Tomorrow

Sept. 11, 2007 will be the sixth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on our shores. It's also my mother's birthday, for those keeping track.

September 11 was painful for so many reasons. There was the universal -- the fact that the New York skyline was altered permanently for such a terrible reason, and that the Pentagon fell under attack, and that a plane nose-dived into an empty field in Pennsylvania. There was the personal -- I was standing in an airport check-in line as it all came down, and eventually had to reschedule a planned six-month stay abroad. (Which, I might note, is far less important than the pain others were enduring at that time and up until this day.)

One of the hardest things about September 11 was living in the Bay Area, where people are so quick to pull out the self-hating anti-American sentiment. I certainly don't believe in blind patriotism, but hearing Amy Goodman on KPFA in those days was pretty much tantamount to sticking toothpicks into my eyes until they bled.