January 22, 2025

As part of his "day one" executive orders, President Trump eliminated all members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, a group that was formed after the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

And with that he reminded me of an old poem, quite flawed if you ask me, that I wrote not long after the Pan Am bombing about my first childhood friend, Valerie Canady, who died in the Lockerbie bombing. She and I for the most part watched our friendship dissolve in 1971 when I moved across town. Still, her loss of life is one, as with many, that requires some kind of acknowledgement, all the more so now that, by all accounts, an effective industry-supported advisory (often advisory means uncompensated) committee formed in the aftermath of her tragedy, has been recklessly destroyed.

At least as of January 2025, the broken arm here is both the literal one of Valerie's and the figurative one of a governmental arm/branch. Hers at least healed.

Broken Arm

London bridge, or

Ring around the rosy,

Some childish game

That indelibly marked us.

Why does a broken arm haunt me

Thirty years on?

Why must that be the clearest memory

Now that you're gone?

In naiveté, I can believe

That no breakage of your arm

Would have altered that beautiful day,

That innocent week,

That youthful month,

That wonderful year,

That first decade.

Could it at least

Have changed that despicable December day

That destroyed the brilliant life?

Fate can't be explained to two kids,

Sometimes a man can't understand it.

Fate can't be expected to make sense,

But why must it carry such expense?

I wonder if I apologized enough

For that broken arm,

If I held to my heart

The extent of its harm,

If I recognized that

Your pain would reappear

In some distant,

God-forsaken moment

Of some never-to-be-forgotten year.