9/11: Seven Years On(Discussion Thread)

[2861U2]

On a related note, Bruce's The Rising will always be one of my favorite albums. Probably top 5. To write basically an entire album about that day is brilliant. Some of those songs are so incredibly moving- Nothing Man, You're Missing, and Paradise in particular.

 

[U2democrat]

On a related note, Bruce's The Rising will always be one of my favorite albums. Probably top 5. To write basically an entire album about that day is brilliant. Some of those songs are so incredibly moving- Nothing Man, You're Missing, and Paradise in particular.

Nothing Man is my favorite song off that album. It's fantastic.

 

[Zoots]

It's nice to see a democrat and a republican agreeing on something.

I love that album too!

That Daily Show clip in the first post was really moving! Took me back to how we were all feeling that day. I was in grad school at Rutgers back then. I cannot forget seeing the smoke in the horizon from the rooftop of our 7 storey department building. The day just came to a complete standstill on campus and there were groups of people everywhere mourning and comforting others. Hope all the people personally affected by this tragedy have found the courage and moved on with their life. ray:

 

[Purplereign]

Hope all the people personally affected by this tragedy have found the courage and moved on with their life. ray:

ray:

 

[bono_212]

The Rising is a fantastic album, and I'm glad I finally ran into it, especially today.

I don't have a lot to share, I live in Indiana and so I'll always feel slightly detached from what happened, which kind of upsets me. I got that same feeling last week when it seemed the Hurricane Gustav was about to destroy New Orleans forever. When Katrina hit, I was no where near what happened, and so, I could not TRULY fathom how terrible it was. The closest I got were two students who transferred to our school months after it happened, but I never even met either of them. But now I go to school in Texas, and I was completely chilled to the bone when I passed the first sign directing Gustav evacuees to various shelters around Dallas. It suddenly all kind of crashed in on me how absolutely heart breaking, and earth shattering Katrina was, and how awful Gustav could possibly be. But back to the topic at hand, in some ways, being so far away from New York, I know what happened was terrible, and I feel sorrow at the thought of what happened and always will, but I will never know how terrible it was to be there.

Personally for me what happened that day was nothing until 2:15 PM. Because I was taking a standardized test that week. And for some reason, some bastard in charge of my school decided the test was more important, and that the "children" shouldn't be interrupted. So I went through the whole day with not a care in the world. It didn't even dawn on me that it was strange that we didn't get our break that day. It wasn't until my step-dad picked me up from school that I was even vaguely aware anything was going on. It's possible they released us from school early, I don't really remember. I just remember getting home, and finally understanding what was going on, because...I actually had never even heard of the WTC until then. I'd seen it before, but I didn't know what it was or anything about it. Anyways, I took a walk, I started thinking about things, had a few hours there when I was convinced it was the end of the world. Made a hysterical phone call to one of my friends. The one truly terrifying thing about the situation was that I live 45 minutes from Chicago, and so we were all a little nervous, even if we were far enough away.


Anyways, it was awful, and I just wish that some things that happened afterward, had not, there's no going back, and I won't discuss those issues here, but someday I really pray that we can find some closure.

 

[corianderstem]

On a related note, Bruce's The Rising will always be one of my favorite albums. Probably top 5. To write basically an entire album about that day is brilliant. Some of those songs are so incredibly moving- Nothing Man, You're Missing, and Paradise in particular.

I listened to it this morning. It was my own moment of 9/11 remembrance.

 

[RedRocksU2]

I am hating the fact that as time passes by, I am losing the "hate" feeling of what those bastards did.....does this make sense?
*confused*

 

[Moser]

I lived in Northwest Indiana during 9/11.

I was in grade school and my buddy Jasen told me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. I was sure it was an accident, but throughout the day, more information came flooding in.

The Pentagon, WTC, Pennsylvania. There were rumors that the President was dead, too. You didn't think the world was coming into an end or anything like that. You just watched.

Everything changed after that. My brother spent the next six years on the front lines, from going door to door in Baghdad to fighting the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. You heard daily reports of the terrorism threat level. You watched our freedom become traded for security.

But in the end, are we a stronger nation? I don't know. The levels of prejudice, racism, and hate have seem to increased so much now. Much of the world does not seem to respect us anymore, even though we couldn't do much about it.

