Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

All week I've been writing about how American society matches the symptom profile for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This morning, I took the first of those pieces to my writer's group, a small circle of women writers who share and respond to each other's work every Friday mornings. I knew it was not my best work, and I wanted feedback.

As usual, the group was very helpful, but one of their reactions caught me by surprise. Members felt that my writing was distressing (not in terms of quality, but in terms of topic), and that I needed to give information on how to deal with that distress. So I'm taking a detour from the exploration of PTSD in a post 9-11 society to help all you Quarterbackers out there as we head into the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Perhaps the most important thing you should know is that, if you're feeling blah this week, or sad, or anxious, or irritable, or having trouble sleeping, or anything else that makes you feel "off," even if you do not consciously connect those feelings to this anniversary, you're normal. Anniversaries are very powerful, and quite often people who don't even realize that it is an anniversary have negative reactions nonetheless. This isn't helped by the terrorism alert for New York and Washington. What might be somewhat distressing anyway only feels magnified given the time of year.

You also aren't crazy if you are sick and tired of the anniversary coverage (although chances are you aren't reading this, so I may be wasting my breath). The extra coverage is draining because it prevents us from getting away from the intense memories and the feelings they evoke.

Whichever of these two groups you most identify with, you're normal. Don't waste one minute worrying that your reaction is too much or not enough or inappropriate, any more than you would criticize yourself for feeling pain when you stub your toe. You couldn't control those feelings if you wanted to, so don't bother trying.

But what can you do? If the coverage or the date or the blogging about our messed-up society is bothering you, what is the solution? You may not like the answer, because here's what it isn't. Turning off the TV, avoiding reading my blog, doing something completely non-9-11 related on Sunday and generally trying to get your mind off it may feel good for the moment, but it is a quick fix for a longer term problem. That's because problem isn't the reminders of the attack, it's how upsetting they are to you. Avoiding the reminders won't solve the underlying issue, it will just push it back underground.

What I suggest is completely counter-intuitive. When you find yourself having negative feelings -- sadness, fear, hurt, anger, guilt, shame or whatever -- don't try to turn away from them. Turn towards them. Identify what you are feeling and what caused it. Label them consciously. Don't try to explain it rationally, because emotions are not rational -- they're, well, emotional. Whatever you're feeling just is, so you might as well feel it.

The reason this is a good idea is that, when you turn and face your negative emotions, they stop feeling so overwhelming. Feelings, by themselves, do not hurt us. What we tell ourselves about those feelings and the events that trigger them can. No one likes to feel sad or afraid, but you can tolerate it. Your negative emotion loses its power when you acknowledge it and face it head on.

Does this mean you should glue yourself to the TV and watch as much coverage as you can this weekend? No. Just as avoiding reminders isn't healthy, seeking them out to excess isn't, either. Watch, read and hear what interests and moves you or is meaningful to you. Consider for yourself what type of commemoration, if any, you believe is appropriate for you to participate in. Just monitor yourself and be careful when you find yourself saying things like, "I can't watch that," "I want to get my mind off it," or "I won't be able to handle that." Those are signs you're avoiding, and you're not turning into the wind.

For me, this Sunday is about reclaiming September 11th as a day of grief and fear -- yes, I'm reclaiming fear -- and as a day of unity, service and collective support. I am allowing myself to feel the sadness and, as hard as it is, some of the horror of that day. And I'm patting myself on the back for doing it, because it isn't easy. I hope you'll join me.

Today, the White House announced that President Obama has decided not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's dead body. As reported in the press, there was some disagreement over whether releasing them would be a good idea. One view was that it would convince people that he is actually dead. The other was that it would "inflame" his followers, in part because it might be seen as an act of disrespect.

I actually don't have any opinion about whether either of these arguments is true. I was interested, however, that, at least publicly, a third issue was not being discussed. These pictures are described as "gruesome." What effect would seeing them have on your average person on the street?

I myself don't really need to see "gruesome" images. Just as I felt triggered by listening to audio of people screaming on 9-11, I find certain kinds of images very disturbing. Over the years, for example, I have studiously avoided the video of people jumping out of the twin towers. I don't need to see it to understand what happened, but seeing it is too vivid for me. It takes me from the reasonable point of needing to understand others' trauma to being traumatized myself.

