On this eve of 911’s fifth anniversary, I think it’s a good time to bring up Everything Changed, Cartooniverse’s post immediately afterward.
It is one of the most moving pieces I have read about the whole incident, including ‘professional’ articles.
Oh, and 'verse? When I was searching for it, it took at least five times as long as it should have, because I kept reading the other interesting-looking threads you have started.
DD
I’ll add this link too, a real-time SDMB thread on that day.
I’m just reading that - my hair is standing on end…
Looks like there were reports of a 3rd plane hitting the WTC…? :dubious:
There were several erroneous reports during the first couple hours, Lobelia. The one I remember most clearly was that the Washington mall had been hit or was on fire. The first few hours of news coverage were filled with “we’re receiving reports that…” It took a while to sort out substantiated reports from the misinformation.
I know Toons has started a thread on the anniversary every year since and the discussions and updates have been fascinating and thought provoking.
Thanks for starting this thread, DesertDog.
GT
Yes, thank you.
Desert Dog, my thanks to you for starting this. Perhaps it will be a place where people stop in to share where they are at about all of this, what they feel about how the media machine has handled it, how their day has gone wherever they live on the planet, and so on.
Ivylass, aaah yes that day’s thread in real time. Every year I’ve read that again- I think you’ve brought it back to us a few times, yes? It’s chilling to me to read it, because I look at the timestamps. It lets me fix in my head where I was and what I was seeing opposed to what Dopers all over the city, country, planet were seeing and feeling and how we all were reacting- and acting. Gosh, the slew of mis-information that day was incredible.
The sunlight is cutting low across the Rocky Mountains, as I gaze out at them up above Boulder, Colorado right now. In a little while I fly back home. ( what irony- flying on September 11th. ).
What a difficult day for all of us. Much peace to the Dopers.
Cartooniverse
Re-reading the thread, with minute-by-minute updates, took me so completely back to 9/11/01 that I had to struggle for a minute to realize that it hadn’t just happened. I felt the same way after watching a documentary last week called Inside the Twin Towers. It’s harrowing; it intermixed re-enactments with interviews with survivors who worked in the WTC.
Cartooniverse, last year you mentioned you had lost contact with your doctor buddy. Have you called him lately?
What I can’t believe about that thread is how many people took the time to get away from the TV and post. If I had been around a TV that morning, I’d have been frozen to the spot for hours.
I didn’t post that day, partly because I had trouble getting on (I was on dial-up then), and partly because I was riveted to the TV. The computer is in the den, and there’s no TV in there.
I figured a lot of people have the computer near their TV and can post and watch at the same time.
Oh, and if anyone checks my sign-up date - I signed up right around that time, and my membership was lost during the Winter of Our Missed Content. I had to sign up again after the board came back.
I didn’t post much that day – aside from the fact that I wasn’t even a lurker here at the time, after work I was totally glued to the set, the news sites, anything I could access on the incident. The wife and I flipped between reports, visited CNN, ABC, NBC, AP, Reuters, whoever had coverage, so we could absorb everything surrounding the incident. Frankly I was just too shocked and apalled at the incident to form enough cogent, lengthy thoughts to write about. I was totally in input mode at that time.
Five years later, and now that I’m a member here, I read through the entirety of the original 9/11 thread and Cartooniverse’s experiences at ground zero and it was like being taken back to the moment it happened and reliving it minute by minute from the point of view of many of those whom it affected most. Just like that day five years ago I was glued to the thread as though watching the news reports, and felt compelled to read each subsequent page.
I spoke to my wife about 20 minutes ago during lunch and she mentioned that some of the survivors, or spouses of survivors, didn’t want to attend today’s ceremony because they just wanted to get on with their lives, and the ceremonies and extensive coverage showing the attacks again weren’t helping. I can understand their point of view, but at the same time I think it is important that the ceremonies be held and the footage shown so that we don’t forget the details of the horrors that were visited upon the American people that day by twisted, cowardly terrorists. Not that anyone could, really, but if nothing else it is cathartic, and serves as a reminder that we can’t let our guard down, not for a second. 9/11 had been brewing for 8 years and all manner of bureaucracy and complacency got in the way of being properly prepared for the possibility of those types of attacks. That cannot happen again.
I watched the excellent documetary on CBS last night, and they had edited it to update some information. The chief of the Ladder Company they had spotlighted lost his brother, also a firefighter, and he said he visits the memorial wall because, experiencing the pain again brings his brother closer in his memory.
The moving on thing is important. Lots of people are impacted all the time by life-altering events. It ain’t like I have the corner on the Sept. 11th attacks and an emotional response to it. Keeping a sharp eye and some semblence of balance ( to me, at least ) means that denial is useless. It isn’t just some day of the week. OTOH, one doesn’t wallow in it.
Today is the proper day, this week is the proper week for me to revisit my memories and feelings about it. I do not envy family members who survived a dead loved one- every anniversary is a public event that may- for some- rip away a delicately forming scab.
Personally I think it’s darned healthy to move on. There has been much said about the widows and widowers, and how they have gotten on with their lives. As well they should.
It’s that yawing chasm between “never forget” and " never let go".