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Some days it's hard to find the chickens...

Will we ever grow to laugh again? (Note: While chickentales are often about laughter, they are really about life. A chickentale is meant to strip away fluff and marketing, and get to the heart of what people are and what they do - for good or for ill...) So how do you feel right now? Helpless, angry, determined, sad, hopeful? Are your thoughts more about the September 11th victims and their families, or more about the perpetrators? I took this picture in 2000 on the day that my friend Giles was granted his US citizenship. What do you see in it? Where I grew up, a small town in upstate NY, there were very few immigrants. Now I count many amongst my friends.Some have been from western, "industrialized" nations. Some have been from South Africa, Columbia, Iran, Israel, Bosnia, China, Taiwan and Pakistan. The one common thread between my immigrant friends is that they have worked harder to earn their American life than I ever had to. That is not to say that I haven't worked hard. But when I speak to Pascha, who was forced to fight in Bosnia and who escaped with his family when his 17 year old son was conscripted as well, or to Peter who came here with his family from China in 1949, in the wake of the hell caused by Japanese occupation and Chinese civil war - I think that maybe I have not had to work hard enough. They each have my undying respect, for they have given more to their families and to this country than I. And they have been forced to leave lands which they love dearly... Some years ago my friend Catherine visited Paris with a friend. The friend was a bit impatient about staying on schedule. But during that day Catherine prevailed upon her friend to spend a little extra time in a beautiful, sunny Parisian park where children played. Eventually the antsy friend managed to pry Catherine from the park; and they went on to their destination, the Arc de Triomphe, where an Algerian dissdent bomb had just gone off right where they were supposed to have been. On April 10, 1992 I was in London with a group of American friends when the IRA detonated a bomb at the Baltic Exchange in London's financial district. It was the largest bomb the IRA had ever exploded on the British mainland, set off the night after elections (while in the US, the NY presidential primary was taking place with its customary "dirty tricks"). Three people were killed and many injured. Three of my friends had gone on a walking tour that night through the financial district. They were just a few blocks away when the bomb went off. Until that night I had been out every evening. But on Friday, April 10th I stayed in to rest up for the London Marathon, to be run two days later. This trip marked my first time off the American continent. There was serious and extensive security at airports, on trains and in bus terminals. But as the British tour guide had told my friends before continuing the tour, "well now - life goes on doesn't it?". I have been off the American continent more than once. And during each trip I have found the perception from outside to be that Americans would like others to understand them; but Americans are not interested in the worlds of others. If this is true, then it is likely that we behave the same way within our own borders as well, amongst our own neighbors and fellow citizens. As I comb the lists of World Trade Center victims looking for names I know - and make no mistake, I grew up in NY so it is likely that there will eventually be someone that I know - I cannot help but think that there are immigrants in this country who cry themselves to sleep every night for the human lives that have been taken in the name of extremism, both here and abroad. While we ask "why us?" or "what is the sense?", many immigrants know what we do not - that there are no easy answers. Ask Bert, a delightful old family friend who lost his whole family to a certain senselessness once upon a time in Germany. There is hope, and there is desolation. And we choose which rules the day. Is it time to ask our immigrant friends how to find life and hope in times when there is no sense? Do not get me wrong. There will undoubtedly be blood lost in the days to come. No one relishes the day in which they must choose whether to end some lives in order to save others. That enormous responsibility now sits in the laps of those we have chosen (or not) to lead. But the enemy is not a religion, or a people, or even a political idea. It is extremism, the notion that one's view of what the world should be is so perfect that it justifies denial of the humanity of others. We cry for ourselves. We cry for others. We each find solace in our own understanding of what life is. And we are all capable of our own terrorism. Road rage, domestic violence, simple racial epithets are also the language of extremism. We will all be raw from September 11, 2001 for a long, long time. Some of us will be hawks, some doves, some confused. Some will want to react in the name of one god or another. Some will be saddened that the name of any god can be used in the same sentence as war. Hear me now - these are good differences! The heart that pleads its case in the hope that life be kept sacred is the true heart no matter what the notion of how to proceed. Speak your case. Argue your point. Listen to others. And be prepared for hard work. Peace is hard work. It always has been. It always will be. Rubber chickens do not just grow on trees you know.