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to say that we don't censor the press to protect Naomi Zikmund-Fisher from objectionable images. If I don't want to look, I won't -- just as is the case with the 9-11 videos. This relies, however, on media outlets handling the images in a manner that acknowledges that not everyone wants to see them, or wants their children to see them.

I vividly remember the day more than 4 years ago when I hooked up my laptop to a projector to show a website to some kids, opened my browser (which had CNN as its startup page) and was confronted by -- and confronted my students with -- a picture of the Virginia Tech shooter aiming a firearm at the camera. I had some explaining to do to some parents, and I wished CNN had made it just a tiny bit harder to see those pictures.

This is a free society, and we don't censor our press. If my sensibilities, or even the sensibilities of a lot of people, were the sole issue, the pictures of bin Laden should have been released. The President has decided not to, and I know that a lot more went into that decision than whether they would be traumatizing to the average American. This is a good occasion to remember, however, that sensory input -- sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings -- can trigger very strong emotional reactions, much more intense than just hearing about a traumatic event. While we shouldn't prohibit them, we should be careful about exposing people to them by accident.

Yesterday, I shared with you my thoughts about explaining Osama bin Laden to children. I was apparently not the only person worrying about this. Time ran a piece which began,

President Obama certainly wasn't taking the sensibilities of West Coast children into consideration when he made his stunner of a speech Sunday night.

Parents in the Pacific time zone found themselves scrambling to explain the news in real time, and some of them were pretty unhappy about it.

While I certainly understand the problems of trying to explain this stuff to kids -- that's why I wrote yesterday's piece in the first place -- I will admit to feeling a little frustrated with those who would make this complaint. If there was one thing we all should have learned from 9-11, it is that live television is unpredictable. Anything can happen at any time. Part of being a parent is recognizing this and using it to make decisions about whether your children can watch TV, and whether you will choose to watch things live. Part of being a parent is also realizing that kids will inevitably ask about things we'd just as soon they not know about, and we have to answer the questions when they come.

In addition, speaking as someone from the east coast, Obama's speech didn't start until way past my bedtime. If he had waited until every kid in the country was asleep, he wouldn't catch a whole lot of adults, either. News happens when it happens. If you don't want your kids to see it, don't turn on the news.

That having been said, I have been somewhat appalled by what some media outlets have chosen to run in their coverage of bin Laden's death. Yesterday afternoon I was listening to "Here and Now," a public radio show from WBUR in Boston. They had the usual talking heads discussing the implications of bin Laden's death, which was all well and good. At the very end, the host said that his death also brought us "back in time" to 9-11. They then proceeded, with explanation of what each clip was, to play the audio of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center (complete with screaming), audio of someone who died in the towers on the phone, and audio of a very frightened voicemail message left by someone who died.

I cried. Then I got mad. Don't get me wrong, I certainly understand that this weekend's events bring back memories of 9-11, and to some extent they will trigger any unresolved trauma we all have. But wasn't the memory enough? Did we really need the extra boost of some vivid sensory input? Did we need to invade the privacy of dead people just one more time? Were they afraid we wouldn't remember unless they retraumatized us? And if you're worried about the sensibilities of children, would you want your kids hearing that with no warning at all?

9-11 is unique in our collective experience because it was a trauma for almost everyone in the country. That means that, in planning what to broadcast, you have to treat everyone in the audience as a trauma victim. You wouldn't force the victim of a shooting, for example, to listen to the audio of the incident without a good reason. We all deserve a little less sensationalism and a little more respect for how raw this still feels.

* The artwork on this post, like yesterday's, comes from the FEMA website and was created by a 5th grader at Chagrin Falls Intermediate School for the 1st anniversary of 9-11.

On Thursday, President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010.  Now, this is not a political blog and I generally try to keep direct discussion of politics and politicians out of it, but something happened at the signing ceremony that I think is really important.

President Obama was to be introduced by Lisa Marie Iyotte, a member of the White Clay People and, like one third of Native American women, a survivor of rape.  I encourage you to watch the beginning of the video of the ceremony for yourself:




It's hard to watch this video and not be moved.  Scratch that -- it's hard to watch this video.

