This morning I went to a simple ceremony in honor of those who died on September 11, 2001. A group of high school students gathered on the lawn near the flag pole of their school and blew Taps in rounds; they call it "Echo Taps". They blew Taps four times, at the time each plane struck its target, times adjusted for the time zones. This was a semi-coordinated effort by a group called "Bugles Across America". The idea was that by adjusting for the time zones, all of the ceremonies would be taking place simultaneously. The lead trumpeter started the round, then each of the other two groups joined in turn. The other two groups consisted of a trumpet, a tuba, and a trombone. It was simple, moving, and beautifully done. My sixteen-year-old grandaughter, Emily, was the lead trumpeter and I couldn't have been more proud of her.

Emily has been associated with Bugles Across America for several months now. The organization was founded when, (I guess) due to a shortage of buglers, soldiers were being buried to the strains of a taped version of Taps. A fellow named Tom Day felt that vets deserved at least a live bugler at their graveside service. So he got together a bunch of volunteers to blow Taps at military funerals. His website claims over 7000 buglers spread over all fifty states. I think he is not only a genius, but a hero as well. And I am extremely proud of Emily for wanting to be a part of this. She has not only played at funerals, she has participated in the Echo Taps at various places around the colorful state. When the idea of this 9-11 tribute came up, she organized the whole thing at her school. She looked absolutely regal in her dark suit, her shiny new trumpet, and the demeanor of a woman many years older than she is.

We came home and put up the flag. That was about as much of 9-11 commemoration as I was up for. Every year the whole thing boils up again. I don't know what bothers me more, all the things we have seen a thousand times or all the things we are never shown because they might be too inflammatory; might...what? Make me mad? Too late. I been carrying a "mad-on" over 9-11 for nine years and I really don't see any relaxation of it in the near or distant future. Despite myself, I watched a couple of the documentaries tonight. They both are showing scenes of the jumpers from the towers; I remember that they quit showing those scenes late on the evening of the attacks. They were, I suppose, protecting our sensibilities. Like they protected us from the headless bodies hanging from the bridge over the Euphrates in Baghdad, or the beheading of the captured journalists, or the bodies of our GIs who had been captured, then hollowed out and stuffed with explosives to blow up when their rescuers arrived. I don't particularly want to see that stuff. But I just wonder where the concern for our feelings was when every night for years on end we had our soldiers being shot, blown up, burned, hauled out on stretchers, and piled up in poncho-covered heaps, paraded across our TV screens dressed up as the Nightly News...I guess Vietnam was different, somehow.

The effort to spare the radicals from our anger is what angers me. I think we need to show the towers coming down every morning when the stations sign on and every evening when the news starts. We should be reminded every day, as many times a day as is necessary to awaken the anger in us all. We should be mad. Maybe if we were mad enough, we would start to ask questions like, "Why would the grand leader of us all balk at chastising Islamists who fly in the face of common decency with their plan to plant a mosque in the middle of an area that has become nearly sacred ground to most Americans but will immediately condemn one little congregation that wants to show their frustration and anger by burning the Koran?" Or, "Why does the same leader feel it necessary to punish one of the states for passing a law to do what the leader is required by law to do...but doesn't?" Heaven help us if we should face up to the fact that Jihadists practice a religion that claims to be peaceful but trains its youth to hate...to the point of being willing to strap on a vest full of semtex and walk into a crowd of "infidels" and go boom. We'd be worse than racists in that case; we would be the wacky religious right that the atheist libs always accuse us of being. And by the way, if "he" ever succeeds in turning 9-11 into a national "day of service"...I will know the world has gone crazy.

Watching those high-schoolers paying tribute, at 6:47 am our time, I couldn't help but compare the youth of America with the youth of Islam. Bomb vests vs Echo Taps. Who do you think represents the best hope for the future?