September 14, 2001
If we are going to ìwhipî terrorism, we better have something more appealing to substitute in its place. Otherwise, thousands of other displaced and desperate characters, armed only with knives and paper cutters, will continue to destroy nations and economies on a whim. I donít think exporting our affluence will do it; that would only destroy the planet. It needs to be a motivation equivalent to that which can transform paper cutters into the strategic military technology of the 21st century.
I went ot the University memorial service today. It was a massive crowd, but somehow I got the last seat in the front row. It was certainly a momentous occasion with speakers from every persuasion and ethnicity offering their own versions of rationality and recovery. Up in front I was interested to see that most speakers came to the platform with some kind of book in their hand and it was always a small book. In the circumstance I thought that those hand held books represented a strategic technology as well. Those books may even be the devise that transforms the others.
As the collapsing towers came down almost astrophysical forces were set off. All the energy stored in each ton of raised steel and fabric and interior of the buildings was suddenly released. Everything was pulverized and combusted except 8 1/5î x 11î sheets of paper from office archives. These archives floated down all over lower Manhattan. They were meaningless, but they could be picked up and interpreted and given a different meaning.
September 12, 2001
The response to destruction is resilience, pure and simple. Resilience is an act of counter terrorism. We do not have the simple option of sectarian violence. In a medieval time the engine of a warring crusade was more realistic. Today we are too intermingled.
The danger is that the rich can be isolated from the poor and the ìfirstî world can war with the ìthirdî. To deflect one affluent society from warring with others less affluent the resources of societies should be stocked to another engine of constructive rebuilding everywhere.
September 11, 2001
Imaginary fears, imaginary cataclysm, fear of sharks, fear of collapse of huge structures or disturbing imaginations of air crashes are sometimes so vivid that they cannot be inventions. Perhaps they resonate the actual experience of living inside the churn of history. Or the disturbing real dream of walking endlessly across the ruins of a city absorbed in details of unexplainable sounds and smells.
Tonight we decided to continue our Ethiopian bindings. Blind tooling, bizarre plaited endbands, scalloped leather hinges and doublure insets of brocade or mirror. No disturbing imagination involved, just comforting continuity from one culture to the next and from one time to another. Books seem to do that. Even at the end of the world, we will still be here, making books in Iowa.
*** its the 60’s all over again
My 60th birthday
party!