I'm afraid it is time for me to sound in on this one.  I wrote the original note that started the thread, though I clearly had nothing to do with what followed.
   
  If one were to reread my note, I was careful not to politicize 9/11.  While I concur with much of what L. Dewey posts--especially as it relates to the current politicial situation--I, too rue the fact that 9/11 has been politicized and used as an agenda for other things I will not address on the list.  Except for the politics that drive museum-related things, I do try to keep my perspective in that regard off list, and it should probably have been done so, but it's too late to correct that.
   
  The original note I wrote was a note of compassion and of empathy for those in the museum world who endured the travesty of 9/11 first-hand.  Most of the rest of us witnessed it by proxy, from the safety of our homes and televisions; we didn't have to clambor to find our way home in the middle of the disaster.
   
  There were people on this list who were directly impacted--a fact I'll never forget.  Most of you are invisible friends, people on list who I've come to know by your spirit, the character of your work, and the personality that comes through in pieces you write.  A loss to a number of you, whose faces I may never see and whom I might never recognize if I did see them, is still a loss to us all--at least to me.  I didn't want to exacerbate that loss, and I hated the fact that so many faces were being exploited in the media this week and in times past.  There's a time when the camera needs to turn away and let the grieving widow have her tears and not capture her most touching, if not ugliest appearance wise, moment by playing voyeur.
   
  Watching people cry on television made it too real again, and I could only imagine it couldn't be more too real than the places where it first happened.  I've had PTSD, and I know how easy it is to "resprain your psyche" when you are forced to relive traumatic events.  
   
  My original posting was simply to reach out a hand and say that you are cared about today, take my hand, we will get through this.  It was not an invitation for the list to be backhanded, and I'm afraid that's the way the posting that followed came through, at least to me.
   
  I despise the war, I do not stand with the Administration's policies, I don't like all the things that are being represented and misrepresented, and I could have written a diatribe that matched the poem, but this wasn't the forum, and these are not the people.  The events since 9/11 have polarized and fractionalized our nation, and you will not get people to agree as to whether what is happening is a good thing or a bad thing.  The events at present are like a work of art and each of us the artist.  The image we see is going to be a reflection of where we are, where we were, what we believe, and whom we believe.  Each person's opinion is going to be skewed by their perspective, and a museum forum is not the place to try to skew that.
   
  My posting should not have been interpreted as supporting the ballyhoo, but rather supporting the members on this list who needed to get through that very hard day.  It shouldn't have been bastardized.  
   
  There are far too many fora to make political commentary--I know, and I do.  This wasn't one.
   
  

L Dewey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  Obviously, the effect of the poem is variable.

I can see how some who take an exceptionalist view of 'nine-eleven' 
(and that view, by the way, is not equivalent to mourning) might 
therefore also read the poem as blame.

The key is perhaps how one understands the 'you' implied in the 
rhetorical device of the poem.

-L.D.





Indigo Nights
[log in to unmask]

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