My parents are visiting. They live in France and over the last week or so we have had some long discussions about the merits, or otherwise, of the countries in which we live.
Yesterday we were in Oklahoma City, and we visited the National Memorial.
It is a completely unremarkable section, in a fairly ordinary city so typical of Middle America. Yet on April 19th, every year, the city remembers an horrific act that happened, on that day, in 1995.
On that day a young, disaffected American veteran unleashed a seven thousand pound bomb, and one hundred sixty eight people, including nineteen children were forever silenced.
Today the site is a permanent, beautiful and fitting memorial. A place that inspires peaceful thoughts and quiet remembrance. I have visited many memorials in my time, and while many are fitting, few match the sheer inspirational qualities of this place.
I don't mind admitting that I had something in my eye that needed wiping away, I think it was the same for my wife and my parents. My wife was the only native Oklahoman among us, indeed she was the only American, yet in that place we were all affected similarly.
It's not an American thing, it's a human thing and I would challenge anyone, from any State or Nation to visit that place and not feel the same way.
Between the two vertical, black granite walls is a reflecting pool. One wall bears the inscription 9.03, the other one reads 9.01. The pool represents that which happened in the terrible minute in between. The pool is black, and only about an inch deep. In the summer the children splash around in the water. Some of their parents and passers-by might disapprove, but I think that the victims would smile down on them. There, amidst the horror of terrorism and death, are children, the next generation, smiling and playing in the water. It is fitting. Not yesterday however. Yesterday was cold but the memorial is filled with the warmth of those who perished, the biting wind notwithstanding.
There are one hundred sixty eight of these chairs. Nineteen of them are half-sized, and they are laid out on the original footprint of the destroyed building.
Each represents a life lost, a family torn apart by madness, and each carries a name. Some of the small chairs are adjacent to another with the same surname. Brothers, or sisters. Some have two names. Pregnant women who died along with the others.
But there is more. In the days, weeks and months that followed messages of support flooded in from all across America, and all across the world. I was in England in 1995, yet I too remember the horror of it. It was news everywhere and it remains a stark reminder of what can happen, everywhere and anywhere.
This is not a Diary that is particularly written to make any political point. Rather it is one man's experience of a visit to a place that moved him. Yet, even while I was there some things flitted in and out of my mind. I was minded to remember that Timothy McVeigh, at least in part, was prompted to act by the events of Waco. When authorities over-react in such a manner it feeds the paranoia that breeds within some people.
While I hope that the current over reactions we are witnessing do not prompt any such event, I wonder what lessons the authorities learned from previous incidents. It does not do much for winning the hearts and minds of the people, when you pepper spray them while they are seated on the ground.
Yet, in that darkest of times, the messages of support and of hope came, so I will let the children have the last word here: