Culture

I looked at the date and thought, quite a lesson from history, and a follow up from those of 9/11. Summer, 1940, when  The Few in their Hurricanes (mostly!) and Spitfires stood between civilisation, however flawed, and a nightmare of aggressive barbarism, with the peak being Sunday, Sept 15, 1940. (That day and date thing caught my eye.) Vid: (And while the narrator has a point on broader themes, if Fighter Command had been knocked out, the Germans would have been able to dominate the battle from the air, and would have won. More thoughts here.) A lesson for us as we stand in the gap today, against fairly long odds. And, coming off a shower, let me add some Read More ›

Trinidadian Genelle Guzman-McMillan, the last WTC 9/11 survivor to be pulled from the rubble of the collapsed towers, has a story of miraculous survival, complete with her angel, Paul, who held her hand as she awaited rescue. In summary: [Genelle] was a Port Authority worker, working on the 64th floor of one of the WTC towers, on September 11, 2001 when she felt the building shake and heard the noise of the first impact. A look out the window showed papers floating in the sky, but it was not clear what had happened until she saw news reports on a TV in a conference room. Strange as it seems today, she and her co-workers were instructed to stay in the Read More ›

Tania Lombrozo has a great piece up at NPR on why, more importantly than common ground, is charitable ground.
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Today, let us reflect on Col. Rick Rescorla, the man who saw it coming TWICE, and then sacrificed his life saving over 2,700 lives on September 11, 2001: I cannot but pause and show a video still of the Col on that fateful day as he rallied his people, bullhorn in hand: It is easy to be wise after the fact, but so hard to have foresight and persistence in the face of inevitable misunderstanding and skepticism from those who don’t see things that way — and who will too often blindly oppose and frustrate. So, it is important to learn from case studies of insight and foresight, lest we fall to the mad march of folly over and over Read More ›

CNN’s live footage that morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT9jkBGFlr0 (More here.) END