9-11 Memorial day

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  • #56761

    My heart breaks for all the useless loss of life when the Towers were hit. I still can remember the feeling when I watched the first plane hit and then the second and then hearing about the other 2. I pray for the families of all that were lost and I remember that each and every one of them were and still are heroes.

    God Bless Each of them and Us by extension

    #56762

    Dorie, I pray for you and I am so glad that we are friends. Terri

    #56763
    AngelaMotorman
    Participant

    A day late and a year old, here’s a memory unlike most. This is what I wrote last year, after trying for five years to get it down on paper. Thanks to all for sharing. Sorry this one’s so long.


    My husband and I may be the only people you know who

    did not see any of this happen. At the same time, we

    may be some of the only people you know who realized

    immediately who did it, and were not surprised

    — horrified, but not surprised.

    We were ten miles from “civilization” at the bottom

    of the Grand Canyon. We had hiked down the day

    before and were on the first morning of a five-day

    stay. I was sitting alone on a rock by Bright Angel Creek

    after our 6:30 am (MST) breakfast at Phantom Ranch,

    watching the sunrise light up the oldest exposed rock

    walls on the planet, thinking about how to spend our

    down time that day before resuming hiking the next day.

    It was a glorious day, with all the brilliant blue sky and

    clean air we had worked so hard to escape to.

    I wandered back to the hiker dorms just in time to

    encounter a Phantom Ranch staffer telling my co-hikers

    that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center — news

    conveyed from the South Rim via the NPS Ranger in just

    under an hour. It wasn’t until another hour had passed that

    we realized the plane had not been a small jet.

    Once we heard from the Ranger that both towers really

    had fallen, the question came up of who would do such

    a thing. There were not many hikers around; most stay only

    one night, then leave. Those who were there, along with the

    staffers we spoke to, had no idea what we were talking about

    when we said it had to be Al Qaeda. For that matter,

    nobody there recalled the 1993 attack on the WTC, or put

    the current attack in the context of the 1998 embassy

    bombings.

    For us, as ex-pat New Yorkers, it was appalling that no one

    remembered the previous bombings, or the 1998 fatwa promising

    to finish the job. That day turned into a strange sort of teach-in.

    Although we worried about our many friends in NYC, we

    realized quickly that we had a responsibility to keep people

    from becoming hysterical, and that our knowledge of the

    background and likely scope of Al Qaeda capabilities, along

    with our reflexive insistence on not jumping to conclusions,

    were desperately needed.

    There was access to one pay telephone for two dozen or so

    people at the ranch, and we used it to establish contact with

    a well-connected friend in Manhattan, who kept us better

    informed over the next few days than probably many

    Manhattanites were at the time.

    Our co-hikers wanted to leave instantly, which made no sense.

    The park was closed, and we knew there was no way to go

    anywhere. We had lodging and food for a week, so we stayed.

    Concern arose pretty quickly about the possibility that the next

    target might be Glen Canyon Dam, upriver on the Colorado. If

    it was destroyed, we’d have a few hours to scramble as high up

    the trails as possible to avoid the huge flood that would wash

    wash away the bridges and historic Phantom Ranch. By the end

    of the day, we had managed to convince most people that what had

    already happened was all there would be until the next time, which

    would be years ahead, not hours.

    So for the next five days, we vacationed, cherishing the surreal

    privilege with the understanding that we were all charging our

    batteries to deal with whatever awaited us at the rim when we

    topped out. The Ranger on duty made the very sensible decision

    to limit what she printed out from her computer, bringing once-

    daily printouts of text only to the cantina where they were passed

    hand to hand.

    Visitors at Phantom come from all over the world, and although

    there were no new visitors, people continued to dribble in from

    backcountry trails and river trips who knew nothing of what had

    happened. We never went on any of our planned day hikes, but

    just sat by the Colorado River or Bright Angel Creek, thinking

    or writing in our journals, or hung around the cantina talking

    with others. On the day of remembrance about 18 people gathered

    for a service under the big cottonwood tree, and we all felt very

    connected to others grieving around the world, not just Americans.

    Most of all, there was silence. Overflights have been an issue

    at Grand Canyon for decades, and although there are no flights

    directly over the central hiking corridor any more, there is usually

    an inescapable amount of airplane sound. That week, the skies

    were empty, and there were no passenger mule trains, and no

    daily influx of dozens of hikers. It was the perfect experience of

    the Grand Canyon, at a terrible price.

    When we got back to the South Rim five days later, some of our

    co-hikers headed straight to the TV, and went into the same sort

    of shock as people who had watched all along. My honey and I

    decided not to consume the imagery, but focus on reaching

    out to friends. Our phone bill for those two days was astronomical.

    Our co-hikers ran straight to the airport in Phoenix and got on the

    first available planes back to Ohio. We chose to get permission

    from Hertz to drive our rental SUV back, and that was sobering

    — across Texas, in particular, it seemed not to have sunk in what

    had happened. It was just another of those awful things that

    befalls people who live in that filthy New York City or work for that

    rotten federal government, from what we saw of local reactions there.

    We listened to NPR all the way, although not every minute. We had

    plenty of Carlos Nakai flute music on tape, and that seemed just

    about right. We spent a lot of time talking about the inevitable

    retaliation by the US, although we never imagined it would wind

    up involving a unilateral war on Iraq, and about the equally inevitable

    rise in isolationism and racism among Americans.

    It wasn’t all cerebral: we also cried a lot. We still didn’t know if all

    our friends in NYC were safe. (It turned out that the only casualty

    was a miscarriage of a very much wanted pregnancy, but we didn’t

    learn that for months.)

    I will forever be grateful for having been so far from TV when the

    attacks happened. When we got back, it seemed for weeks that we

    were the only ones not completely deranged by the endless film loops

    and 24/7 coverage. Friends sought us out for comfort and perspective,

    and I like to think we helped a lot of people.

    We eventually looked at the images, mostly still photos and a couple of

    recommended documentaries, a year later.

    Today, I believe that the TV coverage had an even more insidious

    impact than we realized at the time. I’ve spent a lot of time writing

    about and arguing against the rise in conspiracist thinking since 9/11,

    never quite being able to fully account for the continuing allure of the

    “Reichstag fire” school of thought represented by the David Ray Griffin

    books and films like “Loose Change”. Now, a new essay by Tom

    Englehardt published in The Nation this week adds a new level of

    insight. The URL is below.

    Like Englehardt, I believe that at some level, we all knew an attack that

    looked like this was coming, and that

    > “Except in its success, it hardly differed from the 1993 attack on

    > the World Trade Center, the one that almost toppled one tower

    > with a rented Ryder van and a homemade bomb…”

    But to the cultural analysis Englehardt lays out, I’d add two questions

    that I wish more people would ask themselves, starting with reporters:

    –On September 10, 2001, did you know who Osama bin Laden was?

    –If not, what effect if that have on your understanding of the next morning?

    Those are real unanswered questions.

    Thanks for listening.

    Here’s the Englehardt piece:

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=118775

    #56764

    Angela,

    Thank you for a different perspective of 9/11. No, I didn’t know who Osama bin Laden was. It took me weeks to even get his name right.

    The effect was I realized I live with my head in the sand most of the time. We go about our lives in our little worlds knowing that there are fingers just inches away from pushing a button to my future.

    However, I believe we cannot live our lives in constant paranoia and remain sane.

    Again, thanks for your special insight.

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