Another traumatic anniversary.

 

Alexis84 | Deposit Photos

This month is the 20th anniversary of the DC sniper shootings. An angry man and his teenaged acolyte drove to the DC area in a Chevrolet Caprice with the back seat and trunk modified into a sniper's nest, and began shooting random people. Over the course of three weeks, 13 people were attacked out of the blue by John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The victims were doing normal things: pumping gas, crossing the parking lot of a big-box store, getting off a school bus. Ten of those shot were killed. 

It turned out later that Muhammad and Malvo's killing spree had begun months earlier on the West Coast. In all, they were responsible for 27 shootings, 17 of them fatal.

Muhammad was put to death for his crimes in 2009. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the murders, was sentenced to six consecutive life terms. He could not be given a death sentence because of his age. He has since been denied parole.

***

I first realized it had been 20 years since the shootings when I saw this headline last week in the Washington Post: "The D.C. snipers terrorized a region. Here's what it was like." 

I skipped the article. Then, a few days later -- after I'd screwed my courage to the sticking place -- I went ahead and read it. It relays the body count and something about each victim, but it doesn't fully explain the terror. 

Keep in mind that 9/11 had happened just the year before, in September of 2001. The whole world focuses on the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City, but the Pentagon was attacked, too; I've talked about my experience that day on the blog before. Also, just after 9/11, there was a rash of incidents in DC in which several media outlets and two US senators were mailed packages or letters laced with anthrax, a deadly poison. So everybody in the region was pretty much on edge in the fall of 2001, starting on September 11th and lasting through early October.

A year later, we were moving past the fear and trauma -- and then Muhammad and Malvo showed up and started shooting people. You never knew when or where they'd strike next.

And today, on the 20th anniversary of the sniper shootings, the whole world is still in the midst of a global pandemic.

***

Collective trauma is the term for the psychological impact on members of a society when a traumatic event occurs. That society can be as small as a family, or as big as a major metropolitan area -- or the world.

Sometimes I think that between political shenanigans and mass shootings, we as a society lurch from trauma to trauma, never really processing what we've been through before the next thing happens. Maybe that's just the nature of life: you deal with stuff as it comes at you. But when upsetting event follows upsetting event, how do you deal?

Some researchers say one thing that doesn't help is to forget about the traumatic event. Not only do we need a ritual or commemoration to put the thing behind us, but if we don't learn from history, we are at risk -- as the saying goes -- of repeating it. That's what happened after the 1918 flu pandemic: the disease became endemic and the survivors got on with their lives, and society retained almost nothing about behaviors that would help us cope when COVID-19 hit.

So I guess retrospective articles like the one at WaPo last week are a good idea. And I promise not to hide from them. Just please give me a minute before I have to read them.

***

These moments of retrospective blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Not everything is a sign.

 First, a couple of housekeeping things:

• After I shared last week's post about Medicare, folks who've been through the gantlet reminded me about a couple of things:
• Not everybody pays the same monthly premium for Part B. It's tied to income, so some folks pay more. But I think a majority of folks on Medicare pay the base rate, which is $170.10 for 2022.
• It's a really good idea to shop for a Part D (prescription) plan every year. Insurance companies change their drug formularies at the drop of a hat, so the plan you have this year may not cover your meds next year at the same rate -- or at all, even. You can only change your Part D plan during open enrollment, which runs from October 15 through December 7 every year.
• Today is the 21st anniversary of 9/11. If you're interested in reading (or re-reading) what I experienced that day, here's a link to the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago. (Linking to it saves me from having to type it all out again.)

Okay, onward.

PxHere.com | CC0

If you thought, by looking at the photo, that I was going to write about politics again, you're forgiven. I'm not, though.

A couple of nights ago, I attended a small gathering of fellow Pagans at someone's house. She's kind of out in the country, with a good-sized chunk of land around her house, and so she gets a lot of local fauna roaming through. She also has a permanent labyrinth set up just the other side of her driveway, which is a cool feature that I wish I had enough room to do myself.

We were sitting outside in lawn chairs, socially distanced, next to the labyrinth. And as we talked, various critters made their way around us. This has happened before; during our get-togethers, we've seen a lizard and a few types of birds. It's their land, too, right? They were here before humans got here.

