This blogger remembers where he was on that morning of April 19, 1995. One U.S. history class was departing and another class moved into the room to take their places. A student called out, "Did you hear?" There's been a bombing in Oklahoma City." As the days and months unfolded, we grieved for the 168 dead and lmore than 800 injured people. We learned of Timothy McVeigh and a rented Ryder truck loaded with 5,000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate (an agricultural fertilizer) and nitromethane (a motor-racing fuel). We learned about the gun-show subculture and its anti-government fellow-travelers. In his twisted mind, McVeigh and his co-conspirators (Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier) were striking a blow against a tyrannical government. After he left the U.S. Army in 1992, McBeigh wrote a letter to an editor: Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight.... Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.
Such words, echoing in the tax protest rhetoric of April 2009, give additional weight to Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano's warning that "...'a number of groups far too numerous to mention' were targeting returning (Iraq/Afghanistan) veterans to carry out domestic terrorism attacks." On one level, Timothy McVeigh was a pathetic loser. On another, he was a monster beyond our worst nightmares. As the cries of rage still echo from the tax protests of April 15, 2009, the gun shows go on and the fevers burn hot among anti-government extremists. If this is a (fair & balanced) tocsin, so be it.
[x iVoryTowerz]
Memorial: Oklahoma City & The Bombing
(iVoryTowerz Editor's Note: This piece was prepared for the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, the nation's deadliest domestic terrorist attack. The photo of the Oklahoma City memorial to those lost in the 1995 bombing is by R. Doyle Bowman of Oklahoma City.)
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Tag Cloud of the following article
Ladies and gentlemen and children: See before you the crumbled concrete and teddy bears, the wreaths and forlorn love notes, the postcards and classroom projects, the flags and bobbing balloons, the flowers and final farewells to one hundred, sixty-eight souls. Blown from the earth with a single obscene gesture, they were three months, they were seventy-two years, they were one and twenty-three and thirty-six and forty-two and fifty-five and sixty-seven; good ages all, now etched static on stones in perpetuity.
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Look at their faces, unprepared to be memorialized, giggling from family photos; posing for graduation pictures; caught unaware in backyard barbecue snapshots; accepting awards for deeds well done; squinting through sunglasses and wind-whipped hair; smiling from beneath coquette eyelids; flirting with a future that will remain unlived.
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Do they now soar on the wings of eagles? Do they join celestial choirs, belting out the blues for those left behind? Do they rest safely where God is nigh? Do they fly wrapped in angels’ wings and draped in patriotic colors? Do they heed the solemn psalms we offer up, the precious quilts we stitch with tears, the “Taps” we sound in stolid sorrow?
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Do you know? Their memories will never leave us — children’s cries that faded before they could be found; a boot, impotent with only its warrior’s leg; the futile reach of a toddler’s severed hand; the sacrifice of a limb for life; the heart of one who would serve and protect gone limp as the baby’s body he cradled.
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Can you see? In the victims’ absence, a flag gently caresses a face of faith, memorializing last kisses never placed on loved ones’ lips. Children’s words, pure and simple, are searched for some serenity. Voices are joined to find a remnant of harmony in harrowed hearts. Hands are clasped, ribbons are donned and candles lighted to lead wounded survivors to comfort.
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Can we help but wonder just how great is the resilience of this human spirit? Can we help but question that a god would make such a day as April 19, 1995? And when the doubts are done, when grass grows where battlements once stood, can we find inspiration in the agony? Can we embrace the anguish of it all and fill the void with the wonder of hope and peace?
Ladies and gentlemen and children: Speak tenderly to the city and love each other well that darkness may not have its way.
Please visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.
Isaiah 40:1-10 ♥
[Kit-Bacon Gressitt is a SoCal freelance journalist. In her blog, Excuse Me, I'm Writing, Gressitt explains her given name:BTW, because folks often ask: My first name, Kit-Bacon, is my mother’s creation. Mother felt burdened by her proper Southern double, multi-syllabic name, Margaret Patricia, so she gave me the love gift of Kit. Bacon, her maiden name, was to be my middle name. When her family pitched a proper Southern fit about Kit, she added the hyphen, which silenced them for fear it would get worse. Mother tends toward Dorothy Parker.]
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