 

[TheEdge U2JT]

I am hating the fact that as time passes by, I am losing the "hate" feeling of what those bastards did.....does this make sense?
*confused*

Why do we not see everyone with American flags on their cars like we did in the days and weeks after? Time heals and we get back to business as usual. It would be nice if we did a better job of remembering the great things about our country coming together and not let that fade away along with the sadness and hurt.

 

[Irvine511]

CNN.com - September 11 Memorial

 

[U2isthebest]

I listened to it this morning. It was my own moment of 9/11 remembrance.

The Rising is definitely one of my all time favorite albums. It's such a snapshot of the time.

 

[U2isthebest]

CNN.com - September 11 Memorial

Beautiful The sister of Todd Beamer, who was supposedly the leader of the group that broke into the cockpit and fought off the hijackers on the Pennsylvania flight, goes to my mom's church.

 

[Purplereign]

Why do we not see everyone with American flags on their cars like we did in the days and weeks after? Time heals and we get back to business as usual. It would be nice if we did a better job of remembering the great things about our country coming together and not let that fade away along with the sadness and hurt.

No one will ever forget
Time doesn't necessarily heal but it does allow you to continue to live your life which is the greatest form of rememberance there can be

 

[bonoman]

I listened to the Howard Stern show from that day today. I know alot of people hate him but I love him. Listening to that show during all the events you really get the sense of what so many people felt at that moment. Hate, anger, racism, betrayl, revenge, sadness, disbelief. It was extremely interesting to hear people on live radio not be so proper, they just let out everything.

 

[nathan1977]

I remember. I was at work back at a university in CT. (We had just been in NYC on the weekend and had literally driven beneath the towers.) We listened to NPR every morning driving, and it was a normal day. We prayed together, and I got out of the car, and between getting out of the car and walking into the building -- a walk of about 2 minutes -- the world changed. I got in and everyone was talking about what happened. I remember clicking MSNBC.com and getting a fleeting glimpse of the building on fire before the website crashed. We had a staff meeting and suddenly the second tower was hit. Then my wife called and said that the Pentagon was hit. We found a TV somewhere and put it on. I remember when the towers fell, and I crumbled to the floor with it. Someone later that day made a snarky wisecrack by email about the president and I think I lost it. I sent an email back and then left work. My parents had been trying to call us from the UK to see where we were. They were panicked.

It was such a day of misinformation -- "there was a car bomb outside the White House! There's been an explosion! There are missing planes!" No one knew where the president was. No one knew what was happening. No one knew what was going on.

I remember hosting a prayer event that night on campus, and students packed into this little apartment knowing that we could do nothing else but pray. "When the earth trembles and quakes, it is I who holds its pillars firm," was the verse from the Psalm we used.

I remember the silence of the skies. I remember how quiet it was for days after.

I remember anthrax and everyone being so conscious of what they were sending in the mail, for weeks and weeks.

I remember Bush on top of the rubble on the megaphone. I remember when a firefighter yelled "We can't hear you!" and he yelled back, "But I can hear you!" I remember the Congressmen and women singing on the steps. I remember the pundits talking ad nauseum the day after about how the nation could heal and when the healing could begin, and it made me sick that they were trying to skip to the next point in the story they were trying to write. I remember my firefighter cousin-in-law driving down to Ground Zero the day after to lend a hand. I remember my flight to the UK in November, and how everyone applauded on the plane when we landed.

I remember the anger of the policemen and firefighters when NY suspended the recovery effort. I remember the first funeral and I remember the last funeral. I remember the memorial service. I remember Bush pleading with us to not respond in kind to our Muslim brothers and sisters who were not responsible. I remember stories talking about how Americans were banding together to help. I remember being proud of my country.

I guess most of all today, I just remember.

