Because Ivymoon works at the Northern California Renaissance Faire, and because she was involved in one of their promotions, she managed to obtain a large stack of free tickets. So yesterday afternoon, nine of us all donned our Elizabethan attire and went to the faire.

It was dusty, as usual, but not too crowded, and the breezes made the heat quite bearable. We admire costumes, did a bit of people watching, cheered knights in a joust, and stood on tiptoes at the fringes of a crowd to see a man juggle knives and eat fire. We finished the day with dinner at a nearby restaurant, still in our garb.

Once home, I looked at the screen saver clock on Richard’s computer and was shocked to see it was barely 8pm. It gets so dark so early now, and with all the walking of the day we were drained of energy.

This morning I kissed Richard goodbye and then packed my bags and drove away. Late Friday afternoon I received a call from my manager with my next assignment. Four weeks down at corporate headquarters for the Big Fish – too far to do a daily commute through typical Bay Area traffic. “I have to put you on something,” she told me, but I didn’t complain aloud. There was no point. She cannot keep me indefinitely on the bench, but it’s been so easy to be lulled into thinking I’d somehow have more time.

The call from my manager came on the heels of another – one with far better news. I’ve an interview on Wednesday for a position that I’ve got a great deal of interest in. This is not the first call I’ve received in the past few weeks, but for the first time since I started job hunting in earnest, I finally feel as if perhaps there is actually hope.

The past several days I’ve been combing the news sites – something most of the rest of the country is probably doing as well. But what grabs me and keeps me searching for more are the personal stories – firsthand accounts of those who were in the buildings and managed to escape, or those who saw it happen from the street. I read their words, poring over every new picture they invoke because here on the West Coast, all we have are the television reports and the endless drone of the newscasters as they repeat themselves ad nauseum. My only connections to the actual tragedy are friends of friends who knew someone – but never directly. I am saddened by the extreme loss of life and property, but the incident on Tuesday seems too far away still. I feel as detached from the reality of the situation watching and reading about the attacks as I did reading and watching news reports of horrible earthquakes that leveled Turkey, or the yearly hurricanes that take out mobile home parks in Florida. I have no grasp of what it truly must be like.

So I read, and listen, and try, second-handedly, to come to terms with what has happened. It’s not that I want to have that grief for myself. It’s just that I want to try to understand it. Accounts like this one make it real for me, far more than flash and glitz of yet another television special report.

********

The mind can only take so much before it needs something lighter, and thus I was grateful that the 2001 / 2002 season of the local musical theater company began this month. Last night Richard and I took our usual seats in the little theater and watched The Sound of Music. The women’s chorus echoed beautifully in the spaces of the room, and the children who played the von Trapp’s were enthusiastically harmonious. The distinct lack of even one brief interlude of interpretive dance (usually a hallmark of this particular company’s productions) was thus only a minor item in the list of why this was undoubtedly the best performance I’ve seen at this theater yet.

We gathered with my parents (also season ticket holders) for our usual after-the-show dessert. The talk inevitably turned to Tuesday’s aftermath, but at least it was interspersed with laughter and whimsy and reminders that life goes on; that we are more than 3 buildings and four planes and that there are other things we also should concentrate on besides the tragic, no matter how transient they may be.

According to a CNN article (which can be found here), “Network executives have started to comb through their fall fare, hoping to erase anything considered tasteless…”

Isn’t that nice of the TV networks, agreeing to pull anything that is considered tasteless? Isn’t that sweet and thoughtful and generous? Does this mean we might finally be free of such oh-so-tasteful offerings like ‘World’s Worst Car Crashes, Part 372’, most of the prime time programming on UPN, all those ridiculously over-dramatized reality shows, or even WWF?

Yeah, yeah, I know. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

********

Right now, lots of us are in need of something to smile about. So unless you’re a bonafied cat hater (and in that case, why on earth are you here at all, considering how I blather on about my feline horde? ;-) ), this should do the trick. Warning – VERY image intensive so it may take a long time to upload for those of you unlucky saps who still have to dial in on a modem. You can thank my spiffy new sister-in-law who forwarded this on to me.

