RE: A ceremony at one of our schools

[Karen Canty <kscanty@pacbell.net>]

Our K-2 school is located directly across the street from our house.  On
Friday night, a long-planned family event was not postponed as families
wanted to be together with their children.  At 7:00 p.m., the time that
was suggested for everyone to light a candle, my husband and I went
outside to light ours and saw all the cars parked in front of our house
and down the street and heard singing...so we crossed the street and
walked to the school grounds and there were all the families who had
attended the event standing with their lighted candles singing God Bless
America and Of Thee I Sing...it was another incredible moment in an
already incredible week.

One thing this has helped me to remember - that all the pundits and
talking heads on TV who bemoan the fact that we have lost our ability to
build community in our neighborhoods are wrong...I think one of the
reasons we all feel a part of an American community this week is because
of all the smaller communities that we all define in some way or another -
George Schmidt's flag-lined street in Chicago and the part that the park
nearby plays in his definition of community - my daughter's college
roommate who grew up in the shadow of the WTC and now lives in upstate New
York giving blood because her community had been devastated by the events
of Tuesday - all of us in Menlo Park who came together yesterday at a
memorial service of a woman who had spent thirty years of her life helping
our schools be the best places they could be for all our children by
volunteering in the classroom of ALL the schools, not just her children's
classrooms or schools to working to set up our school foundation after
prop. 13 passed, to serving 8 years on the school board to chairing the
Community Oversight Committee who looked over our bond expenditures and
made certain that each school and therefore each child was treated
equitably by the money we raised...to whatever each of us can define as
our community has melded into an American one....

Karen