Header image via Flickr,  copyright Moyan Brenn (CC by 2.0)

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

I have just come across this article by Kerri Westenberg in Sunday’s (12/6/15) Star Tribune Travel section about a woman (Catherine Reid Day of St. Paul) who was in Paris during the November 14 attacks on the City of Light. She, her husband, and daughter had spent the day being tourists – been to Notre Dame and the Louvre – and were back “in their hotel by 9:30. The terrorist attacks at restaurants, a stadium and a concert venue began at 9:20.

She found out about them via a text from a friend back in the States, asking if they were OK. Then they turned on the TV.

The next day (Saturday) they ventured out and found one store open, a book store – appropriate, she said, “because education is the antidote to all of this.”

To have the attack in San Bernadino, CA, happen on “our own soil” almost three weeks after this event is unsettling, to say the least. One of the saddest outcomes of this random act of violence is, ironically, how much it will hurt the Muslim communities throughout the US and the world.

A Washington Post article re-published Monday, 12/7 on msn.com contains this quote: ‘ “The purpose of terrorism is to make ordinary people afraid to do the ordinary things that make up their lives,” said Janice Rutherford, a member of the [San Bernadino] county Board of Supervisors. “We can’t be afraid of our lives, of our community, of our neighbors, of our coworkers.” ’

It seems from all the rhetoric around these two events that this is being considered another “watershed moment” in our history, the way that 9/11 was – we will remember a before and an after.

What, if anything, do you think has changed in the world?