Here is a place to share memories and personal reflections on the events five years ago.
Please: this is not intended to be a thread for partisan political debate. This is an invitation to share feelings and situations closer to home.
What were you doing on 11 September 2001? What did you make of events as they unfolded? How has your world changed? What reflections did events cause you to have on humanity, religion, life and death?
If it helps in some way for you to share, this spot, I hope, will be a good place to do that.
What were you doing on 11 September 2001? What did you make of events as they unfolded? How has your world changed?
I turned on the tv to see both buildings burning. It was a beautiful morning and I thought I was watching a movie... strained my mind to think which one it could be. It took a second flipping through other channels to realize I was watching the news.
My immediate reaction was that the world had changed. We were at war with someone. And I began to make sure everyone I knew was safe and aware what was happening.
Five years later, I continue to turn on the tv each day and can't believe I am seeing the news. I definitely feel the world has changed. We have allowed the world to go back centuries in social and intellectual development.
That is to say instead of reacting to the emergency with the best knowledge and skills humans had developed up till that point, to test them against a real challenge, we abandoned ourselves to the oldest deepest wisdom of jungle madness. It appears that like sisyphus, we have some work ahead.
Edited by holmes, : more
holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode} "What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)
I remember getting up that morning and going to the computer to try to get on line with our dial-up connection.
The phone line made a funny noise and wouldn't connect, so I went into the living room and turned on the TV, where I saw the first tower on fire. It took a moment or two to realize what the news caster was saying, and it was then that I called to Zhimbo to get out of bed and come look at the TV.
I remember us both gasping and saying "Oh no!" when the second plane hit and the look of horror that we shared. And the feeling just got more awful when the buildings collapsed. I remember Peter Jennings getting choked up at that point.
I can't remember if it was on Sept. 11 or the next day, but at one point I recall going outside to look up into the beautiful clear blue sky because several fighter jets were roaring overhead.
I wondered vaguely if there were more planes or some other kind of attack happening close by, and my adrenaline started pumping.
(We later found out that some knucklehead in his airplane ignored the emergency grounding of all aircraft and took off from the local munincipal airport)
It was strange; the sky being so quiet and empty. Detroit has an international airport and I never realized how constant the air traffic was over Ann Arbor until it wasn't there.
My attitudes about religion and humanity were only more solidified, as were those on life and death. Nothing about the event was any different than any other horrible event in the world, it's just that it happened to us for a change.
"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!" - Ned Flanders
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
I had a roommate at the time, and she came into my room and woke me right after the first tower was hit. She said something like "Robby, I know you probably haven't had much sleep but I thought you might want to know that a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center". I think I said something like "oh, okay" and tried to go back to sleep. But after a few seconds the magnitude of what she'd said hit me and I got up. We watched about the next 2 hours or so of coverage on Today, then she went to work and I went to a friend's house.
I remember that virtually everything I or most anyone else did for the next few days, we did with either the radio or the TV turned on and tuned to coverage. I called people I hadn't seen in a while; I'd recently had a row with my mother and I called and patched things up with her. I called my step-mother too because I knew she had a nephew who worked in one of the towers. No one could get a call through to New York, and not until late that night did word finally come that he had been sick the day before and, although he had headed to work, he was running late and was on the subway at the time of the first crash.
A couple friends and I were so drained by the end of that week that we went kayaking the following Saturday, which is not a bad idea for something to do this next weekend, come to think of it.
Today, I'm growing weary of the trip down Memory Lane. I just turned off the TV (I'm at home right now) and I think I might crank up some really loud music. Maybe something by Iron Maiden. Get some housework done.
"Hey, Dad," my son says on the phone, "a plane hit the World Trade Center."
"Do they know how big a plane?"
"A small one, I think."
"Okay. That's not too bad."
"Isn't the building in danger of falling?"
"No. Something similar happened to the Empire State Building during WWII. It was a military plane, I think, much bigger than a small private plane. They were able to put the fire out."
"Okay. Bye."