Speaking of blathering on about my feline horde, as I write this, Rebecca – my normally dignified grumpy-old-lady cat – is happily chasing a twistytie around the computer desk. And better yet, Zuchinni, who is my resident scaredy-cat, took yet another small step forward in what has now been nearly 5-year saga of him learning that I really *don’t* intend to eat him. In the past few days he’s not only come up to me in the computer room, beeping pitifully for me to scritch his head, but he’s also actually let me pick him up and hold him on my lap. He even purrs while I’m doing it. By golly, if he keeps this up, he might just make it to ‘social’ yet.

********

And on a more sober note, please read this. Considering I made my feelings on this topic rather clear yesterday, I’ll just let this man’s words speak for me.

Today, an email came to one of the mailing lists to which I belong. In response to my comment of sympathy for all the Sikhs, Arab-Americans and Muslims who now face suspicion and are being apprehended by police, or abused and insulted merely for looking ‘odd’, a woman replied with flames and anger. How dare I express sympathy for those beseiged by what is now amounting to profiling. How dare I protest the discrimination that is rapidly building against anyone who looks like they might be Middle Eastern?

I was not so much shocked as saddened by the reply. It’s easy to have that naive hope that those with whom you are in daily contact might also share your values. The fact that several others on the list replied immediately in defense of the sympathy I’d expressed was encouraging, but this reply came on the heels of even more horrifyingly offensive missives from people who actually insisted that Middle Easterners living in America were surely celebrating the attack behind closed doors. I replied back to her as gently as I could, but as expected, I have received no reply. Those who spew hatred invariably turn a deaf ear to any request to think first about what they say.

The men who hijacked those planes appear to have been Middle Eastern, if reports from those poignant cell phones calls are to be believed. This much at least, we know. But what we do *not* know is who was behind the attacks. Despite the fact that there is yet absolutely NO proof whatsoever that bin Laden is behind this, there is this undercurrent of certainty that it was, indeed him, and that shortly we will be declaring war on Afghanistan. This idea is bandied about as fact, not just by the common citizen, but more importantly by those who should know better – the government and the media. Need I remind everyone yet again that despite the dead certainty by everyone that Middle Eastern terrorists were behind the bombing in Oklahoma City, it turned out to be folks as American as you and I?

The important thing to bear in mind is that first we must find out who is guilty. And it is most certainly not up to us, the common everyday American, to determine who is and isn’t guilty. How dare anyone condemn someone based merely on the color of their skin, or the god(s) that they may choose to worship? What kind of blind fool directs their anger to his or her fellow Americans simply because they are different, or might have once come from a country where terrorists reside? What other qualification has there ever been to be American than to simply reside here, or be born here?

Someone wrote in to another mailing list asking for us to define the difference between vengeance, and punishing those responsible. My reply is as follows:

“The difference is that punishing those responsible means first *finding* the responsible parties and bring them to *justice* – a justice that other civilized people who were not immediately affected would agree to. Vengeance is going out for blood, finding some way to ‘get them back’ for all the pain and suffering, and to heck with whoever is hurt in the process.”

If asked, we all want to punish those responsible. But it is up to the authorities to determine who those may be. Our duty, as American citizens, and simply as decent human beings, is to avoid sinking into the emotion-driven need for vengeance instead. Our duty is to be willing to stand up against racial and religious prejudice if we see it, to defend ALL Americans, no matter what color their skin might be or where they might be born. I implore all of you to find the courage somehow to do this. There have been too many victims already. We do not need to add any more to the list.

Because if you cannot rise above your anger and do that – if you sink instead into this pit of mindless violence, of hatred and bigotry – or even if you stand by and support it by your silence, then tell me, what makes you any better than those who perpetrated this attack against us.

