If this is an emergency, please call 911

I did, 911 was busy. I was going to report a roadside fire. 911 was busy for 5 minutes. I gave up.

3 years ago, we had a really big emergency. I still don't know what to think about it. I was here, on the left coast, late for work. It was well after noon in New York before I found out about what was going on there. The e-mail from friend in KY to say that friend in NYC was okay made no sense to me for almost 20 minutes.

A conversation with another friend in Manhattan on Rosh Hashanah: You have no idea what it's like here. Every street pole is covered in fliers asking if you have seen my friend, husband, wife, brother....

I still have no idea what it's like. While New York and California have more in common with each other than each individually has with the rest of the nation, the distance betwen here and there protected those of us in the west. We were removed from the immediacy of the horror.

I hate talking about 911. It's been crassly overused as grist for the politcal mills. I was too far away to properly appreciate the horror and the loss, and when I contemplate today on what happened that day, my stomach turns to knots and tears flow from my eyes, and my personal losses that day, were zero. How can I begin to appreicate the losses of those people who lost so much more? I think the losses of the people of New York, and forgotten Washington, have been tarted up and made to dance like a circus bear. The government can't protect us from these events, it certainly can't do so while simultaneously pursuing an isolationist doctrine.

911 should be a day of national mourning, but the politicans should be locked in cages with ball gags on for the entire week that surrounds the date.