There was much nicer weather on the east coast ten years ago than there is today. In fact, I spent the morning of 9/11 marveling at what an absolutely perfect day it was. Right now I have drizzle. Also, I spent the morning of 9/11 bitching with my co-workers about how dreadfully the New York Giants had played against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football. We’d all been up late watching the disaster, and we were dragging ass. Flight 175 flew directly over my workplace on its way into the South Tower, but by the time it hit, I was in a meeting. Later on, people rolled televisions into another meeting so we could watch replays of the first collapsing tower. Then we went home. Nothing was ever the same for me after that. Within 90 days, I was laid off. Before that could happen, my mail-sorting center was contaminated with anthrax, and I had to open my mail outside and wave it around before risking bringing it inside the house. Then we were told to buy bottled water and duct tape. Fighter jets could be heard in the sky overhead for months. And then the deep crazy began.
The 9/11 and anthrax attacks affected people differently. People I worked with lost brothers and cousins. Members of my parents’ church were among the victims. People in my hometown died. Friends narrowly escaped falling debris. The anthrax letters were mailed from a mailbox I occasionally used, and my mail-sorting center was shut-down for over a year.
It was personal for me. Very personal. It changed the trajectory of my life. But it wasn’t long before Rudy Giuliani had exploited the event to such a degree that I didn’t want to think or talk about it ever again. And I still don’t.
But if you want to talk about what you were doing that morning and what it means to you now, I won’t stop you.
This is all I can remember, and all I choose to remember:
http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/229085_10150170867624724_504979723_6797933_832104_n.j
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And:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/09/3934
That’s important. It’s very important. But there is no reason to forget what happened It’s also important to remember the Anthrax attacks. How many people are discussing that this morning?
Maybe, but as you do on this blog with filling a niche that needs to be filled, I think there are more than enough American-centric people out there to take care of that.
Boo:
K-Thug said basically the same thing you did this morning, and apparently is getting a lot of hate for it. Not sure why.
One of the forgotten news stories of 9-10-01 was a lawsuit accusing Henry Kissinger of numerous war crimes, and so for early the morning of the 11th I’d posted a story on how it wasn’t just Kissinger, and listing America’s many post-WWII incidences of terrorism and war crimes. An hour later, the first tower came down, the story was pulled shortly after that (my editor decided it wasn’t a day for uncomfortable truths), and I spent the next three days live-blogging the tragedy.
That context – having just freshly catalogued many of America’s worst crimes – colored my response, in that I was aware that the idea that “everything was different now” was self-serving BS, and that there was plenty of precedent for innocent people dying in our national affairs. At least initially, there was a substantial reaction along the lines of asking, “why did this happen?” Our national leadership made a point of funneling the emotional response into a desire for revenge instead – most notably by calling it an act of war rather than a monstrous crime, a decision that continues to haunt us – and all that wimpy introspective shit was soon forgotten by 90 percent of the public. But somehow, knowing the context immunized me.
We were on vacation in Flagstaff and woke up to the news. I cried upon seeing the footage. I wasn’t sure how we would get back to NY, thinking we would possibly drive all the way home in our rented Escort. We made our way home (got a flight) after adding a few days on to our trip.
Someone I have worked with for years lost her brother, a firefighter. I have never discussed it with her, not wanting to revisit her pain.
I don’t need all this ceremony to remember how I felt. It’s perfectly clear in my mind.
Remember that people live as we remember them. My grandmother died 30 years ago, and I bring her back to life by remembering her.
When your co-worker discusses her loved one, she has brought that person back to life, and that person is not forgotten.
Another memory on 9-10-01 is of Juan Williams, then host of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” spending an hour on national radio lobbing obsequious softball questions to a couple of conservative academics making the case that not only was American Empire a great thing, but the whole world, including the folks we ran roughshod over, were grateful for it.
Being a Village Pundit means never, ever having to say you’re sorry.
