9/11 - BlogHers share thoughts and memories and hopes

Nancy Sutherland

http://www.directsalesmarketingqueen.com ( http://www.directsalesmarketingqueen.com/ )

Oh my goodness, I thought that I was the only one who didn't have cable on that day! We had cancelled our cable and the dishnetwork was coming the following day to install it. Where we live there is no reception without cable or satillite. So I can remember watching it all on the internet, mostly on those 2-3 inch screens.

One of my consultant's had a husband who worked in the Pentagon. He left his office for a meeting that day in another part of the building. It took the entire day for the family to find out that he was okay. (his office was demolished)

One of my husband's college roommates had a wife who was a flight attendent. The thought that she might be working that day was more than what we could bare to think. The day that started out with mom trying to add to the family budget by working a few more hours turned into a dad left with a family alone. He didn't handle it very well.

They say that time heals all wounds. I believe that to be true. We need to remember that day that changed our history, don't you think?

I had three reporting classes to teach, one child in high school and one in elementary. We live an hour's train ride from Manhattan. When the towers fell, our computer lab became a crisis newsroom. We put up a low-graphics version of our campus newsmagazine and paper. The newspaper isn't accessible in the archives now, but here is the magazine; Unbound 9/11:Connecting to Hope ( http://unbound.intrasun.tcnj.edu/archives/special.... ). A year later, I wrote this poem ( http://professorkim.blogspot.com/2003/09/as-we-con... ), which serves as my personal memorial offering.

I can't say anything wise about all of the things that have happened since then. I still don't have the words. 

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://blogher.org/blog/kim-pearson )|Professor Kim ( http://professorkim.blogspot.com/ )|

I can recall interacting with you and others we know, all of us stunned, all of us sharing our thoughts in the moment, what we heard, saw, the reactions of those around us.

I can recall the redhead's wonderful view from within the military. I wish it was still in my files; looking at her view, of not knowing who, of what she might be asked to do...

we lived 30 minutes from the coast, which meant 30 minutes from Seabrook - there is a nuke there. My sister lived within 4 miles of the place. The skies over our home were always busy - trans-Atlantic flights highest up, flights out of Logan that curled north and then over the southern part of the state as they headed west, and incoming traffic into Manchester-Boston regional...

here was this bright blue, cloudless sky. Not a plane was airborne - commerical aviation that is. Once in a while two fighters would pass over; at my sister's home, they were a constant presence in the sky.

I was on the phone with her when the second tower fell; in that moment, knowing what was happening in real time there... I burst into tears.

Earlier, I'd brought my chronically late youngest child to school, her usual 3 minutes or so late. There is no rushing that one. Not then, not ever. We were listening to a college radio station on the way to the school, or at least that is what I turned on when we got in the vehicle. This is sub-92FM, the land of not for profit radio. As the first sounds began to be processed by my mind, I wondered what in the world Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson were doing reporting on this station; an obvious simulcast. I soon found out.

They talked about the first tower. Horrid accident is your first thought; attack is just not something our brains seek out as immediate possibility. As we pulled to a stop at the school, Charles announced that a report of the second tower being hit had come in. Now one's brain rules out everything else, and grasps what it could not before: attack.

I've talked about this for different reasons recently, but... Springsteen's The Rising captures that time and makes it timeless, makes sense of what is probably impossible to understand.

It was a surreal day; and remembering that surreality is the fastest path to revisiting the emotions of that horrific day.

nelle ( http://refractivethoughts.org/ )

&

llhaesa ( http://llhaesa.org/ )

It was my day off of work.  My husband and I had been without cable for a little over a month because we had decided we watched way too much TV.  I bought a little "bunny ear" antenna for the upstairs TV just in case we wanted to watch the evening news.  My mother called me, frantic, that morning to tell me that there had been an airplane accident in NY and possibly a bombing at the Pentagon.  This sounded very strange to me and way too coincidental for both to be happening at the same time. 

I got the bunny ears adjusted on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit the tower.  It felt like the world was just going to collapse.  Then and there I knew this was no accident.  Some sickos were killing innocent people on purpose.  I called my mom back while we watched in horror as the towers burnt and fell.  We have friends in New York that worked at a facility right across the river in Brooklyn.  Having never been to New York I had no concept of how far away they actually were.  

I sat down and cried.  I cried for those that perished, for the families that had been ripped apart, the friendships that were crushed, and the lives that were traumatized that day.  That evening after we had our weekly Bible study we turned on the TV at my inlaws to watch and listen as they replayed the horrors of that morning over and over again.  My husband had no concept of what had happened because he hadn't seen a TV all day.  It wasn't until then that the utter terror and gruesomeness of the event really began to sink in.  

Needless to say, that day we decided that cable was not a frivolity but a necesity for us to keep tabs on world news.  It was our channel to keep connected to the world outside our small community.  

One of the most moving pieces I've heard/read about 9/11 is written and performed by Suheir Hammad. You can watch here ( http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2008/09/whi... ).

