HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: September 11. It's such a knife to the heart. Sometimes when I see the clock is at 9:11--which I do so often--I still pause a moment to remember.
We all know where we were, and have told our stories over an over, and that's our responsibility. We need to tell the stories. And doesn't it seem like a long time ago now?
We learned to take our shoes off to get on an airplane. Now we worry about getting on an airplane at all. We gathered at memorials to remembered...and now it's risky to gather at all.
So Reds and readers, can we take a moment to reflect?
We're in the midst of a horrible thing, this Covid, and the fires, and there's no denying it's incalculably awful. And yes, I know, you can calculate some of it, and that's awful, too. And there seems to be no end to it, or only a flimsy fantasy ending, or just promises and wishes that no one can describe or rely on.
We are all so fragile in every way, and in everyday lives we often forget that. Normal, whatever normal is, takes over, and we take things for granted, and then, whoosh.
Gone.
Used to be, we could rely on "tomorrow." Or "the next time." Or--"see you soon."
Gone.
I know I look at the sky more these days. I remember the September 11 sky, that perfect blue. I look at the stars, too, and think of the vast universe, and little us, down here, doing the best we can. Trying to remember to notice.
Reds and readers, what are you thinking today?
Somber thoughts today . . . thinking of the fireman whose name is on my bracelet, and of his family. So many lost . . .
ReplyDeleteOh, your bracelet. That is so touching and brave.
DeleteThe sky was a heartbreaking blue that morning. Clear and cloudless. Unusual for NYC. My thoughts turn to all of the people who woke up and simply went about their daily lives. Those in the towers, the first responders, those in the planes and on the ground.
ReplyDeleteYes. That’s sky.
DeleteSo many thoughts and memories of that day. I get chills thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteLast year, I dragged Mary "Liz Milliron" Sutton with me to tour the Flight 93 Memorial with my FBI Citizens Academy alum group. The visit freshened all the horrors of that day. Anyone who doesn't believe in ghosts should tour the Shanksville site. I'm sure the same is true for sites in New York and the Pentagon too. The History Channel is broadcasting a show about Flight 93 tonight and I plan to watch. What I don't plan to do is sleep afterward.
Annette, hope one day to get there. The 9/11 museum in NYC is incredibly sad and touching. Well worth a visit to remember once we get back to our "New" normal.
DeleteHmmmm I don’t know if I will watch that…
DeleteI remembered the date as I was making my coffee just now. My workplace made, among other products, news-editing software, and a television was always on a news channel in the cafeteria. Nearly the whole company sat together for hours that day, watching and murmuring and weeping. One of our salespeople was on the Boston plane. Others had loved ones in NY. When I got home to my lovely rural home under that beautiful sky, I wept.
ReplyDeleteWith possibly questionable judgment, I am currently reading The Orphan Collector, set during the 1918 pandemic - in Philadelphia. Told from the point of view of a 13 year old girl, it is also horrifying to see the parallels to today.
What can we do? What we always should do: bless every day. Tell our loved ones we love them. Live as safely as we can.
Agreed. Xxx
DeleteThanks for that, Edith. xx
DeleteThank you, Edith, for this bit of comfort and inspiration. Your (reading choice) judgment may be questionable, but your courage and perseverance are not. Blessings.
ReplyDeleteBlessings right back, Elisabeth, and thank you.
DeleteAlmost 20 years ago now. Reflecting I remember the phones going silent as President Bush traveled back to Washington D.C. For the newcomer btl at Jungle Reds, I was working at a call center for a major airline on that day. I don't remember any other day when four domestic flights were lost. I remember the awareness that we were now at war. I remember my Buddhist training kicking in telling me to stay in the now and stay on the task in front of me. I remember agents with tears streaming down their faces still speaking calmly while we spoke to passengers. Then I left to go to my second job. A mental health counselor in a practice for the GBLTQ community. And not one person, counselor or client asked me how about that work morning. Not one. That was the dominant lesson for me. The individual's ego when s/he is suffering often can not find empathy for the other.
ReplyDeleteIn short and bluntly - me first happens when the mind is shocked. That insight is still useful for me. It helps me listen compassionately. May we all take the lessons from 9/11 and apply them to the days ahead.
I had forgotten that about your history Coralee. What a terrifying, gut-wrenching morning...
Delete"me first happens when the mind is shocked" - what an insight. Thanks for sharing...
DeleteWow, that is a powerful point of view, Coralee.
