We went to Indiana last weekend for a gathering of Tom’s family. And it was there, by the shores of a rain-water-swollen Lake Monroe, that we heard the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. We had just begun to realize that our cache of Scrabble letters was far more than the board (or our attention span) could use when we got a call telling us the news. Those of us with Blackberries and iPhones (this does not include me) found news sites were crashing from all the hits. So since the cottage has no television or wi-fi, we cranked up the radio in the old stereo receiver.

As we bent toward its sound, I felt we were drawn not only into a new, post-bin Laden era, but also into the past. We were like the people in “The King’s Speech” listening to George VI rallying his fellow citizens, minus the sonorous soaring of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU03byh6O1M

We strained to hear the scratchy sound coming out of the box, the narrow frequency fading in and out during the president’s brief announcement. We were startled from our lethargy, hungry for information, searching for a community in the airwaves.