the day after

September 12, 2001

Today's Starting Pitcher:
There is no baseball today anywhere in the USA.

The sky remained eerily empty of planes all day today until I just heard two military planes go over a few minutes ago. Definitely the loud military planes, not the dinky planes that tow advertising banners out of the airport down the street. It's weird.

It's almost business as usual today except that everything has changed utterly and forever.

Yesterday I was buying a cup of coffee at Perfecto's when the first of the twin towers collapsed. I'd heard reports of the two planes crashing into the WTC on the radio and was so horrified I didn't even turn on the TV. The surreal TV at Perfecto's was on as usual and everybody in the place was staring at it in shock. The sound was actually turned on on the TV, which it never is, but otherwise there was not a sound in the crowded coffee shop. The guy pouring my coffee almost let it overflow as he stared at the TV screen watching the building collapse. Finally he exclaimed "It's just gone!" Nobody else spoke.

Today I was buying a cup of coffee at Perfecto's. The surreal TV still had the sound turned on. The place was no longer silent though. The place was packed with people in groups talking about yesterday's attacks. I felt like simply buying a cup of coffee was an act of defiance toward those who seek to destroy the USA. I bought my coffee and went to work as if my $1.55 at an independent coffee shop and my toil on the next new switching thing would head-off the economic disaster the heads on the surreal TV are predicting.

Another plane just went over, also military sounding.

The planes will start flying again. The stock market will reopen. The USA will not collapse. And I sincerely hope we will stick to our American values and not let terror reduce us to the level of the terrorists. We can't let them win.

If we attack Afghanistan without evidence that Ossama bin Laden is the perpetrator, they will have won.

If we seek blind revenge out of anger, then they will have won.

If we lash out in hatred against fellow Americans or foreign visitors based on ethnicity, they will have won.

If we resort to Israeli-style summary justice, assassinating suspects without even arresting them, they will have won.

If revenge takes precedence over the rule of law, then they will have won.

If we surrender any more of our precious civil liberties in the mistaken notion that it's necessary to do so in order to protect us from terrorism, they will have won.

We cannot let them win.