20 Years Ago
I was startled by my wife screaming, “Oh my God!” over and over and over.
I ran to the family room and she gasped, “Turn the TV on.”
My daughter joined us about then rubbing sleep from her eyes.
The first tower fell.
The second soon after.
Commentators were often at a loss for words.
And they repeatedly played the recording from the first plane colliding to the second tower collapsing.
Over and over.
We could not look away.
The one visual I cannot remove from my mind’s eye is of a man who jumped from the flaming building to sure death in the rubble below.
They told us early on about the plane that rammed the Pentagon.
Very little more was said after a bit.
Later in the day the story of the brave men and women that gave their lives to bring down the plane targeting the Whitehouse or the Capitol came out.
I spent the day in shock thinking, how could this happen?
Looking back, over the precipice of time, I think I have some idea of why.
The people that planned this were like brilliant children believing they were striking out at a school yard bully. They justified this heinous act in many ways:
- In their view, we worship the wrong God. That is even though we know that Islam, Judaism and Christianity share the same foundations.
- In their view we exercised too much financial control over the world. Okay, I can give them that because the behemoth we call China had not yet emerged in financial matters.
- In their view, our ideas about freedom and equality particularly where women are concerned was anathema to their male overseers. No, we are still not the highest standard in women’s rights but we are not barbarians imposing stone age ideas either.
- In their view, we took no notice of their beliefs on anything. Pretty much true. But then, they were not a legitimate government and we were not alone in viewing them as terrorists.
- In their view, we were responsible for all the new changes in the world, changes that challenged their tribal existence. I have to give them that one, sort of. Yes, a tremendous amount of the digital differences in the world originated here, but not all. We get the lion’s share of the credit but we have some advertising experience.
It is said that commemorations tend to help us forget.
I don’t want to celebrate this day.
I want to remember it with all the shock of that morning draining my blood away.
I want to remember the horror and the pain and yes, the steel resolution to make them pay.
I’m an American.
We don’t respond well to sneak attacks. We go to war. And we try to change the way the enemy thinks.
I don’t think I or my country know all that is right.
I don’t think I have the right to make you do things the way I see fit. Nor does my country.
But if I disagree with you I have the right to say so. No matter what your station, your country, your creed, your sex or the color of your skin.
I will not lay down that right.
- I believe the Taliban are barbaric
- I believe any government dominated by religious leaders is illegitimate
- I believe that no populace should be forced to live in a dictatorship
And so it goes.
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Comments
Jerry Fletcher
2 years ago #10
Fay, In the words of a popular tune not so long ago, “ I will survive.” The verse is the promise of the human race: "Oh no, not I, I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And I've got all my love to give and I'll survive
I will survive, "
And so it goes.
Fay Vietmeier
2 years ago #9
@Jerry Fletcher
Your words are a balm Jerry .. to “light the way” 😇
So much in life is about precisely that “light the way”
Darkness is like the black hole of greed .. an unrelenting power that will suck everything it touches into DARKNESS
Why it is so vital to be in the Light
“in His Light .. we have light” - Psalm 36
God's Word is filled with Light
Jesus is the Light of Men
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/i-am-the-light-of-the-world
(a wonderful message of hope I share here for any who may be in need of hope)
There is a young woman (a bee) who reached out to me last year
I've been speaking with her off & on
She just sent me many messages to which I will respond
.. she is struggling - like many people - about the pressures of life
.. the concept of how hard life is
"Life is worth trying
and trying is hard" - her words
So many things she said begs a writing
I'm thinking ..
We live in a crooked world
Life is not fair
When I find words .. I'll let you know
Jerry Fletcher
2 years ago #8
Fay, and there are those among us, like you, that light the way to a positive survival that builds a legacy to believe in. And so it goes.
Fay Vietmeier
2 years ago #7
@Alan Culler
So well said ..
We survive though and keeping on keeping on - surviving - seems like a mission. And perhaps making the world a little better, a garden planted, a child raised right, a person in pain listened to, enhances that mission
So much about life is a “mission”
.. finding identity
.. finding purpose 😇
Alan Culler
2 years ago #6
@Jerry Fletcher
After writing that I watched the NBC special called the The Memory Box wherein survivors told their stories in 2001 and today. My happy ending seems a bit tone-deaf in light of that.
We survive though and keeping on keeping on - surviving - seems like a mission. And perhaps making the world a little better, a garden planted, a child raised right, a person in pain listened to, enhances that mission.
