Sunday, September 11, 2011

Rebuilding This Site, Rebuilding That Site

Naturally, it appears circumstances will take me two places a truly risk-averse person wouldn’t go on this terror anniversary: the subway system (where Michael Malice and I will try out the temporarily-recommissioned, weekends-only 1920s subway train running noon-6 on the 2/3 track between 42nd and 96th) and downtown (where I’ll watch Rev. Jen Miller’s kooky comedic films at 9pm at Bowery Poetry Club).

In other 9/11-related news, Republican Liberty Caucus chairman Dave Nalle announced on Facebook that today he’s unfriending all Truthers (with mercy on a case-by-case basis if they make their case to him).  No biggie by most humans’ standards but sorta bold for a guy with so many Ron Paul allies at this crucial juncture, I think (as a Texan, Nalle’s also led the RLC criticism of Perry).

It’s a thin line sometimes between healthy debate and anything-goes lunacy, and I intend to walk that line in Williamsburg soon, at a bourgeoning events series I’ll host called the Brooklyn Forum.  To facilitate that, though, I’m going to make some changes to this website (and my other online activities), so for the duration of the gradual pre-Forum tinkering, I’ll cut back on the frequency of blogging (as I’ve been threatening to do periodically almost since this blog began, roughly half a decade ago, when 9/11 was a mere five years prior instead of ten). 

The plan is to post a weekly entry, on Tuesdays.  I will also fix various old problems that have nothing to with Brooklyn Forum (nor 9/11, nor Y2K) such as at least some of the links broken in the transition to Blogger, etc.  One or two things may get snazzier.  Bear with me. 

In the meantime, a few actual 9/11-related items:

•Yesterday online, Gerard Perry shared a nice New York-inspired performance by New Yorker Suzanne Vega.

•Out of towners might like to know that now there really is construction visible aboveground at what for a decade has been the embarrassing and bureaucracy-plagued hole at Ground Zero.  I’m glad that’s happening by the tenth anniversary, at least.

•If One World Trade Center, a.k.a. the Freedom Tower, ends up looking as nice as its Wikipedia page suggests, we’ll be doing OK.  (As I type this, the page also contains a slightly-tackier pic of the partially-constructed building red, white, and blue-lit for today’s tenth anniversary, but the sentiment is appreciated, and it’s considerably less tacky than making the Flight 93 memorial a giant red crescent pointed toward Mecca, which seems like the kind of design decision a committee makes if it’s trying to provoke civil war, or else is very, very stupid.)

•And, just as sentimentalism should not lead us into unwise political, economic, immigration-policy, or foreign-policy decisions, neither should it cause us to be guilt-tripped into believing every story about mysterious, ostensibly Ground Zero-caused illness, as my old ACSH co-workers have repeatedly noted. 

One almost self-refuting part of this statistics-based story about such ailments, for instance, is the brief mention of World Trade Center exposure correlating with a decrease in lung cancer (and after all that hubbub!).  If I thought that was any more medically plausible than all the disease-increase claims, I’d go huff some pit-ash right now, just to be safe.  Breathe in enough and we could all take up smoking!

Try to stay sane, America.

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