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Requisite 9/11 Moment of Memory
Sep. 11th, 2004 06:09 pm(I apologize in advance for inflicting it upon friends' lists: if you've read too much of this stuff already, feel free to skip.)
On a personal 9/11 update, my stepfather, who lost his job but escaped with his life from the World Trade Center, has been unemployed ever since -- the company he was working for relocated to another city, forcing him to move temporarily with them, and then fired everyone a month or so after the dust had settled. He's finally found himself a job, though: he's going to be working for the post office. He was in computer compatibility with graduate degrees and it's the best he can get now.
My stepfather is a passionate Republican (you should hear the holiday political arguments with my mother's passionately Democratic Jewish family) and for the first time in his life, he's going to be voting for the Democratic candidate in November. Bush is anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-personal rights, and he has taken steps during his presidency to enforce all these opinions; the economy has plummeted and he has no plan to fix it, refuses even to admit it's faltering; he has no respect for our national tragedies and the thousands who die in the Middle East, basing his entire re-election campaign on a war we don't even have to be fighting against a single man who can't be found -- not that anyone even remembers him anymore.
If you're of age, register, and vote for Kerry. Don't ever think that doesn't count.
I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
On a personal 9/11 update, my stepfather, who lost his job but escaped with his life from the World Trade Center, has been unemployed ever since -- the company he was working for relocated to another city, forcing him to move temporarily with them, and then fired everyone a month or so after the dust had settled. He's finally found himself a job, though: he's going to be working for the post office. He was in computer compatibility with graduate degrees and it's the best he can get now.
My stepfather is a passionate Republican (you should hear the holiday political arguments with my mother's passionately Democratic Jewish family) and for the first time in his life, he's going to be voting for the Democratic candidate in November. Bush is anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-personal rights, and he has taken steps during his presidency to enforce all these opinions; the economy has plummeted and he has no plan to fix it, refuses even to admit it's faltering; he has no respect for our national tragedies and the thousands who die in the Middle East, basing his entire re-election campaign on a war we don't even have to be fighting against a single man who can't be found -- not that anyone even remembers him anymore.
If you're of age, register, and vote for Kerry. Don't ever think that doesn't count.
I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"