September is not a good month around the Hedgerow. It was in September 1996 that I left my husband (who was in a downward spiral due to manic depression) and it was still September nine days later when he killed himself. Oddly enough, in doing genealogy, I discovered that my great-great-grandmother also killed herself in September, and on the same day: the 18th. (To make that even weirder, her birthday was the same day as my daughter's: January 2nd.) September is the month of my father's birth, which is a good thing; but two days after his birthday in 1967, his mother died (which really has to take some of the fun out of it). September is also the month that school starts in our neck of the woods, and that is not usually a joyous time for the piglets. (Mama feels differently about it, of course!)

All of that is pretty awful (except the birthday thing); but September of 2001 really guaranteed that we view the whole month with distaste, especially Caitlin. Monday September 10, 2001, Caitlin got on the school bus to find girls in tears and the whole bus abuzz with bad news: a classmate of theirs had been killed over the weekend, in an accident involving an All-Terrain Vehicle. Caitlin called me from school, distraught. I wouldn't let her come home, but I did talk to her for quite a while. It affected her in a whole different way than her father's death, for reasons I am not entirely clear on. Losing John tops my list of Bad Shit That Has Happened In My Life, but losing Evan tops Caitlin's list by far.

So Caitlin was already pretty upset; September was the worst month in the year as far as she was concerned. Then on the morning of September 11 she got on the bus and somebody told her World War Three had started. And I don't think I need to say anything about that because everything that needs to be said has been said; September 11th is burned like a great black slash across the American soul.

So nobody around here was looking forward to September this year. Besides our own personal sorrows of the month, I knew that the whole country would be taking note of the September 11 anniversary, with accompanying media frenzy, of course.

I was expecting the worst from the media, and for the most part I avoided the TV that day. Newspapers are harder to avoid, since I deliver the local paper; and I read The Seattle Times on a near daily basis. There wasn't anything outstanding about the local rag; some pictures of people wiping their eyes at a memorial service here in town, as far as I remember. The Times, on the other hand...showed a touch of class.

Blank space in a newspaper is kinda like silence on the radio: it generally isn't done. So my first look at the Seattle Times last Wednesday surprised me; there was more blank space on the front page than filled space, even when all I could see was above the fold. There was a simplified version of the paper's nameplate; the date was centered right under the nameplate instead of in its usual place to the side. In the middle of the area above the fold was a small watercolour illustration of the World Trade Center towers. Immediately under that, in fairly large type, it said "In remembrance" and under that in much smaller type "of September 11, 2001, a moment of silence." The only other thing on the whole front page was a note in small type at the bottom of the page:"The news of today can be found starting on Page A3." It really was the newspaper equivalent of a moment of silence. I was impressed. Turning the page answered any questions about why the news of the day began on page A3--page A2 was filled with the names of "The Lives Lost" and it was _filled_, and in very tiny print, too.

It really displayed a touch of class that, quite frankly, I have come to _not_ expect from a newspaper. It didn't really make September any better--but it didn't make it any worse, either. And sometimes that's almost as good.