*White With Foam (non-fiction) was conceived, written, and edited as a history project to be released in book form on the 15th or 20th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, either in 2016 or 2021. It's being posted early on the Internet by academic request because many sections form a true record of a decisive moment for most Americans -- a time already being distorted short of true by revisionist memory -- and many of the essays and collections of dated reference material have apparently already become valuable teaching tools. It's being posted without threat to overexposure because really -- -- -- despite being surprisingly entertaining for a horror story -- -- -- how many people can be calculated to read a full-scale journal about the worst year of our lives on a computer screen?
On the afternoon of September 12, 2001 the author, an international street photographer by trade, unexpectedly found himself stranded in Amsterdam in the middle of a surprise war. And being a cynical American, he cynically conceived the notion to write a real-time daily journal about the war that presumed that a biblical era of global unity against the attacks (thickest on that day after) would eventually crumble amidst the chaos, brutality, and incompetence of all out war. Little did he realize how peculiar his trip through the evolving post-9/11 morality warp would get and how close (before the Axis of Evil Speech undid all the healing) he'd come to buying and waving his first American flag since the Vietnam War.
This record was kept between the week of the attacks and September 12, 2002, the day after the first anniversary of 9-11. The original journal amassed over that one-year time period turned out to be 1055 pages thick with 475 eligible photographs. Editing of this current pre-publication Web form of about 375 book pages with 170 photographs ended on April 15, 2003. Many of the original journal entries were eliminated for lack of importance to the me or the us in the story, edited for clarity, shortened, or copy edited. No information that wasn't known at the logged time was added during editing, as the intent of the project at its inception was to release it at a time in the future when people might care to remember ("Never Forget") the way it really happened --
The good, the bad, and the ugly of an Armageddon of our security, patriotism and faith ...