Saturday, October 13, 2001

A few days ago I posted a link to a wonderful discourse on what the flag means to lefties like me. Today I ran across another one, this time from fellow blogger Barron Chugg.

I'm glad I'm not the only one out there who refuses to allow Old Glory to be the symbol only of those who agree with the phrase, "Our country, right or wrong." For our flag to mean anything, it must represent this country in all its facets: our failures as well as our virtues. Like the song says, "America! America! God mend thine every flaw."

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I'm enjoying the new Star Trek series Enterprise more and more with each episode. It looks like Rick Berman and company finally figured out that human beings laugh, make mistakes and occasionally touch each other, and that's made all the difference.

As much as I like what they're doing with humans, my favorite character on the show isn't one. He's not even a biped. He's Porthos, Captain Archer's dog. He is one cute pooch.

And you know a beagle is cute when he draws a red-blooded hetrosexual's attention away from T'Pol (or, as a friend of mine refers to her, T'Pow!).
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Thursday, October 11, 2001

A thought struck me today as I was getting ready for work: it is amazing how quickly the tactics used to cause the World Trade Center and Pentagon atrocities were adapted to and nullified.

The passengers on United Flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, were no different from those on the other three doomed airliners save for one crucial element: they knew what the terrorists intended to do with their plane. The cell phone calls they made to their loved ones provided them with news of the attacks that had already been committed. Armed with that knowledge and a resolve we can only imagine, they were able wrest control of the craft from the men who planned to use it as a missile, and foil those intentions.

The actions of people doing what had to be done made this grand scheme quickly obsolete. Years in the planning, the gambit had an effective useful life of about forty-five minutes upon implementation.

It's thoughts like these that allow me to sleep peacefully most nights.

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Many words and images have moved me in the month since the terrorist attacks. There's one picture that's haunted me since very near the beginning of this. I want to share that picture and what it means to me, but I just don't have the words yet. Soon, I hope.

In the meantime, I can offer the words of another. On this week's season opener of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor read the poem I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great by Stephen Spender, to sum up his thoughts on the attacks and their aftermath. In a gentle yet confident way the poem (particularly the last stanza) evokes the memory of the brave men and women who ran into the World Trade Center to save whoever they could.
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Tuesday, October 09, 2001

After missing the "Very Special" episode of The West Wing and the premieres of Buffy and Angel because of a combination of forgetfulness and VCR failures, I broke down and got TiVo over the weekend. The guys over at TeeVee have been raving about it for a long time, but fear of price and complicated set-up kept my enthusiasm for this new technology rather low.

A little online investigation of the facts about TiVo quickly changed my mind on the subject. Couple that with a substantial "open box" discount on the unit itself and you've got one very happy new user.
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