 

[JCOSTER]

Such a somber day that everyone will always remember, and where they were at the time. I had just taken my 2 year old to a mommie and me class and my other son was in his second week of kindergarten. There first day of mommie and me was taken over by cell phone calls of people getting in contact with their husbands etc. Then when the building fell we all knew it was really bad. We actually heard the fighter jets flying overhead and the elementary school was in lock down mode. I could have gotten my 5 year old but didn't at the time because he was giving me a hard time about going. I'm only a block away from the school so I could see clearly as to how many people were picking their kids up. Not many did though. My bro in law is a NYC fireman and we thought he went down to the site to help and thought maybe he got caught in the collapses. Little known to us, he had a wisdom tooth pulled that morning and went home to sleep off the anesthesia. He didn't know what happened until later that night when we finally got in touch with him. I can tell you that, that was the best tooth he had ever gotten pulled!!! The next day he was down there digging with the rest of them.
My husband lost a close client and a girl I knew when a bunch of us used to go out dancing at the clubs. She was just about to get married. In the weeks, following I would cry myself to sleep at night. I always have a guilty feeling about something. I felt horrible for the people that lost someone and felt guilty that I had my family.

It's a very sad day and I don't think it will ever be forgotten.

 

[Dreadsox]

I was in front of a classroom of students welcoming them into school. A teacher knocked on my door, whispered to me that the world trade center was attacked. A little while later another knock, more bad news.

We never told the students the whole day. We taught them. We gave them a day of normalcy because we knew that their world was about to change forever. As they walked out of the school a collegue and I enjoyed the sounds of children leaving the building like it was any other day. We felt that we have given them a gift.

I left the school and Sunday Bloody Sunday came on the radio. I cried and cried. I picked up my children at daycare, called my father and told him that I loved him. My wife came home. That night, we sat together on the porch, with a candle lit for the three families we feared had possible lost loved ones.

Peace

 

[dazzledbylight]

.....to all here who lost people they knew.

Thank goodness, jcos, for your BIL's achey wisdom tooth!

Actually b/c my life has been in some major ways more difficult in the past 2 1/2 years than before-- 9-11 does feel longer away than before. But it doesn't take too much for me to be "back there".

My story was a little weird amongst stories.....

I got up late (10AM) for where I had to be. I was living in Brooklyn.
ALmost ALWAYS I put on my Walkman as I run around the apt getting ready to leave.
But I didn't that morning.Nor did my roomates ddidn't have morning TV on either.

I come bounding out the door, glorying in the gorgeous day's weather. I see a Happy Summer Cloud, and keep on going.
I'm parallel to Flatbush Ave (which leads towards the Manhattan Bridge) somewhat above Downtown Brooklyn .

JUST before I turned to go parallel, I flick on my Walkman. I hear WITHOUT ANY INDICATORS as to WHAT & WHERE this biulding is............
"......firemen covered in ashes", "building collapsing", "i don't mean to say this, but it looks like this could out of a movie">

I was like WHAT was going on?!?? I PICTURED - for what reason I'll never know- one of the large red-bricked apt buildings in Queens. They're often a block long and 10 - 12 stries high.

AS I am paprallel to Flatbush ...the multiple set of radio voices reporting- goes SILENT. Half a min? or more of what is called "dead air" in broadcast terms ensues.
I reach the next block, and NOW turn "down" the street that will bring me to Flatbush Avenue to finally get me to the subway into Manhattan, around Houston Street.

Suddenly the voices- well, one voice at first returns to the airwaves.

"The Towers are gone", he says. I stop dead in my tracks., and stare ast my walkmen, as though it had turned into a....demon-water bug, sitting in my hand. It's amazing I didn't drop it!

The....what .....are gone? I think to myself.
I terribly, slowly (yet fast internally) as I begin to link up all I've heard- realize....something was unbeleiveable wrong!!!

The final proof awaited me ...ahead of me..... because I was ALSO was putting together where I was, and where i was looking towards in relationship to Manhattan as I had left my building and gotten this far.

I slowly turned my face upwards. The Happy Summer Cloud that I had casually noticed earlier ( north and west of my location) ...I looked at again.
I realized (being an artist & a colorist in particual) that it's colors were WRONG for that time of day and season.
No it looked like....more like a cloud low in the sky in winter time.......yellow-beigeish. In fact it seemed to look heavier in appearence, thicker, grittier.

I finally realize WHAT I was looking at above the close "visual blockcade" of the nearby buildings.
It WAS the cloud of destruction, doubled in size as WTC 1 (north building) came down just as I was leaving my building at 10:30AM.