DeleteOh, yes, such a riveting moment… Life-changing and instructive and chilling. Xxx
DeleteIt is still shocking and sad. I had to go to work and heard it on the car radio. The office manager didn't call off the meeting she was conducting until an admin came in to tell her that a third plane was down. Then, I had an inspection to attend and watched tv with the homeowner as the towers fell. Numbness and disbelief. Despair. Understanding that this was an attack. The feeling that life in our country would never be the same. Later, watching reactions from around the world. Mourning in most places, dancing in the streets in others. I remember.
ReplyDeleteNot sure about the dancing, you know?
DeleteYeah, unfortunately, I do know, although it's been covered up lately.
DeleteI'm always a little torn on this day. See, it's my birthday. Birthday #28 kind of stunk.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, I worked for a company that did software for banks. A lot of our clients were in New York. It was very sobering.
I'll do what I always do today. Pause to remember that day and then celebrate because no matter what, life should be celebrated in all its forms. And I'll pray one of my favorite prayers from Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM, the first recorded casualty of 9/11:
"Lord, take me where you want me to go.
Let me meet who you want me to meet.
Tell me what you want me to say.
And keep me out of your way." - Fr. Mychal Judge
Happy birthday, Liz/Mary.
DeleteHappy birthday! We are happy that you were born, and take power and inspiration from this.
DeleteHappy birthday, Liz!
DeleteThank you ladies!
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ReplyDeleteI remember the phone ringing... my sister in NYC saying turn on the TV. Going from before to after.
ReplyDeleteOne of my daughters was working not far from the WTC... waiting and waiting to hear that she was ok (she walked from there home to Queens). My other daughter was at Barnard College up on 116th St... from her window she could see the smoke at the opposite end of Manhattan. They were safe but so many lost. It changed all of us who lived through it.
Yup. Which is why it’s good we remember.
DeleteIt started as a normal day for me. I had a group of third graders when the teacher in the next room came in and told me one of the towers was on fire. It had been her free period and she usually had the TV on. She stayed in my room so I could see for myself. While I watched, the second tower was struck and nothing has been the same since.
ReplyDeleteAll week I have been thinking of this day and remembering 19 years ago. The thoughts from all of you have been very comforting to me.
Love you—
DeleteI remember this day 19 years ago -- it started out normal and ended up anything but. A changed world.
ReplyDeleteI also remember this day when I listen to the soundtrack from the genius musical Come From Away, which celebrates the spirit of human kindness shown by the people of Gander, Newfoundland on that day nineteen years ago. That small Canadian town took in thousands of stranded air travelers. The musical doesn't shy away from the darkness of the act of violence against the US, but it shines a bright light on kindness and compassion and the belief that we are all much more the same than we are different from each other. And that reaching out a helping hand is always a good thing to do -- for the other and for oneself.
Oh, yes, one of the best plays I have ever seen! We all stood and cheered at the end, and it was quite amazing! I was really apprehensive about seeing it, I thought it would be too sad – – but it was absolutely inspirational.
DeleteI was in NY that day. I walked out of the elevator at work, into a reception area with a television, just in time to see the 2nd plane hit the building. My husband saw the debris in the sky from an elevated MTA track. I walked out of the building at lunchtime to a. beautiful fall day, blazing blue sky and uncanny silence. We were in midtown, not directly affected, but everyone in NY was affected in some way. We will never really forget. And yes, I have also seen Come From Away and was touched deep into my heart.
ReplyDeleteXxxxxx
DeleteThe last time I was in NYC I admired the new WTC. I wanted to see the memorial but I'm very claustrophobic and all those buildings in lower Manhattan are just too tall and close together for me. Instead I sat in Battery Park and looked and the damaged art work still standing in little plaza there after there being hit by debris on 9/11. I see reminders everywhere, not just in NYC, but seeing that smashed art bought it all back: that blue, blue sky; the horrifying cloud of smoke; the people jumping... I can see it all in my head now, just like it was yesterday.
ReplyDeleteYes, it does not seem far away at all.
DeleteI’m wondering will they ring the bell for each of the 200,000 plus list needlessly in this pandemic? We have a 9/11 every day!
ReplyDeleteWe absolutely do, Rhys. Good point.
DeleteOf course we need to remember 9/11. But I've also often thought about places like Syria and Afghanistan, where bombs fall and life isn't safe every day and hasn't been for years. It's very American of us to be so self-centered simply because our soil has been mostly free of that kind of attack.