What I want to point out is that the rape that Ms. Iyotte talks about happened more than 16 years ago.  She clearly has found a way to deal with it, and now works as an advocate for other women.  At the same time, she is unable even to stand up and introduce herself, knowing that she is going to tell the story.  Of course, Ms. Iyotte was nervous. You would be too if you were introducing the President, regardless of your politics. This was also an emotional day, for something she had worked long and hard for was finally coming to fruition. Even acknowledging all of that, however, I doubt it accounts for her tears.

This was a triggering event. Even if you've done a pretty decent job of processing a traumatic experience, there will still be times when thinking about it, or about something similar to it, upsets you. To his credit, President Obama both tried to be comforting and continued to listen. He could just as easily have told her not to continue, or otherwise taken the attention off of the power of the moment. Survivors of trauma need to be heard, even through the tears, and he is to be commended for modeling that.

The courage of Lisa Marie Iyotte is not only exemplified by the fact that she is a survivor, that she has used this experience to help others, or that she volunteered to tell her story. Her courage is also exemplified by the fact that she started to cry, and stood there, and told her story anyway. That is how we know that this trauma has not defeated her -- she wouldn't let it.

The first of six defendants was convicted today in the murder of three young adults in Newark, New Jersey three years ago and the attempted murder of a fourth.  The dead, Iofemi Hightower, 20; Terrance Aeriel, 18; and Dashon Harvey, 20; and the survivor, Natasha Aeriel, 19, were all students or soon-to-be-students at Delaware State University, were hanging out on a Newark school playground when they were attacked with guns and machetes.  At least one of the female victims was sexually assaulted.

These murders are widely referred to as the "Newark Schoolyard Murders."  They got a fair amount of attention when they happened, and the Associated Press says they

jolted New Jersey's largest city into trying to fix its crime problem.

I find this an interesting phenomenon.  Clearly this is not the only homicide Newark has ever seen.  There were 106 homicides in Newark the year that these killings took place.  What made these stand out?

While there is plenty that is fairly typical about these murders, they also have particular aspects that propel them to the top of the front page.  First of all, while people in Newark might have come to expect homicides by the time these occurred in August of 2007, there were some caveats.  Generally speaking, there was one victim at a time, killed by one or two perpetrators.  There was gang violence, but it usually killed other gang members.  The number of murders involving unknown assailants and random violence was still a tiny percentage.  In this instance, the murders happened in a low crime part of town, relatively speaking, and the victims were college students, not gang bangers.  The motive appears to have been initiating a new gang member, with robbery as an afterthought.  In short, these murders violated all of the basic worldviews that allow people to think of violence as something that happens to other people.  If these kids could be killed, anyone could.

I think that the factor that most tipped the scales in favor of massive publicity, however, was that the killings took place in a schoolyard.  When you read the term "schoolyard murders," your first thought is probably about school children being killed, perhaps by other students.  We as a society are obsessed with school violence despite lots of evidence that school is one of the safest places for children in this country.  Sending our kids to school takes a leap of faith, because we as parents can't watch over them, so murders in schools are a big deal.  In this instance, even though it was nighttime, summer, and neither the victims nor the killers were students at the school, the simple use of the term "schoolyard murders" triggers a visceral response, and we want to learn more.

Certainly these young people did not deserve to die like this.  No one does.  And to the extent that this event was a catalyst for change, that's all to the good.  It's important to remember, though, that 103 other people were murdered in Newark that year.  Not all of them were minding their own business, not all were college students, not all happened to have been killed on a school playground.  All 106 murder victims were human beings who had people who cared about them.  As the coverage of this and the remaining trials hits the news, let's take a moment to remember them, too.

On Tuesday, a sixth grader at Heritage Elementary School in Saline, Michigan, south of Ann Arbor, was rushed to the hospital after a fight on the playground.  He was unconscious and having convulsions.  It appears that he was pushed from behind and possibly kicked by two or three other students while other children watched.

This story hit the news this morning, and I've already had it emailed to me by more than one parent.  People are upset by the story, and they are also upset by the comments they see posted by readers of the story.  These comments can be divided into a few major categories:

Category 1: What is the world coming to?

This behavior is beocming [sic] an everyday event. What has happened to our children? They are violent and seem to have little respect for life. The bigger question is, why are grade schoolers beating another child to a point that a child is put into a hospital? What are they thinking? What are their parents doing? Who is teaching humanity?

