While trying to absorb all the interesting developments in the ongoing cliffhanger over the stimulus bill in the U.S. Congress, my eye was caught by the following headline: "State Holidays for Sept. 11 Meet Resistance." Huh? A holiday on September 11? This was something I hadn't heard of before, but it sounded absurd. Surely no one was proposing to make a "holiday" out of September 11? Why would anybody do that?
Reading the article didn't clarify the "why" part, but it did confirm that attempts have been made in several states to make the date a holiday, and that currently a state Representative named Casso is attempting to do so in Colorado.
Writing from Virginia, the only other state besides New York to have been targeted and actually struck by terrorists on that date in 2001, and knowing a few people who were directly affected by the attacks, I nevertheless must say the logic - and even the emotion - behind this suggestion completely escape me. First, appropriate memorials are already complete (at the Pentagon) or in planning (New York and Pennsylvania) and I don't see the need for more.
Second, the event seems to me a totally inappropriate one for "holiday" status. Should we make a nice long holiday out of Black Thursday/Monday/Tuesday of 1929? Maybe Pearl Harbor, or the date the last Americans were pulled ignominiously off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon? Mr. Casso reportedly laments that "every year, there's a little less coverage ... a little less feeling." But isn't that the whole idea? Aren't we as a nation supposed to get over a national tragedy, just as individuals who may have been directly affected will naturally move on from the loss of a spouse or parent? Or should we choose annually to contemplate our navels, and prostrate ourselves in grief, thus chalking up another minor victory for the terrorists?
Third, of course, is the issue of cost. This holiday would really only be observed by government, perhaps joined by banks, which seem to think of themselves as governments. In Colorado, the cost of a lost workday is estimated at $3 million; in New York, it would be $43 million. Beyond that direct cost is the fact of lost productivity that we can ill afford.
So no thanks, Mr. Casso. I'm really pleased that this harebrained scheme is predicted to meet with resistance from your colleagues in the Colorado state legislature. If some feel more mourning is needed, the declaration of an optional moment of remembrance ought to do the trick. Pearl Harbor Day is observed mainly where the event occurred but is still recalled by others elsewhere. Let this be the case also with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
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