The last couple of days have been busy. Last night, our county executive held a town hall meeting, open to citizens enterprising enough to get the attention of the moderator with the microphone. I went with Paula Davis, mother of Justin Davis who lost his life in Afghanistan in 2006. Paula wanted to remind the county exec about the library naming (you may recall, a movement last year wanted to name the library in our county seat "Rockville Memorial Library"). She and I had not met before, though we had e-mailed each other not long after Justin's death. Over an hour into the meeting, Paula finally got the moderator to hand her the mike. She made her statement about the servicemembers we have lost here in Montgomery County asked why the library had not been named "Memorial." As the meeting moved on, a staff member came over go tell Paula that there is a new Veteran's commission in the county and that the question of creating a memorial is certainly on the agenda in the coming year. We took his card and we plan to call.

I also e-mailed Louise Penny yesterday (see Aug. 29th). It seemed only courteous to let her know what I had done and why. She was very gracious in her reply and asked me if she could put my note in her own blog so here it is: http://louisepenny.blogspot.com/ She got this so completely right and I am happy to be able to thank her.

This is a link to a blog entry about a war memorial unexpectedly discovered.

http://philangelus.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/death-and-the-soldier-and-the-virgin/

On this day, September 11th, let us remember the victims of war.

Time to get back to my story. Aside from election stuff, it's been pretty quiet out here.


*****
Remembering that September, three years ago now!, we concentrated on getting Matthew back to school and I worked fairly often at the fabric store. I have now lost my calendar for that year which is really annoying because I keep a lot of information in my calendars so I can't give exact dates without more digging than I want to do right now. Sometime at the beginning of the school year, I realized that the principal who had been at the middle school since Anna was in 7th grade (initially as an assistant principal) had opted to move to the central office of the school district. I did not know his replacement at all well though she had been in the school the previous year and in general I felt much less comfortable entering the school. Some of it was undoubtedly just being very self-conscious about Thomas's death and the reaction or lack of reaction that I had gotten from the school. I can imagine the staff throwing up their hands and asking what I wanted from them. I don't know what I wanted. Thinking back on it now, I realize that they, like me, were operating without a manual and that this situation was not fair to anyone.

So that was hard. I also had this minor surgery unfortunately involving anesthesia and recovery which interrupted my training for the Team River Runner event in November. And we were planning our trip to Fort Lewis. Matthew really did not want to get on a plane, which was tough, but we did manage to convince him after much heartburn. We chose to fly on Alaska Airlines because they had a nonstop to Seattle from Dulles. My old friend Anne is retired from the Air Force Reserves but had done two years in the Army on active duty when we were all very young so she knew Fort Lewis. She offered to take care of Matthew if he decided he couldn't handle the memorial ceremony because she could go on and off post without the paperwork involved for visitors. My sister offered to host a party of sorts on the Saturday after the event, inviting our extended family and our friends and acquaintances from western Washington and Oregon. We began to get our ducks in a row and prepared to meet Thomas's Army friends.