We'd been to the top of the trade center earlier that summer, but I get back to work. The phone rings later.
"Dad, they say it was an airliner."
"That's impossible. Between pilots and ground controllers, that could never happen."
"That's what they're saying."
"Okay, well, let me know if you hear any more. Bye now." I'm sure my son is mistaken.
Phone rings later.
"Dad, a plane hit the other tower."
"No, that can't be."
"No, really, it's on TV. Both buildings are on fire. Can't they fall down."
"Not likely. Let me see what I can find out from here."
I go out to my car to listen on the radio. It's true, airliners have struck the towers. I'm not thinking, but I start the car and begin driving home. On the way Peter Jennings announces that a tower has collapsed. Before I reach home he says the other tower has collapsed. At first I imagine that Jennings is just saying it that way, that he really only means that upper floors have collapsed, but it gradually becomes clear there is nothing left. All those people, all their families. I cry.
So I'm knocking around a forum I visit, whilst doing some tidying chores. I see one post appear saying that a plane has hit the WTC. I figure it was a Cesna or something like that. Then a second post sprung up a little later stating that second plane has crashed, and this sounded most unusual. So I opened up the thread and was presented with the words 'If you haven't got the television on, go turn it on right now'. So I did.
That was when I called in my house mates and we sat there and watched it. I remember saying that the world was going to change, that this is one of those days people are going to ask 'Where were you' about for years and years, much like the Berlin wall.
I remember hearing that 50,000 people worked in the building, and I realized that the population that worked there were almost equal in size to the population of the town I grew up in. They were talking about evacuations and people being trapped. There were bodies falling and then the tower fell.
My stomach and my heart fell with it, just what was going on? What is it we are hearing about these other planes? Is it going to get worse? It felt like I was in a disaster film as one of the extras watching television around the world. The rest of the day was a blur of watching - listening to projected casuality reports as rumours came in and were squashed just as quickly.
quote:Today, I'm growing weary of the trip down Memory Lane. I just turned off the TV (I'm at home right now) and I think I might crank up some really loud music. Maybe something by Iron Maiden. Get some housework done.
I have had NPR on all morning while I knit a sleeve for a sweater for Zhimbo and now, posting to fora and anwering e-mail.
I'm getting tired of the trip, too.
I'm going to go for a run.
The I'm going to put some music on and, like you, get some housework and laundry done, and possibly bake some bread.
In middle school--english class. The husband of our teacher called, and then we watched the TV. The rest of the day was shot (as far as actual schooling was concerned), but they didn't let us watch it. I may have seen one of the towers fall live, but I can't remember. I do know that they replayed and replayed the scene. Too young to realize what it meant, other than that it just absolutley sucked.
Has my life changed? no. I grew up in a city of 40,000 (small student population, though--not even 4000) in the middle of the appalachains--who the hell was going to hit us?
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What were you doing on 11 September 2001? What did you make of events as they unfolded? How has your world changed? What reflections did events cause you to have on humanity, religion, life and death?
I had just woken up. It was 1030 a.m. My friend called and I began talking to him about the mundane and ordinary things that friends usually discuss.
He said, "Don't you know what happened?"
I said "No, what?"
"The World Trade Center is gone!"
What???!!!
and then I turned on the news and watched the endless looped reruns of the event.
I suppose my first reactions were selfish. I worried that WW III was starting.
I thought that we would plunge into a great depression.
Local gas prices at the pumps were doubling....rumors abounded.
And only later did I connect the human element of people who died in NYC.
My other friend who is a Rocket Scientist (and otherwise very intelligent) worried about anthrax in his mailbox.
Only much later did we realize that the neocons had seized power by playing on peoples fears.
They are still trying to do the same thing.
Would not a true Christian nation have turned the other cheek rather than going to war?
We could have had the worlds respect had we absorbed the blow.
But then again....nobody that I knew died that day.
As an English major, tuesday was kind of my "day off", the only class I had was Intro Biology lecture at 11:00. So I was sleeping in.
