9-11-19

We remember where we were on the morning of 9-11-01.

We were living in Riverton, Wyoming, in the house we had finished a year earlier.  

Jim left before 7, headed to the site of a house he was constructing for a customer.

I began tidying the kitchen, turning the TV to BBC America with the intention of watching the gardening show, Ground Force. 

I didn't understand the images on the screen: smoke, dust, firetrucks, rubble.

Turning to several news stations I found the same photo coverage and at last managed to grasp the basic facts being broadcast by stunned and disbelieving reporters.

We were two hours behind New York time where the horror occurred while we were still asleep.

I jumped in the truck and roared to Jim's work site, a 10 minute drive.

There the radio blasted country music as usual, no mention had been made of the disasters in NY, the downed plane in PA, the attack directed at the Pentagon.

Many of us remember our where-abouts on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and a few days later our compulsive viewing of his funeral via grainy black and white TV.

It is right that we remember days of infamy, those recent and those that impacted other generations.

It is right that we also remember those days of grim endurance and victory.

Each of us in a lifetime, accumulates our personal roster of remembrance--anniversaries of joy, of new beginnings, of loss, of heartache.

Some are shared only  with family or close friends, unacknowledged by country or world at large.

Events such as the 9/11 terrorist attack, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the evacuation of Dunkirk [a few that come readily to mind] need to be accorded a solemn mention, year after year, decade after decade.  As Abraham Lincoln stated in his speech at the Gettysbugh battle ground, 'It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.'

September 11, 2019 has had a quiet beginning here. 

A storm swept in last evening, unexpected.

Thunder boomed, wind blew, rain drove in furiously from the east--so intense that it briefly sounded like hail. 

I had been out to water the cabbage and broccoli transplants within the hour and to sprinkle them with sevin to deter the flea beetles which have been lunching on them.

The sky to the east was pearly with an innocent pile of pale grey clouds. The air was still.

I was reading in a chair by the east windows, Jim was in his bedroom watching TV when the first blast of wind flailed through the trees along the lane.

Within seconds rain streamed down the windows, drenched the chair cushions on the east porch.

The storm passed within the half hour, though the degree of moisture on the ground this morning suggests a quieter, gentler return of showers during the night.

Shortly after full daylight I was outside collecting the variety of plastic plant pots which had been blown from the lower porch and scattered over the grass.

The red flowered cushion lifted from the back of a porch rocking chair, made a splash of color against sodden grass.

I walked the edges of the garden plots, noting that the cabbage and broccoli plants were standing up pertly--no trace of the sevin dust. 

The first blooms of purple coneflower, raised from seed this spring, are rising above their caterpillar-riddled leaves.

Four Monarch caterpillars are clinging to the defoliated stalks of milkweed.

Sunflowers are past their prime, a few small blossoms open near the bottoms of the stalks.

Cockscomb--free-loader from the Amish farm--blazes with heady color, seemingly undaunted by the long drought.

Jim is away overnight on a quest for a 'bed' to be used on a truck he is having restored.

I was invited along--a road trip of 9 hours each way.

I declined, politely I hope. 

The cats and I are keeping house. I've some music to practice; a mystery to finish reading; I may go downstairs this evening to sew more curtains.

It is a quiet day on Turkey Flatt Road--as it should be.