On 9/11/2001, I was in the car, driving my 14 YO daughter to high school. We were on S-E Bypass drive, just south of N-E Bypass, and I was listening to NPR. My daughter was saying something, and NPR mentioned that there was a report of a plane hitting the WTC, so I told her “Shhh, there is something weird on the radio” The rest of the day was a total loss, as mostly we spent time in the library room watching the towers go down, listening to ignorant TV commentators discuss their ignorant ideas. I had a deep depression because I knew that this would unleash Bush to do all sorts of dreadful things.
He exceeded my expectation.
Personally, I am far, far angrier about US responses to the events than I am about the events.
It’s all been absolutely grotesque — including the endless regurgitation of the day itself.
I was not affected by the 911 events beyond the fact that I was in NYC & had to deal with it, but had I been more directly impacted I don’t believe I’d be any more appreciative.
I’m just not a good Pavlovian American. The politics, the policies, the suffering, the imposed ignorance, the relentless development of the 911 brand into maximum corporate plunder have all been absolutely hateful to me & I can only respond to this anniversary on that basis. I’m nauseated.
A recent piece in the NYT by Dick Cavett also says it well:
The rest of the piece is about Mel Brooks – very funny and certainly worth reading.
Outstanding piece.
I’m far angrier about what took place before the event. I.E., Bin Laden determined to strike memo. They were either inept or criminal.
Personally, I’ll opt for ‘criminal’.
I lived just a few miles south of the Canadian border. The airspace was closed and thus all lifeline flights. I remember the day when a desperate family we had all been watching in the news made a run for it to get their child down to emergency care in a hospital jet. They went right overhead in a sky that carried not one other plane.
Friends who lived in BC and worked locally couldn’t cross the border as it was closed and they ended up sleeping for weeks on the floor of the factory where they worked.
And then came the black helicopters flying low to check out the pipeline, they would hover 30 feet over my yard and the co pilot would salute. Very unnerving.
Our post office closed. Then reopened. Then closed again. No one knew what was going on.
All the locals talked about carrying shotguns and driving to work with their wives to guard them.
Peoples reactions are what I remember. That and the eerie sound of quiet skies when it seemed America came to a halt.
For those of you who lost friends, family and loved ones in these attacks, it is obviously very personal and you have my utmost respect in regards to grieving and remembrance. For the rest of us, and particularly those who have chosen to exploit this crap ad nauseam for cynical political purposes, it was time long ago to move on — the animals that did these things have succeeded in fucking us up as a nation and society beyond their wildest dreams.
The idea that anyone has forgotten anything is ludicrous and the orgy of patrio-fascism that grips the media today is little but the dedication festival for the temples to bin Laden’s successes. It repulses me that the nation is obvious still mid knee-jerk.
The morning of 9/11, I was in CA and awoke in time to watch the second tower get hit and fall. I went to work and told everyone that the government would use this to infringe our civil liberties, handout contracts to cronies and settle unrelated scores like Iraq. Luckily that was in the SF Bay Area where I was killed on the spot. I wrote tons of stuff here and elsewhere saying that Bush would pose as a wildman President to start a pan-Asian conflict for resources against the dictators we’ve propped up for this eventual purpose. Why then? An impending global economic collapse. I don’t recall getting a lot of support from anyone for those ideas (at least presented in this constellation), or for doing much about it at the time, while we had the chance.
I do not share predictions anymore.
Funny how I never heard many full-throated defenses of people’s First Amendment rights back then…
There were plenty of folks saying such things, but none on TV.
and that’s about as far from funny as it gets, as you well know.
That was sort of my point (in contrast to Sarah Palin and her ilk constantly bloviating through the bullhorn about being “muzzled” from “speaking their mind”). As I recall, any opinion contrary to the republican party line back then was presumably “treasonous.”
Yeah, the whole “HOW DARE YOU! WE ARE IN A TIME OF WAR!” meme was way strong. Odd how it disappeared as soon as a Democrat takes office.
Perhaps that meme should be resurrected for this jobs bill push?
In May 2001 I was laid off in the IT bust. The Memorial Day at the end of the month my mom passed. During the summer I swore off TV news (and TV) for good because of the unending drumbeat of “Sharks, sharks, sharks, Gary Condit, Gary Condit, Gary Condit.” The news on the normal web sources was awful; Yahoo front-paged Ann Coulter in their Opinion slot.
