Tag Archives: where were you ?

Sunday night – where were you ?

It’s been a long strange day.. 9/11 ten years later.. a day long in coming. It loomed large in everyone’s mind.. how would it feel.. what would happen ? would there be another attack ? Would there be a sense of closure ? The day passed relatively quietly .. there were many remembrance services..in towns across the country .. and on radio and tv. I tuned in a short bit to radio.. but didn’t find the sense of meaning I was searching for.. what was I searching for .. anyway ? Like many things.. the expectation of the day.. and the day itself were two different things.

I did attend a small remembrance service held by the fire and police force of our tiny town. it was quite and reserved.. many stories about shock and horror of that day.. many stories which Id never heard before.. of frustration that our fire and military folks felt when they quickly made ready to help.. and then were never called upon to help.

 

Many of the 180 or so of us gathered on the green today had attended a quiet candlelight service in the Round Church a few days after 9/11. I remember it was organized by our freind Rev. Barbara Putian and Father Benoit of the local catholic church. Barbara asked me to read a hebrew prayer of peace..   I think I read

עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו, הוּא יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵיֽנוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאִמְרוּ : אָמֵן.

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu yaaseh shalom aleinu v’al kol Yisrael, v’imru: Amen.

May the One who causes peace to reign in the high heavens let peace descent on us and on all Israel, and let us say: Amen.

 

 

I remember the deep sadness at that point.. but I also remember the perfect moment as that world came together in solidarity for what had happened ot our country. That solidarity quickly vanished though.. was it us ? or was it just the time ? I personally feel that our hunger for retribution and revenge drove us into the complex tar-babies of Afghanistan and Iraq. I honor the work done by our soldiers there.. but i simply cannot see how our leaders felt that soemthing like the hatred behind the 9/11 attacks can be stopped by more hatred.  But.. i’m also aware that ‘soemthing had to be done’.. .. and so it’s been forever..

One of the amazing things about 9/11 is how indelibly it’s etched in each of our minds..  .. each of us knows exactly where we were, what we were doing, who we were with and what we did next when we heard..   Like when JFK was shot.. .. or.. when the Challenger exploded.. or when we got the call about Sam..

I posed the question on facebook this morning..  ”  Where were you ?” I posted it and the moment the plane hit the first tower..  I began with were I was.

8:46 AM Sept 11, 2001 I was giving a talk at the University of Vermont Math department when my pager/watch went off with the news… Where were you ?

    • Meryl Goldfarb in my car heading to my store. saw the vermont national guard taking off over our skies flying faster than i had ever seen. i new something was not right. I then turned on vpr……

      16 hours ago ·
    • Ben Ashe Physical science …sophomore year of high school

      15 hours ago ·
    • Jason Sallee Saint Petersburg Florida, saw the second plane hit live on television.

      15 hours ago ·
    • Jessica DiToro ‎6th grade geology. The principal came in and told the class. I didn’t fully understand what happened til later when I got home from school.

      15 hours ago ·
    • Lorelei Lissor I was at work on the phone with my Dad in Florida telling him about our trip to Yankee Stadium and NYC just two days prior, when my Dad said “Oh my God…a plane just hit the world trade center”…then “oh no another one”…then he said he had to go…he was speechless…and if you know my Dad, that’s a rarity!

      15 hours ago ·
    • Karen Bahle Gard I was working at home, on a conference call . My sister had instant messaged me asking me to turn the TV on after the first plane hit. I was the 2nd one hit. It is amazing how I can go right back to that time … it is a memory that will never fade.

      15 hours ago ·
    • Jacques Benkoski In a hotel in Tokyo and had CNN on through it all. Then stayed blocked in Tokyo for 10 days…

      15 hours ago ·
    • Lester Fox I had just landed in Chicago on way to San Jose, got a phone call from Brother, when he said second plane had just crashed, all of the monitors went blank and I told the guy I was travelling with to call and get hotel reservation and I would get a car for following day since we wouldn’t be flying any where. Drove back to BTV, was weird not seeing any contrails in the sky for two days.

