Six-Month Anniversary - Hard to

Six-Month Anniversary - Hard to believe it was six months ago today that the world seemed to turn on its ear.

In many ways, life doesn't seem all that much different now. The day to day grind really isn't, honestly. Not here, not for me. And yet it's changed one of the most important things in my life.

Indulge me, here.

I grew up in rural North Dakota, not far from the vast fields of Minuteman III missiles, close to the glide paths of the B-52 bombers,. all of which were on alert for my entire cognitive life. I was keenly aware of the presence of all of those first strike targets, forty miles away. And while I may have been one of a minority, growing up around all of that did affect me - there was a long-standing anxiety that my life and the entire world around me could be incinerated in seconds, or irradiated away, without warning.

The Berlin Wall fell about the time my oldest child was born. It would be easy and melodramatic to tell you that knowing my daughter would grow up in a world without that tension hanging over her was a wonderful, liberating sensation - but it's the truth.

I was driving to work on September 11. I was on 394, by Xenia/Park Place. I'd just flipped over from KQRS' interview with PJ O'Rourke to MPR's live coverage of the attacks, without warning. And as the day wore on , and the shock sank in, that exhilaration - covered by the many other emotional layers of an adult's life - sank away. The threat is different - but it's still the same.

So my kids are growing up in the same world I did, now. The threat is less omnipresent - I dont' suspect the Twin Cities are high on any terrorist's hit list - but more visceral. Maybe that's a good thing - it's harder for this threat to fade into the background of daily life, like the insanity of the Cold War's "Mutually Assured Destruction" amid whose tools I grew up.

And perhaps, knowing that history was not over in 1991, we were all fools to ever let our emotional guard down.

Back to the usual business of holding the "anti-war" left's feet in the fire tomorrow.