America on September 11, 2001

Walking the Labyrinth—September 11, 2009—Egyptian Christians, called Copts, today keep the feast day of St Paphnutius, a monk who lived in the desert 1600 years ago. During the anti-Christian persecutions under the Egyptian governor Maximin Daia, every priest and monk was to have his right eye burned out and his left leg broken. Why the governor chose these bi-lateral mutilations is unknown, but after Paphnutius was subjected to these penalties, he was sent to work in the copper mines of Sinai. Most prisoners there died within two years, but Paphnutius was accustomed to living in the desert, and not only survived but recovered full use of his mutilated leg. When the persecutions ceased, Paphnutius returned to his monastic life (in the desert—how different could it have been?). He was later made a bishop and attended the Oecumenical Council of Nicaea called by Constantine the Great in 325. A chronicler said that when the Emperor met the pious bishop, he kissed the burnt flesh where Paphnutius’ eye had been. In 1297, the Scottish warlord William Wallace (yes, whose story Braveheart supposedly tells) led a Scottish army to defeat English royal forces at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The battle didn’t take place on Stirling Field (as the movie suggests) but around the bridge spanning the river. The narrow bridge allowed only two horsemen abreast to cross at a time; when the Scots beat back the initial attack of the English cavalry, the horsemen tried to retreat back over the bridge, crushing the soldiers trying to come to their aid. Pandaemonium reigned. The only survivors of the retreat were those who managed to throw off their armor and swim the Stirling. The leader of the English army, the portly Hugh de Cressingham, was among the slain. Braveheart showed a version of the battle but omitted the aftermath: Wallace found de Cressingham’s body, had it flayed and cured, and made a baldric (a belt slung over one shoulder) for his sword out of the fat Englishman’s skin-probably a bit much even for a Mel Gibson movie. On September 11, 1766, the third Earl of Darnley, John Bligh, married Vicountess Mary Stoute. For eighty years, the Blighs had represented County Meath in the Irish Parliament. The third Earl served in both the Irish and English parliaments for fifty years and more. Mid-way through his political career, most of his parliamentary colleagues recognized that the Earl was mentally—"uncertain"—about himself. He took to claiming he was a teapot, and referred to his various body parts as if this were so (his head was his “dome,” his arms “handles,” etc.). He fathered seven children, though he sometimes publicly worried that if he wasn’t careful in propagating them, his “spout” would come off! No one seemed too concerned about all this and the Earl's political career continued unaffected for another quarter-century till his death. William Sydney Porter, better known to us by his pen name “O Henry,” was born today in 1862. His short stories (“Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” “The Cop and the Anthem” are among the more than 600 he wrote) are noted for their wit, warmth and clever endings. Porter’s life is as interesting as any of his stories. As a young man he worked first as a pharmacist then a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He wrote his short stories for pleasure. In 1887, Porter eloped with his sweetheart (who had tuberculosis) and got a job working for the Texas General Land Office. His stories won him a popular readership and he was hired by a magazine in Houston; the couple began to prosper. While they were settling into their new home, Porter was indicted for embezzlement—the Austin bank he'd worked in was audited and his bookkeeping figures repeatedly came up short. Porter fled (not a good sign), first to New Orleans and then to Honduras. He continued to write short stories even then (writing about Honduras, he coined the phrase “banana republic”) but came back to Texas when he was informed his wife was dying. She did die shortly after his return and Porter sunk into depression; he quit writing and refused to participate in his legal defense. He served three years of a five year sentence (he began writing in prison, now under his famous nom de plume) and, on his release, moved to New York City. He poured himself into his writing: over the next five years he published 381 stories. During that time he drank himself into cirrhosis of the liver, which killed America’s great story-teller in two short years. On this day in 1875, the world’s first Comic strip appeared in the Daily Graphic, a New York City newspaper. “Professor Tigwissel’s Burglar Alarm” was seventeen panels long and drawn by Livingston Hopkins, the Graphic’s political cartoonist. It was not well-received and regular "cartoon strips" would have to wait ten more years before they found an audience. James G. Cutler, a former Mayor of Rochester, New York, patented the mail chute on September 11, 1883. He installed the first one a few months later in the Elwood Building in Rochester. It was a success and the Post Office commissioned two more in New York City office buildings. In 1905, Post Office regulations allowed Cutler’s Letter Boxes “in all office buildings of more than five stories and in hotels taller than five stories and in apartment houses with more than 50 residential apartments.” Further regulations required that they “be of metal, distinctly marked ‘U.S. Letter Box,' with a door which must open on hinges on one side, the bottom of the door not less than 2'6" above the floor." Bureaucratic writing has the same ring at all times and in all places. For twenty years Cutler was the only producer of Letter Boxes in the United States; the company is now headquartered in Torrance, California. The “Miss America Pageant” was first broadcast on television today in 1954. Lee Meriwether was crowned Miss America by a panel of judges that included Grace Kelly; that night, for the first time, Americans heard Bert Parks sing “There She Is, Miss America.” Twenty-five years later Parks was fired from the staff after polls showed he was considered “old-fashioned” and programmers feared he would lose the pageant viewers. The years before Parks’ dismissal, the pageant drew 80 million viewers; in 2008, 3.1 million Americans tuned in. Evidently, Parks wasn't the only problem. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev died of a heart attack on September 11, 1971. He was 77. Khrushchev, who led the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, was removed from power in October of 1964 and forcibly retired. He was given a large home in Moscow, a splendid villa (dacha) in the Russian countryside and a monthly pension of about $15,000. When his opponents in the Politburo felt more secure, they took away his Moscow home and replaced it with a modest apartment, he was moved out of his dacha and his pension was reduced. An angry Khrushchev began writing his memoirs, but was told he wouldn’t be allowed to publish them. Shortly before his death, Khrushchev managed to smuggle his memoirs out of the Soviet Union with the help of connections in the free world. The Party denied him a State Burial. On the ancient Roman calendar, today is reckoned as ante diem III Idus Septembri and the eighth day of the Ludi Romani. This is the 254th day of the year, 111 days remain, leaving only 83 shopping days till Christmas. Johnny Mercer topped America’s music charts today back in 1945 with On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; and the Congress of the United States of America has not only named September National Mold Awareness Month but also National Piano Month, while, not to be outdone, the United Nations (or Oprah Winfrey? Or both?) has declared September International Self-Improvement Month. I’m gonna pull out my old keyboard and play “Claire de Lune.”


