Well, it’s that day again. I’m avoiding the TV today, just because I don’t really wanna see the footage repeated endlessly, with talking heads telling me that we should “remember.”
I hadn’t even planned to blog, but I started reading Fark, and they had linked to their original discussion thread on the day it happened, and re-reading that made me want to at least say something.
On 9.11.2001 I was at Kinko’s on Glenwood Ave in Raleigh, NC. I had opened that day, and so was there at like 6 or 6:30am. Early morning was slow, so I had various news sites open on the computer in the production area, reading while copiers hummed. Slowly everyone else filtered in for the workday, and we saw a few customers.
Then a customer came in, and said that she heard on the radio as she was pulling in that a plane had hit the WTC. We checked CNN, and sure enough, there were photos of the first tower smoking. There was a small TV in the back room…we all turned it on and crowded around it to find out what happened. I called Betsy at home, and told her to turn on the TV…she did, just about the time that we both watched the second plane hit.
After that, the day got seriously wierd. We were only minutes from Raleigh-Durham International, and on a major road, but the day got very quiet. No traffic, no planes, nothing. Just a lot of us staring at the TV, customers gathered around the counter to watch with us.
The oddest thing for me personally about that day is that I was supposed to fly to Atlanta…had a ticket and everything. My luggage was in the car. I was supposed to take off at 11 something in the morning for management training. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the airport. I remember Betsy being very worried that I might go, before everything was locked down.
Now, on 9.11.2004, we’re in Sewanee, TN, and I’m appalled at the complete inappropriateness of things like this. Can’t say that I think our country has gotten any better since then. matter of fact, we’ve spiraled into something that I don’t even recognize as the US that I remember. Personal liberties and privacy have been given up for the illusion of security. We’re embroiled in a war in a country that had nothing to do with 9.11. I’m just hoping beyond hope that the upcoming election will result in something, anything that is better than the atrocity of a head of state we have now.
2 replies on “The day rolls ’round again…”
are those coins for real? silver recovered from ground zero? sheesh.
I was watching LA Law when it happened, and they did NOT break from the show to say the news.
My father called me and asked me what I thought about what was happening. At the time, it was a thrilling courtroom debate going on, so I said that I thought it was quite interesting, and that I didn’t know how it would turn out.
Little did I know that what I said referenced two different things.
I haven’t watched LA Law since.