Great Love is....

~ staying up late arguing about discussing the muhammed cartoons because after five years, there's still something to discuss (and you think freedom of speech doesn't mean you HAVE to speak).

~ still sharing dreams after 12 years.

~ fighting off an overwhelming urge to kiss even tho' you're standing in a canteen full of 1500 people at work.

~ knowing which task is whose (laundry: mine, garden: his)

~ making one another laugh.

~ when your heart still skips a beat when you catch sight of him across the room.

~ horrible dreams of mangled plane wreckage when he's away.

~ ok, i have those dreams even when he's not away, and they're mostly about me, but i'm never hurt (tho' often strangely wearing rollerblades) so it's ok.

~ being one another's closest confidant.

~ him putting up with all of your whims.

~ you putting up with him putting away the dishes as if he doesn't live here (he never learns and frankly, you've got to remember to be grateful he puts them away at all).

~ late night discussions of evolution, sociology and political science.

~ funny text messages.

~ building something together (literally, out in the garden).

~ a shared history.

~ finishing one another's thoughts.

~ there still being surprises after 13 years (who knew husband took a photography class?)

~ not remembering precisely how many years it's been (12, 13, whatever).

what's Great Love in your world?

a terrifying act, but not terrorism

last weekend, a 28-year-old somali man broke into the home of kurt westergaard, the political cartoonist behind the most famous of the infamous mohammed cartoons that appeared in danish newspaper jyllands posten in 2005 - you know the one which depicted mohammed with a bomb as his turban. the young man had an axe and he was bent on killing westergaard because of his cartoon. it was big news and even BBC world ran the story again and again all weekend.

the young somali didn't succeed, westergaard locked himself in his specially-secured bathroom and set off the alarm direct to the police. they were there within three minutes. the somali tried to run and threw his axe at the police, after which he was shot three times in the hand and leg to prevent him from fleeing and taken into custody. most shaken was westergaards 5-year-old granddaughter who was sitting at the table in her pajamas when the incident happened.

this is a gravely serious incident and it has everything to do with a clash of extremist islam against core western beliefs like freedom of speech. in a way, it's not unlike the fatwa against salman rushdie over the satanic verses - with fanatics of a religion against a purveyor of freedom of artistic expression.

on sunday berlingske devoted 8 pages to calling it terrorism. it is careless use of that word, begun by bush and his cronies, that has brought us to a point where it begins to feel quite meaningless. terrorism is an act of aggression against a group of innocent people - a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace or metro, the airplanes bringing down the world trade center - those are terrorism. but an assassination attempt on an individual over a specific incident, while undoubtedly terrifying to the individuals involved, is not terrorism. and to call it such takes away meaning from true acts of terrorism.

we need to be more careful than this with the language.