September 11 and beyond

I wasn't going to post about September 11. I don't have anything to add to our collective hard memories of the day--which, in Chicago, was like today--a perfect fall morning with a golden sky and air so sweet it was impossible to believe so much destruction could lie beneath it. We've had eight hard years since, with more than 5000 service men and women dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, 139 journalists killed trying to report the war, over 90,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and one in seven Iraqi civilians now refugees. I was going to leave all this alone, but yesterday, I learned about a group trying to do something positive in the name of the dead in the Twin Towers.

Two men who lost loved ones on 9/11 have started an organization called "My Good Deed," or the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance. My Good Deed embodies what is best in all Americans--our desire to serve, to help, to rebuild. The members of My Good Deed ask us all to pledge to do an act of charity during the week ahead. I'm trying to figure out what mine will be. I'd love to know what some of you might choose.

On a completely different topic, check out this post in Publishers Weekly, on the decision of a New England prep school (annual tuition, 42,850) to abolish its library. Maybe my good deed will be to send the kids there a book.