Many senior Saudi officials, including Prince Bandar, have been visiting Mecca to mark the final days of Ramadan, and that may have been another reason why no attempt was made to stage a commemoration that would include both Saudi and American officials, according to knowledgeable Saudis.
This year's Boston Marathon, the 117th annual race in the city, was being staged in commemoration of the Newtown school shooting, in which 20 young children and six educators were killed in December.
WE may count Tancred Agius as a no-show for tomorrow's stage-managed commemorations of the anniversary of last September's terrorist attacks.
Security forces are also on full alert across the Tibetan plateau amid fears that Tibetans may stage their own commemorations.
Symbolically perhaps, the ANC has been forced to covertly buy its own birthplace at a hugely inflated price so it can take centre stage in the commemorations.
Last month, the authorities on the island of Majorca held a memorial for Jews who were burned in the city of Palma in May 1691, in what was the first such commemoration staged by a Spanish regional government.
At seven o'clock on Thursday evening, a group of very brave men and women will gather in Taksim Square, in the centre of Istanbul, to stage an unprecedented and moving commemoration.
It's also easier for Britain, which is a relatively small and unified nation, with a strong central government, to stage nationally-inclusive displays of commemoration than it is for the United States, which is a country with a relatively weak federal government, that many people dislike and distrust, and which oversees a vast transcontinental empire extending from one ocean to another and beyond.
Two local women, widowed by the wondrous train-wreck, flee Fingerbone before any commemoration can be staged: "They said they could no longer live by the lake.
While The New York Times reported last month that Washington and Tehran were testing the waters for direct talks — an idea denied in both capitals — Iranian hard-liners turned the annual commemoration on Friday into a stage for opposing any form of compromise.
