So it's 9-11

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I suppose I’m typing this mostly as a cathartic exercise, although, in spite of some of the grumbling on the board about the anniversary, I also think that there should be some remembrance of the day in this little corner of cyberspace.

I’ll never forget that morning. I woke up somewhat late (10:00 AM) and wandered into the computer room to check my e-mail and log onto washingtonpost.com to get the daily news. I couldn’t figure why the Post wasn’t coming up and when I tried to log onto my backup news source, nyt.com, I still couldn’t get on. I finally said the hell with it turned on the TV figuring I’d just catch the late morning news. What I saw when I turned the TV on is something that I will never forget. I had to change the channel to be sure that it wasn’t just a crazy movie with wild special effects and unfortunately it wasn’t. I went back to the computer room to get the news since TV was so scattershot. I finally had to settle for USAToday’s website. I started reading finding out that the State Department had been bombed (which turned out to be false) and that as many as fifty-thousand people may have died. The internet wasn’t giving out much better information than television so I went back out and turned the TV on again. After watching the plane crash into the WTC over and over, and hearing that a plane was still missing, and seeing the devastation at the Pentagon I finally started crying. I remember it clearly, because before then I didn’t cry often. I was standing, gripping the back of a chair for support and I just wept. I couldn’t believe the loss of life.

And I couldn’t believe this was happening in my country. Sure there had been terrorist acts here before but none had been as devastating. The little security blanket I had lived under, believing that I was safe from these sort of things, was ripped off.

The next few days were kind of odd. I live near three major airports and Washington D.C. and it was odd to not hear or see airliners streaking overhead, instead I saw and heard military jets. When I went to school the last road I’m on before exiting for the University is the primary exit from BWI and it’s always crowded prompting me to have fight traffic to enter onto it. For the first time I could just hop right on and I wished for the alternative. All the radio stations played news making it hard to escape, but oddly I didn’t want to, staying glued to the radio and TV in case something else happened. Then hearing about the bigots who were targeting violence against Muslims only to feel like a hypocrite because I later get nervous when I would see groups of Muslim men. Especially in my job.

We found out that some things weren’t as bad as we thought (fifty thousand people hadn’t died) and some were worse (the missing plane had crashed).

I hoped going to work would help take my mind off of things, at least for a little while, but a day or so after the attacks we found out that the terrorists had stayed at a motel down the street from my work (a grocery store) and that they had shopped and sent money orders there. They usually shopped late at night and since I often work late I probably saw them, maybe even offered them assistance. I can’t be sure because my area has a heavy immigrant population and if I did they most likely just blended in with the steady stream of customers. The FBI sent agents to my work to interview some people and I remember getting a bit nervous when they interviewed an office worker whose parents are Palestinian but had grown up in D.C. and is about as American as you can get. Thankfully my worries were unfounded but I didn’t like that I had those worries.

But there was some positive things as well. The sudden up welling of patriotism was reassuring, especially given the racial, political, cultural and other divides that cause so much argument here. I wonder if it occurs to people outside the U.S. that our high level of patriotism is a bonding factor but not a limiting one. It really didn’t matter what color, religion or political affiliation you had, you were an American first. We have our problems with each other but we also have each others backs. That felt good.

I remember giving blood, something I stopped doing years ago but I just felt the need to do something, and helping out at a local donor center. It was wonderful to see hundreds of people willingly waiting for hours to do whatever they could to help.

Suddenly even the entertainment industry was into it, with books and shows whose entire profits were going to 9-11. Entertainment is criticized now for going back to same stuff they did before 9- 11 but I can’t blame them. They are businesses that are there to make a profit and they stepped up to the plate when they saw a need. Every sector in the United States wanted to help.

People were friendlier. They were more polite and more eager to help each other out. Heck, people’d even let you over in traffic, almost unheard of in my area.

Looking back on all that a year later I still feel the same way on many of things that I do now. I usually shed a tear or so, not crying per se, once or twice a week when I think about the events or I see something that reminds me of what happened.

Some things changed for me however. I no longer am so upset with having to worry. It just makes me more aware of the world and what is going on in it. I think I was more aware than the average joe before but now I pay a bit more attention to what’s going on. That’s always a good thing.

