It Happened One Morning...

Events of the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks exert a powerful distortion on our sense of time. The emotions were too strong, too fast, too raw at first. But after a little time, some numbness comes--the event receding into mythic time as stories are shared, theories are constructed and argued out, positions and actions are taken, beliefs are formed and hardened. Now the actual facts of the day are covered in a patina of settled opinion and political posture. NCPR has just aired two full days of testimony by the important players in homeland security detailing what happened when to whom. What do you think? What do you belive--has it changed any? What next?

This just in

Somewhere along the China-Mongolia border, at this very minute, there is a young man who has brought his clan's yaks down from the high pasture, has finished his dinner and his chores and his homework. Next to his bed there is an old sprungneck guitar and a third-hand IBM 386 machine with a 2400 baud modem. Late at night while the family sleeps, he practices three chords over and over, waiting anxiously while an mp3 of Mona, played live in Crary Mills NY by the Radio Bob Band, slowly downloads over the ancient copper wire from his dial-up service in Ulan Bator. Behold the power of the Bo Diddley beat.

I was sure it was Jim Benvenuto who told me the proverb "If you don't think too good, don't think too much," quoting his now-deceased father. Jim thinks I made it up myself, and made up the story of his father telling it to him. Who has the brain cloud?