Hey I was there when the guy broke the c 	 JD 	 8:35 pm saturday september 8, 2001 
Hey I was there when the guy broke the clipboard.  Im from TN 
and my bud Trent invited me to check out the no shamers.  The 
gang in harlottesville Rocks.  Keep it up and get the word out.  
You need to grow.  Next time Im in town Ill be there and damn it 
Im getting a $1 PBR!

jd

 No Shame Deals and Heals: an email excha 	 Clinton Johnston 	 3:54 pm monday september 17, 2001 
-----Original Message-----
From:       Johnston, Clinton  
Sent:       Monday, September 17, 2001 10:28 AM
To:       Xxxxx, Stuart
Subject:       CJ thanks you

Stuart -

Thanks very much for coming to No Shame on Friday.  I hope that 
you come again.  It's a very cool idea that deserves to have 
more people seeing it and more people involved in it.  Although, 
I can see how you would not, I hope you say good things about it 
to people.  

Anyway, thanks again.

-C
 A
  J

---

You are most certainly welcome, Clinton.  I figured all of the 
autobiographical introspection was most definitely a result of 
last weeks tragedy.  I hope I didn't upset people with my 
questions of that first guy who went up there [See footnote 1 
below], but I was pretty frayed around the edges myself.  I hear 
a lot of platitudes about this event; I was really keen to hear 
someone say something committal.  I'm tired of hearing that 
we'll bring Osama bin Laden to justice- just what exactly does 
that mean?  I wanted to hear from people exactly what will 
satisfy them that justice has been done.  Everyone seems scared 
to say they want him dead, so I guess I was prodding that guy, 
trying to get him to say something, anything committal.

Now your cohort's (the guy who gave away the walking stick) 
[ftnt 2] soliloquy, on the other hand, was the most intelligent, 
sincere, moving, and meaningful thing I have heard anyone say 
about the tragedy yet - period.  He should be doing that 
monologue on national TV.  It struck a deep chord inside me and 
really made me feel better- I enjoyed catharsis over last weeks 
events.  Bravo!  Please tell him that I was just amazed with 
what he said.  I am sure Jeni and I will be back, although we 
might not exactly be regulars.  Thanks for taking the time to 
put that together Clinton, I really had a great time.

Stuart

----
Footnotes to Stuart's response

1) Scott Silea - He opened the show by talking about his 
reactions to the WTC/Pentagon attacks and inviting comments from 
the audience making an open forum of sorts.

2) Todd Ristau - founder of No Shame, and we've got him here in 
Charlottesville!  Woo hoo!  Did an AMAZING piece on his life 
long considerations about The End of the World that developed 
into a piece talking about the nature of endings and catharsis.

-caj

 re: No Shame Deals and Heals: an email e 	 Ursula 	 2:43 am thursday september 20, 2001 
A couple of things.  

First, Scott's last name is Silet.  

Second, I was very proud of him for getting up in front of people 
(some friends, some strangers) and talking about his feelings 
regarding the events of 9/11/2001 and trying to get other people 
talking about them, as well.  I know that my 
thoughts/feelings/reactions to all this are still developing and 
evolving and I'm sure others are in the same boat.  

Knowing Scott, I'm sure that any opinions not equal to his own are 
welcomed and respected, but I do think that anybody who engages in 
a debate on this subject needs to keep in mind that we don't all 
have the same mindset and we don't all have the same background 
knowledge of the topic.  Some of us are a lot more (or less) 
informed on the political and idealogical issues surrounding 
Middle Eastern foreign affairs, for instance, and what might 
strike one person as "obvious" would be a completely new concept 
to someone else.  I just say this to keep things in perspective.  
We all have emotional reactions and we all have reactions and 
opinions based on all the news we're hearing every day, of course.

I think Todd was correct in cutting of the discussion when he did 
-- I'm not sure this forum is any more "correct" for this 
discussion, but anyone should feel free to contradict that 
statement and respond with whatever comments they so desire.

