There are going to be a LOT of fifth anniversary posts today.
They'll commemorate those who died that day.
They'll honor the heroes of that day.
They'll cover what happened that day, and what has happened since.
And what has *not* happened, too.
Many will try to affix blame.
Sometimes even to those actually responsible.
Given that this is an election year, expect every single politician and candidate to come up with a statement that is both respectfully mournful and sonorously patriotic, yet that somehow finds a way to express the crass sentiment "Send money!! Vote for me!"
Actually, that'd probably happen in an off-year, too.
All I can add is that like the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the "greatest generation" and the assassination of JFK for the Baby Boom generation, the attacks of September 11, 2001 are our generation's "Where were you when?" moment.
Every single person I spoke to this last week knew exactly where they were and what they were doing when the first heard about the attacks.
Syd - She was getting ready for work when her brother-in-law called, telling her to turn on her TV "right now. We've just been hit." She went to work, but everyone was "weirded out." Not much was accomplished that day, or for many that followed.
Kari - She was home in bed recuperating from surgery and under the influence of some pain meds when the images on TV grabbed her attention and made her sit up. She saw the 2nd plane hit. She went to work later in the day and found everyone in the break room silently watching the TV there and was struck by the "eerieness" of it.
Mike - He was driving home from work when the first brief reports came over the news on the radio. He took his wife to work, still listening to the radio as more reports came in. When he made it back home from that he spent all day watching CNN, looking for info on the internet, and calling family.
Susan - She had just taken her children to school and upon returning home had called her mom to say hi. Her mom told her what had happened. She commented on the "weirdness" of not seeing any planes in the sky.
Liz - She had just flown home from Minnesota on the evening of the 10th and actually slept through the initial reports. When she awoke in the morning and turned on the TV, she started "freaking out" because it was as if "the whole world had fallen apart."
She had a friend who was scheduled to fly from Boston to NYC on the morning of the 11th.
It was almost a week before she was able to find out that her friend had missed her flight and was OK.
There were others, but the pattern was similar. Much shock and numbness at the news, desperately searching for even the tiniest bit of new news, and lots of time talking to friends and family, both to reassure each other and to find out if anyone in the social circle may have been a victim.
As for me? My sister Patti called at approximately 6:20 that morning and told me to turn on the TV. As I had just gone to sleep a couple of hours before (at the time I worked from 4 p.m. until 4 a.m. and tried to stay on that schedule even on off days) I was not the most pleasant person when I asked "why?!?"
She practically screamed at me to just turn on the TV, to any channel.
I watched for a little while while speaking to her before my body just could take any more and I had to go back to sleep. Awaking after only a couple of more hours of sleep, I followed the news as best as I could as I got ready for a class that I was taking at SCC.
After the class, I came home and spent the rest of the day and night watching the news, trying to find info on whatever news websites were accessible, and talking to friends and family.
...One thing I learned from asking people what they could remember of that day is that EVERY one of us could remember exactly where we were, what we were doing, and what we were feeling when we found out about the attacks.
A couple of the people that spoke to me thought about some of the other "major" news events of the last few decades.
The Challenger shuttle disaster? Very important, but most of us couldn't remember much else about that day.
The OJ verdict? This one brought a laugh from a few people. Most of us didn't care, even at the time.
John Lennon's murder? Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan? Nixon's resignation? Significant, especially in particular cultural demographics, but...no.
Same thing with Neil Armstrong's moonwalk and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and even Martin Luther King, Jr. They approach the all-encompassing cultural significance of September 11, but they don't quite make it.
Pearl Harbor, JFK, and September 11, 2001.
That's it.
May we never have another "where were you when?" moment.
Too many people die, both during the moment and during its aftermath.
And as for the title of this post, "U.S. Reels"?
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, pretty much every mainstream news website was so swamped with hits that in practical terms they became inaccessible. Many of us turned to secondary sites for our info. One of those was Yahoo! News, which had an article titled "U.S. Reels From Twin Attacks, Thousands Die."
Yahoo! has message boards attached to its news stories, and many thousands of people, including me, turned to this one to get news and to discuss and speculate about the events.
I thought that the board had been taken down a couple of years ago, but last week as I was cleaning out my inbox, I found the link to it and just clicked on it out of sheer habit.
Much to my surprise, the board was up.
I started to reread the posts from that day, and was inspired to blog about what is there.
However, the posts from that day touch a still-sensitive spot.
All of the shock, confusion, anger, hatred, sorrow, fear, and other emotions that all of us experienced in the hours, days, and weeks after the attacks is there, sometimes in *very* raw form.
It was so overwhelming that I had to step back and change course on this post.
It all did remind me of one personal silver lining from the events of that day, perhaps the only one for me. I met one of my best friends there online, later in person.
If wiseass is a genetic trait, she may be my sister. Have to ask my father about his travels in his younger days. :))
Now if only I could convince her to live somewhere besides Minnesota, "Land of 10,000 Lakes and Two Seasons - Winter and Mosquito."
Of course, to be fair, she wonders how *I* can live somewhere where the weather ranges from 'hot as hell' to 'hotter than hell.' :)
Anyway, I don't know how long Yahoo! will leave the message board up (the story itself is long gone), but I will post the link here.
Be warned though - some of the language used there is very raw and hate-filled, and will offend many people. However, it is the best online repository of people's immediate emotional reactions that day that I have found.
U.S. Reels message board.
On edit: The link worked last night, but today the board doesn't open up. I've tried to access it from a few different computers, so it's not just me. I have to check into this.
End edit.
Peace everyone.
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