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However, it doesn't seem appropriate for 9/11.
The American Folklife Center found a story about white ribbons: It is the story of two men in a railroad train. One was so reserved that his companion had difficulty in persuading him to talk about himself. He was, he said at length, a convict returning from five years' imprisonment in a distant prison, but his people were too poor to visit him and were too uneducated to be very articulate on paper. Hence he had written to them to make a sign for him when he was released and came home. If they wanted him, they should put a white ribbon in the big apple tree which stood close to the railroad track at the bottom of the garden, and he would get off the train, but if they did not want him, they were to do nothing and he would stay on the train and seek a new life elsewhere. He said that they were nearing his home town and that he couldn't bear to look. His new friend said that he would look and took his place by the window to watch for the apple tree which the other had described to him.
In a minute he put a hand on his companion's arm. "There it is," he cried. "It's all right! The whole tree is white with ribbons."
The article also mentions the John Wayne film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"--named after a song that goes 'way back, where the ribbon is a reminder of an absent lover.
Living symbols change over time, but the victims of 9/11 are not coming back.
www.loc.gov/folklife/ribbons/ribbons.html
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