I lost my naivete about how safe I was in the world, also a good thing. Not that I didn’t know it before, it was just more of an intellectual “step off the sidewalk, hit by a bus” sort of thinking before. Now I know that I could die just because of political issues. Could be worse. I could have died on 9-11 and never had a clue as to why.

I started giving blood regularly again and have rekindled thinking of joining the Peace Corp or some such when I graduate. Just a need I feel to help better the world in some way. And it’d be nice if I could represent the more caring side of the U.S. when I do it.

Things changed in the world as well of course. That sense of unity that was there after 9-11, or seemed to be, looks to be falling apart. I can’t help but wonder how much of that is U.S. foreign policy and how much is ugly anti-Americanism. But that’s another thread.

People went back to being a bit less polite, but at least the American flags are still everywhere showing that when the next thing happens we’ll readily jump to each others aid again. Overall I’d say that’s a good thing because our way of life wasn’t overly disrupted for the negative, we just had a short reaffirmation of the positive.

This is kind of bizarre for me because I’m not the sort of person to express inner feelings like this, especially in a forum where thousands of people can see it. I just felt the need to do something to remember this occasion because I still carry wounds from that day and I know others do as well. Maybe this is more for me than for the people who are reading this and maybe this is just going to come across as rambling. But maybe somebody will connect with what I wrote and I’ll help them get something off their chest. I’m going to sign off and go to bed hoping that this is going to help someone and is a halfway decent memorial for the victims, even if it is mostly about me. But then again maybe it is for them. Because of how they died they in some ways helped me become a better person. Not the largest memorial but one none the less.

2

This is what I posted on September 12th, on my website’s front page.

I never broke down, I never cried. I wish I had. Now I know the answers to most of my questions, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand the third one.

Even though I’ve stayed home the last two days due to a nasty bout of food poisoning, I’m going to work tomorrow, and it’s going to be a calm, uneventful day.

3

I was in NYC this time last year. I had been in a training class in our main office across the street from the Empire State Building. They finally let us know what was going on at 10 - after they’d evacuated the rest of our building. I went first to my building on 31st Street. (Where I knew I wouldn’t have to wait in line for a phone. Whether I’d be able to get through anywhere was a different story.) Then, when they announced (prematurely) that the LIRR would be running again shortly, I left to wait outside Penn Station. The silence was eerie. There were no cars driving down 7th. Every time we heard a jet flying overhead, we, almost as one, looked up with fear in our eyes. It was truly one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had in my life. After three hours of waiting in the sun, they finally herded us around to the entrance to Penn Station that leads directly to the LIRR level. I needed to wait even longer for my train to board, and then for it to fill up enough for them to let us go home. By the time I finally arrived at lurkernomore’s station stop, I was getting home at the time I would have on a normal day.

I didn’t go to work again until Friday. Our office had been closed on Wednesday, and I just wasn’t sure I could face it on Thursday. Friday, I knew I was going to have to go through the City anyway, because I was meeting a friend of my sister’s in Jersey to travel to my sister’s bridal shower. So I went. And there were flyers everywhere requesting information on the missing. When I walked past the fire station next to my office, there were pictures of those they had lost. I didn’t make it to the front door of my office without tears.

I was among the lucky. I didn’t lose anyone. I didn’t have to see, with my naked eye, the horrors that took place that day. But I still get emotional every time I read a personal story of one that was lost. My eyes still become bright when I walk past the fire station, or when I look us and see where my section of 31st St. has been renamed Fr. Michael Judge Place (I think that’s the exact name of it anyway… Fr. Judge was out of the fire station I’ve spoken about.) In one year, the grief that I held for those who lost loved ones, for all of us who lost some sense of innocence, has abated, but it hasn’t disappeared. Sometimes, I don’t think it ever will. Sometimes, I hope it never will.

I’ll be in NYC today. Working at my office on 31st St. It’s not going to be easy for me. I’ve been a bit edgy about it all week. But I’m doing it because I have to. I expect more tears to be shed today. I expect it to be a quiet day in the office while my co-workers reflect as well.

But, honestly, I’d rather be anywhere else today.

4

Sept. 10, 2001, I went to my regular bar and watched the house blues band play. Drank a little too much beer, got too loud, etc.; to be honest, I don’t recall specifics of the evening. Not because I drank too much, but because the next day overshadowed it so much.

