I will never forget the feeling when the second plane hit. Live.

We all got it, the feeling that your stomach dropped about two feet. Then, later, when the towers fell...................

The madness of that day.


To all the victims, We Remember. We Will Always Remember.


As Salaam Alaikum.

all that night and I wasn't running the country.

He was just posturing and talking about going to war already.

He had no compassion. Never once did I see him show any sign of feeling anything.

I hope there is a hell so he can rot in it.

"Peggy Noonan (interviewer): So the day starts in tragedy and ends in Marx Brothers.

George W. Bush: That’s right — we got a laugh out of it." :grr:

I'm new at this, but I'm trying not to hate. I hated the Bush Administration for a long time, for many reasons. Only now do I really appreciate that the hate damaged me.

So I will not say anything about them today.

I say that on that day they got some things right and some things wrong. I wonder how I would react in their shoes. But I won't hate. The real trick is not hating the murdering terrorists. So today I will not hate.

Today I Will Remember the victims of September 11, 2001. I will empathize with their families, and I will wonder how a person can be so consumed by hate that they would do such a thing.

I don't hate anybody, either. I may get angry at what people do, and hate policies that are harmful and even destructive to people, but hating people is counterproductive and can even become pathological.

Bluebear's post was a reminder of something I'd forgotten, and from the replies, it struck a chord. Mostly, I'm amazed at the kind of utter cluelessness and detachment from tragedy the episode reveals.

It would be nice to have a quiet, peaceful day of remembrance. Unfortunately, some will use the day to spew hatred and bigotry, and that will intrude...

Love & Peace,
pinboy3niner

What scum...

Why should he lose sleep over his big break in show business?

if something like this happened under Clinton or Obama and either had DARED to find anything humorous to speak of.

"Smirk." - AWOL

and woke up around noon, decided to catch the midday news to see what the weather was going to do and WOW! I went out later that afternoon because I was out of cat food and I remember the shocked silence. I haven't heard that kind of silence since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I hope I never hear it again.

Needless to say, I didn't get any more sleep that day.

And we went ahead and practiced that day, though I didn't want to. The weather was as clear and nice as any day ever. And like you I remember the eerie silence, the lack of aircraft, the lack of autos. The searching glances. The haunted looks.

We Shall Always Remember.

I was in college and I woke-up that morning, the dorm was completely silent. I would have never imagined a building with a 1000 boys could be silent. Still creepy to think about.

I had NO idea what had just happened, but you know sometimes when you feel that there is something very wrong going on when you wake up at times, and when that happens you often ascribe it to perhaps remnants of a bad dream. But it just seems spooky that I had that feeling at the pit of my stomach when I look back at that day in hindsight.

Went to check my stock prices that morning as the first thing I was doing when I woke up, and noticed before I got to the message board, etc. the message about the stock market being closed because of the plane crash then.

Remember calling Mom, and watching live on TV when the second building collapsed live while we were talking on the phone.

It was weird that when we were monitoring our sales of online web business sales, that the day it happened of course it tanked, but in the days following they swelled a lot more than usual, as our product was something that gave people a means to escape... Listening to music.

Those memories will never go away from then. So many personal stories. One of my sisters' better friends from New York wrote a book about how she was caught as one of the last to escape one of those buildings alive before their collapse but still had very serious and life changing injuries from that experience from falling debris.

The first reports of the first plane were just airing. I watched it all in real time.

The only grace of the day was Aaron Brown as anchor on CNN. He was calm, steady, professional, and mostly quiet as events unfolded.

I owe him a great debt for his strength that day. Wherever he is, I owe him thanks.

For weeks afterward the pictures on the Hastily Made Bulletin Boards around NYC. A picture with 'Have You Seen _______'

All those innocent people.

How could a person do such a thing??

starting up, and then turning on the radio.

The first thing I heard was a scream...

They were either broadcasting live audio from the site, or repeating audio recorded earlier. I can't remember which. It took me quite a while to understand exactly what happened.

It was one of the quietest days at work I can remember...

I turned on CNN sat down and shut up. There weren't many questions from the kids that day, and I'm glad of it. I didn't have the answers, i tried to be reassuring, calm. But they seemed to understand just how significant that day was. We watched CNN that day, and we didn't talk much about what we saw. We saw some people jumping from the 90th floor of a building. We learned a plane hit the Pentagon. We watched the Towers Fall.

We watched in silence.