I also agree that Todd's piece on the End of the World was very 
moving and very appropriate and if I thought it was written down 
(is it, Todd?), I would encourage him to disseminate it widely.

I'm gladder every week to be part of this thing they call No 
Shame.  Thanks to all who have and who will share it with me.


--Ursula

 re: No Shame Deals and Heals: an email e 	 Todd Ristau 	 7:40 am thursday september 20, 2001
I also agree that Todd's piece on the End of the World was very 
moving and very appropriate and if I thought it was written down 
(is it, Todd?), I would encourage him to disseminate it widely.


Well....I suppose I'd better write it down compeletly then.

It was somewhat off the cuff (no pun in regard to the content) 
but it went something like this:

The end of the world

I remember the first time I ever heard that the world was going 
to end.  I'd been watching that old movie version of H.G. Wells' 
Time Machine, and near the end of it he catapults through time to 
when the sun is a red giant and the earth is on the verge of 
being a cinder, just before the sun explodes.

Up until then I'd never even considered the end of the world, but 
when I found out it was going to happen I really wanted to be 
there to see it--even though that was going to be millions of 
years after I died.  That made me want desperately to live long 
enough to see the end of the world.

And my desire for immortality was born.  I suppose that was also 
the beginning of my attraction to the idea of the vampire, who 
has been a potent symbol of the desire for eternal life for 
centuries.  And its important that the vampire must kill 
something else for every day it prolongs its life far into the 
future.  I asked myself, even at a very young age, would I be 
willing to take a life every day in order to prolong mine?  Would 
that be worth living to see the end of the world?  I told myself 
yes, then.  What did I know?  I was a kid.  A kid who wanted to 
live forever.

I was born in 1963.  That makes me pretty old to most of you. But 
I was among the first generations to grow up in a time when the 
world could end not millions of years from now, but in the very 
next minute.  When I was old enough to understand that wrinkle 
being a vampire wasn't quite so attractive.  Yes, you're immortal 
now and you'll live to the end of the world, by the way, its 
tomorrow. 

When I realized I might live to see the end of the world 
afterall, I suddenly didn't want to anymore.

And I saw it coming everywhere.  When they took the American's 
hostage in Tehran, I knew it was just around the corner.  When I 
turned 18 they reinstated the draft.  I was certain that was a 
sign. I became obsessed with signs of the end times, and kept an 
ear cocked for all the doomsday cults that sprang up in the 
80's.  Does anyone remember the guy who took all his followers to 
Coney Island to meet the End of the World?  I do.

On the day that the end was to come, I gathered some of my 
favorite things around me, the sweater my girfriend (who had 
broken up with me, by the way)had given me, some other reminders 
of what I had loved in my life, and I bought a strawberry sundae 
supreme from the DQ and went up on the highest hill in my home 
town and prayed while I looked toward Coney Island.  I couldn't 
see it, my home town is in Illinois.  I didn't pray to stop the 
end of the world--that wasn't my place, but I did thank god for 
all that had made my life something I would miss, and asked him 
that if it really didn't have to happen, could he give us an 
extension.

The hour came. It went.  The world didn't end.  I waited another 
hour just to be sure, because of the time difference, but then I 
got up, took my favorite things, and went on with my life.  Until 
the next time it looked like the end.  There was the Gulf War.  
Maybe some of you remember Johnny Cash singing about how "it's 
clear to anyone who cares to take a look....its all going by the 
book."  There was a lot of stuff going around then about Saddam 
being the anti-christ in the blue turban who would bring about 
the end of the world.  I got married.  I used to joke that we got 
married because there was a war on...well, the world didn't end, 
but that marriage did.

Then there was Hale Bopp, and the Heaven's Gate Cult in their 
black Nikes.  The comet passed, and the world didn't end.  There 
were various asteroids and the comet hitting Jupiter that had me 
pretty convinced, but still the world went on.  And now, 
September 11th, 2001.