I have a little window on my desktop, pointed to Amazon’s Red Cross Donation site. Every once in a while I refresh the screen, because the way that total number keeps creeping upwards gives me hope in the overwhelming goodness of the human spirit. When I checked first thing this morning the total was over $500,000. It surpassed one million early this afternoon. Right before I posted this, it stood at 1.7 million. Money seems such a small thing to give, but at least it’s something, and there’s an awfully large number of us out there who – because of geography and other reasons – are unable to offer anything more.

They say that on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, some of the passengers managed to overpower the hijackers, but were unable to regain control of the plane. Those on the other three planes were too paralyzed by fear. We may never know all that happened on board those planes, but at least in one, they found the courage to refuse to sit quietly and let it happen to them. How many of us, given the same situation, would find the courage in ourselves?

They’re letting flights resume – the ones that were scheduled for Wednesday. How many people will be willing to get on a plane after what happened? Even with increased security, how can you not worry about what might happen? They took over the plane with box cutters and plastic knives, for crying out loud. Box cutters without blades probably look completely harmless in an x-ray, and all they require are ordinary razor blades, found in any man’s shaving kit. Will they now no longer allow people to bring shaving implements on board?

Just before I was ready to post this, an email arrived in my inbox. Normally I’d just delete this sort of spam, but after yesterday’s graphic description of alternative uses for passenger planes, this one struck a little too close to home.

“We are prepared to send you a FREE Air Check worth up to $100.00 in savings on your next flight. You’ll be able to fly to many exciting places on most major airlines and save up to $100 per airline ticket. Just click here or on the link above to receive your FREE $100.00 Air Check now! I must hear from you immediately!”

I suppose I should take comfort in this. After all, it proves that even in the face of national disaster, life goes on.

I just wish it were something a bit more comforting than spam.

I slid open the new curtains just a bit this morning, and took a deep breath of the outside air. The sky was overcast, and there was a hint of rain. It was the makings of a nice day.

And then at our computers, first one email and then another, more and more all gradually realizing the horror and outside is forgotten. We are under attack by a concerted terrorist effort of the most horrific proportions.

Over the course of the morning I search desperately to find some sense of continuity. When they mentioned two crashes, and then three, and only the first confirmed to be American Airlines, I wanted to know that all three were the same airline and the same type of plane. I wanted to hear that all had come from the same airport because of some special type of laxness in security. Somehow that would be easier than learning – as we all did as this day unraveled – that they were all from different airports, and two different airlines.

In some small deep rational part of my mind I am in awe of the intelligent brilliance that went behind this attack. The patience it took to plan, to time just right, to carry out. What an incredible movie plot this would be, hmm? We’d flock to the theaters to watch, eyes wide with amazement at how cleverly the director managed to convince us of reality.

Watching it on the television it doesn’t look real. The landscape is gray from smoke, and with the lack of sound it’s more like an old newsreel, or B-rated end-of-the-world flick. I don’t know anyone who worked there, lived there. I am numb, huddled on the couch in the living room watching the collapse of the towers over and over until I can no longer take the mindless babble of the news reporters who have nothing new to say.

It is easy to become almost complacent with this feeling of unreality when there is no sound. In the car later this afternoon I listened to the radio. All they have to give is sound – the yells and sirens and commotion. The few stations who were actually playing music seemed somehow jarring and out of place, as if they have no right to be projecting anything so cheerful.

What gets to me most – more than the pictures and the horrible words and the numbers – are the voices. People who have escaped, or saw it happen, are speaking up, sounding still shocked and unable to fully comprehend what they’ve just experienced. One man tells of watching as people threw themselves out of windows in a desperate attempt to escape the Towers shortly before they collapsed. It is this man’s account – the way his voice trembles and breaks and the way he pauses to catch his breath as he struggles to continue – that finally brings me to tears.

I was going to write out a sharp and witty entry, wherein I would regale you all with our scintillating dinner conversation last night. The conversation in question resulted from my first mentioning that I’d found a rather amusing ‘help wanted’ ad which required the submission of a Christian Testimonial, followed by noting that – due to its untimely discovery by ants – perhaps it may finally be time to get rid of the dead frog in our garage. Satan’s minions (cleverly disguised as ants) came into discussion, as did interpretive hopping dances.