Category 2: It's no different than it always was.

NEWSFLASH- Children fight on playgrounds! Please where did you people grow up. Saline grad here k-12, and a playground fight is not really news. I've seen a student knocked out before and plenty of fights. As children age it tapers off- more fights in younger grades but they don't knock each other out. There is no one to blame -its called growing up, and its the same in every public school.

Category 3:  It's the school's fault.

What has the school done to protect him? How come there was no teacher in sight? Maybe the first punishment was not strong enough to show the previous and current attackers that the school is serious about protecting students in school and that their acts would not be tolerated at all.  All these questions need to be answered by the School principle [sic], obviously he/she failed to have any adequate planning in protecting the kids at school. The previous punishment failed to send a clear message to all students about bullying other fellow students at school that it will not be tolerated under any circumstances. This should not be brushed easily aside, we need answers and responsible people to provide education and safety for our kids in Michigan schools. Unless this is properly addressed, it will most likely be repeated.

None of these commenters, as far as I can tell, have any more information about the incident than the sketchy details from the news article, but they all are making assumptions about what happened before, during and/or after this incident.  Some of the parents who are emailing me, furthermore, want to know what we are "doing about this" at our school, in a different town and a different district.  Why is this eliciting these reactions?

This story has all the makings of a triggering event -- one with which people have strong emotional associations.  It took place in a setting that almost everyone has experience with -- a school playground.  For we Ann Arborites, it took place not too far away.  It involves school violence which, on some level, we all also had experience with. 

Perhaps most importantly, this incident not only involves children, but it involves children in a setting where their parents are particularly powerless.  We can watch our kids at the mall or the grocery store or our own yard, but when we drop them off at school we have to trust that they are going to be OK.  When something happens that indicates that kids are not safe at school, we parents become like mama bears protecting their cubs.  Don't mess with us.

The categories of comments on the news article indicate where people's anxieties and biases -- about the world, their children and schools -- already were before they read the article.  If you firmly believed that school personnel were somewhat incompetent yesterday, then when you read about this today you saw evidence of that.  If you believed that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket, here's your proof.  And if you yourself were a fighter and turned out OK, or if you deal with the fact that you can't protect your kids at school by telling yourself you don't have to, you'll say that kids will be kids.

Who knows what the backstory on this incident is.  Did the child have an undiagnosed medical condition?  How long did the fight last?  Who was the aggressor, and what previous problems have they had?  I know from having my own school incidents covered in the press that there is always, no matter what, some side of the story that does not make the paper and which I think is very important to understanding the whole picture.  In the end, however, these comments aren't about the whole picture and they're barely about this incident.  They're about the people who write them, and we can tell a lot about the authors just by reading them.

Yesterday afternoon we had a perfect storm at my school.  The secretary was out sick.  The clerk is in China.  The lead teacher was out of the building.  The nurse and all of the special education staff were in a meeting.  One of the teacher's assistants, the one who works with our most medically fragile students, was picking up her ill child from another school.  I was in my office with my boss having my evaluation conference.  It's hard to imagine a worse time for a student to have a seizure in the lunch room.

In all likelihood, there were probably a total of 90 seconds between the start of the seizure and when I got there.  The nurse was 30 seconds behind me.  In this day and age, we were lucky she was even in the building -- she is only there one and a half days a week.  Had everyone been in their usual places, it might have shaved 30 seconds off the entire thing.  Those extra 30 seconds, of course, felt like an eternity to the lunchroom staff, and probably sounded like an eternity to the family when we spoke to them.

This child has a known seizure disorder and a written plan for what to do.  I won't say my adrenalin didn't kick in at all when I started heading for the lunch room, but I will say I wasn't scared.  We had a plan, the nurse was on her way, and I knew this child was susceptible to seizures.  Stuff happens.

Once the nurse had taken over, I looked around at the lunchroom staff and realized that my reaction was not the same as theirs.  The one who had first noticed the student seizing was beside herself wondering if she had done the right thing.  Another one told me her brother, who died a couple of years ago, had died during a seizure.  Most of them just were not at all convinced that this child was going to be ok.  They work at the school 2 hours a day.  They've never encountered this child having a seizure before, and it triggered all sorts of emotions for them, as you might expect.  Those of us who have seen this before felt much better than they did.