I went screaming and crying back to home. Sat all day with the radio on. I was too scared to see the TV images.

MY sister finally gets me around afternoon.

finally at night i turn the TV on and see the Actrocity and aftermath.

 

[Liesje]

Some pictures I snapped today. I came into work to find this tribute on the lawn. We have a webcam on the 4th floor of the library that points at the lawn and someone arranged one flag for each life lost in the shape of two towers.

 

[Liesje]

We never told the students the whole day. We taught them. We gave them a day of normalcy because we knew that their world was about to change forever. As they walked out of the school a collegue and I enjoyed the sounds of children leaving the building like it was any other day. We felt that we have given them a gift.

My experience was totally opposite, albeit I was in high school. I was not looking forward to third hour German b/c it was my birthday and my friend threatened to remind the teacher, meaning everyone would sing Happy Birthday in German which is always embarrassing. We went to third hour and my German teacher turned on the TV. All the classrooms had TV (installed by some program the school was participating in). She said everyone was turning on the TVs and we were to just watch. She put it on CNN and we watched both towers fall. The room was totally silent the entire time, except for a few sniffles and the guy sitting in front of me whispered "Oh.my.God...." I don't remember how many classes I went to but at one point I just went home. Everything was canceled and they were sending us all home.

 

[angelordevil]

I am hating the fact that as time passes by, I am losing the "hate" feeling of what those bastards did.....does this make sense?
*confused*

That's entirely normal, and it's probably a very good thing that time has numbed the feelings of hate or retribution many held immediately following.

People who murder are either damaged, or complete assholes. Transcending that, and moving forward is the ultimate way to underscore how truly wrong their actions were.

On a related note, Bruce's The Rising will always be one of my favorite albums. Probably top 5.

He truly captured something on that album...it also cemented his brilliance as an artist. Not that age should ever be a factor in the calibre of output, but I've always thought it was interesting how, in that seminal time in history, he really outshone the majority of younger, contemporary artists.

It was so beautiful here today, almost a mirror to the day exactly seven years earlier. I remember everything with crystal-like clarity: the sadness I felt, the crazy amounts of information that were pouring out of every radio and television station in the grand attempt to figure out why this had happened. I remember walking to the airport after the road to it had been closed, and all of the planes were grounded...planes of all nations, wingtip to wingtip on an overcrowded runway. Later that night, I remember how strange it was, that on such a clear, moonlit night, not a single aircraft could be traced. It was a jarring sense that reality as I knew it had been kicked in the gut.

As a Canadian, it was also like finding out that your big brother's gut had been kicked...a sense that, no matter how badly the relationship had gone in the past, absolutely none of the punishment or pain inflicted on that day could ever be justified.

Some pictures I snapped today. I came into work to find this tribute on the lawn. We have a webcam on the 4th floor of the library that points at the lawn and someone arranged one flag for each life lost in the shape of two towers.

That's amazing.

 

[anitram]

I remember the day very well.

I was in 3rd year of my undergrad and I'd just come back from the UK a couple of days earlier - eerily enough my flight coming back from Heathrow was late because we were evacuated from the terminal when somebody called in a bomb threat. It was a Tuesday and I had no classes. I was sleeping when my Dad called me and I remember it so well - he said, "go downstairs and turn on the TV, there is war." This was after the first plane hit but before the second and he just knew. It was chilling.

I saw the second plane hit the building and then I remember calling my Mom at work to tell her to get on the Internet and check the news. I watched TV the rest of the day.

The next day, I remember being on the subway and everybody was reading the free papers provided and there was absolute SILENCE on a packed train. I have never experienced anything like that.