And our lives have never really been the same.

I yelled out "Holy Shit! We're at war!" I then went and woke my wife up and told her and went to work. We listened to the radio and turned on a TV but I went home after a few hours. I remember that night looking up at the sky and seeing no airplanes. Strange.

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political junkies we are had the news on. We were living in NJ at the time and have a niece working in NY. My husband immediately got on the phone to find out exactly where she worked.

I stood in the middle of the living room and from the instant I could wrap my head around what was happening I knew, just knew this was not an accident. Who or why I didn't have a clue but, accident? No. Then the second plane confirmed it for me.

After today burning Koran insanity, I'm even more frightened that 9/11 will have eventually have a sister date. Another horrific anniversary to perpetuate more hate and more death.

I was in Norcross on my way downtown for the annual Networld+Interop show at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC). I was driving along on Peachtree Industrial and listening to Atlanta's Morning News then Neal Boortz on WSB 750 when his show was interrupted by the planes hitting the building. I at first didn't believe it, but as I got closer to downtown, there were wild rumors that the CNN Center, which is @ GWCC and the Ga Dome, was a target. Needless to say, the show and most everything else kinda stopped at that point. I was riveted to the TVs there, and when the hall was closed and once I got back to my hotel room, I couldn't stop watching CNN and Ch. 2 Action News. I never want to feel that emotion again, and for a number of years after that, especially when I was trucking, I made it a point not to work on that day, I couldn't deal with it, even though I did not know anyone personally who lost their lives.

After first plane, thought "Damn ... That was a one in a million shot" ...

When the second plane hit, it jumped to a one in a trillion shot ....

Immediate recognition of a planned effort .... It took all of a millisecond to figure that out ...

Then, real shock and awe ...

I went to work, where a hidden B&W TV was taken out of hiding, and workers walked around in a daze, trying to work, but mostly going back to the TV and watching with a crowd ...

WHOOOSH ..... One tower ...... OMG ....

WHOOOSH .... another .....

How many people work in there on a given day ? ... Oh fuck ....

First responders, people escaping, crushed in the second collapse ....

How many thousands will die ? ....


That was a surreal day ....

Shock and awe ...

I work from home and had just returned from taking my daughter to school. For some reason I had the TV on, which was unusual, and saw it happen live as well.

Since that day, I ALWAYS have the TV on, muted, in the background...just in case...wanting to know immediately if something happens. Why, I don't know. :(

and I couldn't believe it and turned on the tv right away, and saw the second plane hit. Live. On Fox News (didn't know it was evil then). It was really unbelievable. I was stunned for the rest of the day.

to instant horror to learn of it. I was a new mom with a young baby, having a brief heart-to-heart with several other moms -- moms whose kids were grown, moms who had grandbabies -- on the exact subject of what a joy and a privilege it is to be a mother, to be entrusted with protecting the life of and caring for a beautiful new little human being. At least four or five other moms stopped in their tracks for a moment overhearing the conversation and we all connected in the shared agreement of this feeling, each one remembering it in their own lives, each of us feeling an immediate bond with each other. There was something so magical about that conversation. We walked away from it, went back to our work areas and learned the horrible truth just minutes later. Sobbing, shock, and by the time I heard there was a third plane and possibly a fourth, some fear, being that we were in a skyscraper ourselves and we had no idea how many there were. How many children became orphans that day was one of the first things I thought about when I saw the first tower fall. And my sister calling to touch base.

We heard about what happened in NY, but nobody could get on the internet to get any information because it was overloaded on some sites. Somebody had a small TV, and we were watching on the TV. We were about 4 blocks away from the White House, we could see smoke coming up from somewhere but we didn't know where. There was confusion everywhere, and there were lots of reports about what had been bombed in DC, but most of them were untrue. We watched the towers coming down live. They closed our building down and told us to go home, but the radio was reporting that the subway was closed down so I had no way to get home. I ended up getting a ride from one of my coworkers, the streets were completely jammed. It took forever to get out of DC. All the radios stations were carrying TV news coverage feeds. Went back to work the next day, there were National Guard Troops on every corner and a lot of Jersey barriers.

I will always remember that day, it is seared in my memory. And I feel for all the people who were looking for loved ones, that was just painful to watch.

the tv..'"TURN IT ON!" she yelled, so I did. Exactly when the second plane hit. I could only watch snippets the rest of the day because it made me physically ill.

