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Across the Fence:  Where Were You???? 9/11/2001  |
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CMac
True Blue Farmgirl
1074 Posts
Connie
Ashland City
TN
USA
1074 Posts |
 Posted - Sep 11 2011 : 8:20:39 PM
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I pulled up AOL's page to check e mail with my first cup of coffee in hand. (late night the night before) There was a short video feed of a plane hitting the tower and a line that said "Are we under attack?" I thought it was horrible that AOL would stoop to such a crass sensational tactic to keep people on their page. It was obviously fake right? I opened my mail page and a voice in my head literally screamed "Go turn on the news!" I did just in time to see the second plane hit. I realized the NOOOOOO I was hearing was coming from me. I was frozen just like so many others describe. I kept thinking " Not on our soil. Not where we live. Not here." I thought about the draft too and wondered what life in a war zone would mean to all of us. Then the news of the pentagon, then the plane in PA, then the anthrax and life here has changed forever. I went to my beloved Appalachian Trail to grieve and contemplate and try to find my center again. I realized on the third day that there were no planes. That really unnerved me. There are always planes even when you are out alone on a mountain top. Zero, Nada, nothing in the sky. I can honestly say that was the first and only time I have ever felt totally isolated on the trail. And probably the only time I have gone 24 hours without hearing another human noise. Weird. I will never forget. Every time I look to the sky and don't see a plane I remember. When I look to the sky and do see a plane I remember. Just as the skyline has changed for New Yorkers the sky has changed for me.
Connie
"I have three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for company."
Author: Henry David Thoreau |
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Dusky Beauty
True Blue Farmgirl
1108 Posts
Jen
Tonopah
AZ
USA
1108 Posts |
Posted - Sep 11 2011 : 10:49:02 PM
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I was up late the night before doing some homework for my first week of college. I had pretty much fallen into bed about 2 hours before it happened, and I woke up to my mom coming into my room, sobbing. I didn't really hear her words but it was her crying that woke me up, and I couldn't imagine what was wrong, I wondered if our old horse got tangled in barbed wire or something, then she herded me into her bedroom to see CNN. I just kinda blinked, still mostly asleep while what I was seeing soaked in, with the black smoke writhing up to the sky while the planes stuck out like a lawn dart in the neck of the twin towers.
We lived very far away from the excitement, Northern Nevada, at the halfway point between Reno and Salt Lake, 3 hours from anything else so we and our neighbors around us weren't spooked too much, Winnemucca wasn't much of a target.
I remember writing in my journal because I knew this was a big deal, and I would probably want to know what I remembered from then. At the time I was struck with how invulnerable our country had seemed up to that point (I don't think all of that was just the illusion of youth), and how someone (we had not heard the words "Al Qaeda" yet) had taken advantage of the opportunity to shake the core and confidence from our nation (I had not yet heard the word "terrorist".)
For me, the fear I felt had nothing to do with the terrorists. It was for the words I was hearing from my neighbors. Old men and fat middle-aged women shouting how we should "bomb 'them' into the stone age" (We didn't yet know who orchestrated the attacks!) They wanted someone, anyone-preferably someone middle eastern, to pay the debt for American lives lost.
They murmured words like "cowards" and "draft"-- They who were in no danger of being called on themselves, without any regard to the loss of American men and women who should be, at that moment marching on someone and annihilating some country if they had their way.
The entire lecture for my US history class that day was completely de-railed, while my professor spent the entire class talking my classmates down from their panic, and trying to assure them that tragedies happen during each generation, and some day, we would catch the people who did it, and life would return to normal. I wonder if she even believed it herself.
"The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way it's animals are treated." ~Gandhi
http://silvermoonfarm.blogspot.com/
"After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.” ~Will Rogers |
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jpbluesky
True Blue Farmgirl
6066 Posts
Jeannie
Florida
USA
6066 Posts |
Posted - Sep 12 2011 : 01:04:47 AM
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I worked at an advertising agency, and we had a large TV in the conference room. I went and got my boss and said, turn on the TV. I will never forget his face when the second plane slammed into the second tower. I left the office, called my daughter, filled up with gas, went to the bank and got cash, and also bouht a few things of food, etc. I had no idea what was still to come, and told my daughter to do the same. She had just returned the week prior, landing in Newark, from a summer mission trip to Israel. I remember being so thankful she was not coming through Newark at that time!
I remember sitting in front of the TV long into the night, watching and wondering what was next. Tonight I watched the documentaries and heard the stories of the NYFD. Tears streamed down like it was yesterday. What heroes.
Farmgirl Sister # 31
www.blueskyjeannie.blogspot.com
Psalm 51: 10-13 |
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Bear5
True Blue Farmgirl
13055 Posts
Louisiana/Texas
USA
13055 Posts |
Posted - Sep 12 2011 : 12:19:55 PM
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I was teaching school. Around 10 AM, One of the teachers came in to walk my students to her class, and asked if I had heard that the United States had been bombed. No, I said. It wasn't until noon when I called my husband did I really found out what had happened. I was so busy doing lesson plans, getting music prepared for the students for the week, that I did not have the time to watch much TV. But, on this 10 year anniversary, I watched as much as I could. It was indeed sad to watch.
Marly
"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." Elisabeth Kurler-Ross |
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FebruaryViolet
True Blue Farmgirl
4810 Posts
Jonni
Elsmere
Kentucky
USA
4810 Posts |
Posted - Sep 12 2011 : 12:57:49 PM
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I was coming up into the lobby of our office building to make a copy and to run up to the third floor. When I got to the lobby, one of the partners, Barbara, took me cautiously by the elbow and said, "Jonni, you have lots of friends in NYC, don't you--You used to live there?" I said, "yes..." and she brought me into the large conference room where we have the tv (that I didn't even know worked) on, just in time to see the 2nd plane hit the tower. I was devastated and spent the morning calling friends and trying to get through. We ended up shutting down the office and went to a local Irish pub where my husband worked, a block away, for drinks and to watch, and to cry and to just be with people. I had been married the month prior, and my husband and I talked about how, "it could have been me..." prior to meeting him, I was moving back to Manhattan to live with my best friend, Jess, and had already procured a job at ITT Hartford, near the Trade Center. My dear friend, Kit, who is an archivitst with the New York Public Library said they made them walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to evacuate the city, and she recalls seeing bits of business cards, letter head and envelopes, floating down from the sky like confetti.
Musings from our family in the Bluegrass http://sweetvioletmae.blogspot.com/ |
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Across the Fence: Where Were You???? 9/11/2001 |
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Where Were You???? 9/11/2001