This time, as we chatted, a tarantula trucked across the labyrinth behind us, making for a copse of trees on the far side. It was a good-sized critter, about the size of your hand with your fingers extended. Some of the women got up to get a closer look, but I stayed in my seat. (Now I wish I'd gotten a photo; if I had, I wouldn't have have to resort to a stock photo for this post. Hindsight is 20/20, etc.)

Here's the thing: Our host was convinced that the tarantula was a sign -- for her. She'd never seen one on her property before, and here it was, crossing her labyrinth. And during our meeting, too! She was both fascinated and kinda scared, I think. 

This group tends to talk about animal sightings and What They Could Mean anyway, so I'd brought along my copies of Ted Andrews's books, which I mentioned in a post not too long ago. I looked up tarantulas and found them mentioned in the section about spiders. Andrews says the bite of a tarantula is poisonous, but the effect on an average human is no worse than a bee sting. He also says tarantulas don't weave webs, per se. Rather, they live in holes in the ground and catch food that comes near the rim of their hole. Of spiders in general, he says, their keywords are creativity and the weaving of fate.

A few of the other women at the meeting told our host that autumn is mating season for tarantulas. The females stay in their holes, and the males go walkabout in search of them. They said there was probably a female in a hole in the copse, and our boy was just heading over for a little boom chicka wow.

But our host would not be dissuaded. That tarantula was meant for her. Never mind that there were nearly a dozen of us at the meeting, so it could have been for any of us -- except that it stayed well away from our circle.

As I said last time this came up on the blog, "The biggest trick...is to not read too much into what you're seeing." It was cool to see a tarantula in person. But given the season, I'd say this was a spider doing spider things -- not any sort of message from the Universe.

***

These moments of spidery blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The omicron vaccine is available -- get boosted!

Will 9/11 ever be over?

 

Stolen from dcist.com

Yesterday on Facebook, I mentioned that I was grateful all of the 9/11 stuff was over for the year, meaning the social media posts and news coverage of the memorial events. Someone took issue with my phrasing. "For some people, 9/11 will never be over, " she said.

You're telling me.

I guess I've never told my 9/11 story here on the blog. Maybe I should save it for the 20th anniversary next year. But I think I'll write it now and just re-run it next year.

***

When people talk about 9/11, they tend to focus on New York. That sort of makes sense -- the collapse of the Twin Towers was a dramatic and horrible tragedy. But two other planes went down that day. One of them slammed into the Pentagon. That's the one that affected me.

We lived in the West End of Alexandria, VA, in the rental townhouse where I later set the Land Sea Sky trilogy. That September morning, the weather was beautiful. The heat and humidity of the typical DC summer was over and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The girls and I went through our usual morning routines. They went off to school -- Kitty was in ninth grade at Minnie Howard School and Amy was in seventh grade at Hammond Middle School -- and I went off to my job. I caught my usual bus, which took me to the Pentagon where I changed from the bus to the subway, and went in to work. 

Our office was at 24th and M Streets Northwest in those days. I sat next to a secretary who worked for a partner with a corner office. He had a little TV in there and a great view of the skyline south of DC, and he was traveling on business that day. So when the first plane went into the World Trade Center, about an hour after I got to work, Debbie went into his office and turned on the TV. Her boss had a bunch of clients in the World Trade Center, and she was worried about them. Then the second plane hit and the towers collapsed. 

And then we heard about the plane at the Pentagon. 

That was pretty much it for work that day. I'd left the news business just two years before, so I had some inkling of what the reporters were going through. I spent the morning going back and forth between my desk, where I kept refreshing the news coverage online, and the partner's office, where we could now see smoke rising from the Pentagon crash site. 

Then we heard about the fourth plane -- including the speculation about the hijackers' planned destination: the U.S. Capitol, maybe, or the White House. Our office was just a few blocks from the White House. Now, everybody in DC is pretty much a fatalist; I've heard the route for the Capital Beltway was chosen because it marks the outer edge of direct damage from a nuclear bomb blast on the White House. If you live or work inside the Beltway, you figure you're not going to survive an attack. But still, this made that threat a little too real. 

Our office manager sent everybody home at lunchtime. This was before cell phones were ubiquitous and people were worried about their families. My usual bus was a commuter bus that only ran during morning and afternoon rush hour, but I knew that if I could get to a different station, farther down the Blue Line, I could catch a bus that ran all day. The question was whether the trains would be running to Pentagon Station or whether they'd be turned back. I got lucky; the wedge of the Pentagon where the plane went in was far enough away from the Metro station that it wasn't affected. The station, however, was closed. My train went through it without stopping. I caught my alternate bus and got home okay.

