911: Twenty Years After

[Kendra]

I was able to keep relatively dry eyed today until Acosta closed his show today. Here's a partial, if I find the whole clip somewhere on the web I'll post it also. A must see, but keep the tissue handy. *sniff*

Acosta: We live in separate worlds now. We don’t agree on the same facts anymore. We can’t even agree on wearing masks or getting vaccinated to end this pandemic

[Volkonski]

[scirreeve]

I live on the West Coast and was sound asleep. I was supposed to fly to Boston later that day for a sales management meeting which was to start on Sept. 12. I got a call from a friend a little before 6 am which woke me up saying turn on your TV. I did and saw the 2nd tower get hit a few minutes later. We had sales managers stuck all over the globe. I remember the Japanese folks were at some military base in Canada (close to Whitehorse IIRC). The Canadians were super nice (of course). One of my Japanese buddies said they arranged for buses to take them into Whitehorse for day trips so they weren't stuck at the base the entire time. The Aussies were stuck in LA. I was fortunate to be at home. I will never forget that day.

[Flatpoint High]

I was living on Staten Island and was awakened when a friend called to tell me the first tower fell. We spoke until he told me he just saw the second tower fall.
I could see the smoke from the roof of my building

[Frater I*I]

I was a drug dealer at the time, so was living my usual vampire hours, I was asleep when everything happened. A friend called me to tell me to turn on the television, I asked what channel, and he said any, I knew something was seriously wrong. When I tuned to CNN I just saw holes in the buildings, and a few minutes later I saw the replay of the towers coming down, I knew right then, it would lead our government into a series of bad decisions regarding this, because the government could push fear upon us for a long time.

[Kendra]

Here it is:

[Lani]

I was sleeping, but awakened by a nightmare around 3am. A tower in flames, people dying. It was so scary, I got up and paced the floor, frightened that if I went back to sleep, the nightmare would continue. I turned on the tv to keep me awake. And then I saw the fiery tower and the 2nd attack.

A friend was between rentals and was sleeping on my sofa. His son & mine were best friends and were sleeping on the living room floor, pretending to be camping. I closed my bedroom door so I wouldn't wake them. I felt very lonely. Shortly before 6am, I woke up my friend, finger to my lips to keep quiet, and motioned for him to follow me. God only knows what he thought I was up to! Then I told him what had happened. He didn't believe me until I showed him my tv. We needed to be ready to explain what had happened and assure the boys that they were safe.

The boys were ok. Mostly they were worried about being late to school. We assured them that no one would be in trouble for arriving late. Unfortunately, it was a terrible day for them. Their teacher had the tv on all day. The kids needed to feel safe, but their teacher destroyed that. We should have kept them at home.

[busterbunker]

This is one of those events that everyone speaks about in first person. Like where were you when they shot Kennedy? Well, I was sucking on my mama's titty, but that's between her and me.

I knew the neighborhood very well. Awoken early by a call from God. I quickly surmised the situation. This was a crime on New York perpetuated by Boston. In a nutshell, I went full NIMBY.

OK - If you want to debunk some conspiracy theory: the Pentagon was some fancy flying and someone was asleep at the wheel. WTC7 was spooky.

Here's some more first-person stuff that someone put together 5 years ago:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ky-214230/

‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’
Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board.

Pretty interesting. Never seen it before.

[MN-Skeptic]

My niece was born two years later, on September TENTH. My sister-in-law was relieved that her daughter would not have to share her birthday with such an awful date.

[Foggy]

I was in a motel in Fresno, California with ol' Wifehorn and our first adopted son. Our second son (we hadn't adopted him yet, but we eventually did) was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, he was 4 days old but he had some elevated protein or something, we didn't get him out and back to Orange County until the 11th day.

So, umm ... yeah. I usually didn't watch TV even back then, but I didn't have a newspaper so I turned on the news, in time to see the second plane hit and to watch both towers collapse. My son, age 2 and a half, watched the huge amount of smoke and papers flying around and told us, "That's a MESS! Somebody has to do a BIG CLEANUP!" He's still the neatest member of the fambly.

I think 9/11 was a missed opportunity. Instead of starting unwinnable wars, we should have done what the Israelis did after Munich - they sent kill teams to assassinate ALL the people who helped plan and organize the attack. They treated it more like a police matter than as a cause for war. And of course, we should never have invaded either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Imagine if Bush had announced, "Our dependence on oil is keeping us mired in the Mideast, and we have to convert our whole nation to clean, renewable energy without the need for petroleum products. Let's get to work."

Suppose instead of spending a trillion dollars in Afghanistan and another trillion in Iraq, we'd spent two trillion dollars in America, on Americans, supporting scientific advances in wind farms, solar cell manufacturing, electric cars, R&D into battery technology, installing the Smart Grid, building rapid transit, fixing our outdated infrastructure, and so forth.

We could have had a major, enormous, gigantic effort to re-invent our economy and our nation. For a brief time, we were really united as a nation. If Bush had said, "We're hunting down the terrorists and we won't stop until we find and kill them, but we have to use this moment to do something great for America and its people. We're going to build a better future, starting right now" I think most of the right-wing people would be able to accept it (especially when they got jobs as the $2 trillion spending resulted in jobs).

Instead we eventually ended up with a president who ordered the Navy to return to steam catapults on aircraft carriers.

[scirreeve]

I was in a motel in Fresno, California with ol' Wifehorn and our first adopted son. Our second son (we hadn't adopted him yet, but we eventually did) was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, he was 4 days old but he had some elevated protein or something, we didn't get him out and back to Orange County until the 11th day.

