2011 — 2 May: Monday

A sunny morning. How is one supposed to react to the news of Osama bin Laden's death, I wonder? Let alone, where he was found? Our world has become a remarkably unpleasant one in the last decade.

This was part of my initial email exchange with Carol at the time:

Subject: Re: Words fail me
Am okay, though ironically was supposed to be a block away at Bank of New York today — Bank cancelled out yesterday. The carnage is appalling and we are all in a state of shock. Carol

Subject: Resuming
Well, I've not had a shock like that since the IRA blew up the Baltic Exchange and a substantial chunk out of the "inner" City of London a few years back on a day when I'd originally planned to be on one of my book shopping jaunts.
Having sat quite mesmerised last night through essentially seven hours of satellite coverage from the likes of CNN and MSNBC, plus your Rathers and Brokaws, I must admit I'm now left wondering quite how such a well co-ordinated operation of this size and nature can have managed to slip by so many intelligence agencies and their squillion dollar budgets quite so unnoticed. But then I also believe that anyone can basically be persuaded or coerced into doing just about anything, one way or another. It all depends on the degree of fanaticism and indoctrination. Let alone, perhaps, religion.
As for contingency and disaster planning, who but a lunatic would allow for even the remote possibility of such an attack? You would, in Western eyes, quite literally have to be crazy. The world is truly stranger than I feared.

Subject: Re: Resuming
Oddly enough, the WTC was built to withstand the impact of a 707. I was working with the Fire Department at the time, and there was a lot of activity connected with construction of the twin towers, because they were so outside the range of experience. And much tug of war between FDNY and builders and their backers, including the Port Authority (owners, a New York/New Jersey entity, which greatly complicates things here) over safety, both in the final product and in the construction.
I am praying that we don't do anything rash or vengeful or inappropriate (though many cannot imagine anything quite harsh enough), and that we will try to get much smarter rather than get even. It's not possible with people who do such things and only makes things worse. And killing a bunch of people — innocent or otherwise — does nothing to erase what occurred.

Date: 11 / 12 September 2001


Let's have a photo of Christa taken during that picnic in Netley in much happier times:

Christa, June 1982

I have no current plans1 for today beyond stuffing my next little crockpot full of culinary magic. As for last night's televisual treats — I hadn't even reached the end of the pilot episode of "Freaks and Geeks" before I could have been seen ordering my own copy of the boxed DVD set. Brilliantly well-observed, though I'm very glad not to have attended an American High School. (I heard enough about the system as it was in 1963/4 from Christa, over the years.)

It's 10:19 and time for my next cuppa and a smidgin of breakfast. I'm predicting a deliciously-stale croissant (just the way I like them). And Lauren Laverne's taste in music will do nicely for now.

About bl***y time, too... dept.

Finally, "Deep End" is going to be available again, a mere 40 years since I saw it. Over the years I have mostly failed to find anyone who even recalls it, let alone enjoyed it. It will be interesting to see how it compares with my now somewhat-faded memory of it. You can, obviously, never see such a film for the first time twice... (Link.)

But then, yesterday, I mentioned to Mike that I'd heard BBC 6Music DJ Nemone promising to set her "record detectives" the task of tracking down Marsha Hunt's version of "Walk on gilded splinters", which promptly set precisely that music rattling around inside my largely-empty head. The thought that upwards of 50% of the human race wasn't yet born when she sang that is a wry one. As he suggested, with a twinkle in his eye, does it mean I'm getting old? :-)

Now, what about that crockpot, Mrs Landingham?

Soon be time...

... for a spot of lunch, what with it being 13:44 or so. I'm currently catching up with yesterday's "Cerys on 6" music show and it's already cost me the £7-49 to buy and immediately download the MP3s that make up the album "Je chanterai pour toi" by Mali musician Boubacar Traoré. And now she's talking to Robbie Robertson about the very album I recently bought and promptly played two or three times on the trot.

I hafta say: this is my kind of lazy, sunny, Sunday afternoon — even for a Monday :-)

I haven't bought...

... any books by Joanna Russ since 1980, but I'm still not pleased to learn of her death. She was, I suspect, too intelligent for me.

Suddenly, it's 23:09 and I'm tired. G'night.

  

Footnote

1  Shock, horror!