I was preparing yet another resume and had just checked the news, which said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I immediately thought of the B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 and thought to check back later. My wife called from work and told me to turn on the TV about New York, with no further explanation. I did, and I spent the next three or four days glued to NBC’s coverage.
For the next year, I was numb. Because in the fall Enron collapsed and the recession looked like it would go deeper. It did. And the news reports continued on in the drumbeat to two wars I became more and more out of it. To the point that all the rationales for Iraq made sense because there was the evidence there, wasn’t there. Didn’t British intelligence have the goods?
In February 2004, next to the Ann Coulter opinion column on Yahoo was a news item. Liberal radio network Air America starts broadcasting. By that time I was what was called “a discouraged worker”. For about two months, all I did was listen to Air America. And I found out that I was not alone in my anger against the Bush administration and my doubts about what was going on. And Sam Seder on Majority Report introduced me to the blogosphere through interviews with Markos and Atrios and others.
Those are the experiences of someone who was very far away from the actual events, who knew no one affected by the events.
The anthrax attacks remain unsolved, perhaps deliberately so. It is remarkable that the media has not focused on them more. The Majority Leader of the Senate and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee were the targets of weaponized anthrax whose genetic material traces back to a strain at Iowa State University. It happened just at the moment that the PATRIOT Act was being considered. The FBI bungles the case by pursuing an innocent researcher who then sues the government. A second suspect commits suicide. And the evidence for that suspect is now in question.
And the national security state that has been introduced makes people reluctant to assert their rights to public assembly. Demonstrators at the White House are immediately hauled off to jail. Members of Congress can dodge reporters by calling for the Capitol Police. Local cops can wrestle to the ground a 71-year old man whose crime was wanting to hold his member of Congress accountable.
– the words that should be engraved on the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
The anthrax attacks remain unsolved, perhaps deliberately so. It is remarkable that the media has not focused on them more. The Majority Leader of the Senate and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee were the targets of weaponized anthrax whose genetic material traces back to a strain at Iowa State University.
Two things. 1.) Isn’t it interesting that Leahy doesn’t even seem to care any more about this? It was an attempt on his life after all. 2.) How do you know the Iowa State part? I haven’t seen that mentioned elsewhere.
Marcy Wheeler has been tracking the news reports on this all along. When Ivins was the suspect one of the news reports mentioned that the strain was an Iowa State strain that was used back in the days when the US was actively pursuing biological weapons that had been identified on the samples of anthrax they the FBI collected from the letters. It was that information that required the FBI to discard the idea that it was associated with al Quaeda or Saddam Hussein.
The mysterious part of the whole thing is the letter that was sent to the National Enquirer editor who was the first victim. What was the motive there?
Motive? Someone that wanted to throw off the scent? I don’t know.
Damn brutal way to throw off the scent
throw off via the only non-politician? also, publicity
If we want to remember anything, it should be the efficiency with which the first responders (sorry, Rudy but it’s not your show) and ordinary people of New York responded. The very cooperation of American government and civil society that the right despises.
And the generosity and compassion of the citizens of Gander, Newfoundland who took in many air passengers stranded by the shutdown of air transportation.
I also remember the brave people on the plane that crashed in PA, ordinary people who showed extraordinary courage. i don’t need anniversaries to remember them, I have thought of them often these past 10 years.
Mr. Rogers did a wonderful show about why we mark anniversaries of terrible things, not just happy things, and it all made sense at the time, when I heard it in conjunction with (maybe) the first anniversary of september 11. But all the sleezy politicians who capitalize on this make me sick, as do all of the things that have been done in the name of 9/11.
As others have said, most of our damage has been self-inflicted. Bush and his cohorts should be hiding their heads in shame. Instead, he’s proud to have been the president on that watch. In what world does even make sense?
One of the things most difficult for me today is the number of ppl I know who lived near the site or participated in rescue efforts and have died of cancer since.
I was in class at University of New Orleans. When we got out of class we all rushed to tv and I couldnt believe my eyes.
I didnt not know anyone personally, and I thought I’d never see anything more horrible and then 4 years later Katrina hit my city and the horror was more close to home.