A Followup of Sorts

Okay.  I thought I had the whole mosque in NYC thing out of my system.

Guess not.

About 8 years ago I guess, someone bought the 100 acre parcel directly behind me.  They cut down the 100 year old pines, excavated the land to baby bottom smooth and planted a huge suburban style McMansion not 150 yards behind my house.

Add in the fact that I was kicked off their property by the missus when I was found wandering up their drive oggling the new landscape they had created, it would be reasonable to expect that I was not happy with my new neighbors. 

I sucked it up.  I respected their rights.  I learned to live next to them but not interact with them.  They went their way.  I went mine.

Fast forward to sometime earlier this summer.

I am coming home from the bike shop one evening before the Sun actually was down.  Seldom do I even look down the driveway of my neighbor, but this nght I did.  What do I see? 

A forty foot wooden cross has materialized in their dooryard overnight.  The cross is huge, brown and obviously meant to relay to any who care their deep faith in the Christian god.

Being a card carrying heathen, I was at a loss trying to understand why such a huge reminder of their faith was needed twenty feet from their front door.  I imagined a 50 pound bible sitting on the kitchen counter open to Mark, Luke or John while the missus recites the Lord's Prayer as she joyously prepares sumptious and scrumptious Hambuger Helper meals to serve on holy plates painted with Jesus dragging the cross across their lily white suface.

And I laughed.  I chuckled deep.  What else could an American heathen do?

Get mad?  Be Sad?  Shit, there's too much going on in my own life for me to worry about what my neighnor erects in his dooryard. 

Maybe the tight asses upset over the mosque in NYC ought to do the same thing.

NOW

Before I get accused of having no empathy, sympathy or ability to understand the emotions surrounding the huge loss of life on 9/11, let me say this.

I sat dumfounded  in the waiting room of Goodall Hospital, the morning of 9/11 and watched the second plane hit.  And I cried.  Deep embarrassing sorrowful, shock filled and angry tears.  To this day I cannot look at any image of that carnage.

I cannot know the immediate and personal grief of having lost a loved one.  No one close to me lost their life that day.  But like the day JFK was shot, 9/11 is emblazoned in my mind with every detail cast in stone. 

But America needs to move on.  We should not be so petty that we cast our own principles in the shitter just because we are still grieving or worse for political gain.  We are supposed to represent possibilities and freedom.  To me that is the least we can do in honor of those who innocently died on 9/11. 

Later............................................