Excuse me, a note

I haven't been posting on Fridays and this isn't an ordinary post, I just want to say a few words about September 11th, since that is the day we have landed upon.

Curious how a date that occurs every year becomes the name of a specific, isolated event? I've written about that before....

Anyway, I ended up writing less about the attacks over the past year than I intended to, as though we saw the news, reacted to it, and everything went back to normal a week or two later. It didn't, of course. Two graduates of the school died that day, no one I knew, but some of the masters were pretty broken up--especially Allen, since one of the two had been his student. Other people on campus had outsider friends or family among the victims.

Security Joe, as a retired cop, went and volunteered at Ground Zero for while. While there, he was exposed to contaminated dust, and while I do not think it has actually affected his health, he will be monitored for it, just in case, for the rest of his life. Several graduates joined the military because of the attacks and one of them died in Afghanistan several years later. Greg became very concerned about rising anti-Arab sentiment and began lecturing, both on campus and off, about the history of the Middle East and Islam. He's still at it, making the rounds of schools, colleges, and libraries every year.

In the months after the attacks, things on campus felt...weird. It's hard to describe, which may be why I didn't end up describing it. I think it was easier for us than for many people in the outside world because we didn't watch TV and so didn't constantly get reminded of those images. Also, a lot of us were in therapy, just as part of being students at the school. But life had divided itself into before and after.

Over the following year, things gradually normalized, if anything at such an extraordinary school can be said to be normal. By the first anniversary, I think most of us felt that the attacks had started to recede into history, that we were moving at last into whatever comes next. There was a memorial of sorts on the anniversary, but I was in the woods still and missed it.

Anyway, I just wanted to add that in.