I opted for words over images today, listening to NPR's All Things Considered and Marketplace this afternoon while I continued to work on design specifications for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I trusted Robert Siegel, Jacki Lyden, and David Brancaccio to compliment my own personal reflection with comforting words and lingering questions and a freshness that didn't think I would find elsewhere among the recitations and recycled sound bites. Much like yesterday's Sonic Memorial Project: A September Story, I felt their stories to be touching, intimately personal fractions of a collective American experience. And for a few busy hours, I felt part of something a bit bigger than myself.

As I read the paper after dinner, thinking about Laine at her candlelight vigil in Central Park, I contemplated driving downtown to join one of the many being held around DC this evening. But I found myself yearning to do something a little more every-day, a little more naturally civic. And once again, I found myself opting for words-- this time at my local library branch in Georgetown. I packed up my book bag of overdue books, put on some walking shoes, and stepped out into the first chilly evening of the season.

The library always comforts me. Always makes me feel connected to a true community. The bulletin board. The regulars. The exchange of niceties. And all those books. I picked out a few new novels. I looked up Mr. Mau's recommended E=mc² and decided to learn more about physics. I flipped through all the CDs and chose a few happy classics (like the soundtrack to Singin' in the Rain-- the world's best pick me up.) And I was delighted to see that Laine's recommended tiny treasure called The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White was finally shelved and ready to come home with me.

Upon checking out I opened all of my books to the back flap, just as the sign requested. I paid my enormous fine. I exchanged the requisite niceties with the librarian. As I left, I set off the magnetic "book-stealing" detector and was waved away with a laugh.

I walked out into the gorgeous periwinkle twilight, noticing the sliver of moon and the blinking lights of an ascending plane from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. As I bounced down the steps to begin my journey home, I heard the door open behind me and the librarian called out to me. I turned, thinking perhaps she had had second thoughts about my innocence in the detector snafu. But she leaned over the railing and held something out to me. "I forgot to give you this. We've been handing them out to everyone who came in today." I took her offering, brought it closer for inspection, and found this tiny American flag lapel pin.

I thanked her with tears in my eyes. I told her to have a wonderful night. And we shared a generous smile with one another.

As I fastened the pin to my collar, so many of the feelings from the past year came rushing over me. Loss. Fear. Anxiety. Loneliness. But mostly I was struck by this genuine goodwill that has washed over me so many times since last September 11th. Tiny gestures of community kindness and citizenship that have found their way into my quotidian life as gifts bestowed, received, and witnessed. The simple smile and have-a-good-day wish for a stranger. Holding a door for a Mom with a stroller. Picking up a piece of blowing trash to deposit it in a trash can. Running outside to give someone a tiny flag on a day of remembrance. It all means something. It's my one newfound blessing in a world of uncertain futures.

And it's the one solace I'll take until they sound the All Clear.