I work at the newspaper, on the Web site. I woke up to the clock radio, playing the radio. I keep it on the news channel, so when I woke up and foggily heard an announcer discussing something that appeared to be a News Event I shut off the radio, groaned, and took the dog outside, as I do every morning.

I came back in, took a shower, got dressed, and grabbed some socks and sat on the couch to put my socks and shoes on. For the hell of it, I turned on the TV, which I never do in the morning. The footage of the towers burning was showing. I stared at it like a fucking idiot, slowly dragging socks onto my feet, until the phone rang. Hearing it ring woke me up to the world. It was Ray at work. I grabbed the phone: “Yeah!” Ray: “Get your ass over here!” Me: “I’m on my way!” I hauled ass to work, listening to the radio, already thinking about how we’d cover this.

The first tower fell as I was listening to the radio at the corner of Poplar and Manassas.

I got to work, and even though we had no fucking idea what was going on, my boss was cool as a cucumber. He was amazing: “YOU cover the towers; YOU cover the missing plane; YOU cover the Pentagon; I’ll find art for the stories.”

I started working on the Towers stories and updating as I could. One of our salesmen was there, and as I had my head bent over the keyboard, he said, “Adam! Look!”

The second tower was falling.

We watched it go, shouting, “No! No!” I’ve never felt a spike in my heart as sharply as I did at that moment.

Anyway, I worked throughout the day, updating the stories and trying to make some sense. At about 4 p.m., I went home for a break and to let the dog out. I stepped out into the back yard.

It was so quiet.

I live in a frequently-used traffic corridor for the Memphis airport, and there are ALWAYS planes going overhead. You can always hear them. But not that day. Not a sound.

I’ll never forget that quietness. Nor any of the rest of it. The eighty hours I worked that week, the times I wasn’t working and could do nothing but sit on the couch and drink myself to sleep, the neighbors sitting on their front porches with candles because of some bizarre e-mail they’d received.

I still dream about it. I still lose sleep over it. And I can think of nothing I’d rather see than Osama’s head on a pole. I hate that it draws out that bloodthirstiness, but it does, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t.

Let’s hope Sept. 11, 2002 is a quiet day.

5

I was taking my dog to his pen in the backyard. Some people next door to me had, for some weeks, been renovating the house there, preparing it to be rented. I saw two people sitting in a pickup truck, grim looks on their faces, leaning forward, listening intently.

They told me, “a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”

My instant reaction was, “It’s finally happened. All that air traffic over New York City, all those tall skyscrapers. An accident was bound to happen, eventually.” I remembered the bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building, decades before.

I went in, turned it on CNN, and watched as the second plane struck. I remember that the announcers didn’t scream “Oh my God! Oh my God!” or anything like that. There was a huge, confused pause. Like, “I didn’t see what I just saw.”

Not long thereafter came the news that the Pentagon had been hit, and that a bomb had exploded at the State Department (which was false).

I’ll never, ever, forget that moment. Terror and uncertainty. I thought planes would be raining out of the sky all day long, destroying our major cities.

But then, those were the days when I didn’t comprehend that it was even possible to ground all flights in North America.

I’ve been reading a lot of the old SDMB threads from that time, the last few days. One thing that’s struck me is how the vast, vast majority of Dopers were so rational - let’s take our time, figure out who is behind this, and then seek justice (and, yes, revenge). And let’s not be indiscriminate in our retribution. I mean mere hours after the attacks. When it stung. When the horror and rage were thick. When the death toll was thought to be much, much worse.

The “nuke the entire Middle East” and “the U.S. had it coming, and under no circumstances should it fire a single bullet in response” extremes were marginalized instantaneously.

And it moved me again to read how the rest of the world stood as one with us in grief and support that day.

I provided a link around that time to a column by a Miami Herald columnist, that was the best thing I’d read to that point about that horrible day.

Here’s a link to the best thing I’ve read about the one-year anniversary date: Mitch Albom’s column today in the Detroit Free Press.

6

This is what happened to me that day in Ireland. I know there is no comparison whatsoever to the effect on Americans or those in New York, but I thought someone might be interested to see the effect of the horror on another country.

