No forgetting.
Posted on 01/07/2002 6:31:18 PM PST by Sir Gawain
Death is
nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into
the next room.
I am I, and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other,
that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity
or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes that we
enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me,
pray for me.
Let my name be ever the
household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort,
Without the ghost of a
shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is abslolute and
unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a
negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you,
for an interval,
Somewhere very near,
Just round the corner.
All is well.
-Henry Scott Holland
"It's my calling."
--CAPT. TIMOTHY STACKPOLE, Division 11, Brooklyn. Severely burned and near death after a 1998 fire, he insisted on returning to full-time duty. Perished in the Twin Tower collapse. New York Post
"Every fire is scary. That's the way it is. You're a damned liar if you say you're not scared."
--LINCOLN QUAPPE, Rescue 2, Brooklyn. Perished. New York Times Magazine
"We'll see things today we shouldn't have to see, but listen up, we'll do it together. We'll be together and we'll all come back together."
--ANONYMOUS FIRE LIEUTENANT. New York Times
"Guys, be very careful, because firemen are going to die today."
--CAPT. DANIEL BRETHEL, Ladder 24, Manhatten. Perished. New York Times
"I saw a piece of metal the size of a football field coming at us..."
--RICHIE MURRAY, Engine 205, Brooklyn. Men's Journal
"We were greeted by a frantic mass of people, covered in gray soot, fleeing the city. Many of them reached out to touch our coats, and a woman said, 'God bless you and may He watch over you.'"
--DANIEL BIVONA, Ladder 84, Staten Island. Staten Island Advance
"I was praying to die fast."
--RICH PICCIOTTO, Commander, Battalion 11, Manhatten. Survived collapse of North Tower. Times Herald-Mirror, Middletown, N.Y.
"Sometimes in this job, good-bye is really good-bye."
--RAY DOWNEY, FDNY Chief. Missing. New York Post
"Anyone who had any hand in this should go straight to hell."
--JIMMY CANHAM, Battalion 31, Brooklyn. Albany Times Union
"Most guys want to be here. If they can find one person--cop, civilian, it doesn't matter--it's worth it."
--ANONYMOUS FIRE MARSHAL, Manhatten Base. U.S. News and World Report
"I said to myself, Oh my God, they're all in there. All the firefighters are in there. This can't be happening."
--ROBERT CHYRIWSKI, Engine 3, Manhatten. Men's Journal
"They killed all my friends, guys who I grew up with. We were all kids together."
--LT. BRIAN GILLEN, Ladder 34, Manhatten. Philadelphia Inquirer
"I know I will probably relive this every day of my life."
--BILL SPADE, Rescue 5, Staten Island. Saten Island Advance
"I said 'Thank you' to the volunteers. 'Thank you' to the skilled ironworkers and wreckers. 'Thank you' for all the firm handshakes and the much-needed hugs."
--DANIEL BIVONA, Ladder 84, Staten Island. Staten Island Advance
"In the first one hundred years we filled a wall with the names of fallen firefighters. On the eleventh of September we created a new wall."
--KERRY KELLY, Chief Medical Officer, FDNY. Opening Statement to U.S. Senate
No forgetting.
How do you explain the beauty and complexity of Western civilization to brutal savages?
Thanks for the ping, Sabertooth.
While I would not dream of using arguments to diminish the horror of the September 11 attack for thousands of people, I would also suggest that the people who died in the attack did not suffer more terrible deaths than animals in slaughterhouses suffer every day. Moreover, the survivors of the September 11 attack and their loved ones have an array of consolations--patriotism, the satisfaction of U.S. retaliation, religious faith, TV ads calling them heroes, etc--that the chickens, whose lives are continuously painful and miserable, including being condemned to live in human-imposed circumstances that are inimical and alien to them as chickens, do not have available. They suffer raw, without the palliatives. Doubtless the majority, if not every single one, of the people who suffered and/or died as a result of the September 11 attack ate, and if they are now alive continue to eat, chickens. . . .In conclusion, I think it is speciesist to think that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was a greater tragedy than what millions of chickens endured that day and what they endure every day because they cannot defend themselves against the concerted human appetites arrayed against them.
-- Karen Davis, PhD President United Poultry Concerns,
http://www.upc-online.org/011226vegan_voice_singer.html
In conclusion, I think it is speciesist to think that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was a greater tragedy than what millions of chickens endured that day and what they endure every day because they cannot defend themselves against the concerted human appetites arrayed against them. Perhaps the word "tragedy" should not be used anyway in this context unless in the more precise sense of a fundamentally terrible thing happening to a human being who consciously or subconsciously brought the terrible thing upon him or herself, lived through it, and gained insight and wisdom as a result. In this classical sense of tragic drama, it remains to be seen whether America is a "tragic hero" or even a "tragic" victim. If, though, the question is whether the World Trade Center attack was worse for its thousands of human victims than the sum total of misery and terror was for millions of chicken victims that day, I see only one nonspeciesist answer to the question.
Sincerely, Karen Davis, PhD President United Poultry Concerns 26 December 2001
They will Jimmy, they will.
The sadness is, one can't. Nor can one explain it to some folks on this forum, as you know...
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