I noticed a headline the other day… I was going to share it, because it was so ridiculous, but then I left the website where I’d seen it and didn’t go back. It went like this:

“Woman’s week-long rape, torture may be hate crime.”

And I thought, upon reading that, If a week of rape and torture isn’t based on hate, what the hell is it based on??

It really got me thinking about the notion we have in this country of certain crimes being “hate crimes” and therefore more severely punishable. A hate crime is one which is committed against a member of a protected class (blacks, Jews, gays, etc.) because the offender hates that person for who they are.

For example, if my white grandmother is murdered because she awakens during a burglary in her home, and my black neighbor’s grandmother is murdered because her killer hates black people, the killer of my neighbor’s grandmother would receive a more severe punishment because the murder of a black person is a “hate crime.”

The obvious hypocrisy of this is stunning: it places a higher value on the life of one person, in terms of punishment for a violent crime against that person, than on the life of another.

Look, I understand that we as a society abhor the kind of supremacist thinking that guides groups such as the KKK or results in horrific circumstances such as concentration camps full of Jews or young men dragged until dead behind pickup trucks. And we cannot on principle, as a nation founded on liberty, punish hateful thinking in and of itself.

So instead we intensify the punishment of behavior that comes from hateful thinking. Therefore, “I killed her because she’s black and I hate blacks” gets a worse punishment than, “I killed her because I was trying to rob her and she swung at me with a baseball bat.”

I personally disagree that violent crime is ever anything other than the expression of hatred. And I don’t believe killing someone because they’re black is any more hateful than killing them because they woke up during a robbery. I therefore don’t agree that one person’s life is worth more than another’s in terms of punishment for their murder. It is all killing. It is all abhorrant. It is all hate. And just when I thought headlines couldn’t get any more ridiculous, along came the next day’s effort:

“Feds: No Hate Crime in Torture Case.”

Blue Sky.

That’s what I remember, more than anything else, about September 11, 2001. It was one of those blue sky days (at least, it was in New York – isn’t it funny that I don’t remember whether it was overcast here?). The kind like today: bright, clear blue sky, where trees and buildings just seem so much more vivid than they do against an overcast backdrop.

New Yorks’ bright blue sky made the towers gleam… it also establshed stark contrast for the black smoke. Standing in my living room, watching the second plane hit, I remember thinking: look at the blue sky. Then, a day or so later, I remember leaving my downtown office to take a walk, noting our own blue sky, and looking up at our own tall buildings. I imagined planes flying into them. What would I do if this happened in my city, I wondered?

I have always had a special fondness for blue-sky days. In their truest form, they are actually few in number – most days seem to have some degree of cloud cover. At least that’s the way it seems to me – they are, at any rate, few enough that when they occur, I always notice. These days, of course, it’s hard to take note of a blue-sky day without remembering the events of September 11th and the aftermath.

I think what’s hardest these days is accepting that there is a larger picture than just the images we saw on television. September 11th isn’t just about loss, or victims, or heroes… though I firmly believe those stories should be told often.

It’s also about vulnerability. And how for one day, and the few weeks after it, we stood together because we recognized our vulnerability. And this to me is such a huge issue, even now, six years later. On the one hand I think we have a large segment of our population that no longer feels vulnerable, and so no longer sees the need for our military response. (Or, apparently, any other type of response.) On the other hand the people leading our response have focused so much energy on the military side of things and so little on fixing the problems that make us vulnerable.

So here I am, an average American, right in the middle: disgusted with those who want to give up the fight, but recognizing that in six years’ time we have done so little to actually protect ourselves.

September 11 should be a day of national mourning. It should also be a day of heart-felt remembrance, and story-sharing, and celebrating our heroes. It should not be a day to lament how far we haven’t come.

I think that’s why I’m sad today. Not because people died, but because we are still stomping around, refusing to learn the lesson that they died to teach us.

I have to mention a really interesting experience we had the other night. My husband and I came out of El Rodeo on E. Euclid and were approaching our car, when I realized there was a Praying Mantis perched on the roof of the car, over the driver’s door. We approached slowly because frankly, I’ve never seen one up close and I was curious about them. This one was about five inches long and bright green, and it was facing the front end of the car. As we stood there staring at it, it turned to look at my husband. But it didn’t just re-orient its body, which is what I would have expected in an insect. Instead, it kind of reared up on its hind legs, with its front legs up in the air, and twisted its “neck” so its head was facing us. It then cocked its head to one side, just like a dog does that is listening to a sound. We spent probably five or ten full minutes watching it watch us, during which time it would turn and cock its head and neck back and forth, toward us and away from us, walking toward us and then backing up… it was just a little creepy because of the way their face looks a little alien-like… anyway, I mention it because I guess I have never seen an insect with a neck before, and certainly not one that looks around in the same manner as a dog or a human. It sure gave the little guy a lot of personality!

Well this was a tough weekend… I learned that a friend of mine had been in a motorcycle accident Friday night – she is recovering from a variety of serious injuries and it certainly reminded me of the need to “ride like nobody sees you, and like those who do see you want to kill you.” I haven’t seen a word about the wreck on the Register website; it involved a drunk driver on SW 9th Street and took place late Friday night or very early (wee hours) Saturday morning.

I see the Register finally caught up with the Arthur Caplan column I quoted from back in early August…

We are having our first 8th grade girls volleyball game tonight over at North High School… a few disappointments/irritations this year – namely, the 7th grade girls last year were all looking forward to wearing the 8th grade PINK t-shirts this year, but for some reason all three grades have to wear WHITE this year. And the damn shirts don’t even have NUMBERS on them, so now we have to figure out how to tell OUR brown-haired pony-tailed girl from all the other brown-haired pony-tailed girls wearing numberless white t-shirts, from the cheap-seats. Yes, I realize it’s not the end of the world… but, I’m really curious what the hell is so difficult about giving the 8th graders the pink t-shirts they were looking forward to wearing, and at the very least giving the girls numbers so they can be easily identified from afar.

In light of the “men’s room etiquette” schooling we all received last week courtesy of Sen. Larry Craig, I thought a brief round-up of rules from the ladies’ perspective might be in order. Here are some unwritten guidelines you might not be aware of:

1. Courtesy flush – yes, gals use it too… it’s only proper to flush the poo even if you’re still doing the paperwork. Little-known fact: women also sometimes use what’s called the “hailing flush,” which is where you flush as soon as you hear someone else enter the bathroom. Newcomers can pinpoint the stall from which the hailing flush originates, and will therefore refrain from trying the door to the occupied stall. Especially useful because it seems that making the two parts of a stall door latch actually match up is just too damn hard for the people who install stalls.

2. Sharing resources – It’s okay to ask the person in the stall next to you to pass some TP under the stall wall. It’s NOT okay to ask them to pitch your used tampon for you, even if the little discard bin in your stall is full.

3. Shoe-tiquette for women – perfectly acceptable to study the shoes of the person in the stall next to you to figure out who makes a lot of potty noise. NEVER cool to remark about it to them later.

4. Gals should always wear clean undies. Those who study shoes might inadvertantly also study the undies bunched at your ankles, and then you’ll be busted not only for the decibels in your drop but also for skidmarks. And trust me: no one wants to know what your “period panties” look like.