The problem with this, of course, is that while the conversation had us nearly spewing our water across the table, it’s kind of hard to put all that down into text without it degenerating into the sort of thing that anyone else who wasn’t there at the time of the original conversation would end up staring with puzzled look, saying ‘Huh?’

There you have it – the sordid details of your narrow escape from complete incomprehension. You have no idea how lucky you are.

It was funny, though. Honest it was. It could have been big too. We were going to call it the Church of the Dead Frog, and it would have rivaled the Church of the Quivering Otter. I’d put a link to that one but I can’t find a working one (and I hope this doesn’t mean that it’s no longer online. Now *that* would be a tragedy).

So, instead of discussing frog-based religion, I’ll simply let you know that I finally finished the master bedroom curtains – because of course I know you’ve all been on the very edge of your seats salivating to find out just when I’d manage that little feat. Because it was so gosh darn exciting – the saga of my curtain-making, that is – I’ll simply leave this to your imagination. We ordered fabric for the computer room curtains. Yes, that’s right folks. Two more of them, as soon as the order comes in.

For even more excitement, we wandered through three (yes, three) hardware stores today looking for wooden arbors that come with gates. Oh yeah, and earlier this evening we somehow ended up in an argument over who had the slimier nose – Tangerine or Richard.

Do we know how to live it up or what?

Yesterday I hussled myself down to the courthouse and procured two copies of our marriage license, each bearing the official seal of the county, created by a machine I can only assume is so insanely expensive and rare that it cost me $12 per copy simply to have them stuff the paper in and press down a lever. Then I sat down and starting making a list – a list which keeps growing slowly as new cards and accounts keep popping into my head while I’m driving down the road, or stirring up dinner, or doing anything else that precludes me from immediately rushing to the computer to write it down. And to really get the ball rolling on all this excitement, I just got back from several hours waiting in line at the Social Security office to file my paperwork.

Yep. After a month and a half of marital bliss, it’s time for The Change. From this day forward, I’ll be required to fill out that ‘maiden name’ slot on applications and official documents with something other than Not Applicable. I’m so excited I could just spit! No, really. You might want to move back from the monitor a bit. Ahem. But where was I?

It would help, I suppose, if The Change had taken place a bit quicker, and I was actually using the new name on a more regular basis. But since we’d planned this trip to DragonCon and had already purchased the tickets prior to the wedding, and since airlines tend to be fairly paranoid about letting people onto their planes who don’t have proper identification (the thought process being, I can only assume, that terrorists apparently don’t have proper ID’s), I figured it was better to wait til after the trip to go through the whole official name change hassle. In the meantime, I’ve been introducing myself as Jennifer Crawford, and changed all my email sigs and updated my journal pages and all that happy stuff, but it’s one thing to see it in print, or to have it come out of my mouth, and it’s quite another to have it come from someone else. Yesterday the choir director at church called and asked for Mrs. Crawford. Took me a few seconds of open-mouth gaping before I managed to *not* pop out “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number” and remember that oh yeah, that’s me he’s asking for.

The few times I’ve actually had to sign my new name my signature gets a bit messy. Not to say that it wasn’t messy already. My handwriting is of the caliber that I should have been a medical professional, in other words. Years ago I gave up on cursive and stuck with printing out of self-preservation. I figured if I couldn’t even read my own handwriting, let alone everyone else, I really ought to stick to something a bit more legible. Pre-marriage, my signature was a little J-shaped squiggle, followed by an M-shaped squiggle with a few L’s thrown in. Now there’s the little J-shaped squiggle that’s my first name, and the last name part ends up something that started out as an ‘M’, but morphed into a ‘C’ because my hand is set to autopilot when I sign stuff since it’s been doing the same thing for the better part of three decades, and it’s only halfway through that I remember to actually concentrate on what I’m writing down.