Notions of Identity ( http://www.notionsofidentity.com )

As a New Yorker, I have conflicting feelings about how 9/11 is memorialized and treated in recent years. Clearly, it was a horrific day for millions of people, some more than others. It is important to remember and acknowledge what happened that day. Yet sometimes I feel like these memorials just reopen wounds that are healing. Increasingly, I'm angry at how they are used as political tools. I don't want politicians standing around the hole in the ground that was the WTC site, mouthing empty promises.

I feel like the best way to honor people who died that day is to start doing something positive with the site. For all the words about how everyone identifies with the tragedy, I see stupid plans to build another outrageously tall office building that will sit mostly vacant. I see tax breaks and other economic incentives promised to companies to move in those new, unwanted offices. What I want to see is what New Yorkers need: affordable housing for middle and lower class families, child care, schools, restaurants, and small businesses and shops. I want public transportation. I want inspiration, not rebuilding what was there. We can't bring it back, and we should not try.

I worked near the WTC site from January 2002 to October 2006. I saw a lot of positive changes happening around the financial district in terms of building a community (albeit a luxury community that most people can't afford). Let's talk about how 9/11 changed us, let's remember it, and let's also move on.

Suzanne Reisman ( http://www.blogher.com/member/suzanne-reisman ), Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender ( http://blogher.org/topic/feminism-gender )
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants ( http://cussandotherrants.com/ )

Generally, I don't do these, but I posted this ( http://kperfetto.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/912/ ) on my photoblog. The picture probably sums it up better than I could have written it.

Available Light ( http://kathy-p.blogspot.com ) & Five Dollar Radio ( http://fivedollarradio.blogspot.com/ )

Elisa, that's a great idea.  I used to take down my regular blog on September 11 and post a regular HTML page with my recollections on it for the day. 

Dimple and a Smirk (dot) com ( http://www.dimpleandasmirk.com )

I remember that Tuesday, my children were home from school for some reason and we were all enjoying a rare relaxing morning. The restrictions about TV watching are always relaxed when my children have a holiday from school and I always enjoy a bit of a lay in.

That morning I was listening to our local public radio station ( http://wkar.org/ ) to Morning Edition and thinking when I heard the news report that it must somehow be wrong. My hometown is DC and when the attack happened at the Penegon I was shocked. I made the children turn the TV off and did not allow them to watch for the rest of day and for some day following.

For me there was a strange sense of dismay, pride, and love for country that I have not felt in such intensity since the attack.

Non Sequitur created that beautiful cartoon of the Ghost Fireman helping the Ghost Businessman to God; I still have that on the door leading to our kitchen. Its been there since 9/11/ and at times I look at it and feel such sorrow for all the lost life, and at other times it is just a reminder of an event that happened as my youngest daughter says: "So long ago."

But today I looked at the cartoon with the same sense of lose that I felt when I first put it on our kitchen door seven years ago.

http://spirituallivesofwoman.blogspot.com/

http://www.spirituallivesofwomen.com/

...who was only a few blocks away.

http://www.blogher.com/remembrance

Tacoma Mama ( http://www.tacomamama.com )

Here is my post ( http://www.curiouschild.wordpress.com ) of remembrance for today.  I leave you with two words:  Be well.

Back in 2001 I was in NYC on business, due to return home on 9/11/01. I was mid-town, so nowhere near the destruction, but it was a surreal four extra days I spent stranded in NYC trying to get a flight out.

I told the story aloud many times, and then I began to be afraid I would someday forget what it was like. So in 2004, less than a year since I had started my personal blog, I started recording the story.

Now every year on 9/11 I republish those links.

It's just one person's 9/11 story ( http://homepage.mac.com/elisa_camahort/iblog/C1894... ). Mine.

Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer
elisa@blogher.com

My BlogHer profile ( http://www.blogher.com/haystackprofile/viewprofile... ) truly shows you everything I do online...Check it out!!

My heart aches and the tears flow as I watch the news and recounts of that fateful day. Though I sit hundreds of miles away, I will never the images and the feeling that even though I didn't experience it first hand, it was an attack against myself and every American.

But that day holds another meaning for me. Today is the 2nd Anniversary of the day I held my daughter for the first time. I had kissed her picture 1,000 times, but finally I wrapped my arms around her and promised to bring her home.

She waited 2 years in a Chinese orphanage, but September 11, 2006 her Mommy and Daddy came to get her. I will also never forget the feelings on that day. Pure joy.

Sue
www.praiseandcoffee.com ( http://www.praiseandcoffee.com )

Moved to Alvenable's discussion of this. ( http://www.blogher.com/seven-years-later-rememberi... )

I wrote a post myself ( http://sparksandbutterflies.com/2008/09/11/remembe... ).  I find myself wanting to remember, and wanting to be able to tell my children my thoughts at the time.

Michele

Sparks and Butterflies ( http://www.sparksandbutterflies.com )

Butterviews ( http://www.sparksandbutterflies.com/butterviews )

Whoops.  I had posted in the wrong thread and just moved it over before I saw your response.  So very sorry. :(

Mitee, that completely took me back to that day. The mass confusion, the news that was flying fast and furious...too fast to get it all confirmed, the panic of trying to get in touch with friends, co-workers, family members. 

Dimple and a Smirk (dot) com ( http://www.dimpleandasmirk.com )

--Moved comment--