Exactly. It seems wrong to differentiate, somehow.
DeleteMy thought exactly Rhys
DeleteAnd that is exactly the point of my little essay today.
DeleteYes, exactly, Rhys. I think of this every single day now.
DeleteI posted earlier, but I'm directionally dyslexic. Flight 93 flew west over northeastern Ohio before it turned back east and crashed moments later. I remember thinking, when I learned that it had pinged on a directional marker to the east of me, that those passengers were already in action. And down below, we were unaware and helpless if we had known. Seeing the second plane hit, seeing the devastation--I will never forget.
ReplyDeleteYes.
DeleteI've thought a lot about 9/11 these last few months. In the second week of March, when so many Americans were self-isolating at home, the skies were empty of planes, and the airspace above our house, normally on a flight path from CVG, and also busy from the municipal airport a few miles away, was eerily empty. Just like then, traffic slowed to a nearly nonexistence, and Americans were stunned into shock.
ReplyDeleteFlora, my daughter was living in Cleveland at the time, and I remember my horror at knowing that plane was so close to them.
That day, with every station airing the same footage of the towers falling, over and over and over again, is one of the reasons I rarely watch network TV any more. The trauma is still there.
But like Rhys I wonder why we are more horrified by 9/11 than we are at this daily loss of life that so easily could have been prevented. It's too much loss to comprehend, maybe.
Yes, that is exactly what I was trying to point out!
Delete!!/22/1963 I was in Dallas. I thought it would never get worse.
ReplyDelete4/19/1995 I was in Oklahoma City. I thought I'd seen hell on earth, from my office window.
9/11/2001 I was in Rochester, at work, Visiting Nurse Service and Hospice. I was on the phone to Aetna in NYC, asking for more home visits for my Muslim patient, Hassim. He was dying of cancer. The person I was speaking with kept saying he needed to get off the phone, that the city was being attacked. I refused to hang up. My patient needed those nursing visits. I got them. And then I listened to the radio the rest of the day, kept my phone on speaker so Julie could hear NPR in her office. This was way before she had internet access at work.
12/14/2012 Sandy Hook. I was in the hospital, recovering from surgery. My roommate and I watched in horror. How could it be. This was worse than Columbine.
11/8/2016 It got worse. Worse than I could imagine.
9/11/2020 190,815 What is there to say?
( Yes, there were many other mass shootings, bombings, here and abroad, genocides, black lives snuffed out by police lynchings. I remember them all.)
Yes exactly.
DeleteWell said, Ann.
DeleteOn the morning of 9/11 I arrived at Gatwick airport, 7 a.m. UK time. I rented a car and drove to Rye, in Sussex, where I had reserved one night in a B&B. I was researching a bit of AND JUSTICE THERE IS NONE. I got settled, had some lunch, unpacked, took a nap. In the late afternoon I got up, made a cup of tea, then went out to get dinner in a little restaurant down the street from my hotel. It was only when I was paying my bill that my waitress said, "You're American. How do you feel about what's happened in New York?"
ReplyDeleteI had no idea what had happened. I ran back to my room and turned on the television, watching the footage on the BBC over and over again, and sobbing. I couldn't call home, there was no phone service, no internet. Everything was totally overloaded. I have never felt so completely isolated. The next day I moved to London to stay in an unfamiliar flat in an unfamiliar part of the city. It was almost a week before I was able to contact anyone at home, or to find out if friends and family in New York were okay. I didn't know when air travel would resume, or when (of if) I would be able to go home. But what I remember most about that week was the bizarrely empty clear blue sky. I was in Fulham, in West London, right under the flight path for Heathrow, and I've never seen the sky empty before or since. But the British were wonderful. There was such an outpouring of love for America.
On a much happier note, today is our dear Dax's 8th birthday, and there is nothing like a beloved dog to remind one to appreciate the moment.
Yes--happy birthday, darling Dax!
DeleteI’m thinking that while 9/11 was a terrible event, the 2020 horrors are so equally horrendous. Almost 200,000 dead from covid/19 that didn’t have to die. Here in California we are on our 26th day of fires, which are raging in Oregon too. I’m in the Bay Area where there is so much smoke in the atmosphere we haven’t seen the sun since Tuesday, We are suffering conditions like a nuclear winter, it was 100 on Tuesday, and only 70 on Wednesday. There are so many atrocities this year, you’ll excuse me if I don’t have time to reflect on this one.
