The Day After

My trip back to Duncan probably will not start until the 20th or later. Bought a ticket yesterday. The border is back open already but tight around the New York line. Fortunately last year’s changes in the Duncan/Ottawa bus route take me through Windsor/Detroit instead of Montreal/upper New York State. Whether there will be any permanent problems crossing the border remains to be seen. I just returned from a walk down south on Bank street to a health food store because I was out of gluten flour for bread. On the way, I stopped to talk to my young friend, Chris Griffin, in his studio. He had been working on a painting but was just sitting, listening to the radio. He was choked and speechless. "I was just painting," he said. "Now I just can't. It's just too terrible, too senseless." Then he just reached over and unplugged his radio. It changes the way you think. It changes the way everyone thinks. Later, each customer at the health-food store, as they paid for their, carob or wheat germ or vitamins, commented how painful, frightening it was to hear the news about the US. At the Blood Center on Plymouth Street near here, there are lines in the street of Canadians, mostly university students, waiting to help. Some are waiting as long as two hours to get in to donate blood. I stopped for coffee at a Starbucks. I sat and watched the conversations at other tables, the exchanges between the incoming customers. Everyone shows shock and sorrow at the awful and useless loss. I looked through the remnants of this morning's papers scattered around the tables. I had the passing urge to save them to read again tomorrow. Tomorrow's editions will be very sad. Some people have likened this attack to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. But it bears little resemblance. The difference is mainly that after Pearl Harbor we knew the identity and location of the attacker. This time we don't. The enemy is faceless. One similarity is that undoubtedly this will increase mass prejudices against the Middle East, The Arab and Israeli states in particular. If we learned nothing from the Second World War experience, there may even be concentration camps of Mid-Eastern-Americans. I just heard a radio news report that a 15 year old Arab American was beaten up in a school yard by school mates. Another similarity is that the tragedy will probably cause Americans, (that is Mexicans, Canadians and the States) to gravitate more toward unity. The entire democratic free world will probably (or at least should) tend toward greater unity. The Allies, Americans, British and Russians, in the second world war were partners in defending against the aggression of Japan and Germany (as those countries were configured then.) Before then and indeed after, they were not all great friends. Bush is probably wishing he hadn’t fudged in Florida about now... Canadians have a different view of our political circus. Many actually feel that the US politics are a bit more down to earth than Canadian. Others just think that it is not quite as funny as their own. To be drug out...

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