Tags: 9/11

WHERE WERE YOU…?

On November 22, 1963, when JFK was shot? (Me: at prep school in Port Hope. A student ran into the dining hall yelling: “Kennedy was shot! Kennedy was shot!” We thought it was a fellow student named “Kennedy”)…

On July 2, 1969, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon? (Me: In Edmonton in a friend’s basement rumpus room.)

On October 16, 1970, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act saying “just watch me” during the FLQ Crisis? (Me: at university in the States, where it wasn’t so momentous.)

Read on…

Rich old white guys

I wish they had the grace to be content being all four of those things.

But no.

So many of them, especially in America, cast themselves not just as outsiders, but as victims, their rights hijacked by by trans people (1.03% of US adults), by gays (7.1%), Jews (2.4%), Muslims (1.3%), Asians (7%), Blacks (13.6%), Hispanics (19.1%), and of course, women (50.4%).

I thought of this irony while I was watching Tracie D. Hall interviewed this week by Omar El Akkad at the Toronto Reference Library about freedom of speech and banning of books – in the US where Ms. Hall is the executive director of the American Library Association, and in Canada, where To

Meanwhile…

Terror Times Two

I was in New York on September 10, 2001 to meet travel editors. I wrote a lot. I travelled a lot. So, I thought, why don’t I do both at the same time?

A friend got me an interview with the managing editor of Condé Nast Traveler, which was like talking with God. He casually said: “A place is not an idea.” His point was travel writing shouldn’t be an endless “we went here and then we went there, and this place was lovely and that wasn’t.”

It was 20 years ago today……

…that 9/11 happened. So please spare a memory for those who died and for how our world has grown much less stable in the past two decades because of it. One good way is to watch Spike Lee’s film that captures New York’s faith and fate since September 11, 2001. Make it a communal thing: bring your family, friends, neighbours old and new.

RamsayWrites

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