…we found ourselves with a Joel Schumacher film come to life. My neighbor was worried that it wasn’t safe to send the kids to school while I was busy freaking out because I couldn’t get in touch with Kathleen.
For me, it’s just memories. For those who lost loved ones in the disaster, it left a gaping hole in their lives that will never be filled.
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Amen.
Never forget.
Forget what? [blinks innocently]
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More seriously, I did have a bad moment yesterday – my closest friend is in the Army (4/2, 202nd BSB). He was scheduled to redeploy to Iraq on Wednesday. However, there were a couple of snafus in scheduling the aircraft, and they finally took off around 10am – on September 11.
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I kept reassuring his wife that this wasn’t an omen, that this plane was flying from one military base to another, and that literally everyone on the flight was a trained warrior – but it was still a little surreal…
It is also our mutual friend Leah’s birthday. She would have been 49 today. It was a good way to forget for the few years after on her day. Her son wrote a beautiful paragraph on his FB page:
“That day has arrived once again. In all my life I have not hated a day more than this one, but this year I will not mourn. I will not mourn the fact that on this day my mother will have turned 49. I will not mourn that she is not here to enjoy another birthday. NO I will celebrate the life that my mother had and the life that she gave me. And to her friends that she and I both knew love her, do the same. Celebrate this occasion for we all know that is what she would have wanted from us.”
l’chaim, Leah
I had moved out of New York at that point and the urge to just go back was so strong that day.
It was more like a Roland Emmerich movie… with all the running from collapsing buildings and a fighter pilot president.
But let’s never forget the events of that day and the days that followed… ever.
That was my thought. Unless he meant that 9/11 was a nightmare on the level of Batman & Robin.
I had fallen asleep in the wee hours of the morning after nursing our first child, our 6 week old baby girl. “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (of all things) had been on TBS as I’d zonked out. We didn’t have cable in our bedroom, so whatever we could pick up from Atlanta was what we got. When I awoke, sun was coming in the window, and I stared at the tv, trying to figure out why the movie was still on, rather than “Saved by the Bell” or some such. It took a minute for everything to come into focus…realizing that it obviously wasn’t the same movie…thinking that surely there hadn’t been a movie where that had happened…figuring out that it was actually a live news feed.
We went downstairs, called to check on my husband’s family, and watched CNN. I remember just sitting on the couch in shock, thinking over and over about the kind of world into which we’d just brought a child, and wondering how this would affect her, affect all of us. As terrified as I was even then, I don’t think I could have imagined that she would be 8 years old, and still we would be hearing casualty reports from the resulting war on a daily basis. I think that I would not have believed it.
I recall someone around that time, maybe The Onion, saying Jerry Bruckheimer. Schumacher’s not a good metaphor, because he at least has made some good films.
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On that day, I just walked around my home town and Hoboken, taking pictures of the skyline. One of them was taking from the Union City Boxing Club, and is in UC’s Wikipedia article. Interestingly, the Club was demolished, and rebuilt as Firefighters Memorial Park, which opened about a month ago.
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Union City, NJ lost three citizens on 9/11. At Liberty Plaza, which was built as a memorial to them two years ago, there was supposed to be a ceremony tonight. I don’t know if it’s still on, given the rain.
Thoughtful Rememberance, 6 comments.
“F U, your side of the aisle is a bunch of A-holes!!!”, 142.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
I have different emotions on 9/11. One is profound sadness and loss form what happened to my city. One is pride in how my city came together.
The other is anger. Anger at George Bush and Rudy Giuliani for usurping the attack. Making it as if it was a personal attack on them and using it for there own ends.
Bush was in a school in Florida when it happened. I had friends in the towers and others living nearby.
There was a line about Iraq that it was as if we had attacked Mexico after Pearl Harbor. Well that is what we did. My nation invaded a country without cause.
It is hard to reconcile the harm that was brought to this country in the name of 9/11 with the tragedy that happened.
After reading this post, it took me several minutes to figure out what you were talking about.
I had absolutely no idea today was the anniversary.
It’s strange how differently people react to events like this. To so many people it seems to be the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the World, but it never made that big an impact on me. (I hope that doesn’t make me sound too callous. I certainly recognise it as a tragedy for everyone who was there, or knew somebody who was there.) Maybe geography has something to do with it, since I’ve never been farther East than Branson, but I don’t know… The Oklahoma City bombing was pretty close, and I’ve actually been to the spot where it happened, but that wasn’t a major defining event in my life, either.
I’ve tended to see the actions of our Government following the attack as an even more important tragedy.
I’m not sure what precisely I intended to say here. I apologise if I accidentally upset anyone. (Once again, I’m not trying to belittle the trauma anyone else experienced because of the attack.)
For quite some time after 9/11, it was a dominant subject of discussion on the rec.arts.sf.fandom newsgroup
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And at some point, in response to a comment someone made wondering how long it was going to be before he began to feel less badly, i quoted David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” novel, “Rolling Hot”:
A civilian reporter is riding (and fighting) in one of the Slammers’ combat cars, trying to get to the provincial capital where his sister is the Governor’s wife. (The basic storyis essentially inspired by the Tet attack in Viet Nam.) After hours of terror, fatigue and slaughter (both by and of the members of the task force they’re part of), he asks the car’s commander when things will get easier or better.
And the Lieutenant says “It never gets easier. It gets over, though.”
Even from France it was the craziest thing to see happen, it was so unreal at first. I can remember that i remained stuck to my TV screen for maybe 3 days, just wondering if some other attacks would happen and what the international consequences would be. I remember these days very clearly, and how much that whole thing made me think and how shocked i was…
From here, the horror of what people went thru was quite abstract, maybe too far away, i don’t know… What remained was the “show”. & i remember thinking that the reason why this terrorist act was such a “success” wasn’t as much because it killed 3000 innocent people than the fact that it gave the whole world just what you said : a Joel Sumacher movie… for real.
These days i realized how dematerialized our world has become, how the spectacular pictures of a plane crashing into a building (that also was a symbol) was more shocking than the death of 3000 people. I also realized how the so-called “news” are like a show to many people, a never-ending serial with a new episode every day until the end of time… i caught myself watching this as you would watch a drama, wondering what would happen and stuff… I also remember thinking that murdering people in the name of God was just the same as murdering God himself.
I don’t know… it gave a lotta food for thoughts for every one, and lots of things to write about for us writers…
We have a new special ed. student, he’s a non-verbal first grader and he’s a refugee from Iraq.
His parents sent him to school today wearing a T-shirt and shorts that both said “Osama”. His teacher had him go to the office for a change of clothes.
My family and I were on vacation on Cape Cod. Needless to say it was a vacation unlike any other. Souvenir shops, candy stores, you name it, each had small TVs set up inside to provide news updates for the vendors and for whatever customers happened by.
No amount of shopping, strolling, and dining out could erase my deep and profound feelings of fear, uncertainty, and powerlessness. I really really thought the world’s number was up.
That description reminds me of Lou Reed’s song “The Day John Kennedy Died”:
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“…but most of al I dreamed that I forgot the day John Kennedy died…”
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Because you never do.
First of all, I think it’s wonderful you put up this tribute. I had a grandmother in NYC that day, and I was so incredibly worried she had been caught in the rubble or in the area… Thankfully, she was outside that area and came home fine.
But for everyone who lost someone in the attack, this was a day never to be forgotten… I don’t think anyone could.
Thanks for remembering. Let’s hope everyone else does, too.