At the Halloween parade, as puppets swung over the heads of the crowd, people climbed up on the traffic light posts and entwined their arms around the fixtures for the walk/don't walk signs. To get a better purchase. To get a better view. Their faces would glow red awhile, and then bluish white. Men and women in skeleton body suits. Figures from the comics page and figures from the screen.

I came home to watch some of the "The War" on PBS. It occurred to me for the first time that the 9/11 bombers were nothing more – nothing less – than kamikaze pilots. This was nothing new. Nothing no one'd faced before, you think about it. They're vested with the curious, solemn authority of the sacrificial rite, all the more daunting as they're sprung from another civilization, another, more ancient, mode of thinking. But in the end it's just a pile of ashes and debris to sweep into a pile and a dead body, or a few, that you need not mourn.