"Haunting hopeful tributes....." What a bunch of crap. This is the kind of thing I'm coming across here on this 10th anniversary of 9/11. Has it been worth the hype? To my mind, not really. I told the story a while back of working in Dearborn, with a little Muslim girl who was being particularly hard-to-handle for me. When I confronted her about what could possibly be the issue, she said her dad was in the army. It didn't occur to me to ask *whose* army he was in the service of, and really it didn't even matter; all I saw was a little girl who missed her daddy. I can see where she was coming from there. The only thing I could tell her was that her mommy probably missed her daddy just as much, and it would probably help her mom if she "made good choices." (the teachers in the crowd know what this means.) The next time I saw that same little girl, she gleefully told me her daddy had come home. I'm pretty sure that was all she wanted, and frankly, I don't blame her. I don't recall even having a problem with her after that. I'm also pretty certain all she wanted was to be heard. No surprise, I can get my head around that one myself. Look around you, and legitimately ask yourself if there is any such thing as a  "pure" American, outside of Native Americans. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. We're all from someplace else, if you're lookin' back far enough.

And culturally, 9/11 will eventually be the same variety of vacuous, memorial non-entity that things like Armistice Day are. Do Americans have any trouble driving Hondas because Pearl Harbor occurred? That was another attack on America. "Well, that's different," I hear some say, "almost all the people who were at Pearl harbor are dead now." Exactly. And one of these days, all the people who were involved with 9/11 will suffer the same fate. The same fate as us all. Every generation has its Zapruder film, Rodney King, Challenger explosion, whatever. And the succeeding generations will NOT be able to get their head around it, because it is only history to them. Except for the soldiers who fought in the wake of 9/11, who will now be maimed for the rest of their sorry lives. Them I feel sorry for. Maybe it's just me not having the "luxury" of being able to be "totally American," because I've worked around everyone else from every other part of the world. No harm, no foul, I say. Think about it.