I’ve found most of the suggestions about ways to commemorate 9/11 incredibly lame, but I like this one. Please note that Frank Perricone is the author, not me.
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 20:20:57 -0400, “Frank J. Perricone”
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 19:55:07 EDT, wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 11, 2002 everyone in the USA who will be driving
> a motor vehicle is asked to drive with their headlights on during
> daylight hours.
Wouldn’t it be a lot better if, instead of this empty gesture, everyone spent that Wednesday actually *doing something good*?
I bet if you could get one of those firefighters that were in the towers when they fell, and asked him, which would you rather people did next year to remember you—turn on some headlights and waste a little gas and add a tiny bit more pollution to the world, or go donate a pint of blood… which do you think he’d pick?
Turning on headlights is just an empty gesture that lets people feel like they’re doing something without requiring them to actually do anything. Don’t turn on your headlights. Instead, find someone who needs help and help them, or pick up a piece of trash on the street, or smile at someone, or plant a tree, or teach something to a child, or carpool, or make arrangements to volunteer at the local hospital or woman’s shelter. Bake some fresh bread for someone who can’t do it himself. Plant some flowers in a public place. Repaint a wall at the local school. Find someone who’s doing a thankless job, and thank her. Read the newspaper, then write to your representatives about something you read. Make a stranger in your hometown feel welcome. Adopt a kitten. Improve your car’s gas mileage with a tuneup and correct tire pressure—or just take the bus. Help a little old lady across the street if you can’t think of anything else. Just for one day.
If you already do these things, good. On every other day, you do those things for yourself. On 9/11, you’re instead doing those things for one of the people in the towers who would have spent the day doing something good for someone, but who can’t, so you’re filling in for them.
Please pass *this* idea on to everyone on your mailing list, and ask them to pass it on to everyone on their mailing lists, and let’s see if we can make the world a better place, not just a slightly brighter and more polluted and just as empty place.
