amber waves of grain Archives – Page 5 of 5

Memorial Day weekend is the opening to summer that Labor Day closes.

Years ago, I wrote a meditation on the fall that contained some version of the line, “If Fall had an archway, this would be it.” And a similar line would work here, that Summer officially started this past weekend.

All around us, the community sprung into motion, as if the spring season had pent up some untapped reserve of kinetic force. My friends filled their Facebook and Instagram and Twitter feeds with reports and pictures of movement, point A to point B, fun all along the way, pictures of barbecues and lake outings and beaches and camping and Nascar races and parties. The pumps are running at all of the swimming pools, and thousands (or millions!) of us braved the temperatures, this spring more fitting in October than May, and splashed around in glory.

As for me, I left work Friday around lunch and picked up my golf clubs, inspired by a friend who was doing the same thing, and drove straight to the little county course near our house. I bought a pair of hot dogs, and a cold beer, and a bottle of water, and a bucket of range balls, and a round of nine holes. It had been about two years since I’d been out on a golf course. Better to ease into it.

Flags at Rockefeller Center in December 2001.

Sometimes, life asks us to hand parts of ourselves back. September 11 was one of those times.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following post originally appeared as a Facebook note published on September 11, 2011, ten years after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

Whenever I write about September 11th, I feel somewhat guilty for the grief I feel. I didn’t directly know anyone who was lost on that day, but I know plenty of folks who fit into that category. I am two degrees removed from a lot of tragedy. My grandfather, though, worked at the World Trade Center before he retired and moved to Florida. Most of my Dad’s family lives in Monmouth County, NJ, which lost 147 people in the attacks. I feel connected.

These days we all feel connected. Television this last week has all but made it impossible to escape the replays of the towers burning, the planes striking, the collapse and smoke and misery. Newspapers are running the headlines all week. Websites feature tributes, the radio runs urgent dispatches from a decade ago, their audio scratchy enough to underscore how old they’ve already become. Indeed, it was a time when television was still square, newspapers were still read, and cell phones were still dumb and dropped calls.

Inevitably, we all remember where we were. I started the morning at Smoky Mountain High School, where I was observing a class when a student came in to say there’d been a terrorist attack. I left, returned to my dorm room at Reynolds Hall at Western Carolina University, and watched the towers fall.

Peter Jennings told, or tried to tell as best he could, the story of the day. Amazingly, I was able to connect a single phone call to my relatives in Lincroft, NJ. They were safe. Nobody knew then how long this moment was going to last.

Tag: amber waves of grain

The Opening

AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

Memorial Day weekend is the opening to summer that Labor Day closes.

Ten Years Later

Sometimes, life asks us to hand parts of ourselves back. September 11 was one of those times.