Very shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, a good friend and former Marine came by our pla

Very shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, a good friend and former Marine came by our place in Downtown Atlanta.

Steve @peglegstudio had with him a HUGE American Flag and we soon set about figuring how to rig it to the west facade of our building which at the time served as my psychotherapy offices, my blacksmith studio and our private residence. Today the building is home to @staplehouse Market.

As I recall, the flag remained there for months as America and the rest of the world began to reckon with the unfathomable traumas wrought that day.*

From today’s vantage point I can recall my inner stirrings to “DO SOMETHING!” in an effort to connect, to mark the moment and to try to make some sense of something so enormous and overwhelming.

For a brief while we came together (somewhat), treated one another a bit more kindly (mostly). In the stark shared horror of those days there were some fleeting promises of hope.

Those days are now long past and so many of the opportunities created in that tragedy were squandered by the careless while others were exploited by the self-serving.

In recent years I’ve felt that familiar inner stirring crying “DO SOMETHING!” I’m doing my best to listen for that signal buried in all the noise.

*I know 9/11 is but one punctuation point in the long and unending history of humankind’s capacity to visit cruelty upon itself.
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#blacksmithing
#9/11/01
#storyteller
#hurtpeoplehurtpeople
#trauma
#ptsd
#healing
#terrorism
#loveistheanswer
#atlanta
#faerie
#maker

(at STAPLEHOUSE)
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