Heard on my local NPR station one day last week: “One morning late this summer, Turners Falls

poet Patricia Pruitt woke up and wrote a poem full of abstract, disturbing,

apocalyptic images. She says she has no idea what prompted her to write it, but she didn’t think too

much about it until she found the poem again in late September. Suddenly,

those strange images had an almost eerie significance in the post September

11 world.”

                       Attempt

                       August 28, 2001





                       The last mark

                       the red mark

                       was decisive

                       It oblit....(O don't say

                       obliterated again.)

                       START OVER



                       The last mark

                       the red mark

                       was decisive

                       It hit walls

                       and sidewalk

                       It fell from

                       helicopter

                       propellers

                       dripped out

                       of concrete into

                       the bulldozer's maw

                       it became the sole

                       color

                       day and night

                       A kind of red weather

                       and.. (Not and. Not decisive. It was not

                       decisive.)



                       START AGAIN



                       The last mark

                       the red mark

                       created red weather

                       Day and night

                       It was the sole color

                       A sort of rain

                       or fog

                       envelopping cafes

                       Graves everywhere

                       No one could make it STOP

                       Not the ones with power

                       The ones without STOP

                       we're or were helpless

                       roofs in the dark...

                       START OVER



                       The hard thing

                       can't be held

                       or tied down,

                       turned off or

                       on This red

                       weather eludes

                       helicopters

                       floats alone

                       out of reach



                       As roofs

                       ones with

                       ones without 



                       START AGAIN



                       The last mark

                       Red walls

                       sidewalks slid

                       into concrete maw

                       Rooves cafes powerless

                       ones with

                       ones without

                       can't be held

                       tied down

                       It floats everywhere

                       helpless STOP



                       NOT HELPLESS NOT POWERLESS

                       start over



                       The ones with

                       the ones without

                       can't be held

                       or tied down

                       turned off or on...



                       Good. Stop There.

“A struggle for the soul of the 21st century”: ‘Conservatives blasted former President Clinton for this Nov. 7 Georgetown University speech, after a Washington Times story said Clinton called Sept. 11 the “price” the U.S. had to pay for its misdeeds. Here is the full text of Clinton’s speech.’ Salon

Study says touch-tone phone systems could be used to help detect callers’ dementia

Automated touch-tone phone answering systems could help screen older callers for early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say.

In a study of 155 patients, a touch-tone system identified warning signs in 80 percent of patients who had been diagnosed with mental impairments by their doctors. It also gave passing grades to 80 percent of patients diagnosed as normal.

The results appear in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

Participants were given recorded instructions such as “Spell ‘fun’ on the touch-tone pad,” and “Press ‘1’ if the following sentence makes sense: ‘We wanted to cut down the tree in the yard so we went to the garage to get a hammer,”‘ said psychologist James Mundt, a research scientist at Healthcare Technology Systems Inc. in Madison, Wis., and lead author of the study. SF Chronicle

William Safire: Prague Connection: Czech counterintelligence has revealed it was tracking Mohammed Atta as he met in Prague in April, 2001 with the Iraqi consul to the Czech Republic; their assumption is that the consul was trying to recruit Atta to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free Europe, whose ideological influence on the Iraqi opposition apparently irks Saddam Hussein. But Safire prefers to believe Iraq was assisting Atta with his Sept 11th plans. Not only what they talked about, but whether the Czechs informed American intelligence agencies at that time, remains in question. Safire explains that Saddam’s assistance might have been incognito, as ObL has no high regard for the Iraqi regime but it would be in Saddam’s interest to facilitate an attack on the US. Safire also mentions “an unpublished report” suggesting that Saddam facilitated a leading Iraqi physician’s trip to minister to ObL in Afghanistan in May, 2001.

In other coverage of Iraq, Defectors Tell of Kuwaitis

in Secret Jail in Baghdad: “Two Iraqi

defectors, veterans of the country’s

intelligence service, say they worked in a secret

site outside of Baghdad where 80 Kuwaitis

captured during the 1991 war were detained in

an underground prison.” One of the defectors, who had befriended several of the prisoners despite strict orders not to fraternize and to refer to them only by number, provided names of four detainees which Kuwaiti officials have confirmed are among the missing from the Gulf War. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

One of a series of ‘songs for the City’ written for the New York Times Magazine:

‘Laurie Sadly Listening’ by Lou Reed

Laurie if you're sadly listening

The birds are on fire The sky glistening

While I atop my roof stand watching

Staring into the spider's clypeus

Incinerated flesh repelling

While I am on the rooftop yearning

Thinking of you



Laurie if you're sadly listening

Selfishly I miss your missing

The boundaties of our world now changing

The air is filled with someone's sick reasons

And I had thought a beautiful season was

Upon us



Laurie if you're sadly listening

The phones don't work

The bird's afire

The smoke curls black

I'm on the rooftop

Liberty to my right still standing

Laurie evil's gaunt desire is

Upon we



Laurie if you're sadly listening

Know one thing above all others

You were all I really thought of

As the TV blared the screaming

The deathlike snowflakes

Sirens screaming

All I wished was you to be holding

Bodies frozen in time jumping

Bird's afire

One thing me thinking

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Love you

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Love you