I was perusing the popbitch message board during my lunch hour. Someone posted “Have you seen what’s happening in New York?” Within a couple of minutes a picture of the WTC with gaping hole in it was posted on the site. One of my coworkers called from Spain with a message for me: “I know you’re a newshound, so you might be interested - a plane’s crashed into the World Trade Center.”

A bizarre coincidence: the week before I had seen a documentary on the National Geographic channel about a plane flying into the Empire State Building. The picture on popbitch looked similar, though larger. Holy shit, I thought. What a horrendous accident. I hoped there weren’t too many killed.

“Terrorists” said someone on the board. “How do you know?” was the response. I sent a text message to mrs jjimm: “plane crashed into WTC in NY. Turn on TV”. I got a reply within 30 seconds: “TWO planes”. She had been walking in the door of the house, and had turned the TV news on to see the second plane hit, live. The anchor was speechless.

Terrorists. The culprits? First thoughts: the Serbs. Allies had blown up a skyscraper in their bombing of Belgrade. Someone suggested anti-capitalists, but I couldn’t believe they’d be that crazy.

I went down to the TV room in our office, and tuned it in. There were live pictures of the two buildings burning. Gradually, more and more colleagues filtered into the room. We stared at the screen in silence.

Conor O’Cleary, the RTE business correspondent, who had been in New York that day covering a conference, was talking over a phone link. He was describing events as he perceived them, but then his voice choked. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop talking. I’m just after seeing someone jump.” Silence. The studio anchors were at a loss for words. The image of the second plane hitting was played again and again.

I went back up to my desk; CNN was down, BBC was down, ABCNEWS was down. A lot of the contributors to popbitch work for the British media, and the board was still up. The board contributors had stopped their usual trivial gossip to post only what was coming off the newsfeed tickers in their offices. The occasional sick joke was made and the normally cynical board members told them to fuck off.

My colleague finally got through on the phone to her sister in NY. She had been in the mall underneath the WTC, trying on her wedding dress. When the first plane hit the other building, she had had the immediate instinct to get the hell out. The security guards had tried to keep her inside, but she’d elbowed them out of the way and got one of the last subways out of Lower Manhattan. She was in her apartment, watching the buildings burn, crying hysterically.

Then I got another text message from mrs jjimm - “One of them has collapsed”. I ran back down to the TV, and my colleagues ran in behind me. We saw the huge pall of dust and smoke. “Oh my God,” someone breathed. The entire company was crowded into the small room, and we watched and watched, and then the second building fell. The death toll could be as high as 50,000. Those poor people.

“Car bomb on Capitol Hill” was the next thing I heard, back at my desk. Then “the Pentagon has been hit”. Then “four more planes’ transponders have been switched off and are heading over the Canadian border”. The Web was locked up, so I went outside and listened to the infinite bandwidth of the radio in my car. The various rumours were scotched one by one, but the plane down in Pennsylvania was confirmed. Holy shit, World War Three, was all I could think.

Back in the office, nobody was doing anything, and I told my boss that I couldn’t work on a day like this, and was leaving. He agreed. Several friends arranged to meet in a pub, and we and all the other drinkers sat watching the big screen, normally reserved for sporting events, broadcast images of what had happened, over and over again. Tony Blair came on, live, and the entire pub was silent, gauging the British response to the American situation. We all feared an ill-considered military reaction.

The next day, British warplanes banked over our house - by an agreement with the Irish Government they were protecting the Irish coast, and the British one by default, particularly round Sellafield nuclear power station on the English coast, a few miles over the water from Dublin. On my way to work, I drove past the US embassy, and there was a queue of people snaking round the building, lining up to sign a book of condolences in a little tent at the front of the building. Flowers were piled high by the gates. Phantom FM, the pirate radio station I listen to, had switched to relay a Chicago-based radio station for US expatriates in Dublin for that week. Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, announced a National Day of Mourning, scheduled for Friday.

Four years before, almost to the day, I was living in Connecticut, and a friend visiting from England and I decided to go into Manhattan. We were planning to go up the Empire State building, but I said “fuck that, let’s go up the biggest one”. We stood at the top of the WTC, freaking at the height. For nights afterward 9-11, I dreamed of being in that viewing gallery, and feeling the sickening lurch as the building collapsed beneath me.