I was born some six hundred miles upriver from New Orleans, in the quintessential Illinois river town of Cairo. I've been thinking about that lately because Cairo's population was around the same as September Eleventh's death toll.

Cairo was established as a land speculation given legal authority to call itself American in an 1818 Indian treaty signed by Merewether Lewis. Mark Twain, Eudora Weldy, W.J. Handy and Oscar Wilde, to name a few, wrote of Cairo's promise and disappointments. Now, sadly, every journalist from Alabama to Zanzibar is writing about September Eleventh's.

"Look," I said to L.A. Norma on her first night back from Europe. She had gone to Italy with a waiter we met in the yester life before September Eleventh. He had told us he was getting a two dollar and seventy cent tax refund. They went to protest the New World Order, dallied and got stranded after the bombings. I found them and some other friends swimming in a bottle of medicinal red at Frenchmen Street's Spotted Cat. "Bush," I continued, "may have come to power in an oversized fraternity prank but it is a certainty he did not want the presidency that now holds him." Sigh!

"He has good advisers, Norma," another friend said. "They will fight off the Armageddon goblins, besides we have no one else!"

We finished the wine and regrouped across the street for a belated birthday dinner at the new Jamaican Café Negril. Wow! Shrimp Betty sautéed in a Caribbean sauce and served on fettuccini. Wow! Caribbean roast pork tenderloin stuffed with onions, served with sautéed apples, potatoes and great salty gravy. Too salty, but too tasty for words.

We had a fine time drinking dark thick Guinness stout and fruity island drinks, followed by cigars and Pilsner Urquell (the world's first beer say some) at hip's newest haunt, the internet connected bar DBA drink good stuff.

The dinner party rocked without regurgitating September Eleventh for the umpteenth time. Then, nestled in the DBA's wooden rooms the subject popped up like an online ad. A voice at the table next to ours said so all could hear, "The king must first return to the castle and defend the kingdom. Would FDR, or Clinton, or even Nixon have gone the other way?"

"But the Secret Service told him to come to Louisiana and then go to Nebraska," I said. "The Secret Service works for the president, not the other way round," Norma said.

Alas, this is neither a war nor a president like we have ever had before. I tremble that it could become illegal to even say that.

We know domestic Armageddon goblins, from the Washington Times to Lush Rumball, are creeping around ready to pounce on any civil right but the one to own guns.

We also know the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said in no uncertain words that liberty is the culprit and wee the people are responsible for so angering a bitter and unjust God that He firebombed America. This is so outrageous an idea it is hard to find the words to respond but National Public Radio's Scott Simon found them on Weekend Edition, September twenty-second. He found perfect words with which to answer these unpatriotic, unholy and frightening men. You may hear that perfect commentary on the NPR Web site.

Keep the faith, speed the day, at least take a coffee break and keep in mind, freedom takes eternal vigilance in war and in peace.