communication error

Argh. That was close.

Our garage came with an ameteurish "wood-burning stove" that we have never used. It was, essentially, a 55-gallon drum with a chimney and a barrel of wood scraps. The previous owner of the house used the garage as a workshop. We use it to store cars.

A couple months ago our garderner asked if we would be willing to sell it to him and we told him to just take it (so long as he didn't leave a hole in the wall). We also told him he could have the wood pile. When Dani and I talked it was about taking the barrel and the box of wood scraps, but apparently, either Dani said or the gardener mis-heard "clear out everything". The stove etc disappeared during Pennsic, I think, and I didn't pay much attention.

This morning something in the back of my head told me to make sure all the parts of my sukkah are in good shape. (Sukkot begins a week from Friday night.)

You see where this is going, right?

Fortunately, the gardener still has the expensive roof part, which -- as a roll of laced-together bamboo really ought to have set off the "this might be important" alarm, but didn't -- and he will return it tomorrow. The other important piece is gone, though, so I will have to fabricate a new corner post. Fortunately, it isn't expensive in dollars, just time. (Three corners are anchored to existing architecture; the fourth is a free-standing post with braces and stuff.) Just what I needed, a project to be done in the next week.... I'm pretty inept at carpentry, too. Someone competent could probably make this part in 10 minutes; when I did it before I think it took a couple hours.

semi-obligatory 9/11 entry

So tomorrow is September 11th. The media has decided to mark the day by showing lots of specials and retrospectives and whatnot. If you watch TV tomorrow, you're going to see the planes hitting the buildings every damn ten minutes.

This is appalling. It's sensationalist crap that is a disservice, not a tribute, to the victims. At least give them the option to end their mourning and move on, for crying out loud. When I die, I want my survivors to remember my life, not the way I died. Especially if it's tragic. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think I'm completely alone on this one.

9/11/2001 was a tragedy. But it was far from our only tragedy, and certainly far from the world's only tragedy. It was an act of hatred, but there are places in the world where hatred is recurring and systematic. We could, in general, stand to get a lot more perspective.

On the other hand, if we fail to learn from this, if we fail to empathize with those who face terrorism on a weekly or daily basis rather than once, or if we fail to distinguish between evil individuals and their races or religions, that will be a tragedy far more serious than planes flying into buildings.

I pray for a diminishing of hatred. I also pray for justice, that those responsible for terror -- all terror, not just ours -- be brought to account. And I pray that this doesn't take as high a price in liberty here in the US as I fear it already has.

But I will not build a shrine to the dead, and I will not spend the day watching the carnage on infinite loop, I will not attend any of the memorial services being held around the city tomorrow, and I will not change my daily routine out of fear. Living normally is the only response that makes sense to me.

Tomorrow, God willing, I am going to go to work, study talmud with my rabbi, and socialize with friends. Just as if tomorrow were the 10th, or the 12th.