Thursday, July 7, 2005:<\/b> No need to add excessive verbiage about the London mass-transit attacks. Suffice it to say that America shouldn’t forget the Madrid attacks, which have been scarcely mentioned in the news media today.<\/p>\n
This sort of terrorism has an evening effect. Whether it is thousands killed in the U.S., hundreds in Madrid or dozens in London, the effect remains similar, making Westerners feel vulnerable, paranoid.<\/p>\n
It is very late, and I won’t be talking about this to my wife until Friday. But in 1999 through mid-2001 she worked for a multinational corporation, spending weeks at a time in London, several times. (I spent the week of Thanksgiving 2000 with her there.) Her hotels generally were near the Kings Cross stop, and she’d take the tube daily from there to the financial district in east London, near the Tower of London. I rode with her. Both were sites of bombs. (My wife, working for another corporation in the 1980s, worked for a couple of weeks in the World Trade Center. This one’s also going to be tough on her. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, July 7, 2005: No need to add excessive verbiage about the London mass-transit attacks. Suffice it to say that America shouldn’t forget the Madrid attacks, which have been scarcely mentioned in the news media today. This sort of terrorism has an evening effect. Whether it is thousands killed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":131,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/how-you-get-there\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":0},"title":"How you get there","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, July 15, 2005. It would take some nerve to call myself an avid bicyclist. I pedal more than most, and a lot less than others. I biked for fun and for commuting as a teenager, even though I could borrow Mom's Beetle almost whenever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":235,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/09\/picture-postcard\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":1},"title":"Picture postcard","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Everybody has something to say about today, and what happened five years ago, today. Where is the numerology for the ninth month and eleventh day? Or the date of the first Trade Center attack. Or the hit on the USS Cole. Or the attack in Madrid. The one on London\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/07\/security-is-observation\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":2},"title":"Security Is Observation","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, the newspaper says, the town of Lowell is installing a $1,500 Panasonic video camera on a 200-foot cell tower. It will record the \"south, west, north and portions of the east sides\" 24 hours a day. Mayor Perry Long says, \"It will be used for security, not for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":246,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/11\/this-is-a-busk\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":3},"title":"This is a busk","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"No hounding of the buskervilles. We have a word for it: busking. It's the practice of a musician (maybe a duet or trio) performing on a street corner, with a hat or open instrument case right there, for tips. Towns trying to encourage tourism often encourage busking, until shopkeepers get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/hammered-point-nails-thumb\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":4},"title":"Hammered point nails thumb","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Monday, January 10, 2005. Just thought of another way to explain my confusion with a certain kind of column. Or blog now. The discomfort is partly from the frustration of not being able to explain, but mainly because their writers are some of my favorite\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3839,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/09\/armistice-daze\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":5},"title":"Armistice Daze","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"While watching a local 9\/11 commemoration Tuesday, a curious thought came to me, \"What day was Osama bin Laden killed?\" Did anyone in the audience know? I didn't know, myself. When the Al-Qaida leader met his fusillade of bullets is the smaller query. The larger one is, Why does America\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}