Back from Michigan with Tales to Tell!

...but unfortunately for all of you, it's 2:33 a.m. as I write this, so I won't be doing that tonight.

But I will leave you all with this. My favorite part of CNN's coverage of the September 11th doings at Ground Zero this morning was a brief moment when artwork (presumably by the children of those lost) was visible. It depicted Sponge Bob Square Pants planting a U.S. flag atop a pile of rubble, with his big goofy Sponge Bob grin on his face.

Love that. Although I spent most of the day on the road (I-80 between DuBois, Pennsylvania and Beautiful Downtown Jersey City), at my stops for gas and lunch and such, folks were bedecked in American flags and were in 'barely-holding-myself-together-under-the-circumstances' mode. Somehow, I knew that this would not be the case in NYC. And sure enough, there were no maudlin doings here. Bars tended to be packed. People were perhaps not festive, but clearly, that New York joie de vivre did not go down with the towers. Interestingly, in our perambulations, Baron von Philadelphia and I ran across a couple of groups of firefighters out drinking toasts to fallen comrades. God Bless'em. We shouldn't forget that the tragedy of September 11th is that life is good, despite the pain and grief and unfulfilled dreams that comes along with it, and that wonderful thing called life is what more than two thousand people were deprived of in the name of religious fanatacism. Life is precious and good, and I very much doubt that if any of the those who perished had the opportunity to spend another day back here on this mortal coil, they wouldn't devote the day to sackcloth and ashes, not even red, white and blue sackcloth.

I'm with Sponge Bob on this one.

Anyway, Inferno Tales to come. And there are some doozies. We are talkin' about eight magnificent days.

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