Jerry Fletcher
2 years ago #5
Fay, Perhaps. The question becomes, Spared for what? I have known survivors of other tragedies that spent their lives asking that question. Those I know best say that it was because the rest of us need to know that the race can survive anything. And so it goes.
Fay Vietmeier
2 years ago #4
@Jerry Fletcher
Death & loss have freezing powers
Like planes crashing into towers
Changing lives in briefest hours
.. Time seems halted ..
Against a glorious blue sky
Frozen in the mind's eye
For heroes and martyrs’ … lives NOT lost in vain
Their song will live on and their memory remain
.. Frozen in time ..
Two words come to my mind about September 11th
“Senseless, senseless”
They are from - The Road - by Cormack McCarthy
Evil is “senseless”
The Road is darkest book I have ever read ..
An outcome we should pray never comes to be
Evil is a very present reality .. it always has been
As I am alive .. I see it increasing
BEWARE & Be aware.
Where can we run?
To God .. would be my exhortation
Beneath His everlasting arms .. there is safety .. refuge
Every day .. I am grateful that His reach is never short
Every day I am grateful that our days & our times are in His able hands
Every day I am grateful that God’s Word never returns to Him void
His Word will accomplish His will.
I have been watching this series on Netflix .. it is revealing
(can't share video's here - but here's a link)
https://www.netflix.com/title/81315804
I spoke to someone yesterday (a former prominent bee) who told me he was supposed to be in the Twin Tower on Sept 11th ..
He shared that having returned from China .. he decided not to attend a conference that day at the Twin Towers .. but did go into the city
He was on the 25th floor .. across the street .. he saw the planes hit the Towers
.. I am cannot help but think .. there was some Divine intervention
Ken Boddie
2 years ago #3
There are three dates, Jerry, that mark major changes in my life, how I perceived America and the world, and how the world forever changed:
• The assassination of Robert Kennedy;
• When man first walked on the moon; and
• When the Twin Towers tumbled to the ground.
But only the last event polarised the whole world and created such a divide, born of hatred, propogating more hatred, and, fueled by ignorance, lack of tolerance and understanding, on both sides of the rift, rewarded and continues to reward all warmongers with the destruction of our various societies as we once knew them.
What have we learned in the last 20 years, or even the last 200?
How many wars to end all wars can there be before we end mankind and the world we live in?
We are indeed homo nonsapiens.
Jerry Fletcher
2 years ago #2
Alan, Thank you for a happy ending, I needed that.
Alan Culler
2 years ago #1
@Jerry Fletcher
September 11 is a tough day for many.
On that beautiful fall morning under the bluest of skies, I was working in a fifth floor consulting office on Park Avenue at 28th St. Traci spoke over the keyboard clacking open office quiet, “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” Sitting at my desk I imagined some “idiot training pilot in a Piper Cub or Cessna.” Not sure when I realized it was an airliner - maybe when the second plane hit.
In the quiet anxiety of our consulting office, the firm partner who hired me, seventeen years my junior and with whom I had such conflicts after that I ultimately quit the firm and left the same day, stepped up.
“Call your families; let them know you are OK. We will shelter in place until we know what is going on.”
And we did.
I called Billie to say “Turn on the TV.”
We had no office TV just a video monitor used for training tapes. Someone went across the street to Radio Shack and just bought an antenna while I was scrounging a wire hanger to MacGyver one.
We all left the office around 2:30. I remember walking north to 95th and Amsterdam l with thousands of slouching, shuffling souls, all looking over our shoulders at the shafts of smoke streaming up to the now-gray downtown sky.
The next days were eerie. New York City was quiet. People stopped honking their horns. The still bright September skies were silent, no airplanes, except occasional fighter jets, which were somehow comforting and the rarest army helicopter, which wasn't comforting at all.
“Did you know anyone?” was the first question after “Are you OK?”
Billie and I were always one degree of separation away. We knew people who had lost someone, but hadn't lost someone ourselves. Still the walls at street corners were covered with pictures of the missing. Heart-rending. Soul-tearing.
“Oh, God. the wedding?!”
After a fourteen year “courtship,” Billie and I were scheduled to be married on September 23rd. After a week of stubborn-stupidity, wherein I uttered such classics as “If we cancel, the terrorists win,” we moved the wedding to a gorgeous day in late October. We paid the band twice and had to find another photographer because the new date didn’t work for the first. The wedding was beautiful and we are still married.
In all the craziness of that time and the wars and division that followed, and unlike many, we do have a very happy memory.