The old last name – Mueller – was constantly mispronounced, even to the point of people insisting that I must be wrong (because I, of course, would be the last one to know how to pronounce my own name). I recall getting into an argument with my German teacher back in high school on how to properly pronounce it because the proper German pronunciation has an emphasis that my esteemed ancestors never used. She was practically adamant that I should be spelling it with an umlaut, and I think only sheer professionalism managed to keep her from foaming at the mouth and leaping over her desk at me when I insisted (silly me) that my way really was correct. Let’s put it this way – if you are reading that name and hearing a long ‘u’ in your head, you’ve got it wrong (yes, wrong! Even though everyone else you have ever met with the same last name pronounces it with a long ‘u’). Try it with a short ‘u’. There, that’s better.

Because of all the hassle I’ve had my entire life over how to properly say my last name, it’s been a secret and wicked dream of mine to find a man who had the same spelling, but the more ‘proper’ pronunciation, and then I would hyphenate our names, just for the amusement of changing it around every time to confuse people. Mueller-Mueller. Doesn’t matter which one was meant to be first – think of the fun!

Of course, I had to give up that dream to marry Richard. You see what love will do?

Sebastian suddenly gives an annoyed and abrupt cry and takes off down the front hall, one back leg tucked high against his body. I rush after him as he stops in mid dash and sits down to frantically lick at his rear. Upon further inspection I discover the source of the offense – an ant. I can only assume that the mad dash and funny walk were because the ant bit him (seeing as how I’ve been the victim of those little critters myself lately). Poor cat – I couldn’t decide whether to pet him and sympathize or burst out laughing. I settled for petting, snickering, and referring to him as ‘anty-butt’ for the remainder of the day.

********

Tuesday night, Dad came over to return our garage door opener (they had it in order to feed the furry horde while we were off at DragonCon). One thing led to another in conversation and it ended up me handing him the first book in the Harry Potter series as he headed out the door. This afternoon, while arranging times for him to come over to dinner (Mom’s out of town), he mentioned he’d finished the book. There was a pause, and then ‘Do you have another?’ We sent him home tonight after dinner with the next two. Another addict on the way – heh heh.

********

The end result of trying to organize things is that I invariably end up having to unpack stuff. I had a frantic hour or two searching madly through the house for all my old paper journals – mainly because I just filled up another one and wanted to put it with the others. After whimpering to Richard via IM, and scrambling through drawers, cupboards, and even the garage, I finally found them, buried in the bottom of the one box I’ve left to unpack. I didn’t end up unpacking the rest of the box, but while I was in the guest room – also known as the Room That Holds All Random Stuff – I sorted through the pile of wedding presents and managed to get a bunch more of those put away too. It’s getting to the point where I really need to take the cardboard over to the recycling place. I think I’m happy about this, because this means the number of boxes (cartons, packing boxes, etc.) left to go through is dwindling rapidly. Maybe by the end of the year we’ll be finally all ‘moved in’. Ha.

What’s left to unpack and put away, however, has got me thinking more and more about furniture we really ‘need’ to get. Going through the Toscano catalog that arrived in the mail today didn’t help at all. I’m currently lusting after a dining room table, an end table, an occasional table (although what it is when it’s not a table, we’re not entirely sure), and this amazingly lovely ‘gossip lounger’, which is a Victorian-type loveseat where one end is actually a phone table. Of course, most of these just wouldn’t fit in our house, and of course the prices are just a tad (ha!) on the ‘ouch’ side, but…. Ah well.

One of my all-time favorite movies is 1776 – a musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Early on in this film, Benjamin Franklin takes John Adams aside to discuss the proposal of American Independence to the Congress. The problem, he explains, is that someone else needs to propose it, because as much as some of the other members may privately agree with the concept, they cannot help but associate the cause with the man firmly behind it – Adams himself. And Adams is – the film makes quite clear – obnoxious and disliked. Naturally John Adams resists, since after all this cause is everything he is working for, but in the end, he agrees, and of course you’d have to have been living under a rock for the past few centuries to not know what happens after that.

