September 11

Posted on September 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Bob Cesca

No politics and no posts today in deference to September 11. If you’d like to add your thoughts about the 10 year anniversary of that tragic day, feel free to post them in the comments.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1432102542 Tim Neuenhaus

    9/11/2001 The 100 mile observer.

    On the morning of 9/11/2001 I was in the parking lot of a Circuit City store waiting for it to open. While waiting I remember looking up through my open sunroof at the clearest deepest blue sky I think I’ve ever seen, I was listening to Howard Stern and I was watching a small Cessna airplane flying over. It was peaceful and incredibly beautiful that morning. Gary from the Stern show broke in to the broadcast and said “A plane hit the World Trade Center” and Howard said “How? It’s a crystal clear day” I listened for a bit and the store opened, they had it on the TV’s there, I bought the computer part I needed and headed off to work, it was then that the 2nd plane hit. It’s strange, but I remember every word I said that morning and that sky, that crystal clear sky. There are so many families that suffered unspeakable loss that day, I lost nothing… my life wasn’t changed in any significant way, it just went on, I as an observer 100 miles a way of a horrific act, and although I lost nothing I don’t need a day like today to remember…all I need is a crystal clear blue sky.

    • dildenusa

      I was at a Verizon (back then it was called Bell Atlantic) central office in downtown Philadelphia. I worked for a company that doesn’t exist anymore called Lucent Technologies (it was bought out by the French telecom company, Alcatel about 2-3 years ago). Anyway, I had to relable some switching equipment that was labled incorrectly. The Verizon tech came to get me and told me I had to leave the building immediately. Verizon declared an emergency and only Verizon personal were allowed in the switching offices. Before I left I went to the break room to watch the video of the towers falling (by this time it was already about 10:30 am). I left and took the subway home. I didn’t realize that the entire downtown Philadelphia had been evacuated. The subway was very crowded but nobody was panicking. Six months later I was laid off because Lucent made bad business decisions, not because of 9/11. Then I moved to northwest Arizona but I couldn’t find a job in telecommunications because so many other telecom companies made bad business decisions. So I drove a truck and worked part time doing other things. So my life changed but not so much from 9/11.

  • Dan_in_DE

    I rode on up a mountain on my crossbike this afternoon – just to get out for a little exercise and a little peace and calm outside the city here. I wanted to clear my head a bit. Stopped to rest at a mountain top-beer garden, and had a glass of Weißbier. And as cynical as I am about all this shit, I still got caught up thinking about 9/11 for most of the time (before distracting myself with conversation with some frienly locals).

    America is the tragic hero in this tale, stymied by that classic character flaw, vengefulness.

    • dildenusa

      Bush and Cheney both forgot an old saying about vengence. And I don’t know where it came from or who said it first but it goes something like this,

      Vengence is a dish best served cold.

      • http://twitter.com/KenInCO Ken Johnson

        I knew it from The Wrath of Khan, but it looks like it goes back a bit further than that.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge#Proverbially

        • NewlyLiberated

          It’s an allusion to Les Liaisons Dangereuses, (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

          La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid” which means, “Vengeance is a dish eaten cold.”

  • Robert Scalzi

    If the anniversary and the horrific images it conjours up are bothering you Remember that today is also Grandparents day, try and think good thoughts and call your grandparents today, if you are a grandparent – have a drink in your honor, if your grandparents have passed (as all mine have) have a drink and a toast to them, Don’t get bogged down in depression, do something POSITIVE, whatever you do today try and BE POSITIVE . GRANDPARENTS ROCK !!

    • dildenusa

      OK. Since you put it that way, I can’t help but boast.

      • Robert Scalzi

        AWESOME !!! so happy and innocent !!

      • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

        Thanks for that, dilden. Babies make the world seem like a good place.

  • dildenusa

    Here we are, standing on a tiny rock which rotates on it’s axis like a top, and travels through spacetime around a midsequence yellow dwarf star on the edge of a mid to large size galaxay, in a star system that could be one of billions of star systems, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The reality of the universe is truely awsome. The truth is that we are in the galactic boondocks. If we saw the reality of the downtown Milky Way, we would be truely shocked at the true nature of the universe.

