http://www.frugalsites.net/911/sep...

That is one of the most beautiful tributes to 9/11/01 that I have ever seen.

I was an American in Canada on that day, sitting at my desk in the basement of an old house, which is where I worked, and listening to CBC2. Casually during the first half hour came an announcement that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre, and then the show went back to interviewing a local politician. I tried to log onto a news site and found they were all jammed. I phoned my sister who was at home and asked her to tune in CNN (Fox News was forbidden in Ontario at that time -- Al-Jazeera yes, Fox News, no) and see if she could find out what happened, assuming at that point it was a private plane. She started telling me what was happening -- and it was a full 40 minutes until the CBC stopped its regular programming to join the world.

That was when I realized I was not only in a foreign land, but in a clueless foreign land.

I packed up my stuff and rushed up the stairs and told the receptionist (who was Portuguese) that I was going home because my country was at war. She asked me if I had cleared it with my boss (who was not yet in) and I told her to tell him when he arrived. For the rest of the day I sat speechless in front of the television watching the end of the world. We lived in an apartment building that was quite heavily Muslim, people right from the Old Country who dressed in burqa and native costumes and did not speak English. My sister was terrified, as she was recently moved up here from the USA -- she thought they would come after us, because they knew we were American. I told her quite the opposite was true: they knew we were Americans and they were terrified that WE would come after THEM. Within 3 days there were no burqas or native costumes to be seen in that area. The only foreign people we saw were Chinese. The Muslims went into lockdown.

There was an American Le Mans race in Georgia (where we came from) that weekend and we decided spontaneously that we had to be with our countrymen and we drove 21 hours in a small sports car, sleeping briefly by the roadside and finally collapsing into a motel in Marietta for a nights sleep before the race. At the border we met National Guardsmen who examined our papers and our car and cross-examined us on where we came from, who we were and where we were going. We embraced them and their concern. All the way to Georgia we passed a forest of flags (Canadians do not fly the flag as we do, and indeed at the Japan Olympics there was much whining about the Canadian teams flying TOO MANY flags) and the radio was filled with patriotic music. At the track, all the European teams had American Flag stickers on their cars and stood in solidarity with us -- all except one Swede, who at the Standing Silence was conspicuously disrespectful although silently -- and we fervently sang God Bless The USA before the cars took off. People at the campground huddled round fires at night and talked in low tones about the coming war, and where they were when they Heard, and about their anxiety for family and friends and their memories of New York. There was a grim resolve to seek out and crush the enemy and no doubt at all who it was.

On the way home John Ashcroft held his press conference announcing the start of the Afghan War, and many cars pulled over in the mountains of Tennessee to listen to him speak, with thankful hearts.

We crossed the Canadian border at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, and the bored girl in the booth barely looked up from her People Magazine to ask if we had any cigarettes, alcohol or weapons. We were two middle aged ladies in a sports car, but we stared at her, and then said politely, no. She waved us through. SHE DID NOT CARE. For her it was still September 10. And so I found it to be when I went back to work. Most of my workmates believed that the USA had it coming, and simply did not care. I soon left that job, appalled at the hostility toward my native land. Although the American Consulate was inundated with memorials of flowers and for about 3 years there was a ceremony at 8:30 and 9:04 for those who crowded into the fortified and barricaded courtyard, in Canada 9/11/01 quickly became a non-event.

This year the International Film Festival began on 9/11 and there was absolutely no commemoration at all. It was all squealing and fainting and running after celebrities. September 11, 2001 was dropped deep into the Memory Hole and flushed away. Oh, there was a small article in our paper talking about how uncomfortable the MUSLIMS in America felt every 9/11/01! That was it.

Twenty Four Canadians were killed at the World Trade Centre and in the Pentagon. They are pretty much forgotten here.

We promised we would never forget. WE PROMISED. And some of us never will. It is a different world now whether the idlers, tweeters and wireheads want to believe it or not...a world that is in the throes of tearing itself apart. And it all came out in the open on 9/11/01, eight years ago yesterday.

The reason is that, whether you like it or not, You Are Not In Charge. Contrary to what your Mommy told you, Someone Else IS the Boss Of You.

You didn't get the job because you sat down, crossed your legs, and started interrogating the interviewer about his "sustainable energy" plans, about "work-life balance", and about how much time off you get and how many perqs; and because you told him "I GOTTA leave at 4:00 to pick up my kids at daycare" even though the clearly advertised quitting time, if any, was 5:30.

The reason you flunked bookkeeping was that you didn't show up for class, your work was incomplete, you failed most of the exams, and you persisted in standing at the teacher's desk and whining that your F grade was "unfair" because you TRIED SO HARD ... when you and the prof both knew that the only thing you tried hard to do was pass the class without doing the work.

Your resume was rejected because half the words were misspelled, and the cover letter used was written in text message gibberish (e.g. the word is PEOPLE, not ppl.) A person who cannot spell, punctuate, paragraph, or recognize poor grammar in a letter of application is a person who cannot be left alone to do the job; and a person who needs a nanny to watch her work is depriving some useful person of a chair, a desk and a job.

And from what you have told me, when you finally did get a job, you were fired because you couldn't do the work, or even worse, you WOULDN'T do the work. When telephoned from the boardroom to bring your pad and pen and take lunch orders, you sniffed, "I'm not a waitress!" When you were called from court at 4:55 and asked to get a boardroom and order coffee and snacks from the kitchen because your boss and the clients were coming back and by the way, stand by to take instructions because the Judge had decided to hear argument on damages tomorrow instead of Monday, you whined, "But I go home at fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!" and you spent the next five minutes frantically trying to find someone else to do your work before you shut off your machinery and shot out the door.

And the next day when you came in, a 59 year old woman had your job ... because she could read, write, spell, punctuate, take lunch orders, run to the mall for nylons when your boss ripped hers right before a meeting, address clients with deference and stay til the work got done.

True, your aunties and uncles, and your Mom, were lucky enough to have parents who taught us these things, and who toiled in the factories and the fields so we would not have to. And it is true that you had four fathers and three mothers before you graduated from university. But your biggest problem is, was, and always has been that you believe that the world was your oyster and everything revolves around you.

Now you know it doesn't.

So you have a choice. Will you continue to sit on the kerb and whine that it's not "fairrrrrrrrrrrrrr" and vote for the next demagogue or puppet who tells you he'll take stuff from others and hand it to you ... or will you save us all a world of trouble and just starve to death now?