WE HAVE COUSINS IN SWEDEN and had a Facetime meeting yesterday with one who is a senior in high school. His social studies assignment was to conduct an interview with someone about the U.S. 9-11 tragedy. His mother suggested he talk to someone in this country. We’ve established a friendly association with our Swedish relatives who remain and thrive there, and we were happy to be asked to visit with him.
My memories of the event have already dimmed a bit. Wanting to refresh that time I opened and read from the irreverent biography of George W. Bush written by Jean Edward Smith. It was helpful, especially reminding me that I didn’t know who was in charge at the time, was it Bush or Cheney? Remember how they cleared the sky of all airplane traffic? Remember how the war drums started beating to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden? So much came back.
I told my cousin how I’d thought our invasion of Afghanistan was probably doomed to failure. I remembered reading James Michener’s novel CARAVAN where he said that through the centuries no nation had ever succeeded in that country. Russia had gotten kicked out just previously. I reflected that we forget about such things after a few years have passed. I quickly found and read W. H. Auden’s poem “Musee des Beaux Arts” to him about how no one cared when Icarus flew to near the sun with his waxed wings and fell into the lake.The last verse fits appropriately -
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky.
It was fun to visit with a high school student who was working hard for a grade on his assignment. I found myself speaking carefully and trying to leave my natural feeling slang expressions out of the conversation. They learn and speak proper English. I hope my remarks were of use to him.
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