Jon! Me trivialise matters?! I thought it was obvious that anyone who didn't agree with me was a weirdo. (I think it was Wittgenstein who said that they only stick in the world that couldn't be measured was the official metre stick in Paris). Me=normal. (joke, joke, joke, ask the heron). I am afraid I am an unrepentant believer in having people talk about what concerns them here and enjoy having lots of people disagree with me completely -- why this makes me dogmatic I can't figure, but I guess I must be.

Having said that, I am personally averse here to the continous sound of drumbeats calling to war, it is really tiresome -- and speaking of tiresome, every psychiatrist knows that people like to be part of a story bigger than they are: it relieves their internal struggles, but I am also openly prepared like some other people to say that wallowing around in the WTC stuff is getting tiresome and self-indulgent, especially for people who don't have a family member or close friend lost. It is turning into an emotional drug that people cannot get off -- turn the TV off and go and hug a tree for crumbs sake. Still, I think we have enough elastic here to let people be tiresome and self-indulgent from time to time (including pontificating tiresome and self-indulgent people like me). This is a big event in the world, and will take time for people to absorb and turn into real music here, elsewhere. Sometimes this place is like the raw material dump, and like all dumps, it isn't pretty: I think it will go into grass soon enough. The artistic optimist in me.

yours, Peter T.
P.S. I apologise for underreading Jeri's comments.
P.P.S. I bought a lousy Seagull guitar a few years ago, and it took all the craft of Rick Fielding to fix the damn thing so it was playable.