Orac, you do have a point about postin dates in general in an internationally used site like Mudcat. If you said your birthday was 12-5-19??, I'd probably send your greetings to you in December. To avoid confusion, it would really help to write out the name of the month.

I don't think this is necessary in the context of discussion of the Al Quaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2002, though, any more than when saying that we Americans are getting ready for our firework displays on "7-11." (As for writing "...4th July...," that would not be proper American English, would it? It's a kind of shorthand that people would understand, but I've never seen it written that way in a newspaper, magazine, or book.

And while we're drifting within this thread, let me say that every time I hear a Brit call someone a "prat," I'm glad I don't live in the UK. (My last name is "Pratt," and while I've always known of the other meaning, fortunately, hardly anyone in the US makes that connection to the name.)

----

Larry, I share your frustration over the music situation. When I was putting my own feelings about the 9-11 attacks into song and reading those of other folk musicians (including Tom Paxton), I realized that the songs about 9-11 which the bulk of the public would hear would -- as with any other kind of music -- be those written, performed, and recorded by well-established commercial artists.

Some of those songs, like "Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning," are quite good. But there are others like the ones by Toby Keith and Charlie Daniels and Cheryl Crowe, and a few others which got airplay just because they were done by big name performers.

There's a website someone linked to in an earlier thread which was all about songs about September 11, and it seemed to have some good songs by unknown songwriters. It does seem a shame that even when it comes to honoring the victims and heroes of the attacks of 9-11, there is no ready means whereby the real "cream" of the poems and songs can "rise to the top" of public awareness. So many folksingers' songs are like "flowers ... born to waste [their] sweetness on the desert air."

Genie