What's It Like In NY?

[John Dicus]

Hello all,

First, did you notice that there have been almost 300 messages sent into
this list since the morning of 9/11?  It looks like an impromptu open space
emerged.  I am grateful to all of you for holding this space in such a time
of need.

There may be people on this list that have lost friends or loved ones in
NY, DC, or PA.  It's such an unimaginable thing that I don't even know what
to say next.  If you have experienced a loss, I know there is a lot of love
and caring that wants to enfold you.

There has to be many of you that had scares concerning people you couldn't
contact for days.  And I imagine you are still jumpy.

My main reason for writing this is to share a couple of things our daughter
told us.  She has people calling her asking for details. Lisa says it's as
though they missed a couple of episodes of their favorite Soap Opera.  She
says, "Don't they know this is in our back yard and we are living with it
moment by moment?"

A couple of days ago, someone sent a large PowerPoint File to her.  The
kind that autoruns.  She couldn't get it to stop -- to go away.  I suppose
it would have been simple to stop it, but she was upset.  These images
rerun what they're trying to get out of their eyes, ears, and noses.  We
see a truck on TV.  They smell it coming.  We saw a building fall.  They
felt in through the ground.

Yesterday, Lisa and a friend exited their building on the way to lunch.  As
they walked out the door they found themselves in a small crowd of people.
Lisa looked up just  in time to see a person leap from a building and land
practically at their feet.  Someone, either unable to bear the stress of
the times, or maybe someone realizing their loved one was never coming home.

Please be more than sensitive when you talk, write, send.  Our experience,
I'm sure is mild to what others are going through -- what others can't even
talk about.

Thanks,

John

--
John Dicus  |  CornerStone Consulting Associates
- Leadership - Systems Thinking - Teamwork - Open Space - Electric Maze -
2761 Stiegler Road, Valley City, OH 44280
800-773-8017  |  330-725-2728 (2729 fax)
mailto:jdicus at ourfuture.com  |  http://www.ourfuture.com

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>From  Thu Sep 20 12:04:52 2001
Message-Id: <THU.20.SEP.2001.120452.0400.>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 12:04:52 -0400
Reply-To: stjohnlu at altelco.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Jim Metcalf <stjohnlu at altelco.net>
Subject: Food against terrorism
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To all in the Open Space community:

Please help me spread a powerful idea to combat terrorism.

I'm proposing a simple idea for a radical response to terrorism in our
country. Please think about it in terms of "if your enemy is hungry, feed
him; if your enemy is thirsty, give him a drink" (Romans 12:20). After all,
loving those who hate us is the sweetest form of revenge.

My idea is simple: Send to Pakistan and Afghanistan vast amounts of food.
Feed the hungry! House the homeless! Ignore the Taliban if necessary. Buy
the food from American farmers. Send it with international cooperation. Do
good to those who hate us. We will refuse to fight terrorism with our own
state-sponsored terrorism. And then we must listen to the poor of the world
to understand how they would construct a better world for their children.

Jim Metcalf

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