We didn’t talk about it — that awful 9/11. The talk of others was all around us anyway; what could we say. What we know, we know.
Instead, my cousin and her husband spent their visit with us letting my mother talk — show them reams of old photos, tell, again, the old stories. They made her laugh. We laughed together, remembering.
More than fifty-five years ago, my mother and her sister dressed me and my cousin alike. We both can still remember the outfits — cute little rompers and seersucker short sets. Hand-in-hand, we skipped down the sunny hill between our houses singing “Zippety Do Dah!”
And then there was the time I went on vacation with her family, where we stayed with friends of theirs somewhere near Plattsburgh. The friends’ daughter had a a small kid-sized cabin with mattresses on the floor, where three of us went off to spend the night, armed with flashlights, blankets, and enough munchies to keep us sated until dawn. Just as we were about to fall asleep, a bat started flying around. My cousin freaked out. I did too, but, after all, I’m six months older than she is, and I felt responsible. (I have a habit of letting others take responsibility unless there is no one else. Then I always amaze myself with my ability to step up to the challenge.) So, I wrapped a blanket around her head and got her out and back to the house. Then the other girl and I chased the bat out of the little house and we had a great time for the rest of the night.
My cousin and I laughed at our childhood adventures until we were blowing our noses and wiping our eyes. And my mother laughed with us — for her, at 88, the best therapy of all.
We remembered the one summer I went home between college semesters and we hung around with a bunch of guys from New Rochelle and did hours of the “Slop” to the music of some band called “Kevin and Rockin’ Saints.” We rode on the backs of Honda-type cycles with guys that were going back to other colleges and we would never see again. And that was just fine with all of us.
My cousin and her husband brought bread and wine to share along with their stories. But not just any kind of bread. RYE BREAD. The kind you can only get south of the Putnam County border, where they live. Having lived in upstate New York for these past 45 years or so, I had forgotten what real rye bread tastes like. Rye bread with butter (well, these days it’s Smart Balance). Rye bread with salami. Genoa salami. Ah. Now, that’s a real taste of the good ol’ days. A sensory reminder of those carefree days before we lost our innocence — both personally and nationally.
In an odd sort of way, this day was, for us, an acknowledgment of the importance of that other 9/11 — an honoring of the basics that keeps us grounded even through the most tragic of times — friends, family, shared histories, hopes, laughter. Stories. And really good rye bread.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,…”
I try to stop thinking about the sad fate of my nation by trying to clean out my clutter, metaphorically trying, trying, trying to bring clarity to a nation mired in the clutter of lies.
On my overwhelmed bookshelf, three little booklets from The Pocket Poets Series published by City Lights that I’ve been carrying around since the 60s. An image of the cover of my little copy of HOWL and other poems by Allen Ginsberg shows up here, except I have 16th printing and not the first, which probably is worth something.
The other two in the old Pocket Book Poets Series I have are Pictures of the gone world by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Poems of Humor and Protest by Kenneth Patchen — neither one a first edition either. I will take them with me on my next more; they’ve become icons, magic carpets into my personal past, reminders that the more things change, etc.
The other book that emerged from bookcase clutter, pages yellowed and crumbling, is a 1945 original edition of “The Wayside Willow,” signed and dated by all of the members of the 1945 Klub Polski at Columbia University who translated and published the anthology.
I don’t have time to read through it now. I’m not done with enough of the clutter. But I will, soon. Poland is a country that was, many times, swept up in the tsunami of others’ histories and still managed to survive and to produce powerful writers from those painful processes. It’s in my blood.

Media Silences Bush Abortion Story Pro-choice Guide Margaret Sykes reports.
Did George W. Bush get a girlfriend pregnant in 1970? Did she have an Abortion? Muckraker Larry Flynt says so, and he’s always been right about politicians and their sex lives. Why is this story being ignored and even censored by the news?
Found the above here and am wondering if it’s true.
It turns out that it’s also reported here.

I tried. I really did. I put the RNC on CNN and tried to stomach all the GWB lies. And then I washed dishes, wandered around clearing up table tops, stood in front of the mirror and tried to decide if I should try a different hair style. Every time I wandered back in front of the tv screen, my stomach would knot. When Zell Miller came on, I took a crossword puzzle book into the bathroom and took a good dump.
Mostly, I couldn’t sit still while that circus was in town. I paced, fumed, despaired. I escaped with a couple of glasses of Dry Sack and a dozen pages of Dime Store Magic. Only there’s no escaping this terror of the reality of the Republican’s determination to undermine everything American democracy was once noted for.
This morning, I read this at Truthout. (Maybe there is hope. I hope there’s hope. What will we do if we have four more years of this Armeggedon leadership?)
From the Truthout piece, which is the Bush Is ‘Unfit’ to Lead U.S., Kerry Charges editorial in the NY Times by David M. Halbfinger and Michael Janofsky and the text of Kerry’s speech last night in Ohio.
“Let me tell you in no uncertain terms what makes someone unfit for office and unfit for duty,” Mr. Kerry said, turning to Mr. Bush. “Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead our country. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care for four years makes you unfit to lead this country.
“Letting the Saudi royal family control the price of oil for Americans makes you unfit to lead this country. Handing out billions of dollars in government contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you’re still on the payroll makes you unfit lead this country.
“That, my friends, is the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney – and that only begins to scratch the surface.”
[snip]
Mr. Edwards, introducing Mr. Kerry, called the attacks on him amazing. “They’ll say just about anything, won’t they?” Mr. Edwards asked. “He wasn’t wounded quite often enough, is that it?”
Reminding the crowd of Mr. Bush’s acceptance speech in 2000, Mr. Edwards recalled how Mr. Bush had “over and over” said: ” ‘They have not led. We will.’
“Well, let me ask you, have they led us to more jobs? Have they led us to better health care for our people? Have they led us to cleaner air, cleaner water? Have they led us to better schools and education for our kids?
“Here’s the truth. They led us from the edge of greatness to the edge of a cliff. And it’s time to lead them out of town.”
[snip. But what I saw on the Republican Lemming Convention, was countless thoughtless delusional citizens following the Bush administration over that cliff.]
When Mr. Edwards invited audience members to ask questions, one man suggested that the Democrats were campaigning too timidly, a criticism that many Democrats around the country are beginning to raise.
“You’re up against the dirtiest fighters in the world,” the man said. “If they hit you, you’ve got to hit back twice. How are you going to handle it the next two months?”
“There’s a difference between how you fight and who you’re fighting for,” Mr. Edwards said, choosing his words carefully.” It’s one thing to engage in a lot of personal assaults, like some of the things we saw last night. It’s another thing to fight with everything you’ve got for the American people and the people you believe in.”
How do you fight the delusions of mindless lemmings?