ReplyDeleteAnyone having family members in Portland you have my sympathy, people are trying to evacuate and they can’t get out, roads are closed. I fear many more will perish.
Yes, agreed..so tragic in every way.
DeleteThe tearing apart of our nation is the greatest tragedy of all! Cascadia is a strong movement and I can see California, Oregon and Washington leaving the US, which is no longer the nation we fought for and loved. Many know what is going on is wrong, yet they fail to speak out, for fear of offending or conflict, that is one of the greatest tragedies of all. I’m a volunteer attorney poll watcher, I will be sent to one of the red states. We are being accompanied by an armed guard because of threats against us. In my own country, we are threatened even when we are apolitical. Shocking and tragic!
ReplyDeleteSO great of you to work at the polls! Rock star.
DeleteA lot has happened since 9/11. A lot of things have changed. Moves. Job changes. Deaths of family and friends. My child in combat on the other side of the world. I hope to never see a horror like 9/11 again in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteThe world is terrifying is so many ways right now. xxx
DeleteMy sons were in grade school when 9/11 happened. Now they are grown men leading their own lives. I’m very thankful for that, but also horrified at the world they are living in. Currently we are also hiding inside our homes because we too live in the San Francisco Bay Area and the air quality is unhealthy and has been for days and will continue to be unhealthy for who knows how long. We were all already sheltering at home because of Covid, but now I can’t go outside for walks and the air purifiers we have running do not seem to keep up with what is seeping in from outside. 9/11 was absolutely horrifying, but the Bush government made it worse by their overreaction and 2020 is horrendous because Trump administration’s mismanagement.
ReplyDeleteTeri, I am so sorry, and its is SO awful.
DeleteThinking about 9/11 today and what is happening now. On Wednesday we woke up to Orange skies in California. it felt like we were on Mars! It was so dark inside the house during the daytime!
ReplyDeleteThe pictures are jaw-dropping, I cannot even imagine. We are all so worried.. please keep us posted...
DeleteI was woken up in AZ out of dead sleep by a call from my mother. My cousin had been booked on Flight 175 out of Boston to LA. She was practically incoherent. I rushed to the living room and turned on the television just in time to see the second tower fall. We couldn't locate my cousin until hours later. He had missed his flight. Being from CT, I knew so many people in NYC and the surrounding area who lost loved ones. My best friend's younger brother was one of the CT State Troopers who searched for bodies, with his canine, in the wreckage. I remember him saying that the worst thing was finding a scorched picture of a family that had obviously been on someone's desk. He was heartbroken for the family in the picture that was no more. #NeverForget
ReplyDelete#neverforget. Yes.
DeleteMy daughter who was in high school called me right after I dropped my son off at middle school. She told me what was going on (she hadn't left for school yet and the Today program was on TV), and when I got home, we watched the events unfold together, with the falling of the towers bringing us to our knees. I always think of the small, precious moments that people miss with their loved ones, those who died and those left behind. Yesterday, my daughter, who is now 36, and her husband came over to pick up some furniture from my mother-in-law's, and while they were busy, I had my precious eleven-year-old Izzy here. It was supper time, and I fixed her something to eat, serving it on the back porch, which she had just set up for the occasion. I thought to myself that these are the most precious moments, a simple supper on the back porch with one's granddaughter. It's thinking about the victims, dead and living, of 9/11 and those moments that were stolen from them that make me the saddest.
ReplyDeleteSo touchingly true, dear Kathy.
DeleteWe're in Portland, and at Evacuation Level 1, which means we're choosing who to pack into the car if we have to leave. Very stressing. Very. How to "abandon" all the loved things that won't fit into the cars, after we, some clothes, the cats, our meds, important papers, backup hard drive, and...what?
ReplyDeleteI totally understand! We are in the southern end of the Bay Area. We never reached level one. I hope things improve in Portland soon! I have family members there that are evacuating,
DeleteOH, Rick, this is heartbreaking. Oh, honey, keep us posted, and stay safe.
DeleteMy mind and heart goes to the children. The babies born that year and the children. Some are just now entering college and some graduating. Almost two decades of life bookended by tragedies - 9/11 and COVID. What do they think and what must they feel?
ReplyDeleteBetter, but the smoke! The windows look out on a thick, choking grey wall. Yesterday, air quality in Portland was the worst city in the world!!!
ReplyDelete