I didn't really experience 9/11 the first time around.
I was going through a family crisis at that time and spent Sept. 11, 2001 on the road, driving through the American west on the last leg of a cross-country trip.
I watched the TV coverage for about an hour in my hotel room that morning, but I had a schedule to keep, so I had to hit the road. Radio reception in the sparsely populated west can be spotty, so my attempts to keep up with the news reports were only partially successful. Those information gaps, combined with the overshadowing personal crisis I was experiencing, had the effect of creating some emotional distance between me and the events of that day. Of course I mourned our nation's tragedy, and the informational gaps have long since been filled in, but I never did feel the events of Sept. 11th in the personal, emotional way that many other Americans did.
So I was unprepared for my response to MSNBC's re-broadcast this morning of NBC's orginal coverage of the events.
I'm still watching right now.
On my TV, it is 11:57 AM, Sept 11, 2001. We have seen the results of the plane crashing into the first tower, and we've watched the second plane fly into the other tower. We've seen first one tower and then the other collapse completely out of existence. The phrase "never seen anything like it" has been repeated too many times to count. We've heard first person reports from the Pentagon after a plane did its job there, too.
We have listened to tearful eyewitnesses, we have devoured tiny bits of information as they trickle in, and have tried to assemble them into a more complete picture that makes some kind of sense. The name of Osama bin Laden is coming up repeatedly -- not because there is any specific evidence of his involvement, but because there is widespread speculation that he is the only person in the known terrorist world who has a sufficient organization to have executed such a vast, efficient, and well-coordinated attack.
There are reports of a plane crash in Pennsylvania, but we don't know yet whether or how that might be related to the events in NY and DC.
/the show just ended. Alex Witt is on. Time to turn off the sound. I really don't want to listen to Alex Witt covering this event. Where is Rachel when you need her?/
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I don't remember crying on Sept. 11, 2001. Today, I can't seem to stop. Partially because I'm watching and listening to the full sequence of events for the first time -- and partly because I'm doing so with the knowledge of the intervening nine years interwoven into the experience:
Knowledge that we did not, in fact, "go after" those responsible for the attacks, as the commentators that day were so sure we would, but instead our national leaders used the tragedy as an excuse to wage the war they had wanted all along.
Knowledge of what the nondescript words "United Flight 93" have come to mean as we've learned why that plane crashed that day, and have tried to wrap our brains around the kind of courage its passengers must have had to do what they did.
Recognition of the contrast between Sept. 11th, 2001, when the words "Muslim" and "Islam" were not mentioned one single time, and Sept. 11th, 2010, when we can't listen to cable news for 5 minutes without hearing about Islamophobia. On Sept. 11, 2001, the voices in the public arena knew the attacks were carried out by a group of individual human beings, not by a religion.
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I've always been a science fiction fan. I have been especially fascinated by the concept of time travel. Recently I've watched a couple of PBS shows contending that time travel is theoretically possible.
But I wonder if maybe it would be best for us not to even try -- for the same reasons the recently-deceased Emily in Thornton Wilder's masterpiece "Our Town" discovers when she goes back in time to "watch" herself live a past day: There is something excruciating about experiencing "what happened back then" while "knowing what we know now."