None of us is as dumb as all of us - From a Despair, Inc. poster

Grace; I just called to say I love you: The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar
Peggy Noonan Wall Street Journal September 8, 2006

... Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them." No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear. ...

Graceless: Five years ago
Bruce McDonald Canuck Attitude September 11, 2006

... A year and a half ago I was walking down a residential street in Brooklyn NY. I think it was 15th St. near the Prospect Park subway station. I came upon a block where every lamp post, sign post, telephone pole, fire hydrant and I think even the trees were all painted red white and blue. They had literally painted the flag on everything on the street. The colours were starting to fade just enough that you could tell it was direct response to 9/11. When I looked at the houses I saw that many of them had memorials in the windows, teddy bears in fire, police and military uniforms with signs saying “we will never forget”. I concluded that the block must have suffered heavy casualties in the disaster and I acknowledged their grief even if I couldn’t fully appreciate it. But I found the place to be really creepy, not because I found myself suddenly confronted with such a public display of mourning, but because as a Canadian I’m not accustomed to such blatant displays of patriotism and I’m certainly not accustomed to people expressing their grief through patriotism. ...

Update: In a comment appended to this post (and in his preamble today to his courageous reposting of his story—which we hadn't realized he had taken down because of harrassment), Bruce McDonald indicates that he did not understand that SSNews was endorsing his point of view. We should have made that more clear. The gracelessness we refer to is the picture he presented not his pov. Please read the following link, which is a repost of the orginal with a preamble. Bruce is definately an individual, sensitive, and aware of the present in an artistic sense (to know the future you must understand the present). Kudos, Bruce, for not letting the bastards grind you down. We welcome and value your 'Canuck Attitude'.

Five years
Bruce McDonald Canuck Attitude September 14, 2006

Preamble: Septemeber 14, 2006
To say that this post has elicited a reaction I didn’t expect would be one of the greatest understatements of my life. Apparently a lot people who don’t know me decided to take offence at what were nothing more than honest personal reflections on one of the most important events in Human history. The fact that I didn’t do the usual and recount what I was doing on that day like everybody else and instead wrote about how I see the way the world is changing since then seems to have made a lot of people uncomfortable. It’s incredible to find that so many people think I don’t understand the meaning or importance of 9/11. It would appear that most people couldn’t get over what I said in the second paragraph about my feelings of being creeped out. Well I’m sorry, I was. I have no disrespect for the people I was talking about, their expression is more true than mine because they lost loved ones and I didn’t, I understand that. But it really did creep me out because it serves as a harbinger of what our society could become because of all of this. ...