Unfinished Work

Fiorinda has just granted me permission to see a film without her. It was not much of a sacrifice for her. I am going to leave work a little early to see United 93.

It is not a movie that even I particularly want to see. I am not entirely sure why I am going to see it. I feel that I must, not just as a history teacher but for some other inexplicable reason.

That infernal day has had such an enormous impact upon me as teacher and as an American that I am compelled to remind myself of.....something. The evil in the world. The good that everyday steps up to combat the evil. The good that fall. The fact that sometimes the best the good can do is choose the lesser of two evils. At times like these I often hear the echoes of the words the world was to have so soon forgot after Lincoln uttered them on a similar killing field in Pennsylvania, "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work..."

The cynic in me wonders if the passengers of have not been idolized as self-sacrificing heroes by propagandists with lower motives. I question whether it is appropriate to view such a movie in the same theater that is showing The Benchwarmers, a movie that is, if their trailers are accurate, about goofy looking people being struck in sensitive places with hard objects. I do not foresee myself purchasing popcorn or a Coke this afternoon. It would be too much like munching on Goobers at a funeral.

Sometimes we must bare witness to that which we do not enjoy. There is nothing noble or heroic in this; there is only necessity.

Peace