Flyin' High on 9-11

The best thing that I can say about flying home on Sunday, September 11th, was that the trip was completely uneventful. There were no delays, nothing unusual or out of the ordinary happened. I walked through the checkpoint, waited for the time to board the plane, secured an aisle seat (for some reason I no longer enjoy sitting by the window and definitely not in the middle seat), had a nice conversation with the woman next to me about Bichons and Chicago-style hot dogs (unrelated content!), and read and dozed during the short flight from Nashville. Everyone went about their business with no mention of terrorists or fear (not that it probably wasn't on everyone's minds), but plenty of talk about the floods and disaster in the South. It seems that we move on with our lives no matter what the disaster may be, unless of course, we are directly involved with the tragedies. I do not know how the families of the victims from 9-11 cope with each day, but I do know that it is possible, though not easy. And now we wonder how the people of the Gulf Coast region will cope. They have lost family members, friends, neighbors, pets, places of work and worship, schools, and houses. Some have lost everything, but their lives. The cameras can only capture so much and it seems as if they focus on the dread and the dreadful. And every once in a while we'll get a snippet about some heroic rescue or deed. I believe that if more time was spent on the positive actions of the citizens of the South, like the six-year old who lead his rag-tag troop to safety, and became a national hero for his brave actions, then there would be more of an impetus to repeat the success stories and not focus on the negative as much. Probably naive on my part, of course now that David Brown is history, we can move on, but I know we haven't heard the last about him and his bleagured agency, FEMA or Homeland Security. There are many others that will come into the spotlight in the ensuing months either for their bravery, leadership, or their lack of either. We can only hope and pray that something is done before the next big storm hits the Gulf Coast area, because if or when it does, there isn't much there at the moment to keep the cities and the regions dry.