    I want to refrain from calling the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition bullshit. Let’s call it myth instead. Because most correct thinking people understand that religious traditions are totally divorced from reality. So why do religious fundamentalists today, hold sway over hundreds of millions of people. It has to be plain and simple ignorance. The Hebrew Torah is a myth. Judaic history didn’t begin until after the death of the mythological composite figures, Moses and Joshua. In Deuteronomy 7:2 GOD tells the Israelites to completely destroy the nations inhabiting the land of Canaan. OK. But archeological evidence shows that the nations inhabiting Canaan were vassal states of the Pharoah of Egypt. The Israelites were slaves of the Canaanite nations and already occupied the land. A small contingent may have come up from the Sinai Desert but the idea that two hairy old white men, one of whom lived in the sky, met on top of Mount Sinai and exchanged stone tablets is a myth. The slaves who revolted against the Pharoah followed certain customs to insure a healthy life for themselves and their families. This is where the laws of Moses come from. So what about Jesus and Mohammed. Well, Jesus is another composite figure, built around the people who rebelled against the Roman occupiers of Judea. Well, Saint Paul was a good salesman (I prefer huckster) and before long, the lamb of GOD on the sacrificial cross was a religious icon. The only religious figure that can be thought of as an actual historical person was Mohammed. And he may have been a sex addict, drank wine, and taken hallucinogenic substances.

    So, Osama bin Laden is dead. Unless of course one subscribes to certain conspiracy theories. And I think one of those theories says that the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was a false flag operation by Israel and the CIA. That’s just bullshit. Now, I do believe in the theory of unconscious conspiracies. For example, Bush and Cheney had knowledge that bin Laden would try to stage an attack on US soil and that there were al Queda operatives in the US. They proceded to ignore this knowledge. The CIA and FBI both failed in their job. This is part of the unconcious conspiracy. I also believe that Israel was providing secret intelligence to the Saudi Arabian intelligence services who in turn was providing bin Laden with support. But a full on conspiracy between the CIA and Israel? No way.

  • http://twitter.com/groobiecat Groobiecat

    I was watching CNBC Market Watch when the news came in, and I was getting ready for work by taking the Cleveland Park metro down to Union Station where I was working as a contractor for the US Treasury. The commentators were confused, as it was just the first building that had been hit before I left for work, and they were speculating that it was probably an accident. But I knew that it was no accident. I’d been waiting for years, wondering when it would happen. Because anyone who had been aware of US policy and our position in the world had to know that it wasn’t an “if” but a definitive “when” scenario.

    As I sat on the subway, heading to Capitol Hill, and it was still not confirmed to be a terrorist attack, I admit that I selfishly feared for my life, because I was in a perfect place for a second attack–the DC metro system. Later that day, as federal managers ignored all FEMA guidance for handling a terrorist attack, and left the building like rats leaping off a ship, I walked to a friend’s house, borrowed a bike, and rode along the Potomac back to my place in upper NW DC. The smoke emanating from the Pentagon was eerie, and seemed somehow not real, just as the main roads, including Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues were empty of cars, but full of white collar employees, ambling like zombies, back to their respective homes to deal with what had happened.

    I remember lighting candles in the windows of my apartment that evening, as hundreds of thousands around the area did that night. And the one lasting memory, aside from the abject horror of the lives lost before I went to sleep that night, was that, for the first time in a long time, we were once again, one country with a single minded purpose. How quickly that feeling changed….

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      How quickly that feeling changed….

      Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about today.

      I’m a little depressed.

      • http://twitter.com/groobiecat Groobiecat

        I think your post is a sentiment shared by many in the aftermath. We were all one America for the first time in a long time, and I too supported “The President.” I even wrote a song about 9/11, as did soooo many (Neil Young comes immediately to mind: “Let’s Roll”) who needed to express their feelings through some sort of creative endeavor.