So, umm ... yeah. I usually didn't watch TV even back then, but I didn't have a newspaper so I turned on the news, in time to see the second plane hit and to watch both towers collapse. My son, age 2 and a half, watched the huge amount of smoke and papers flying around and told us, "That's a MESS! Somebody has to do a BIG CLEANUP!" He's still the neatest member of the fambly.

I think 9/11 was a missed opportunity. Instead of starting unwinnable wars, we should have done what the Israelis did after Munich - they sent kill teams to assassinate ALL the people who helped plan and organize the attack. They treated it more like a police matter than as a cause for war. And of course, we should never have invaded either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Imagine if Bush had announced, "Our dependence on oil is keeping us mired in the Mideast, and we have to convert our whole nation to clean, renewable energy without the need for petroleum products. Let's get to work."

Suppose instead of spending a trillion dollars in Afghanistan and another trillion in Iraq, we'd spent two trillion dollars in America, on Americans, supporting scientific advances in wind farms, solar cell manufacturing, electric cars, R&D into battery technology, installing the Smart Grid, building rapid transit, fixing our outdated infrastructure, and so forth.

We could have had a major, enormous, gigantic effort to re-invent our economy and our nation. For a brief time, we were really united as a nation. If Bush had said, "We're hunting down the terrorists and we won't stop until we find and kill them, but we have to use this moment to do something great for America and its people. We're going to build a better future, starting right now" I think most of the right-wing people would be able to accept it (especially when they got jobs as the $2 trillion spending resulted in jobs).

Instead we eventually ended up with a president who ordered the Navy to return to steam catapults on aircraft carriers.

My Grandpa owned 3 dive bars in Fresno. Maybe you went there. Sadly, I don't remember the names of the bars. Was cool when I was a kid though - he gave us free play on the pinball machines and of course free soft drinks and food.

[chancery]

In another thread I've asked Gregg if he would share his experience of witnessing the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.

My own experience, not nearly as dramatic, was as follows.

I was on the upper west side of Manhattan, finishing getting my five-year-old daughter ready for pre-school, the first day of the school year, when a neighbor telephoned to tell us about the first plane. My daughter immediately asked if our building would be attacked too, but seemed to accept assurances that we would be safe.

By the time we arrived at school, the second plane had hit the South Tower. There was a confused half hour or so during which the teachers and parents went through the motions of starting the school day, trying to keep our faces bright and calm while we shared whispered news of each fresh horror. I remember hearing from one parent that friends in a building with a view downtown could see through the damaged portion of one of the towers. Finally the school announced that we should take our children home.

We walked home, first on Riverside Drive, then on Broadway, marveling at the astonishingly clear blue sky that everyone remembers. We kept looking back at the plume of smoke drifting and spreading from downtown, and every block or so we passed a storefront window with a knot of people mesmerized by the endless replays of the falling towers.

I'll never forget seeing an EMT truck from a tiny New Jersey town inching its way south through the traffic on Broadway, the young driver's face set in a mask of determination as he summoned his courage for the horrors and dangers he expected to experience, not yet realizing that the tally of victims and survivors was already complete.

[Gregg]

My ''experience'' isn't that dramatic really. At that point in my life, the first two weeks of September were when I went on vacation every year, the first week my wife and I went separate ways and the second week we went somewhere together. I picked that year going to Gatlinburg on Saturday and Sunday, Monticello on Monday night staying in Charlotte and Washington DC on Tuesday, September 11. I had reservations in the Crystal City area of Arlington and my plan was to park the car in the garage which was under the hotel, which was also the same building where the Metro Station was. I got up early knowing I had to be inside the beltway before rush hour and I was driving down the GW Parkway when the plane flew over WAY TO LOW. My first thought, being a pilot, was that was way too low even if the airport is very close, which I knew it was but the road isn't in the glidepath...so anyhow, I saw the plane, I heard the explosion and saw the smoke. I couldn't see the actual Pentagon, the GW is kind of a trench in Arlington, but by the time I got to my hotel, all hell had broken loose. I spent the night in the hotel bar and the next morning I just packed up and went to Gettysburg, where I did not at the time have a home, and spent the rest of the week there. My wife was in Sedalia, Missouri without her car so on Friday I ended up driving to Sedalia to get her. Its entirely possible that my little stay in Gettysburg is where I got the seed of an idea to buy a house there. I've always loved the battlefield, but that trip made me take it a little more personally, and after I got divorced I spent 4 weeks there recovering from that when I finally decided I had found a place where I could be alone, and started looking for something to buy.

[Gregg]

Off topic but Riverside Drive in upper Manhattan is the most beautiful part of NYC. It reminds me of a lot of things, all of them not New York. I walked from Grant's Tomb to Columbia University once and it was just gorgeous

[chancery]

Gregg, thanks for your 9/11 account. I'm glad I wasn't responsible for operating a vehicle when I learned about the attacks.

Off Topic

You’re preaching to the choir. One could quibble by nominating Central Park, or the Hudson River Greenway/bike path that starts at the Battery and ends at the George Washington Bridge, or a few others, but Riverside Drive with its adjacent park is my favorite neighborhood.

I grew up on Riverside Drive, in Morningside Heights, the Columbia University neighborhood. Our family lived in a high apartment with a view over the Riverside Park and across the Hudson River, plus up the Hudson to the GWB. Grant’s Tomb was a familiar sight. Decades later I moved back to Morningside Heights, not on Riverside Drive and without any river view, but a convenient block and a half from the park.

For the last four years I’ve divided my time between NYC and the coast of Cape Ann, northeast of Boston. Since Covid began I’ve spent barely two weeks in NYC. I love Cape Ann, but I miss the city, especially Riverside Park.