I had been at the top of those towers as a kid and I hate heights and remembered thinking looking with all the tourists that a plane will hit one of these buildings..I just wanted to get out.

However, I don't know if it was that night or the next but as soon as they had mentioned that Bush had been repeatedly warned, etc., well....


Clinton did actually try to hunt and kill bin laden. I'm not thinking he would have let bin ladens family members fly out of the US so quickly. Maybe he would have wanted to question them, not worry about prior business dealings with the family.

No offense and I am sure you mean it but it is a bit over the top.

understated, if anything.

ennh, but people are all different, I guess.

Did I just divorce you for that sort of thing?

It's not arrogant at all.

This country sheds crocodile tears every year on 9/11 and then goes back to killing people left, right and center. 9/11 is nothing more than a political football.

nearly 3000 human beings perished on that day ....

Only the most cynical would deny the horror of such a loss; the cynically arrogant ....

It is arrogant for an American to think that the loss of life that day was more important than the loss of life though wars started in that American's name - hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and Vietnam, thousands more in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It is arrogant to feel "empathy" nine years later for deaths seen on TV - because it was a spectacular "historical" event.

Nowhere do I "deny the horror of such a loss," for I didn't watch it through the lens of a manipulative media. I saw it up close and personal, saw people die right before my eyes. In real time and in person. While I was running from the mushroom cloud effects of the 2 WTC collapse.

Excuse me but, nine years hence, like most of us who live and/or work there, I'd rather move on now if you don't mind.

You have no idea how human beings operate. Human beings, even Americans, have empathy. And there are people here expressing themselves who knew people who died that day, or were with someone who knew.

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And I've never killed anyone, nor wanted to kill anyone.

It may be a political football for you, but for me it is still a seminal event in my life.

I never intended to insult you; others decided to attack hysterically. I think you are being sincere. From my vantage point it is hard to understand how it could be a seminal event in someone's life unless they were directly affected. But to each his own, I suppose.

I don't understand the way people view things like 9/11. Roughly 3000 people died, which is a travesty, but compare 9/11 to highway deaths. There are always 30,000-50,000 deaths on our highways each year. Why isn't that worse? More sentimental?

Cancer? Flu? AIDS? All kill many, many more people EACH YEAR than that one event in 2001.

In comparison to those other killers, it's a blip on the radar. Yet, compare the response, both the gov't and citizens.

they were dead and dying in front of our eyes. And the events of that day have formed the history of the past decade more than any other.

It is important, and it isn't the same as "highway deaths" or even cancer.

I think it's normal to remember fateful and terrible events in this way.

and I said, "...and Oklahoma city was the fucking republicans.".
He never spoke to me again unless absolutely necessary, and I never felt the lack.

I still have no idea what the fuck he was talking about...


mark

Thousands dead because of his negligence and all he can think of is "I bet I looked funny".

We were shipping the magazine that day. I called my editor, who lives in NC and he said a plane crashed in New York and he was trying to see if a friend of his was OK. I said, OK, and hung up. I couldn't get on the Internet, so I went back to work. Then the CEO went into the conference room and turned on the TV. There were about a dozen people who gathered to watch and we all saw the second tower go down. It was surreal. We were sent home early.

I remember that morning and how beautiful it was out. A cloudless, warm, late summer day.

I worked the graveyard shift back in '01, and had only been off work for a few hours. After the DVD ended, for some reason, instead of turning the monitor off, I switched the tuner to TV, and was greeted with smoke pouring out of one of the Twin Towers. Since the TV's sound was not on, I thought that at first it was a morning movie, until I noticed the crawl on the bottom of the screen. I turned the sound on just as the second plane hit!!

I stayed down there, and watched the events unfold on TV, until I got a call from my wife, who worked the day shift, and she told me that her employer was letting everyone go home early that afternoon. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that day, but went into work that night, still numb and in shock. I was a federal employee, and to my anger and dismay, not a single word was said by management that night about what had happened. Not even a moment of silence for those federal workers who perished at the Pentagon,it was just like any typical working day. Kind of reminded me of Bush's response to the tragedy. Never, ever forgave them for that, and I am glad now that I am no longer employed with them.

one of my friends called me and told me to turn on CNN. I didn't understand what was happening - I innocently assumed it must be some sort of accident and left for class. When I got there (I was late), no one knew because they had been in class all morning. I just sat there waiting and then finally they sent everyone home and I watched the news again and finally realized what had happened.

