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Last Light: The Twin Towers on the evening of September 10, 2001.

by Vanderleun on September 10, 2020

Via A Large Regular: 9/11

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AbigailAdams September 11, 2020, 5:27 PM

What a tough reminder, Gerard. Interestingly enough I was thinking about “last times” yesterday. As we’re getting older, there will be more and more last times. Which is appropriate, I think, since the first half of our lives is filled with “first times.” And the more first times we had, the more last times we’ll have.

Driving through downtown this afternoon, I realized I had already take my last drive on the viaduct and through the Battery Street tunnel quite a while ago. I loved the viaduct and the tunnel. Pretty soon it will be the last time for a lot of things that we’ve been doing for most of our lives.

On September 10th we said our prayers, climbed into bed, turned out the light, and went to sleep. I heard once that God made the world round so that we couldn’t see too far off into the distance.

The trick is to keep hope alive.

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Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020

Only by Fire is Fascism Finished

Year upon year in Earth’s darker forests,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
Dry drifts of wood rot and leaf fall increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

The ash that descends in the September skies
Where the leapers swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With that fire which hollows the bones.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

If their god decrees war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in His stone.
No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The answers that burn in the bone.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

Only by Fire is Fascism Finished.
This Sin is demanded that Your Line may Live.
Only through Fire is Freedom Reborn.
Each generation pulls the Sword from the Stone.

— Van der Leun

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Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”