One Month Later, In Memory

It is one month since the attack on America. When you readthis, we ask you to say a quick prayer for our dead and for the living they have left behind. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were both staffed by young office workers, military personnel and executives. They have left an exceptionally high number of children and pregnant wives.

On Dreamland on September 15, Whitley Strieber read a two and a half minute comment about what America means to him. He received thousands of appreciative e-mails, and requests to hear it again.

We reproduce that statement here:

What I love about America is America. I love her great ideas, that we may be free, and her great places, the high plains and the mountains, the long, good roads and the spreading cities. I love the sound of playgrounds and the eager rumble of traffic. I love the music of America, from her magnificent symphonies to the tejano and conjunto music of my South Texas Home.

I love breezy beaches on lazy afternoons and the way a Coke tastes when the summer shadows are drawing long. I love the burr of the cicada in the evening, and the mystery of the American night, the way the shadows meet you in our great land, and the sighing of her night winds, as free as her soul is free.

I love my family, going back and back, through the days of the old west when they farmed the hard south Texas brush country, and back yet farther, to those whose eyes were set upon the mystery of America when it was a fresh shore.

I love her thinkers and her speakers and her workers, her loud, quick children and the gentleness that lies in so many American faces. I love the way we smile when we smile, and the girls in their summer dresses, and the smell of the grass in a ballpark, and the murmur of blues on the radio late at night.

I love, also, our soldiers, young and bright and ready to go where they must and do what they must, prepared in their spirits to join the silent legions who have defended this land and this place, and this idea that is America. And I know that, with each of them, goes all of us.

I love the pale graves of America, and the babies of America, and the tears and the laughter that fill the years between, in America. America is the heart of my heart, the soul of my soul. And so, when America is hurt, I also am hurt, as are we all, and I will stand up, as will we all.

Because I am an American, I am a gentle man, as we Americans are a gentle people. When we are wronged, though, by the tyrant and the coward, who mistake our gentle heart for a weak spirit, the gentle Americans speak then with a single voice, as one soul: don?t tread on me.

You can listen to Whitley read the statement by clicking here.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.