Not long after I got home, Kitty came in the front door and cried with relief when she saw me. The teachers at her school had told the kids about the attack. Of course, she knew my transit route and was worried I'd been at the Pentagon when the crash happened.

The teachers at Hammond didn't tell the kids anything, but the school is only five miles from the Pentagon and the kids felt it when the plane went in. There was a big construction project at the school and the kids wrote it off to that. It wasn't until later that they found out what had happened. 

Going back to work the next day was surreal. The Pentagon transit station was still closed, and would continue to be for the next three months. Buses that usually stopped at the Pentagon were rerouted to Pentagon City, just across Interstate 395. The new bus stops were makeshift affairs, and when we got off the bus we could smell the smoke from the smoldering fire. In addition, the platforms at Pentagon City are too narrow for the crush of commuters that typically got off at the Pentagon. The station managers were constantly yelling over the intercom, telling people to move down the platform instead of bunching up at the bottom of the escalator. I was sure that someday, somebody would get pushed off the platform by the crowds and into the path of an oncoming train.

Once on the train, it was more or less fine. But once we got to DC, things got surreal again. Armed troops in Humvees were stationed at major intersections. Walking past them to get to work was both reassuring and frightening.

The attacks changed a lot of things in DC. Of course, air traffic was halted right after the attacks. Living in an urban area, you get used to the noise from airplanes flying overhead -- but now all we heard were helicopters flying to and from the Pentagon. Other things changed, too. For example, we had to start carrying an ID card at work to get from one floor to another. Bag checks were instituted at public buildings, including museums. 

And of course, we all know how airport security was stepped up once air travel resumed. It was worse for DC residents -- initially there was a rule for all flights out of Reagan National Airport that nobody could leave their seat for the first 30 minutes of the flight.

Three months after the attacks, as I said, the Pentagon Transit Center reopened. It was due for a redesign anyway, but I believe the plans were modified after 9/11. It used to be that you could get off the train at Pentagon Metro, cross the lobby, go through a set of glass doors, and take an escalator up to the Pentagon itself. I'd done that a few times to buy a bus pass. But when the station reopened, that entrance was sealed off. Now nobody can get into the Pentagon without an ID or an official tour ticket. 

Also as part of the redesign, the bus bays were moved farther away from the building, and the transit center entrance facing the bus bays was redesigned. It's shown in the photo above. The line below Pentagon Transit Center might be hard to read in this photo. Here's what it says: 

In Memory of Those Whose Lives Were Forever Changed by the Events of September 11, 2001

I cried the first time I saw it. All of our lives had been changed by 9/11, in ways large and small.

***

Nearly 20 years on, it's easy to forget how much has changed. Americans came together right after the attacks, sure. But prejudice against Muslims ratcheted up, and it has never gone away. 

I know my own memories of the days right after 9/11 are no longer as sharp; until I looked up the dates tonight, I thought the temporary bus transfers to Pentagon City lasted a lot longer. And it's harder to remember how much easier life was before the attacks. I'm reconciled to the fact that we have to pay the government money now for the privilege of not having to undress and unpack to get on a plane. And I've gotten used to having my backpack searched when visiting a museum.

To me, the most worrisome change is that the Department of Homeland Security, cobbled together from several other federal agencies in the wake of 9/11, has become an easy tool for a president with fascist tendencies to exploit.

I think it's time for our nation to re-examine some of the post-9/11 changes that we've begun to normalize. I think it's time to look at whether, maybe, we went too far. That may be what it will take for us to be able to put the events of 9/11 behind us at last.

***

These moments of bloggy remembrance have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. You know the drill - wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask, and make sure you're registered to vote.

Gotta shop?

So there's still a pandemic on, most states' curves have not yet flattened, and we have neither widespread testing nor reliable treatment protocols nor a vaccine for COVID-19. We're still learning about the effects of the virus on the human body; until last week, we thought kids didn't get it, but then epidemiologists in New York realized there was a new rash of kids dying of an unusual disease that appears to be linked to this coronavirus.

All that, and yet governors around the nation are beginning to reopen the economy in their states. Some are moving more cautiously than others, and in some states customers have yet to flock to stores. But this weekend in Arkansas, this was the checkout line at a TJ Maxx.