My future wife came in, I don't remember when, with the news that somebody had blown up the Pentagon and New York. This would have been after both planes had hit and a few minutes before the first tower collapsed.
I didn't have a TV so I logged onto Google News to see what was actually going on. Two airliners had hit the towers. As I reloaded the page pictures of the tower collapsing came up.
I went to class, but when I got there the professor had cancelled the lecture. I went to lunch. They had set up the big projection screen in the cafeteria to show the news, and I think I watched the second tower collapse. I watched them fight the fires and stuff and then I went to work, doing campus tech support. The only source of reliable news at that time seemed to be the web.
I wasn't very moved, I guess. I didn't know anybody who had died, didn't even know anybody who knew anybody who died. A lot of people were still thinking it had just been an accident. But planes crash and people die. Less people died in 9/11 than died that year in motorcycle accidents. Sure, it happened all at once, and it was dramatic and horrible. But I didn't see anything about it then that "changed everything", and I still don't.
At about 5 that night the rumor started to go around that it had been Arabic terrorists, and naturally we were going to go to war in the Middle East in reprisal, and so that would almost certainly mean an oil embargo against the US, and that you'd better go out and get gas while you still could. My old truck was riding the "E" so I spent three hours in a gas line to fill up. Thankfully I picked a store where they weren't gouging the price - although now that I think about it I don't remember even the gougers charging as much as what I just paid at the pump last week - and filled up.
I remember, on the radio, a discussion panel talking about who could have possibly have been behind the attacks. A few people said "Osama bin Laden" but most people didn't believe it. It seemed like far too great a success for a guy whose previous attacks had killed only 50-60, whose greatest successes had been a little truck bomb in the WTC basement or a boat bomb against the USS Cole.
I remember the great outpouring of support around the world - how all of the animosity towards Americans, towards a percieved American arrogance, had evaporated in minutes. "We are all Americans today" wrote a German newspaper. I remember hearing about the heroism of the firefighters and the passengers on the fourth airplane. I remember an immense swell of pride as Republicans and Democrats came together. I was proud of the president I'd voted for, too, when he took the bullhorn at Ground Zero and promised us that those who had knocked these towers down would soon hear our reply. I had no idea at the time that he'd sat, dumbfounded, for a whole five minutes instead of taking any kind of action.
I remember a whole lot of things that had made me proud of my country and of the people who lived in it, the people who governed and protected it. I miss that pride more than any conservative could possibly understand.
quote:I remember a whole lot of things that had made me proud of my country and of the people who lived in it, the people who governed and protected it. I miss that pride more than any conservative could possibly understand.
Well said; I couldn't agree more.
As I was listening to music I thought of Ryan Adams' New York, New York, the only really excellent song I believe Adams has ever done. NOT a cover of the old Frank Sinatra standard, it's essentially a love letter to the city, and it was released just a few days before 9/11. It was a hit on Triple-A radio stations and (I think) crossed over to Hot AC.
This video was recorded on the Friday before the attacks. The towers are featured prominently.
When we backed the truck out of the shop, the radio came on. The local talk-radio host - a complete idiot - said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. My first thought was, "What a moron...." I thought he was refering to the bombing there a few years earlier and had gotten it wrong.
Then we heard that both towers had been hit, the Pentagon had been hit and a fourth plane was missing. John and I just looked at each other - there was nothing to say.
When we got to the jobsite, there was a TV on and we saw the towers burning. The lady said she was taping it for her husband. We didn't have time to watch it or talk about it for the rest of the day.
When I got home, I turned on the TV and it was on all four local stations. I switched back and forth between the three English-language stations to avoid repetition. That was the first I heard that the towers had collapsed and the fourth plane had been forced down by the passengers. As the evening wore on, the local stations switched one by one to scheduled programing.
For days afterward, everybody was saying that it didn't seem real, that it was like watching a movie.
From five years' perspective, I don't think it has changed my life much at all. I know it sounds horrible to say it, but other people's tragedies are all too easily forgotten.
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