On September 11, 2001, nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.


IT’S EIGHT YEARS SINCE we watched in collective horror the events of September 11, 2009. At 6.30 that morning I was asleep and one of my parishioners called me and told me to turn on the news. My eyes had barely focused on the television screen, when, on the large monitor behind the newscasters, I saw what I later would learn was a second plane fly into the Twin Towers. I know your memories are just as vivid. For the next few hours we all watched together as the story, one event after another, tumbled into our living rooms. Terrified people ran away from the scene of the attack in any and every direction; men and women, trapped in the flames with no possibility of rescue, threw themselves from the 110 story buildings in despair; the Pentagon burned; the national government began to close down; planes seemed to be missing and crashing everywhere and airports all across the nation closed their doors and cancelled their flights. I remember thinking “how long can we simply close everything down?” We went into shock. But briefly. Before any of us knew the extent of what was happening, Americans everywhere began to act. We called each other, got in touch with those we know and loved. We checked our resources and shared what we had. We heard about, and our hearts burned with admiration of, the reckless courage of firemen and policemen and rescue workers who flung themselves into burning buildings and collapsing hallways to pluck the helpless to safety. Through the confusion of the day, we gleaned the details of the 40 passengers aboard Flight 93, who died rather than allow the aircraft to be used to kill more people. In the midst of chaos and reeling in shock, our national character forced its way up through the twisted steel and concrete rubble.

We’ve done it before, time and again. At starving Jamestown, on the bridge at Concord, and in the steaming hall of the Philadelphia State House in July of 1776 (later re-named Independence Hall) we as a people showed our resolve; in the iron words of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, the steel tracks of the first railroads, and the endless rows of Conestoga wagons heading west, we pushed with determination; in the frenzied Secession Winter of 1860; on the bloody fields of Antietam, and by the star-spangled maps of the Underground Railroad we fought forward, not knowing how the struggle would end but with a vision we were willing to die for. Earthquakes, fires and floods have stopped us until we figured out what to do; the Black Days of October, 1929, crushed our economy but we trudged on; four years after the oily smoke from the sinking Arizona blotted the Hawaiian sky, the Day of Infamy gave way to the unconditional surrender of the Emperor of Japan. We as a nation have survived missiles in Cuba, murdered (and lying) Presidents and 53 Americans held hostage in Iran for a year and a half.

There is much to regret in the 233 years of our history—much suffering and injustice and many tears. But there is much to be proud of. Our founding documents, the Declaration and Constitution, were written by old, dead, white men. It’s popular to demonize them nowadays. But their vision, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is a staggering claim of human freedom. Not for white men but the old English notion of Everyman—all of us. As a nation we have often failed to live up to that which we insist is true. But we’ve never given up the vision. That vision isn’t meant to favor one race or creed, but it embraces everyone who loves freedom. That love of freedom, that brash, bull-in-a-china shop spirit that comes from the mixing of dour Puritans and Southern belles and Mountain Men and Sacajaweas, that often acts first and thinks second, is what was at work in us on September 11. That spirit pushed its way out from the ruins of Twin Towers and the smoke of the Pentagon and shines amidst the wreckage on a field in rural Pennsylvania. September 11, 2001 is part of our heritage; it’s a day of which we should be proud. It’s not so much about what others did to us, but who we found ourselves, once again, to be.

God grant that we can find that to be so in these troublous days.


FROM MY BOOKSTACK, though just barely, comes a book from my friend Dolores the Chef Extraordinaire. She loaned me a copy of The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I haven’t seen the movie, though I will. But good as it no doubt is (with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson it could be nothing else), I can say with certainty it cannot successfully convey the subtleties of this book. Ishiguro was reared in England and received all his education there; he understands the English character and it comes through as in invites us into the inner world of Stevens, the butler who narrates his life in the book. It’s a life spent in pursuit of "dignity" and consequently, loneliness; a life of "loyalty" given to the service those who he fails to see are undeserving. When Lord Darlington, his employer, expresses admiration for and quietly gives support to Hitler and Mussolini in the decade before the war, Stevens reflects “many of Lord Darlington’s words will seem today rather odd—even, at times, unattractive…however, if a butler is to be of any worth to anything or anybody in life, there must surely come a time when he ceases his searching; a time when he says to himself: ‘This employer embodies all that I find noble and admirable. I will hereafter devote myself to serving him.’ This is loyalty intelligently bestowed.” It was hard for me—with no single Anglophilic bone—to put this book down. It shows a profound understanding of what it means to be English and a deeper understanding yet of the tragedy repeated in so many lives, when we deny life’s deepest joys so we can be maintain the illusions we most cherish-those about ourselves.

QUOTES FORM THE PRINCIPALS:

“Every man dies, but not every man truly lives.”—William Wallace (yes, it was in Braveheart but it’s one of the movie’s few authentic quotes)

“Inject a few raisins into the tasteless dough of existence.”—William Sydney Porter (O Henry)

“For my money, Julie [Newmar] was the best Catwoman.”-Lee Meriwether

“They’re winners, everyone!”—Bert Parks

“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.”—Nikita Khrushchev