I was only 19 - it didn't even occur to me that someone would do something like on purpose. The gravity of it was completely lost on me in the minutes immediately afterwards.

It succeeded in changing this country in ways that many of us could have never imagined.

The "shock and awe" of that day affected most people to their core. Even today the thought of the events of that day can cause the hairs on your arm to stand up.

It was the perfect event for a media-obsessed American public. The sheer spectacle and horror of it simply overwhelmed most people's ability to critically evaluate the day's events. And the reverberations of that day allowed the quick dismantling of our civil liberties and the launching of what will probably prove to be an endless war.

I remember thinking "Bush will get whatever he wants now. This is a bonanza for the fascists." I never watched, more than once or twice, the footage of the people jumping, or the traumatized people fleeing. I remember feeling that watching someone's death or suffering would be too invasive, too voyeuristic. I think, as a result, that I missed a lot of the media-hyped trauma.

I remember one pundit saying that not being angry and vengeful as a result of 9/11 was being "too philosophical for polite company." So, he was clearly traumatized. I remember also reading a commentary from abroad, where the writer expressed deep sympathy, but pointed out that, unlike in the U.S., there are events with similar scope of mayhem in many countries fairly regularly. As a point of fact, the military/industrial/congressional complex feeds off some of them.

Revenge has no natural endpoint. The only way of stopping the cycle of revenge is to deliberately refrain - to refuse to exact revenge you are capable of exacting.

that morning...our answering machine was fritzing so whoever was calling kept letting the phone ring and ring. We thought "who the hell is calling about resumes THIS early"??

Finally I got up for work because the phone kept ringing, and as I was answering the phone I was turning on the TV at the same time.

It was my mother in law, in KS at the time, asking if we were okay, if we had seen what happened...I didn't know what she was talking about but at the same time on TV was the twin towers. The 1st had already been hit. I yelled for my husband to wake up...

We sat on the couch for a while, watching. I remember telling him "everything's changed now. You just watch, everything's going to be really different now..."


I didn't know what to do...I worked downtown, right next to 2 federal buildings. I called work but no one was there yet so I went in. It was a fruitless day because I'm in Sales, and who the hell wants to buy ads when people are jumping out of windows?

We didn't get tv reception in the building that good, so I was stuck listening to the radio. Internet was spotty because everyone in the world was using the internet I suppose.

It wasn't until I got home that night that I was able to SEE everything. I didn't see everything though...I remember my husband calling me during the day upset at the pictures of the people falling/jumping out of the buildings before they fell.

That night when I rode the bus home it was very quiet, very strange.

No movies, restaurants...felt guilty doing anything that distracted me. Like staying home and watching TV 24/7 was going to change anything, but that is where I felt I "should be".
I didn't even care that I get sent home 4 hours into my night shift the following night because of low patient census. Just wanted to go home.

I had done a fill-the-car-with-gas and a bank run right after the towers were hit to take most of my $ out. Bank teller would just say "because of what happened in NY, we are not giving out cash right now".
After going back and forth, I found a loophole by asking my withdrawl be in travelers' checks mostly in $20's and $50's.
Initially, I had gone by the mall because I knew they had an American Express traveler check place there but the mall closed for the day shortly after the towers were hit.

which is, I would guess, about 250 yards from the South Tower.

I see that moment in my head clear as anything, these nine years later.

He told me when the first plane hit, said "A plane hit the towers in NY." I thought he meant a small plane and thought "oh, that's too bad" and. went back to sleep. Woke up just when the second plane hit, and just couldn't believe it. When they fell... I still get teary eyed thinking about it. I'm getting teary right now, thinking about that moment staring at the TV. I'll never forget that feeling. That whole day. I can't believe it was 9 years ago already. It seems like they've all just kind of run together since then.

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One in school, one working. I was home alone getting ready to go to work. With the time difference it was already 10am in NYC. I turned on the TV and saw a wide shot of NYC engulfed in smoke. I started punching in numbers on the phone getting an all lines busy message.I freaked.

It was another hour before they were able to get through to me. That was a very long hour.

I am saddened that 9 years later this event is still being used to score political points.

I woke my Dad and told him that one of his planes (AA) just flew into the WTC. We both sat and watched, in utter, complete silence and awe.

I was sick, as was my Dad.

What a horrible, awful day it was. I will never forget it.

I'm certain that I'm not the only person who has noticed the similarity