        But as you rightly recall, the Iraq war transformed worldwide opinion from sympathy to anti-Americanism, and the US was itself transformed from victimized world leader to vengeful pariah. The collective spirit of unity and purpose was completely undone by the Bush administration’s jingoistic revenge fantasy, heralding a new, dark period of disunity, division, and decidedly uncivil cold war.

        It’s hard not to be depressed, but for a brief time, we were one people.

        I’ll take a look at your blog, Nicole. Please feel free to do the same with mine. I’m at http://groobiecat.blogspot.com. Cheers.

        • ranger11

          It actually changed pretty quickly. I wanted to give Bush the benefit of the doubt but even the “bullhorn” speech was an exercise in shitkickery. I knew when I saw all the flags go up combined with the with us or against us love it or leave it 60′s style rhetoric we were in for some trouble.

  • GrafZeppelin127

    [cross-posting, editing, expanding]

    Ten years ago this morning, I was arriving at school (I was teaching at a large high school in Queens) when I heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. I could see the black smoke in the southern sky as I walked from the car to the building. I went inside, told the ladies in the office what I had heard and seen, and then went up to the 6th floor cafeteria to have a better look, just in time to see the south tower erupt in a fireball. I and a number of others, students and faculty, stood numbstruck by those windows for several minutes, just staring at the unfolding cataclysm.

    Then something happened that not only will I never forget, but which angers me to no end even to this day, not just because of what happened but because I still remember it so vividly, and because it’s my most vivid memory of 9/11.

    Someone came in; I think it was a new teacher whom I didn’t know, and to this day I don’t remember who it was. But someone came in, looked out the windows, and said out loud, “See? That’s why you gotta vote Republican!!” I remember feeling disgusted that this would be the first thing on anyone’s mind at a moment like that, and I don’t recall if I said anything out loud, let alone whether I pointed out that at that particular moment we had a Republican President, a Republican Congress, a Republican governor and a Republican mayor.

    I guess in retrospect I’m still angry at this person for taking 9/11, before it was even called 9/11, and injecting it with political partisanship within mere minutes after it began. This callous and stupid comment unfortunately set the tone for the next several years, as I knew deep down even at that moment that it would. I just thought it would have been nice to get through the day without it.

    I don’t remember how long it took for Rush Limbaugh to start ordering his minions to blame the attacks on Bill Clinton. Was it a week? Did this person in the cafeteria say it on that day, after I admonished him, if I did at all? I don’t remember. When did the sincere feelings of fellowship and patriotism become cynical partisan manipulation? When did my decent, reasonable, right-leaning friend become a vicious, hateful and insufferable right-wing bloviator?

    So much was ruined on that day. I was lucky that I didn’t lose anyone close to me, and I’m thankful for that. But it’s still hard for me to think about, because of all that went wrong afterward. I doubt we, any of us, will ever get over it.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      But it’s still hard for me to think about, because of all that went wrong afterward. I doubt we, any of us, will ever get over it.

      Exactly how I feel. And as I said on my own site, if a catastrophic event such as 9/11 occurred today, there would certainly be NO unity in this country. Republicans simply would not respond in the way that Liberals did then.

      • ranger11

        If this were to happen again with a Democratic president the gates of hell would be opened. It would be BAD.

        • dildenusa

          I’m sorry but I have no fear whether it would happen again with a democrat or republican in the Whitehouse. I don’t see any difference in the outcome. In fact, we should fear those self serving scum bags (most of whom are tea party republicans) who would use terrorist attacks to implement their own brand of terror called the fascist police state which we already have implemented to a degree. The idea that the innocent have nothing to fear is bullshit. Terrorists have no fear other than not completing their mission. They have no fear of being caught. It is us the innocent that should fear being wrongly accused by some self serving ass hole.

          • ranger11

            That’s what I would mostly fear at this point: the Republicans. I was always afraid if it happened again with Bush as President. I know this might sound a bit of hyperbole but internment camps for Muslims and/or liberals. I know it would be argued for in certain quarters. In our brave new political culture nothing seems shocking to me anymore.

