9/11

     With the anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks falling the day after both a school shooting and the apparent assassination of a high-profile sociopolitical influencer, I was thinking about the nature of murder.

     Murder isn't scalar, not really.  Murder one person, murder a thousand: the stain of it, the sin of it, if you will, doesn't change after the first one.  And while we feel that the person who kills dozens is more heinous that the person who kills only one, realistically, they can only be executed once, only be imprisoned without parole for one lifetime.

     What scales is tragedy.  The attacks on September 11, 2001 left thousands of grieving families.  One family, we know what to do: you drop off a hot dish, sit with them, cry with them.  Over three thousand?  It's emotionally inconceivable.

     We can remember the day.  We can remember any friends lost.  It feels like so very little, but it's what we can do.