Perhaps fearing that one published blog would forever label me as a “liberal”, “socialist”, or, dare I say it, a “conservative”, I have hesitated the last few weeks. Sure, recent political happenings in Kansas, Colorado, Washington DC, and abroad have inspired numerous opportunities to wield my keyboard and pen lines of fury, outrage, and muted irony.

Oh, but how to choose from the endless list of potential blog titles that have been cultivated by creative juices:

Angry, Colorado? – covering the recent assaults on the Colorado Democratic Party office in downtown Denver

The black holes of health reform conversations – discussing the frustrating and circular discussions of proposed health reform legislation that have shut out pragmatic health consumers, practically banishing single payer supporters from the table, and allowed only the screaming and gun wielding crazies to get any attention. This blog would have, no doubt, ended with a Verizon Wireless advertisement-inspired, “Can you hear me now?”

Today, however, I told myself, “enough is enough, pick up your laptop and write something, already.”

I’ve always thought that September 11, 2001 would be the “Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?” of my (and my siblings’) generation. I spent the afternoon of September 11, 2001 in the campus library of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, awaiting my younger brother who was a student there. I was in town, visiting my parents and siblings and decided to spend that Tuesday afternoon reading randomly located dusty books in the library’s equally dusty basement (just an oddly pleasant pastime of mine). With no access to the Internet or a television, I was blissfully unaware that the world outside the library was, in retrospect, forever being altered. My brother suddenly burst into the study room where I was lost in old manuscripts and haltingly explained something about planes and the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and …

None of it made sense to me.

In shock, we located a television in an off-campus pizzeria and watched footage – that was by then, old news – of the Twin Towers crumbling into dust on the city below.

It felt surreal, like Orson Welles-inspired War of the Worlds confusion. This couldn’t be true.

On Wednesday night, President Obama’s speech on health reform drew a now infamous outburst from one South Carolina lawmaker. Today, the President once again addressed the nation - but this time, in reference to an act that united, rather than divided, that knitted countries together (at least in the beginning), and that aided the American flag producer more than ever before.

For months, Obama has said that the “time is now” for health reform. Today, on the 8th anniversary of September 11, the President asked us to “renew our common purpose”.

So, forgive my simplistic and somewhat preachy question. But, if we could all agree on a bumper sticker today, what would it say?