My brother has returned home, he got in at about 11:00 last night, and things were just too close for comfort. As it turns out he was due to be at a function with the Navy AT THE PENTAGON on Tuesday afternoon. IN the wing that was bombed.

Roc had been getting ready to leave for the Pentagon when the crash happened (he was staying in Virginia). He then got in the rental car with the guys he was with and started driving home. It was a long trip and he had to get to Boston via Albany because he couldn't drive through the city.

He has to report to work as he is "essential personnel", but the base is on lockdown. It's quite the ordeal to get admitted through those gates.

I was also concerned about my friend Michael who writes for one of the New York papers, and I e-mailed him right away to see if he was OK. He lives midtown, a couple of blocks from Times Square, so I knew he'd be OK if he was there, but he has an office in the Chelsea area and often has meetings in the area where the Trade Center is – was – located. It was 4:30 before I heard from him, but he is fine.

As it turns out I know one of the women who was on one of the planes, I went to grammar school with her. I also knew the children of one of the other women who was killed in the second plane.

It's just awful.

My mother and other brother are slated to leave for Las Vegas on Monday for a week. We still don't know the status of that trip. Actually, this is going to be a safe time to fly as the security is going to be so tough.

Roc is supposed to leave for England and Germany on Sunday, and so far the trip hasn't been canceled. He's supposed to be gone for a couple of weeks.

I’m personally praying that they will all cancel these trips.

Just watching this on television is so hard. I get so emotional.

They play the film clips over and over, and each time I think that there will be a different ending, or that it’s just a movie and the good guys will win.

I really lost it when they played the National Anthem at he Changing of the Guard in London. Somehow that one did me in. To see all those people watching the tradition of the Guards and seeing the raw emotion that they were feeling was wrenching.

I am supposed to be going to NYC for the day on October 27, and I can't imagine looking at that changed skyline. I spend so much time in NYC, take the subway all over the place and don't even need a map to get around, so this is really awful for me to think of. I was there for a part of April vacation, but never managed to get there this summer. I don't know why, it just got away from me I guess.

Saturday the chorus has to sing at "Hometown festival day" in a local community, and I am totally dreading it. We are singing a bunch of patriotic songs and I'm afraid I'll get so choked up that I won't get through them. This has been planned for weeks, but I was really hoping that they'd cancel it. I'd back out, but I'm the chorus President for the next two years, so I really have to show up, plus I do the emceeing.

But my heart is so heavy with grief that the thoughts of singing the National Anthem, dressed in our red white and blue costumes, makes me choke up.