I went back to my office and called the family.  Then I returned to my evaluation conference, and joked with my boss that there must be somewhere on that evaluation form to notate that in fact that had gone pretty well.

We spend a lot of time and energy preventing things from happening in schools, from shootings to fires to kids tripping over their shoelaces.  At the end of the day, however, you can't prevent everything.  And while we couldn't prevent this seizure, we could make sure we were ready, and we can go back and review how everything unfolded and tweak our procedures.  But even with these relatively "little" incidents, it's important to remember that, to someone on staff, this may not be little at all.  Someone's brother died.  Someone felt incompetent.  When it's over, it's important to support them, too, and review to see how you might have protected them from the trauma -- with a small "t."

On February 17 at about 8 AM, a small plane carrying three employees of Tesla Motors crashed on takeoff from Palo Alto Airport into a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California.  All three people on board were killed, but miraculously no one on the ground was injured.  The ensuing fire damaged buildings and scorched the pavement of the street.

Frequent Quarterbacker Mike Miller, a longtime friend of mine, suggested shortly thereafter that I blog about the crash.  I will admit that I wasn't particularly intrigued.  I didn't have an "angle."  Planes crash.  Some privileged techies crashing into a much less privileged neighborhood did not make me want to blog about their survivors, harsh as that might seem. 

For Mike, on the other hand, this was a very interesting story.  Mike's father was a pilot for United Airlines for many years, and at one time he, too, aspired to be an airline pilot.  He flew small planes and loved aviation, even after his career plans shifted and he became an attorney.  I flew with him only once, the medication I took to avoid motion sickness putting me to sleep in the back seat of his plane as my stomach churned nonetheless.

Mike also lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where this was a big story.  To him, there was a lot to consider about this story, from the trauma it posed for the families to what it meant for other pilots like himself.  He had a personal connection to this incident in a way I never would.

Today's San Jose Mercury News has a story about the East Palo Alto neighborhood where the plane crashed last month.  The residents don't feel very safe right now, and one can hardly blame them.  The sky pretty literally fell on them, and they have no reassurance that it won't happen again.  The sound of every plane engine is a reminder of what happened and a trigger for their trauma reactions.  They look up with trepidation and wonder when the next plane will come down.  In a city rocked by gang violence, it is a plane crash that has residents thinking of moving out.

Usually I get my news stories from Google, the New York Times or suggestions from friends.  The article about this neighborhood did not cross my radar from any of these sources.  I was on the Mercury News website today looking to see if Mike Miller's obituary had been posted yet.  He died on Monday at the age of 39 after a truly spirited battle with melanoma.  He never got to read about the story he suggested, the story that was so personal to him, in this space.  Oddly enough, reading the article was a trigger for me, not because of the crash itself but because of Mike.  His memory is a blessing.

Last week, ABC News released 12 photographs that were among the thousands they received in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request for pictures of the collapse of the World Trade Center.  These images, which had never been released before, were taken on September 11, 2001 from a New York Police Department helicopter.

These new images have a huge amount of power.  They are sharp and clear, and offer a new angle -- from above.  They are good photography by any standard.  As you flip through them, it is like using an old-fashioned animation flip book.  In time lapse animation, we see the towers come down.  From a dispassionate standpoint, it looks pretty cool.  Then you remember that this isn't a movie, or a planned building implosion, but an occupied building, and it isn't cool anymore.

There isn't an adult in American who hasn't seen pictures or video of the collapse before.  On some level, we think we're "over it," some more than others.  Yet there is something compelling and awful about these new pictures.  Maybe it's the new angle, maybe it's the clear sequencing, but these pictures put me back to that day more than 9 years ago in a way that little else has.  Perhaps because they are so dispassionate, they refocus the viewer on the facts -- not the politics or even the fear or anger.

I have not chosen to post any of the pictures in this space because I want you to have control over whether and when you look at them.  If you haven't yet, however, I would encourage you to.  They aren't gory, but they do pack a wallop.  If you want to understand what happened that day, I think you need to see these.  You can view them here.