  • incredulous72

    It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been ten years since the attacks. I live here in New York and it’s like it happened yesterday. I worked evenings during that time, and I remember getting a phone call from one of my friends way too early for me that Tuesday morning, telling me that a plane just went into one of the towers.

    “A plane went into one of the towers?!”

    I turned on the television and watched as the second plane hit. It was as if I was watching a movie. I lived five miles away from the World Trade Center.

    I’ve only recently (in the last 6 months) been down to the Ground Zero site. I could never bring myself to go down there after the attacks. It’s prime real estate and WE HAD to rebuild, but to me that site will always be a burial ground. I didn’t lose anyone personally that day, but in a sense we all lost something that we’ll never get back. It’s made us as a country harder, meaner, and alot more fearful (even though we don’t want to admit it). I think we lost a bit of our humanity that day, or maybe our belief in humanity.

    And we need to get it back.

    • dildenusa

      Ten Earth years is a nanosecond in spacetime. In 1976 Jackson Brown predicted the walls and towers tumbling down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnXhY_RGNjo but he was actually speaking of the walls and towers of Babylon. It was in reference to the fact that there are still have-nots in our world today and that our abuse of Earth was unsustainable.

      Sociologists tell us all about haves and have-nots. But what they don’t tell us is that 25 thousand years ago (a blink of an eye in spacetime) we were all have-nots. That is why we developed myths to help us through tough times. Those myths aren’t necessary any more but we still have self serving people invoking those myths to justify and rationalize away the fact that there are still have-nots in our world today.

  • Lexamich

    Yeah, the ceremony just wrapped up just a block from where I live. Today, you could hear a pin drop on the street save for the pomp that went along with the showcase. September 11 might as well become a national holiday officially.

    I could hear the choir singing outside, and I must admit I welled up a little. Those kids are good. I listened to each and every name throughout the morning and afternoon on C-Span.

    I don’t know what else to say that would not be construed as political in this thread.

    I believe I’ve indulged the ordeal I went through that day on here before, and I do not have the energy to go through it again. Let’s just say that I had to walk a very long way home from work in midtown, walk around the perimeter of the tragedy with dozens of people, took a bus once I got back in Brooklyn, met with some friends, hooked up with my brother’s family and spent the week over at his crib for going on two weeks. I could not go to my own home for a week, and even after that I had no desire to leave the comfort of my brother’s house. I’d just started working full-time just a month prior. I was extremely optimistic.

    The thing one has to understand about 9/11/01 is that it was such a clear, almost serene morning until those planes hit. We all went about our day normally. Then – BOOM!!! Everyone was panicking. The commotion turned to horror. It was something I do not hope to experience ever again. Consoling people I did not know, worrying about my own safety. Seeing the odd child out of the corner of my eye and wondering – sometimes out loud – whether anyone was keeping them shielded from what had just happened. Seeing the police just as confused as us civilians and walking us in circles, but otherwise keeping a level-head. The screams, the tears, the anger, the confusion. The smoke cloud billowing all around us. I did not understand that both buildings were gone, you see. None of us did. We thought the smoke was coming from fires.

    Oh, and the noises. I’ve talked about the screams and whatnot, but the trucks and sirens and calls for attention.

    You know what, I was just happy to have gotten away from all that. Once I was at my brother’s I did not want to move, but I had a new job to which I was committed. We all got back out there and we looked after one another in those following weeks, I tell you. Some of the eyeballing my have come from suspicions, but if shit went down, someone was going to get jumped and probably beaten to death AFTER the cops got there, if you get me. There was no place for petty squabbles. The tension in the city was thick like a brick. Everyone was stiff with anxiety, and ready to pounce on the first thing that even appeared unsavory. For the most part, we were all good. I recall having an extended conversation with a few out-of-towners about a week after the event. Yeah, those out-of-towners were coming out of the woodwork then. They just showed up, and didn’t know their way around the city. It took a few minutes for me to understand that as I was talking with this one dude, he was working at Ground Zero, and didn’t have a place to crash. And you could tell he needed to crash. The others with this one dude I was friendly with were from out of town, too. They had only just met I suppose the prior week, so they weren’t that familiar with one another. Some of these dudes I heard slept in the cars they drove down in. Others had room and board from funds they scrounged up themselves. They came to NY, though. Good people came.