Supposedly the store had a sign on the door that masks were required for entrance, but clearly a whole lot of shoppers didn't bother with them.

I've also seen a photo from a restaurant in Castle Rock, Colorado, that violated that state's reopening restrictions by letting people dine in. The restaurant, by all accounts, was packed.

This all happened on the same day as the death toll from COVID-19 in the US topped 78,000. (Mama Google tells me that today's death toll, as I write this post, is 80,562.)

But why? What is behind the need to get out of the house, go to a physical store, paw through physical merchandise touched by many other (possibly unwashed) hands, and exchange droplets with other shoppers who can't be bothered to wear a mask, let alone stand six feet from you at all times?

I know, I know. There are Americans who have been told, and who truly believe, that COVID-19 is a Democratic hoax, or else it's germ warfare that was released deliberately by the Chinese, and anyway we're all going to get it eventually and lots of people recover, so why are we hiding from it?

Besides, there are upwards of 20 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance since we all went home in mid-March. A lot of them work in the service industry, but not for an essential service like a grocery store or car repair place. These people would like to see a paycheck again.

And we have a contingent of folks who aren't safe at home for a variety of reasons, including poverty, lack of food, and domestic abuse.

But then there are the folks who just have to shop. That's their hobby -- they get in the car and go to a store. And I believe they've been trained to behave that way.

I used to practice simple living back in the day. I ended up not being very good at it and gave it up. But I was still involved in the movement on 9/11, and so I was shocked when one of the first things out of President George W. Bush's mouth after the attacks was to encourage Americans to go shopping.



He couched it in terms of not letting terrorism win. But I honestly think there was more to it. I think the real aim was to keep the US economy from tanking.

Back in 1992, Bill Clinton beat Bush's father to become president with a campaign whose slogan was famously described by campaign strategist James Carville as, "It's the economy, stupid." It's a truism in American politics that presidents are usually re-elected when the economy is ticking along. in '92, Clinton convinced voters that it wasn't. In 2001, Bush the Younger was in the first year of his first term, but he knew voters would remember 9/11 and whether they'd felt safe, both physically and economically, with him at the helm.

Fast-forward to 2020 and COVID-19. The virus has no political agenda. It does not have the mind of a terrorist. It just does its thing -- whether or not we have a vaccine or a cure, or even a reliable treatment protocol. The safest thing to do -- the thing that will save the most lives -- is for everybody to stay away from everybody else for as long as it takes to develop a vaccine or a cure.

But President Trump is up for re-election this year, and it's still the economy, stupid. So our politicians will keep businesses closed just long enough to make sure the infection rate isn't going to overwhelm hospitals with new COVID-19 patients. Then all good, patriotic Americans will need to go back to work, shopping, and eating out.

Actually, maybe we won't keep things closed that long. Some governors -- and President Trump -- think the economy is more important than the lives of regular Americans. They're reopening even though the curve has yet to flatten. They talk about the death toll as if it's not real people dying.

The phrase that keeps coming back to me is cannon fodder. Back before we housed our front-line troops inside tanks (as we did in the war on Iraq in 2003), armies included a lot of infantry. They were the men who went in first, on foot, and it didn't matter whether they all died because they were a dime a dozen. Oh, we still called them heroes, especially if they didn't survive the battle. They'd given their lives for a noble cause, right?

Two months ago, when we all went home and were told to stay there, we began hailing our medical personnel and other essential workers as heroes. The idea made me squirm. Medical personnel are highly trained; presumably they had an idea of what they were getting into when they took the job. But grocery store cashiers? Uber Eats drivers? Not highly trained. Dime a dozen. Cannon fodder.

Now some retail workers are being told by their bosses they need to come back to work -- and if they don't, they'll be considered no-shows and will lose their unemployment benefits. Of course we could pay people to stay home and stay safe, if people were our priority. But they're not. The economy is our priority. And low-skilled workers are a dime a dozen. More cannon fodder.

The folks working shoulder-to-shoulder in meatpacking plants where the owners routinely flout health laws anyway, the people held in prisons, old folks in nursing homes -- they're all cannon fodder, too.

And those folks shopping at that crowded TJ Maxx? The ones who could not stay home a minute longer? I just don't think they understand how little their lives are worth to the people calling the shots.

***
These moments of less-than-cheerful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who is planning to stay home 'til we have a vaccine.