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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (114323)	9/10/2003 2:50:05 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

I do plant things. Despite the fact that I already have a very nice caryopteris in a border on the north side of the yard, and three very nice buddleias in a border on the south side of the yard, I couldn't pass up a beautiful caryopteris, which had to go into a bed smack dab in the center of the yard, and then, profligately splurged on yet another buddleia to put next to it. It's amazing, as soon as I got home and stashed the potted plants onto their places-to-be on the bed, the butterflies found them, and have been in a tizzy ever since. It's a riot of butterflies, which is very weird because the same plants on opposite sides of the yard get almost no visitors. Something about the combination. Nothing eases the heart like butterflies. It's a beautiful day, very much like it was two years ago, bright blue sky, high clean white clouds, sunlight just turning to honey color. Last year there was a terrible drought, and September was dry and sullen. This year September is juicy again. The color of the sky reminds me of the time my mother and I took the boys to New York to visit my brother, who was going to school in Manhattan and lived in Brooklyn, near the Brooklyn Bridge. Both boys were still in strollers then, but Ben was really too old for his, except when he got tired, then it was a good thing we had it. We all went to the top of the World Trade Center, and took a lot of photos. That was back in the days when I took way too many photos. Jesus, that was a long elevator ride! The sky was about like today, but it was October, so cooler. In the photos, we all wore coats, and everybody smiled for the camera. Literally millions of people did the same thing, and all have similar photos in their albums. Looking at the photos, I am glad we did it, glad we got the chance to do it. There are some things that people do that I can comprehend, even though I definitely don't agree with them, but knocking down the World Trade Center was motivated by a symbolic drive at a level of abstraction that I find impossible to comprehend. I ... just ... don't ... get ... it ... The only way I can comprehend it is as some sort of "bookend" or parallel to the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, earlier in 2001. Sort of like saying, "we'll destroy all of mankind's creations that preceded us, and all of those which came after us, in order to achieve and maintain the eternal Now of us, our culture." Many have remarked how radical Islam rejects modernity, but few (if any) remark how it also rejects antiquity. What are we fighting over? Beats me. Sort of like a fight to the death with the Amish over whether we get to wear zippers, as far as I can see. As the whacky guy who pretends to be Allah says, if they knock over two skyscrapers a week, eventually they'll destroy Western culture, in, say, 80,000 years. allahakbar.blogspot.com Which doesn't mean they can't mess up some nice old things, buildings, statues, what not.