    Oh, where are we all now…

    Sorry, started veering off into “political” territory.

    I would not be surprised if a few of those men are now self-declared tea party folk, though.

    I have to mention this fact. I need to.

    Something, not just tragedy brought those men to our state.

    Never mind, I’m about to get worked up.

    Have a good evening, Cescans.

  • D_C_Wilson

    I was working for the Pennsylvania Department of Health ten years ago this day. I called an engineer for a routine issue about a permit application (At the time, I was in charge of public swimming pool permitting for the state) when he told me about the first plane hitting the WTC. A few minutes later, we called into a meeting with the bureau director. We got the news: Two planes had hit the WTC, another had hit the Pentagon, and the fourth went down in Somerset County. The entire state government was in a panic. The Turnpike was shut down. Planes were being grounded.

    The entire experience was surreal. The Capital Complex in Harrisburg, a region normally bustling with activity during the day, become a ghost town almost instantly. Everyone stayed indoors. Government buildings went into a state of lock down.

    I remember the mixture of emotions from that time: Shock, horror, but with a feeling of resolve that America will pull together and rise above it.

    Sadly, the next ten years of republicans shamelessly exploiting it; invoking it whenever any new policy was questioned; calling “patriot day”; using it to justify the Iraqi invasion; has left me deeply cynical about the whole experience. Watching people like Rudy Guiliani and Dick Cheney using this tragedy to further their own agendas has sickened me.

    I don’t buy the truther theory that Bush was somehow behind the attacks. But I do believe that he and his administration saw the attacks as a club that they could use to bludgeon any opposition into submission. It enabled them to act with impunity as they committed one illegal and unconstitutional act after another, even as they abandoned any efforts to catch the man responsible for the attacks.

    I find myself on this day with feelings at rage, not just at Al Qaeda, but also with how shamelessly the previous administration exploited this tragedy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000494583886 Holly Gilham Woodruff

    I worked for an airline 10 years ago and our plane was off the ground and on it’s way to ORD. We were busy getting our morning chores done and our supervisor called from home to tell us to turn the TV on in the ops room. My first thought was an air traffic controller or a small plane pilot had made a horrible error. Right while we were watching the second plane hit. Then all hell broke loose because we knew this was some sort of an attack. Our printer never stopped spitting out paper with instructions from dispatch on how all flight crews were to follow the instructions of the US Military aircraft or risk being shot down. Many of the crews were our friends and we had several planes in the air. We feared for the safety of our crews as well as the passengers who had become our regulars and we had seen them off several times a month on their regular journeys to both coasts. Our corporate security trainer had told us all about the pig and chicken theory of terrorists. Chickens contribute to the breakfast but pigs are committed. I remember thinking about how the terrorist who plotted this attack were most certainly pigs, willing to die for their “cause”. This made me worry even more for the safety of my friends still in the air. Planes all over were looking for places to land and we were on standby since our small airport had large enough runways to accommodate a fairly large aircraft. Two days following the attack we were sent to another airport via driving for intense security training and when air traffic was back up and running as the station trainer I was required to fly to corporate headquarters for even more training for our new reality. I remember sitting at a gate in ORD thinking about how it was so so quiet compared to other times I had flown. Our new reality at our small airport, since we had no explosive detectors and such consisted of physically searching every piece of luggage in front of the passenger. I became quite familiar with how to use the wand and how to pat down passengers. I know our airport was small but once a passenger made it through our security they were also inside the secure areas once they landed in the larger airports. I remember taking this seriously and worrying that it made perfect sense and how if I thought of it surely it had occurred to a terrorist. My heart broke for the innocent people killed and their families. I did not lose anyone personally but air travel suffered such a blow all of us lost our jobs not quite a year later because our ridership dropped too low to sustain our flights.