WE REMEMBER: The enormity of the day, even ten years later, still staggers me. Two thousand, nine hundred seventy-seven innocents, from the busboys at Windows of the World to Pentagon workers to those heroes forced into action on Flight 93 and those who knowingly risked and lost everything by choosing to enter the World Trade Center because of a sense of duty, three hundred forty three firemen among them.
Since the fifth anniversary we have regularly paused on this day -- sometimes as cultural consumers, sometimes as parents, sometimes as citizens (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010). Remembering the good people of Choteau, Montana, is just one of the many stories to be told of selflessness and heroism which we'll be telling our kids and our grandkids. We can be funny again, and we can be divided again, and we can be normal again. We're just never going to be quite the same again.
This is an open thread for whatever reflections and reactions you have today.
<p><span><span>Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.</span></span>
ReplyDelete<span><span>Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,</span></span>
<span><span>And human love will be seen at its height.</span></span>
<span><span>Live in fragments no longer.</span></span>
<span><span>Only connect...</span></span>
<span><span>--E.M. Forster, Howards End</span></span></p>
After ten years...this is still the most heartfelt, honest, and saddest story I have heard about 9/11...It breaks my heart over and over...And what is beautiful about it is the idea that, through all the trials and bullshit life throws at us, the simple expression of "I love you" trumps them all...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k8HHfJe828
This is the first year I've watched/listened to the entire reading of the names. Usually when 9/11 falls on a weekday, I'm getting ready for work during it, but with today being Sunday, I've had it on all morning. It's overwhelming, and incredibly moving.
ReplyDeleteI also found New York Magazine's 10th anniversary issue to be amazing. Rather than do one large article, they did an "encyclopedia" of 9/11, telling dozens of stories - some I've never heard, some about that day, some about the ten years since, some from new angles. An incredible effort to take in the whole picture of loss and rebirth, tragedy and heroism, politics and humanity.
I've been generally avoiding media (regular and social) today. I don't need to see the pictures again- at least not right now- and I have been able to remember the people I knew (gratefully, no one very close to me). I won't forget but I can't handle the barrage.
ReplyDeleteI believe that his daughter was on the Children of 9/11 show this week. She's a wrestler - inspired by her dad's love of wrestling.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks, Adam, for letting me see what I wrote each year...very reflective.
ReplyDeleteWe had a long conversation yesterday with the kids (10 and 7) about the day, in more detail than I had expected they would want to know. But they very much wanted to know, so we did all the parental line drawing we thought appropriate. We then watched about 90+ minutes worth of the "As It Happened" footage that MSNBC was running last night. I had to shut it off after the second tower fell - it was just as raw and awful as it was 10 years ago, and I found myself running to the comfort of a Magic Hat and the relative safety of MTV, which was showing the House of Wax remake. That's right -- in my moment of need, I retreated to Paris Hilton and Elisha Cuthbert (and Brian Van Horn - Penny Can!).
ReplyDeleteSo today, I've mostly been reflecting, listening to The Rising, and occupying myself out in the yard rather than taking in any of the TV coverage. We listened to NPR's broadcast of the memorials over breakfast, but I think that's going to be all for me today.
On 9/11, I remember being grateful that I didn't have to explain to my 9-month-old daughter about terrorism. Yesterday, we had a talk and today, I showed her some footage of the second plane. I watched it first to make sure there were no bodies falling. She didn't need to see that -- not yet. Just like me 10 years ago, she was fooled for a second. "Where did it go?" she asked. "Is it behind the building?"
ReplyDelete"It's inside," I said quietly.
"Oh."
A few seconds later...
"And there were people in there?"
"Lots of people."
"And people below on the street?"
"Yes."
"Did they all die?"
"Not all of them. Would you like to hear some stories about some people who survived?"
"Yes please."
So that's what we're doing today.
I teach 10th grade American History and was really struggling to figure out how to teach the 10th Anniversary. They were only 5 years old, and even though there's documentaries and coverage every year, there were many who didn't know all that much. I'm having them create exhibits using the Smithsonian's online collection of artifacts. There are many examples of not only how the events happened, but also how the country came together to recover and rebuild in the exhibit, found here: http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/index.asp
ReplyDeleteWhat's been breaking my heart today is thinking of the little girl killed at the Gabrielle Giffords event. Her birthday was Sept. 11 and thinking of her parents' grief is more than I can bear. So I hug my kid and give thanks for all the good.
ReplyDeleteI was just revisiting Sarah Bunting's blog post about that day, which I hadn't read in years. Highly recommended if you haven't read it:
ReplyDeletehttp://tomatonation.com/stories-true-and-otherwise/for-thou-art-with-us/
I didn't catch your name at the beginning of your post, but then saw the reference to "the rising" and just knew it would be you. Cool. Is My City in Ruins on that Album?
ReplyDeleteSarah ("Sars" of TWoP) Bunting just posted her annual reflection, and it's lovely as always. If you haven't yet read her harrowing and heartfelt account of her 9/11 experience, or her yearly ruminations on the anniversary (including the search for Don, her seemingly angelic companion in Lower Manhattan that day), please do so now. It'll do you good, especially today.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds think alike, Professor Jeff, although apparently you're better at link text than I am. Yes, Bunting's update, which was posted right after I posted above, is highly recommended as is, well, everything she's written about that day.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, I've been using an excuse...Christina and I have been watching a friends daughter, who is just over 10, and I've avoided all the coverage over the last couple of days so that I don't need to explain anything. Or so I tell myself, since even more so it's that I can't stand all the coverage. it's just too much honest grief, even 10 years later. (The other stuff I don't feel guilty about skipping.)
ReplyDeleteI heard an interesting piece on NPR last week about a Muslim school teacher who always used to have her kids write a "how I was feeling" paper around 9/11. She realized few years ago that she had to scrap that assignment and made it more of a research project. It made me realize that my 11- and 13-year-old nephews view it as I viewed the Kennedy Assassination or Pearl Harbor. They understand it was a bad thing and that it changed the world, but it's a historical footnote for them.
ReplyDeleteLast year I had been away at college for a few weeks and was walking to the dining hall when I remembered that it was 9/11. It was the first time I had been away from the community I was with on September 11, 2001, and it was strange, especially because nobody I talked to that day made any mention of its significance. This year, there's been more conversation, predictably, though not much. My oral histories class read about a 9/11 oral history project and briefly related our own memories before discussing the reading and listening to some sound clips. I started a conversation today at brunch with a few of my friends, but they're from Texas and California and Arizona and maybe it's growing up 5 minutes away from DC, but I seemed to want to talk about it more than they did.
ReplyDelete