The reason I bring this up is because while we were at DragonCon, Richard and I attended a panel that was supposed to discuss the future of science fiction, now that we’ve grown beyond a lot of the marvels of ‘modern science’ that were once predicted in earlier works. It quickly became obvious, however, that the panel members (several science fiction / fantasy authors) really weren’t interested in discussing this point, and at first it was amusing, watching them banter back and forth with each other and the audience in light-hearted teasing and entertainment.

It was amusing, that is, until one young man stood up to make a point. Unfortunately for him, he started his words with a mention of Internet Ethics, and that was more than enough for one of the panel members – a Mr. Harlan Ellison.

It is important to point out here, before I go any further, that anyone with an ounce of common sense very quickly understood that the young man’s point was that *despite* the relative immorality of the flash-in-the-pan dot com industry, there are some ‘new’ ethics on the internet that are starting to gain ground – ethics that fit old fashioned decency and honor. This was in response to the ongoing blather of the panel members that the youth of today have no shame, no honor, and no realization of right from wrong.

However, Mr. Ellison was not interested in actually letting the young man finish. In fact I got the distinct impression that he had been waiting for any opening at all, and he let loose with a volley of insults and hollering, accusing the man of unethical practices on the internet, specifically focused on copyright violations. Seems Mr. Ellison is currently in the middle of a rather lengthy lawsuit on the subject and so off on his soapbox he went. He even came down from the podium, making threats of doing bodily harm to the young man, who futily continued to try to explain his position. Mr. Ellison, however, would have none of that. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in actually discovering what the man had to say. He was more interested in proving to the entire audience how much of an immature idiot he could possibly be.

When the young man was finally able to make his point – mainly that he completely agreed with Mr. Ellison’s position on the subject, and fully supported his fight – the author in question couldn’t even have the decency to apologize for jumping to the entirely wrong conclusion, humiliating and slandering the young man at the top of his aged lungs in front of a room full of hundreds of other people. He was right there talking about how the ‘Youth of Today’ have no sense of shame when they have done something wrong and been caught, but apparently that particular problem is not only found in today’s youth, because Mr. Ellison didn’t seem capable of that particular emotion either.

I sat through this entire thing in shock. When I mentioned my frustrations with the scene Mr. Ellison put on for the rest of us, the prevailing response was ‘Oh yes, well. That’s Harlan Ellison. He’s a jackass.’ As if this was just to be expected, laughed at, and even condoned.

I have never read any of Mr. Ellison’s work, so I cannot comment on his supposed brilliance in fiction writing. I would even have been willing to concede that perhaps Mr. Ellison was simply tired and overwrought from his already-long fight with internet piracy, if he’d simply been willing to apologize publicly for the completely horrible way in which he treated that young man. I find it disgusting and irreprehensible that there are people – like Mr. Ellison – that equate being famous with being above common decency and just plain good manners.

At the end of the little scene, after Mr. Ellison stomped off in a temper tantrum, the other authors – most of whom had been sitting there simply letting him rant and make a general fool of himself and the young man – made a plea for monetary support in the legal battle against these and other copyright violations on the internet. A few people came forward with checks to donate, but I most decidedly was not one of them. I fully support those who would fight against piracy – whether it be on the internet or in any other medium, and I can certainly understand the frustrations of authors who deserve to be compensated for the work they labor so long over, only to discover that someone has been violating any number of copyright laws to distribute said work for free. Despite my extreme dislike of his behavior, I still do wish Mr. Ellsion – and any other author who finds him or herself in this same position – success in the fight. I simply cannot find any legitimate reason to *monetarily* support the man who stood in front of that crowd and acted in such an immature and irresponsible manner. You see, like the first continental congress, who could not separate the cause from the man, I find it difficult to separate this particular fight against internet piracy from the man who leads it.

As the representative from New York said constantly in 1776, for now I must abstain. Courteously. Which is – rather unfortunately – much more than any of us can say for Mr. Ellison.