9/11: No Such Thing as Closure--Just Moving On

I knew the 9/11 ten-year anniversary TV coverage was going to be gut-wrenching, but I had to watch some of it. I'd never seen the 9/11 Memorial and didn't know what they planned in the way of a ceremony. NBC did a great job of simultaneously broadcasting from Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and that peaceful-looking field in Pennsylvania. I found the ceremonies beautiful, tasteful, and touching. I dabbed tears several times as I listened to the reading of the names and the personal messages from the readers to their lost loved ones.

It was an uplanned moment that touched me the most, however. It was captured by an NBC cameraman with a discerning eye as he was panning through the Ground Zero crowd . An Asisan woman with her back to the camera leaned over a name, barely holding herself up with her hands on each side of it. She clutched a crumpled tissue in one hand. A small puddle slowly seeped into the pristine stone in front of her. Tears? She tried vainly to staunch the flow from her eyes with the soggy tissue.

That's when I got it: for me, it's been ten years. For her, it's still happening.

Drunken moose rescued from tree

This poor girl let her love of fermented apples get the best of her. This pose is not very ladylike--it's not even very mooselike. She must be related to the late Buzzwinkle of Alaska.

Imagine the surprise of Per Johansson of Saro, Sweden, when he responded to a noise in the neighbor's garden and found a moose in their apple tree! Overcoming his surprise, he and another helpful neighbor set about sawing a branch off the tree to free her. But still, the moose couldn't--or wouldn't leave. Emergency rescue teams used a crane to get her out of the tree, but she just laid down on the ground and fell asleep. Mr Johansson said she was still there in the morning. He figured she just liked it there.

Johannson's son, an enterprising young man with a camera, took pictures and sold them to the media. He probably figured the moose was doing this just for him so he could grow his college fund. Moose in tree = more of a sure investment than most stocks right now.

Apparently, moose love fermented apples and can smell them from miles away. Keeping the animals out of your apple trees is just a simple matter of housekeeping: no apples on ground = no moose in tree.

Still, I'm glad there aren't any moose (or apple trees for that matter) in my desert. I'm just not that diligent a housekeeper!