Whenever I look at links like these, it reminds me that the price of diversity is that our world is allowed to be composed of diverse elements.

If ever I argue with a point of view expressed in any of these links, there will always be someone here ready to jump on me for disloyalty. Especially today. So, many many days, I don't speak my piece to keep the peace here. This is my choice. I can take the criticism, but am distressed at the conflict in the smaller, greater and virtual communities that the hollering causes. So my work takes me toward expression through other, subtle, oblique means.

I can write tributes to people in my life that I know everyone can appreciate. But can I also point out that my grandmother hid her "Gold Star" in the deepest recesses of her dresser, and never wore it, and never spoke of it, and never spoke of my uncle, who had to die for her to receive that particular memento, within my hearing for my whole life? Can I say that my grandfather, who believed that entering World War II was just another case of America getting involved (as he was in The Great War) in things that didn't concern us, also never said his son's name? He gave me my uncle's remaining books and papers, saying, "These belong to you," in an acknowledgement that Mike and I had a common talent. I think sometimes, later, when his mind had started to drift from the ravages of what might have been Alzheimer's, he thought that I was Mike's little girl, and not Jim's. But Mike had no children. Except me.

They never spoke. World War II was a heroes' war. No one wanted to hear what they had to say, so they were silent. They didn't want to surrender their memories to hagiography or sentiment. All I heard or saw about my uncle was from my dad, or gleaned from his few photos and his own written words.

The links in the 911 stories are typically of the kind that everyone can read. Immediacy and horror. Anger at the criminals. Sorrow for the victims. And then the relentless drum beat of vengeance. But when I read them, I hear that other, muted, syncopated rhythm, the one that beats out the constant inconsistant psychic echo of emotional pain and intellectual conflict, the one that doesn't respond to the simple measured cadences of heroic legend. The voice that doesn't speak.

May they rest in peace, and may the troubled lives of their families find the same.