There really isn't anything a blog about trauma in the news could cover today besides the earthquake in Haiti.  As most of you know, a quake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale struck just off the coast.  Communications are sketchy, and it will certainly be a while before we know the full extent of the damage and deaths.  Estimates put the loss of life at 30,000 to 100,000 people.  Pictures coming out of the country show entire neighborhoods of buildings collapsed.

Every tragedy has a potential to really "get to" us.  Anything bad that happens could strike us in a particularly poignant way.  Similarly, some things that upset most people may not bother any given individual.  Everyone is different, based on their own past experiences, and different elements of traumatic events trigger different people.  This earthquake has certainly gotten many Americans' attention, as it should.  Whether or not it "gets to" you, this one is bad enough that even understanding it intellectually is enough to know it's really, really bad.

This earthquake was not getting to me last night or most of today.  This afternoon, however, CNN sent out a breaking news update (which I have gotten via e-mail since 9-11), that read,

President Rene Preval tells CNN that Haiti lacks capacity to hospitalize quake victims, asks for medical aid.

Now, I certainly knew that Haiti was a very poor country.  I also knew it was very small.  But something about the idea that the entire country lacks capacity to care for the number of injured they have struck me. 

If there is a major earthquake in San Francisco and the hospitals are overwhelmed, help comes from Los Angeles and Sacramento or from neighboring states.  The idea that something would happen that is so bad that we as a country would not be able to handle it is not even on our radar screen.  That is the privilege of living in an affluent, large country.  That is also what made the response to Hurricane Katrina so shameful -- we have the means if we have the will.

Haiti does not have the means.  They are on a tiny little island that they share with the Dominican Republic.  78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day.  They had nothing before the quake.  Now they have nothing and they are injured.  Something about that, coupled with the closeness of Haiti to the United States, really gets to me.  They are less than 700 miles from Miami.  They are closer to the United States mainland than Puerto Rico is.  They are our neighbors.

It will be a long time before it's appropriate to start trying to help with the psychological impact of this calamity on the survivors of the earthquake.  Right now, all that's relevant is keeping people safe and getting them healed.  It's interesting to consider what the psychological impact on us here in the United States will be, if any.  It's also interesting to consider that it may be, morally or ethically, better to suffer that impact than it would be to not feel it at all.

Many fine charitable organizations are already on the ground helping in Haiti.  Two of my favorites are Doctors Without Borders and the American Jewish World Service.  If you are able to, I hope you will make a donation to one of these or one of your choice.  The help is truly needed, and the time is short.

Yesterday, September 11, at about 9:30 AM, CNN breathlessly reported that Coast Guard boats and a helicopter were apparently confronting a suspicious vessel in the security area of the Potomac River, near where the President was commemorating 9/11 at the Pentagon. The reports escalated -- the vessel had been fired upon. Cable news and the Internet picked up the story.

It was a training exercise.

Let the finger-pointing begin. CNN reported an interpretation of what they heard over a scanner picking up the Coast Guard radio traffic, but apparently didn't think it odd that the report of gun fire began with the radio transmission, "bang bang bang bang." They say they called the Coast Guard and were told they were not aware of anything going on on the Potomac. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard says that they never coordinate their training exercises with other agencies, and they train like this all the time.

So what went wrong? If training exercises like this one are commonplace in that area, why did this one make national news? I bet you already know part of the answer. It was September 11. And yes, that matters, and no, it's not because we're all crazy.

The date itself -- September 11 -- is a trigger for most people in this country. The various commemorations on the news heighten that. And that's not a bad thing, necessarily. But it means we are all in a space where we are much more willing to believe that terrorists will attack the US. Most days we know it's a possibility, but on September 11 it feels like a likelihood. This exercise, and what CNN heard over the scanners, was therefore much more believable, and the lack of confirmation was less troubling. It might have been a good idea if the Coast Guard had considered this and announced the exercise, or held it on another day, or at least made sure it's own people could tell the press what was going on. There are two sides to every coin, though, and CNN should probably have known that both they and their viewers were more willing to believe the worst and more prone to panic yesterday than, say, the day before.

It's interesting to consider how long it will be before we are not so triggered by September 11. I see signs that it is fading already: A few years ago I was lambasted for holding a fire drill on that date. We had one yesterday, and no one said a thing. The edge has, at least a little, been taken off. But not so much that everyone can not worry about the impact of anti-terror exercises and erroneous news reports.