My whole life it's been: "where were you when JFK was shot?"
I was two and a half so I was probably making a fuss about
something and/or picking my nose and eating it too.
For the last ten years however, the question has been,
where were you on 9/11? That, I remember like it was this morning.
There have been other notable events since JFK in
my life, such as MLK, RFK, walking on the moon,
Bruce Jenner winning the decathlon, John Lennon,
the Aussies taking the America's Cup,
the Challenger tragedy, the Berlin Wall. Nothing will stick so
clearly in my mind as the events of that picture-perfect Tuesday
morning in September 2001.
It was such a Goddamn beautiful, clear, dry, blue-skied morning.
This picture is another one worth a thousand words.
Or 2801 names. Besides those in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
I'm familiar with the man who created this sculpture, and it's
no coincidence that this figure remained peaceful amid such chaos.
On my way into work. My manager told me of the first tower being hit when I arrived. I said something like, "it must have been a CIA job".
ReplyDeleteThere are two major events that stand out in my memory far more than any others: the birth of each of my daughters.
Everything else, no matter how historic, horrific, painful, or sad, or even wonderful like the first moon landing, or piloting my first solo flight, can eclipse those two events in my mind.
word verif: "boloc" - what Brits say for some reason when things go wrong
9-11 didn't change the USA as much as 20-Mar-2003. What changed us was going to war with Iraq. Off budget. Drowning our government in blood and debt. In a bathtub.
ReplyDelete12 December 2000 was really the first day of the slippery slope that led to 911, Iraq, "heck of a job Brownie" and the 2008 financial meltdown. That's the day that should live in infamy.
ReplyDeleteI will never forget 911. I would like to forget much of what happened in the next 7 years but I don't suppose I will be able to.
I struggled with the decision of whether or not to even say anything, thinking that saying nothing was in a way saying something. The only thing I wanted to bring up was that we should remember the victims and families today and every day, and how helpless and shocked the rest of us were on that day.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of which administration was in charge during or before, I believe that if a country, terrorist sect, or group of religious fanatics hate us and are threatened enough by us for the freedom that we enjoy, those people will act as they did that day.
I refuse to believe, and am insulted when I hear, that some people to this day thought that this was an inside job.
And, I was also at ground zero for both of my daughters' births and would never have had it any other way.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised nobody had anything to say about Bruce Jenner or the Aussies.
Bruce Jenner - didn't he sell Wheaties?
ReplyDeleteThe Aussies took the America's Cup? Where was I?
On that day I was on the 7th floor at USPS HQ in L'Enfant Plaza in Washington D.C. I could see the Pentagon burning from windows on the west side of the building. What always scared me was that the US Capital was in direct line sight from where they hit the Pentagon, in other words they very easily could have hit the Capital.
ReplyDeleteIn entering this discussion late, I want to be as respectful, bipartisan and non-divisive as possible and to still stay on point.
ReplyDeleteThe point of this blog-post is a stated preference of Remembrances over Amnesia. I am all for that. 9/11 sure merits memory of sacrifice and heroism: almost 3,000 of our innocent fellow citizens were killed in an unprovoked attack on our continental USA. But let us, please, in our remembrances, not forget a subsequent self-inflicted wound: almost 5,000 of our fellow Americans (in uniform) have been sacrificed in a needless, capricious and unprovoked invasion of Iraq. (You have to include, additionally, many thousands of WIA who have lost parts of their bodies and brains, not to mention much of their lives.) This self-inflicted catastrophe has occurred, not on one day, but over most of the last decade. Does it therefore merit less remembrance? It was taken off the budget. It is still off the budget. As a matter of fact it even isn't mentioned in our current political campaigns. 9-11 is constantly invoked. Cutting trillions of 'elective' domestic spending is constantly evoked. But out of sight and mind are trillion$ spent and still being $quandered on current elective expeditions to create democracies out of whole cloth on moonscapes. And cooking up this cluster-fook was an inside job. Inside at the White House and Pentagon.
To be bipartisan, this Iraqistan disaster has been largely - not entirely - a bipartisan job. In 2000, Republicans were jobbed by Bush telling them he wouldn't go off and do nation-building; in 2008, Obama jobbed Democrats by saying he was against stupid wars.
By all means let's not forget that we were attacked by international terrorists a decade ago. But let's not forget we have been just as viciously jobbed and robbed ever since by our own national leaders. And that bleeding continues to this very minute.
And so I say, up with remembrance and down with amnesia.
I know we are all entitled to our political, social and economic opinions. I also understand that our personal opinions may rub against the grain of others and this could result in a confrontation between us who contribute to Baydog's blog. That being said my conscious will not me ignore what the previous contributors failed to grasp and that is this; What is up with Bruce Jenner?!! The plastic surgery makes him look freakish. Alsowill some one tell him that his hair cut looked stupid in the 70's and he looks absolutely retarded now. This guy must feel like a complete boob. He is a winner of an Olympic gold medal and is Z list celebrity compared to his adopted family who have no talent and or achievements what so ever! He should cowboy up and challenge Kim, Katrina, Kankorsore, Kindabigbooty and the rest of those vapid idiots. That being said I agree that our military men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are bravely fighting a battle that can not be won, at least not with reason or democracy. It's time to bring our people home.
ReplyDeleteStill L'ing OFL Doug. Call me
ReplyDeleteGood statement, Doug. Except, who is Bruce Jenner?
ReplyDeleteEvery generation seems to have its own epochal event - its moment of terrible awakening.
ReplyDeleteFor my parents, it was Pearl Harbor. For their parents, it may have been the flu of 1918 or the stock market crash.
I was a young teen in 1963, so that is the one event that has shaken me the most.
You would have to have known the somber sobriety of the Eisenhower years to appreciate the giddy wave of energy and optimism that JFK brought to this country. It was cultural more than political. The assasinations that would follow his, the war and the turmoil it brought to this country, and the racial clashes of the '60s would all gradually numb us, until by the '70s we had learned just how much evil there can be in the world.
But in 1963 we were still riding a naive tide of post-war invincibility. The horror was not just that JFK had been killed but that, in this country, such a thing could even happen. We lost more than a man, a president, or a leader that day. We lost our innocence.
I think a lot of the same emotions were swirling on 9/11, but each of us can lose our innocence only once. If we have endured a 1963 or a 1941, something is worn away inside. The latest horror becomes yet another reminder of the capacity for hate that will always lurk in the minds of desperate, angry men.
Doc,
ReplyDeleteBruce Jenner is a guy who won a gold medal in the Olympics and has a very dumb haircut, He married a women who had a daughter who made a sex tape and became famous and now Bruce is...Oh forget about this, Doc you are right "who is Bruce Jenner" anyway.
well said, O Docker...
ReplyDelete"I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating."
Marlow, which is your favorite day?
ReplyDeleteGobble gobble
ReplyDelete