines that were normally rigidly maintained broke down briefly.

How do I feel today? Well, I could go on for days about that if the disgust wouldn't well up in my throat, requiring a detour to the bathroom. So I'll let these people say it for me.

The people who did this accomplished what they set out to do, I'm afraid. Not just the killing of so many innocents, but the mangling of a people, of hope, of a system of governance that had sustained for so long and through so many other terrible trials. And it's still too early to tell whether we'll survive it.

So you can see why I'd rather post about black bears and houses tucked away in the north woods, where the deer visit the corral at sunset and the night is sweetly silent.