 

[Irvine511]

i had just come back from living/working in Europe. i had been in NYC the weekend prior visiting friends from college who were working their splashy I-banking jobs. i remember thinking that, for all the dozens and dozens of times i had visited Manhatten, i had never visited the WTC and that it was something i should do (i usually went into the city to visit friends, go to fun bars, eat amazing food, and see amazing art).

i was living at home and not sure of my next move, i had contemplated a job teaching in Japan which i never followed through on. i slept in that day, and woke up about 10am. i had no plans, other than to look for a job or something to do next as i was treading water before i applied to graduate school (so i thought at the time). the first thing i did after going downstairs to get a glass of OJ was to check my email on AOL. i saw a headline when i logged on -- "airplane hits World Trade Center." and i was thinking, "what kind of a freaking idiot flies an airplane into a skyscraper. sheesh."

i went downstairs, flipped through the paper, had some coffee, maybe went outside because it was so, so beautiful out. i then flipped on the TV right as the second tower fell to the ground. it was disbelief. i flipped to another channel. the same thing. another channel. the same thing. it took me at least 20 minutes to figure out what was going on.

then my mother called. in a near panic. she listed the people we knew that worked in the WTC and how she was so upset she thought she was going to lose her mind. she said that she heard that there were dozens of unaccounted for aircraft, and i remember wondering what was the next target, if a dozen cities would be attacked by flying bombs. it was terrifying. we agreed to check in with each other in 30 minutes after we made some phone calls. lots of checking in with people. turned out that our family friends were safe. turned out i lost a college classmate.

that night was awful. my sister came home from school, my father came home from work, and i remember a terrible conversation over the dinner table where we talked about what we would do if there were some kind of nuclear disaster. we live equidistant (about) between NYC and Boston, so that didn't seem out of the question at that point. i remember eating dinner outside and not a single airplane flew over.

it was so silent.

i stayed up until i feel asleep on the couch, watching the news, trying to figure out what was going on and what was going to happen.

i wish it never happened. everything has gotten worse since.

 

[yolland]

previously posted (9/11/06)

My memory of the attacks and their immediate aftermath are a jumble, and I don't know that I could pin down which thoughts I had in which order. Other than dazed disbelief at the enormity of what had happened, I'm certain my first concern was whether my mother and my younger sister, who were still living in New York at the time, were all right, followed closely by concern about other friends and acquaintances from my years living there. I remember thinking that my younger brother, who'd just begun his tour of duty with the Air Force, would likely be deployed somewhere dangerous and far away very soon (which he was), and I thought of all the times when I'd walked along the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade after school, holding his small hand on one side and my sister's still smaller hand on the other, gazing across the East River at the Lower Manhattan skyline, in which the Twin Towers figured so prominently. I remember watching expressions of solidarity for the US pour in from all over the world, side by side with an explosion of "Why do they hate us?" headlines from within, and thinking, What a heavy, heavy moment this is; I hope we can live up to its demands. I remember thinking that terrorism and militancy were going to become much more central themes in my classes whether I liked it or not. I remember attending an interfaith prayer service on campus and looking aound me at all the folks wearing hijabs and kufis and thinking that many things were going to change for my Muslim colleagues and students, and probably not for the better. I remember inviting over for Sabbath dinner a recently widowed colleague from NYC, who on top of everything else had just lost his only sibling to the attacks, and watching him break down in bewildered sobs while his two grade-school-age children stared silently at the floor. The first friend in New York I was able to get through to, a black man who was teaching in Manhattan near the WTC at the time, told me that other than the nightmarish confusion of being evacuated into the chaotic streets from his workplace and trying to figure out which direction to flee in, his strongest recollection of that day was sitting in some random bar he'd ducked into and finding himself talking for hours to some white businessman seated next to him, who'd also fled from a building near the WTC, dazedly trying to grasp together what had happened. He said it was the one and only time in his life he'd ever talked that long to a white stranger with absolutely no mutual awareness of all the usual unspoken barriers lurking in the background.

Sad to say, I'm not sure I have any clear sense left in my memory of what the "national mood" was like before 9/11. It's a little easier to remember how I personally looked at the world and our place in it before that, but not very.

 

[joyfulgirl]

I was getting dressed for work when my best friend of 20 years Steve called me in a panic and said turn on your TV. We watched together speechless until, for some stupid reason, I felt like I still had to go to work, so I did and I remember getting a call from someone asking a mundane question about one of our events and I blurted out, "Do you know what's going on? Have you seen the TV today?" and she said, "uh...no...I...what?" and then I said something crazy like, "We're under attack! Turn on your TV!" and scared the poor woman to death.

