From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:17:09 -0500

Here at the CCBC we've also been struggling with the tragedies since Tuesday morning. In hindsight we realize that as facilitators and hosts of the CCBC-Net discussion community we should have sent our best wishes for the safety and well?ing of everyone in the New York City and Washington, D.C., areas. We thought about you, we talked about you. We assumed that regardless of where you live you were each too busy with life matters to read CCBC-Net e-mails. Several of you have pointed out privately - and we appreciate that - that we could have written before Thursday to express solidarity with everyone in the CCBC-Net community and to inquire if everyone is OK.

We have each been called upon to model adulthood even when we haven't felt we could meet that challenge as we moved through these days with our own children & teenagers and those of other families, university students, staffs we supervise, neighbors/friends with serious worries, people on the same bus and in the same elevator, people calling and writing e-mail. "All I can hear is sirens. I don't know if I can get home with my little boy." We've had to cancel gatherings of people from across the nation. "I made it home, we're safe, but I had to drive way out the way, and I didn't know where I was in the city." We've each been working very hard at home and at our salaried work. " I didn't even realize I was crying." We've been glued to TV news and lack of news. "My best friend works in the World Trade Center." We've been coping with friends/partners who grieve in ways completely inexplicable to our own needs to express ourselves during these times.
" Smoke is coming into my apartment and my husband is on the subway." We've been losing sleep - and, we hope, more than anything - not losing family members or friends - or anyone in this particular community. That is nothing like the first-hand accounts of people who watched flames coming from the Pentagon for days, or who saw the hijacked plane fly into the World Trade Center, or who continue to have helicopters flying over their heads in skies no longer quiet. No one has been spared.

We have learned that some people have experienced individual acts of racism and hatred from people hasty to assess blame. We've begun to worry about the draft. About losing our civil liberties. How much security is too much? And it isn't over. We won't make the best choices every hour and day. We need to forgive each other for all kinds of lapses of judgment.

We find hope in hearing the small ways in which our friends and colleagues have met the challenge. Megan wrote yesterday to share some of the information we've found helpful. We thank each of you who've also shared resources about which you know. The Association for Library Services to Children (ALA) has put together website information collected from individuals all over the nation, and it's a growing resource: http://www.ala.org/alsc/dealing_with_tragedy.html.


Peace, Ginny
Received on Fri 14 Sep 2001 11:17:09 AM CDT