Thank you Kathy Lee Bates

Sept 11 is, for me, really the only "where were you when you heard the news?" kind of event of my lifetime. I had just moved to Houston from New York City, and had just returned from a jog in my gorgeous new (wildly humid) neighborhood. I turned on the TV and was only beginning to process the images on the screen when the 2nd tower was hit and suddenly everyone knew things were very very wrong. The man I was dating at the time had a commute that brought him through those towers every day, right about that time, and I felt ice run through my insides.

Long story short, I lost no one important to me, only felt the pain of our nation from a small distance. I will always remember my first visit back to the city, a few weeks later, and how the skyline was so horribly altered, and still smoking. A friend of my boyfriend's had a baby on that day, and named him Phoenix. Somehow that still brings a tear to my eye.

As does this...
I've sung this song many times in my life, but after Sept 11, 2001, that third verse invariably reduces me to weeping. Our country has its fair share of problems, but I do love it. I know I am blessed to live in a country like ours.... this amazing, grand, flawed experiment in democracy and personal freedom.

America the Beautiful
by Katharine Lee Bates

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!