After a few minutes at work I left and went over to Steve's. We both had lived in NYC for many years and began calling our friends. We reached one who lives in the East Village and was watching everything from his window, not on TV. He stayed on the phone with us and we all cried when the 2nd tower fell.

Six weeks later, on Halloween, Steve died. He was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer on Sept 30, given 6 months to a year, and died 31 days later. That, as it turned out, was my 9/11 because the personal eclipsed everything else happening in the world.

Someone I knew from another forum I used to participate in was a flight attendant from Denver on one of the planes. I saw her name roll by on the screen at the Denver U2 show a few days after Steve died. I'd gotten the tickets hoping he would go with me. When Bono dedicated "Kite" to anyone who had to say goodbye to someone they weren't ready to say goodbye to, I felt everyone in that arena was thinking of someone and it was the first step for me in moving beyond the personal into the global.

 

[melon]

Sad to say, I'm not sure I have any clear sense left in my memory of what the "national mood" was like before 9/11.

I haven't forgotten, and, needless to say, it generally comes across as painfully naive compared to how we think now, which seems grounded in pessimism and self-doubt, coupled with an unwieldy and meandering sense of nationalism, as if there is no other recourse but to concede powerlessness and a fear of the unknown.

Post-9/11 was when I decided that there was no alternative to understanding the truth, no matter how many traditions or otherwise it meant slicing through. And I think I've succeeded fairly well, thus far, although it has made me quite mortified over the state of modern civilization across all sectors of society. Still, I consider it preferable to a comfortable romanticist lie.

I guess you could say that 9/11 changed everything for me...heh.

 

[Liesje]

Sad to say, I'm not sure I have any clear sense left in my memory of what the "national mood" was like before 9/11.

I was just thinking the other day of how I remembered when we were little and we picked up my dad from the airport, we would run down the terminal and wait right at the gate, standing in the windows watching the planes. Now, I can barely get away with dropping him off or picking him up outside at the curb.

 

[Harry Vest]

Seven years. Wow. I've never been the same since.
Here's a good little piece I found while flipping through the net.

A Blessing and a Curse | Culture11

 

[namkcuR]

If anyone is interested, MSNBC has just started a two-hour re-play of the events of 9/11/01 as they happened on NBC news. It just started in the middle of the Today Show, just after the first plane hit. I'm sure most of don't want to see it, but I just thought I'd give you all a heads up.

 

[dazzledbylight]

I ran off to meet my sis, so we could go on the Staten Island Ferry to see "The Tribute In Lights". These are the 2 twin beams of light - each made up of either 40 or 80 lights arranged in a square that shoot up...woah, I don't know how high, but it can be seen for at least about 50 miles.

Every year tyhey remain as amazing as ever. She told me that this was the last year they would be on. I hadn't heard anything yet, si I HOPE it's NOT true.


Now to an experience about 9-11 afterwards.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm one of the older fans here. I have been to many regular and benifit/tribute concerts. I have marched and stood in a whole bunch of protest /or comemeration marches and ceremonies in my lif- here in NYC and in Washington DC.

They almost always been to focus on some thing(s) needed doing, things that have happpened, or thuings that needed to be stopped, or changerd. The issues usually had a local, and national component. SOmetimes international, too and sometimes something something "only" international.

So our focus was almost always an set of concentric circles of concern outward>>>.

SO in all five burroughs there are little memorials springing up spontaneously around. Esp ones in the small street, vest pocket parks (little parks.

But in one of the medium size parks in Manhatten (several sdquare blocks <vs Cnetral park or a few others>)-- Union Sqaure park - 14th street (the original cut off point for non-resdents or business people to be able to go past in the first several days or so.....a memorial was atarted up there since Union Sqaure Paerk was on the North side of the temporary "blocade".

It grew & grew and GREW......one of the biggest set of stuff was 10 by 20+ feet or so.

SO I remember finally being able to go and see it (since we couldn't travel into Manhatten for ? was it 2 days by subway). i saw it several times...it was AMAZING.

But the thing that SHOOK me was inrealationship to the other marches/commemorations I've mentions...this wa the the first time in my life that the eyes of the Nation, the eyes of The World were totally focused on us for this particular kind of atrocity/ harrowing sorrow.