I teach theatre up at Mary Baldwin College.  One of the things we 
talk about in my classes, as it relates to tragedy, is the notion 
of Catharsis.  The vicarious purging of emotion.  

Like many of you I watched TV all day--and there was more emotion 
and fear and certainty that the end was near than I've ever had 
to process before.  The next day I went out to have a few drinks 
with friends at the C-&-O, and I put on my favorite pair of jeans. 
The ones my new wife, Joan, tells me weren't even cool in the 
80's.  They are worn out and have a big hole in the knee.  But 
they made me feel safe when I put them on, because they were 
familiar, and tight, and comfortable...

Tonight (Friday) while I was upstairs watching the news, Joan was 
downstairs also finding comfort in something familiar, something 
useful.  She was running the sewing machine.  I thought, Ok, 
she's quilting.  I went in to take a look and saw she was 
patching my pants.  She'd cut the fringe off and put a good solid 
denim patch under the hole in the knee.

When the towers collapsed, I didn't cry.  When the plane hit the 
Pentagon I didn't feel the loss.  When the plane went down near 
Pittsburgh, I didn't feel fear.  When I saw those jeans it was 
all I could do to keep from collapsing in grief.  

Maybe what I'm getting at is that living forever isn't all its 
cracked up to be, and maybe the world ends every time it can't be 
the same anymore--no matter in how small or how big a way.

 Nine (11) Foot Sway 	 Lea Marshall 	   3:15 pm sunday september 23, 2001 
My thanks to Annaliese Moyer for reading this poem aloud at No 
Shame on 9/22/01. I wrote it on Wednesday, 9/12, in about 15 
minutes, after not having written a poem in about 15 years.
Peace,
Lea

Nine (11) Foot Sway

I. 
You and I walked for hours that night
through the city, down secret streets only we could see
cobblestoned, dim with gaping doorways and old wood
slowly south, until the sharp breeze cleared our minds
and we came out at the end, under the towers.
We lay down together and looked straight up them
and you said, or we read, I can't recall,
that they had a nine foot sway.
We felt like insects beneath meadow-grass in the wind.
A nine foot sway, graceful and strange.

II.
I watched a building implode once,
streets cordoned off, with city people tailgating
as close as they could get. We took pictures 
and I can't remember a sound, 
only the slow, tired, sagging, crumbling, 
gentle disintegration.

III.
A man with a camera caught it, smoke billowing
then suddenly dust blossoming into clouds 
like a tidal wave, roaring down the street,
and then the images jumbled, 
trapezoidal as he ran for cover.

IV.
In the street she stopped, staring up at roiling smoke
where no smoke should be
and tiny figures, black against the sky through dust and haze
flinging off the building like water droplets.
A man said,
it's raining people.
And then she couldn't see.

V.
We felt the hit, felt the tower shudder,
but who could tell? Until the smoke drifted by from below
and we were far too high. 
Our windows faced water, and we gazed out
while at our backs the room darkened, the air thickened, 
and the screaming.
I didn't know you well, but when I glanced at you
your eyes said this is all we can do.
There was no glass, just the side of the building holding us in
smoke drifting by, a nine foot sway
and on the ledge our feet wobbled, clothes blowing against our 
skin.
The sharp breeze cleared our minds
our hands clasped, knuckles white, and with another glance
we pushed the building away, felt the wind lift us up
felt the sky's arc, 
and the sunlight glinting along the water.


-Lea Marshall
Richmond, Virginia

 The Return 	 Brandon Allison 	 2:42 pm friday september 28, 2001 
I'm coming back in October. Parents weekend is the 12th so maybe 
then. I've been going through No Shame withdrawl. (Convulsions, 
internal bleeding and the like.) I've been trying to persuade my 
drama teacher to get in gear and figure something out. Stay cool


B A