Hi all,

I heard a terrific performance yesterday at California Plaza. Piano, cello and soprano. The featured peace, very moving, was a prose poem for voice and piano about a woman who looses her husband in the 9/11 attacks, just a couple of days before she gives birth.

I'm ambivalent about 9/11; of course it was terrible. Three thousand people crushed out like that, their families left with gaping holes just like lower Manhattan's. This tone poem brings out the personal impact of that tragedy in a beautiful and moving way. And yet, gaping holes are pulled from families every day; tragedy is a part of life. Sometimes I think we that we have made too much out of this particular tragedy. And I'm pretty sure that our response to it, domestically and internationally, has been all wrong and not entirely rational. The Bush Doctrine of US hegemony, I'm afraid, will not make the world more free or us more safe, and there is always the threat that at home our efforts to improve security will be at the expense of other important aspects of our public and private lives.

As I was leaving the concert, I got caught up, for the second time, in an anti-terrorist action, and I didn't entirely appreciate it.

I took the Blue Line in for the concert, and I was walking back to the station, intending to stop at the library on the way. These days, I'm never without my digital camera, and the architecture in this part of LA is so interesting, so of course I had it out and I was clicking as I walked. Coming down the beautiful walkway toward the library, I was stopped by a young uniformed security guard. "You can't take pictures here," she said.

I was taken aback. I asked her if she had heard of the first amendment. She talked into her radio.

I wasn't mad, and not really upset. More like incredulous. She was disinclined to argue with me, and I asked if I could speak to her supervisor, who soon came. "Orange alert," he said. For the past month. Tall building. No pix.

I didn't argue with him. I told him about Sara's Diary. We shook hands. I left. It was no big deal. I didn't have to give back my photos. But I thought it was absurd, and wondered how many such minor infringements on legitimate public and private spaces it takes before it amounts to something.

And for what? Some security measures seem quite reasonable. Metal detectors at airports and courtrooms. But at a certain point we get diminished returns and we should just live with the risk, as we do in every other aspect of our lives. Traffic, for example. I don't know the statistics, but I'll bet we are more likely to be crushed in a run of the mill traffic accident than in any terrorist attack. We accept the risk. We go on with our lives, try to be careful, hope nothing bad happens.

The first time I got caught up in an anti-terrorist web was in Moscow a few years ago. I was visiting with my son for a few days, and it was our last day in town. We still hadn't seen Lenin's Tomb, so we headed over to Red Square in a light rain. Just outside the square we were stopped by the police. Terrorism, they said. Can't be too careful. Apparently our papers were insufficient. We would have to go with them to the station. Our last day in Moscow was slipping away.

On the way to the station, the English-speaking cop said "Look. I can see you aren't terrorists. But my boss, he's a hard ass." A few blocks later an idea came to him. For about $30, he'd give us back our passports.

On that same trip I had the opportunity to meet some of my son's friends in Chelyabinsk. One particular dinner was very memorable, when we were invited to the home of Anna and Alex. He's a forensic pathologist, she's a psychologist transitioning to linguistics. Her older brother, a noted psychologist, was there as well. We had a terrific discussion ranging all over history and politics. I'm still thinking about it. The next morning I met Anna for a walk out by their local lake, and we had another great conversation.

Last week, after that horrid Beslen school massacre, I knew they would be upset, and I dropped them an email. I want to share some of Anna's response:

We thank you very much for your kind letter and condolences. This awful event was a tragedy for the whole country.

The 1st of September has come and we saw children in the morning wearing new clothes with flowers in their hands on the streets, many of them went to the school first time in their life, many of them were accompanied by their mothers, fathers and little brothers and sisters. It is so beautiful to see them, they pretend to be like "adults" and it makes them to look funnier. It is impossible to look at them without a smile. And all of a sudden. All the Russian people were terrified by the awful news: children in one of the schools in the North Osetia are captured by the terrorist during the 1st September celebration ceremony. Three days all Russia was living in front of the TV screen, waiting for every newsflash. And still now our television set is constantly on. Now everything is over. The hostages are free, the majority of terrorist are dead. But more than three hundred lives of the innocent children and adults are lost, more then 700 are in the hospitals (the terrorist were shooting in the backs of children, when they started to run after the explosion).

All Russia now is crying with relatives of the killed people. It is really awful to see a big man, who sobs near the body of his baby! It is hard to live further after all this. But life is going on. And we have to live for our children to help them to survive after all what they went through and to prevent all the others from such a horror.

So there it is. Our Sept. 11; their Sept. 1. It's not just the death and disruption, which happens every day in so many terrible ways (and we hope not to us this day!). It's the public theater that captures our attention in a way we cannot ignore, and comes to dominate our art and politics. We are filled with sadness.

What is a good response to terrorism? I don't think there is a simple answer, but I think we should look at what works in communities, what keeps us safe and comfortable - in a word, civilized - and see how this can be extended to the global community of which we are all a part.

War is almost always the wrong response, and a war on terror cannot make us safe. We like war too much, and we always want to be in a war against something. The Cold War, the Drug War, all the little cold and hot wars we are treated to. Panama. Grenada. Vietnam. I won't go on. Each war represents bad choices, bad policies, and bad results.

We must get beyond war. That became obvious on Aug. 6, 1945. Remember that old "Talking A-Bomb Blues"? "Now I'm done so here's my thesis, peace in the world or the world in pieces."

It's not that war is wrong, just that it doesn't work. A better way is possible. Not only that. Every weapon is a weapon of mass destruction. Every car. Every plane. There is no safety in an endless war that can never be won. Our best safety plan is to nurture those qualities in our nature that are cooperative and compassionate, to extend them through the world and to promote institutions and associations that serve our best nature, not our worst. Every development in the art of war makes us less safe. Bush wants to develop hand-held nuclear weapons. Do you think that will make us safer? We need to develop the art of peace.

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