9/11 Deja Vu

Post 9/11, and some of us have the feeling we've been here before. To a time and place so different in many ways, yet so much like it. I remember the McCarthy hearings in the early 50's, the Commie witch hunts, and what my very nice 5th grade English teacher at Coronado Jr. High, California, asked me not to do......

She called me up to her desk after class one day. Looking a little uneasy, she said, "Bobby, I'm sorry. I know I told everyone you could all write your very first term paper on ANYTHING at all. But I won't be able to let you write on..... "that'. You understand, don't you? It would look to the school, the PTA and everyone like I was, well, teaching COMMUNISM!"

I didn't get it, 12 years old and all. Sounded like a real mysterious, interesting subject, to me. Everyone was talking about whatever it was- my parents, on the radio, in the newspapers. Worked out in the end, though. I switched to 20 pages on "Thermonuclear Fusion Power for Peaceful Purposes", complete with footnotes, bibliography and formulae detailing the fusion chain reaction.

I got an A+. Natch. I didn't realize at the time I'd had my first experience with blackmail.