We survived week one.

        Still mourning the thousands dead, missing and wounded, America looks and feels different.

        A week after savage terrorist attacks struck our people, our landmarks and our freedoms, something has changed.

        And everyone knows it.

        TV news anchors repeatedly comment on our altered state.

        “America is a changed place.”

        “We're going to a new place.”

        “Sept. 11: The Day That Changed America.”

        The changes come in all shapes and sizes. I've been jotting them down, trying to make sense of the aftermath of a senseless act.

        These changes can be painfully obvious or quietly subtle. Some are disturbing. A few comforting.

        The attacks struck at the heart of America's free society. We're free to travel, think, chase dreams and go to work in places like the World Trade Center. Thousands have died protecting those freedoms.

        Yet, in an informal Channel 12 phone-in poll conducted Monday night, 72 percent of 1,204 callers said they would give up some freedom to fight terrorism.
       

Changing channels

        Other perceived changes have been in and on the air.

        Since Sept. 11, passenger jets seem to fly over lower and louder. Their shiny bodies loom larger. And act as potent reminders.

        These planes can produce obscene acts of terror when hate-filled madmen sit at the controls.

        Also since the attacks, TV just doesn't look right.

        The networks are slowly resuming their regularly scheduled programming. Life must go on. But some commercials just must go.

        Restaurant spots showing laughing, smiling faces jammed into noisy eateries jar still-raw, still-sad senses. It's too soon to party.

        Tiger Woods stars in an SUV commercial filmed like a horror movie. Sparks, flames and smoke mix with grim shots of a tall building and a black-shrouded figure wielding an ax. We've seen enough of such evil. And it's all too real.
       

Future generations

        Over the weekend, the Oak Hills Local School District held its annual fund-raising festival.

        Kids in their school colors raced from the game booths to the rides. High school sweethearts melted into each other, arm in arm, joined at the hip.

        Everything — kids greeting classmates, teen-age boys gawking at teen-age girls, adults chatting — was toned down a notch.

        Walking among Sunday's festivalgoers, I thought about the estimates of how long America's war on terrorism might last. This won't be a Gulf War or even World War II. It could go on for a decade. And involve countless students now in school.

        That's an ominous cloud of change to leave hanging over the heads of school kids giggling over games of chance and goofy rides.

        Somewhere, I thought, among all these changes there must be a bright spot.

        It appeared overhead and on the ground. As a passenger jet climbed in a cloudless sky, a little boy, a toddler, stood nearby holding his father's hand and pointing to the plane's profile.

        Maybe, when that toddler grows up, the war on terrorism will have been won. Good will have triumphed over evil.

        If his children never encounter bad things coming out of the blue, then all the changes America went through will have been for the best.

       Columnist Cliff Radel can be reached at 768-8379; fax 768-8340.
       

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