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Scott Simon's Essays
The American Spirit
Dec. 29, 2001 -- And this final thought. The year did not begin or end on September 11th, but it often feels that way. It's really too soon to know whether, as so many were quick to proclaim, everything changed here. In fact, the sun continues to shine just as it did on that bright and terrible morning last September; and the gutsy, willy-nilly push for continuity and endurance is still with us.
Last October, on a visit to France, I awoke to a fantastic pink sunrise painting the beaches of Biarritz on the Atlantic Coast. Biarritz, where the rich and royal used to vacation before they moved their beach towels to the Riviera. The sun stayed bright that Sunday as my husband and I wandered around town. Rounding a corner, we came upon a free, open-air concert on a plaza by the sea. The Happy Junior Band(ph) from the School of Music(ph) of Leipzig, Germany, seated in neat rows and wearing sunny yellow T-shirts; 100 accordion players pumping out popular songs. Young people, none more than two years old when the Berlin Wall fell, attentively following the baton of their leader through The Beatles' "Yesterday" and "YMCA," and "Barbara Ann," plus some French and Dutch songs.
A crowd gathered, locals and European visitors, jiggling children on their shoulders or in Snuglis or standing with crossed arms and serious expressions, listening. And then off-key and wobbly but with a good, firm beat, the drummer of the Leipzig accordion band began to sing "New York, New York." `We'll make a brand-new start of it,' he sang, and the 100 young accordionists pleated and unpleated their instruments in accompaniment. And we, the only Americans in the crowd, lost it. There, under the shining bright skies of Biarritz near an ocean that once protected our country from assault, surrounded by strangers who knew our songs and young music makers from a nation we once feared, we found ourselves swept into the sadness and fear September had created and, in an instant, came home to the core of our country, which we carry with us wherever we are.
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