[meteorite-list] Life Must Go On

From: Bernd Pauli HD <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:49:00 2004
Message-ID: <3BA4F640.353FA970_at_lehrer1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Steve Schoner wrote:


> Yes, "life must go on"-- but unfortunately,
> it will not be going on as it was before.

No, unfortunately it will not. I was very hesitant about answering
Joseph's post late last night or answering Anne's about chondrules
today. We had spent Saturday on a tourist ship going up the river
Rhine to the famous "Lorelei", the legendary nymph of the Rhine
who lured sailors to shipwreck on her rock by singing. This boat
trip had been planned and paid for several weeks ago and both Alex
Seidel and Twink Monrad know this is true from our regular private
correspondence. On our way there my wife suddenly woke me up
from a deep and long-lasting period of brooding silence ... I had
been listening to Joe Cocker's song "N'oubliez Jamais - Never
Forget".

The main attraction of this "Rhine On Fire" is the almost simultaneous
arrival of a countless number of colorfully illuminated tourist ships at
dusk which is then followed by an equally colorful display of fireworks
the likes of which I have never seen in my life. Again I became very
thoughtful and melancholic wishing that each of those myriads of sparks
might go to one of those poor victims, their souls and to those whom
they left suffering in grief. During our trip back in buses, I tried to
sleep because I had been so exhausted from the days that lay behind
me. I could not sleep telling my wife that the scenes of those planes
crushing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon kept haunting me.
I had begun to feel the impact of Steve's words "it will not be
going on as it was before" or Mike Farmer's words "The world
has just changed forever today". Wish they were wrong!!!

Bernd
Received on Sun 16 Sep 2001 02:58:08 PM PDT