      15 hours ago ·
    • Randy Soffar

      I had recently moved back to Texas and had dropped my daughter off at school. Went back home and a plane had hit the first tower on the news. They thought it was a single engine plane and that had a terrible accident had happened. Got in my… car and started to drive to the Chapman Ranch in Hempstead to go horseback riding and help my friend I had not seen in years with some cattle. Then it came on the radio that the second tower had been hit. I knew then they had finally achieved their goal and got the trade center. I knew then the world had changed as we knew it.See More
      14 hours ago ·
    • Randy Pratt I was at work, in my manager’s office, having our 1<->1 when we heard the news and went into the hall to watch the TV there and saw the rest of the tragedy unfold. It ranks right there with my memory of hearing about JFK’s assassination and the explosion of the Challenger.

      14 hours ago · \
    • Mary Bentley In my car , in the parking lot. When they interrupted the station on the radio… I thought ” Is this an HG Wells parody ” ? Could not believe it was real.. I really don t know how long I was in my car for . It seemed like an hour just staring at the radio not believing what I was hearing.

      14 hours ago ·
    • Anne-Marie Happe Making rounds on the oncology unit at Rockdale Medical Center

      14 hours ago ·
    • Morgen LaCroix I was home with my Dad, watched in disbelief when the 2nd plane crashed

      14 hours ago ·
    • Joan Janik Bodendorf On the Garden State Parkway – probably less than 10 miles away

      13 hours ago ·
    • Pete Osler

      I attended that talk. You had just got the watch. You were proud of that watch and were showing it off before. I questioned its utility, and when you announced in the middle of your talk that a plane had hit the WTC, I felt vindicated–w…hy would I want to clutter up my life with news about everytime some yahoo flies a cessna into a building? Also, we needed to close the windows because the sound of the fighters taking off from BTV was drowning out your voice.See More
      13 hours ago ·
    • Scott Turnbull At work, 862-2. Had NPR on the radio in my office when the news came through…. Thought “Cesna”, at first. Later was at the window, with the radio and a group of co-workers, listening to reports of collapse.

      13 hours ago ·
    • Gary Beckwith

      I was in my room, counting the 4,000 copies of my book (http://theharmonyinstitute.org/book) I had just received from the printer, which is all about peace between the religions of the world. I found it so ironic sitting there with all th…ese boxes of books about world peace, watching the towers fall at the same time. 10 years later, it’s somewhat disappointing that our planet is still so divided. I still have hope, but there’s much work to do.See More
      11 hours ago ·
    • Stephen Perelgut

      I had just arrived at IBM’s relatively-new Software Lab just north of Toronto. I was even a bit early that day because we had a full day of IBM executives and government officials speaking to recognize the first new IBM SWG Lab built in de…cades. Needless to say, it was somewhat chaotic and I was one of the few people at that time who regularly used the internet for news and video, and I had clusters of people stopping by my desk for the next few hours as the story unfolded over a CNN video feed. I remember a feeling that it couldn’t have been real and listening as reporters tried to make sense of the little that was available at first. And I’ll never forget the voice when the first tower started to collapse. The only other public event that holds as much meaning for me was the assassination of JFK, which I learned about after school – watching on a B&W television.See More
      9 hours ago ·
    • Georgina Papp

      I was in a car going on the Taconic parkway heading to work and listening NPR. They started talking about some plane crashing into one of the towers and first I thought that they are talking about some stupid movie and then I realized that… this is not a fantasy, this is for real and got really scarred for my daughter-in-law since she worked in one of the towers(the second hit) on the 86th floor. It was only 2PM when I found out that she was not killed. She was 10 minutes late for work and was walking into the building when the second plane hit that building. She walked all the way to midtown to her husband(my son)’s workplace and then we found out that she is alive. She could not call on the cellphone earlier, they were not working. Next day I was due to fly to Paris, but of course that never happened…See More
      9 hours ago ·
    • Howard Druckerman I was at work in Dilbertville and watched on the internet then the TVs in the halls.

      6 hours ago ·
    • Howard Druckerman What was interesting was that morning, while driving to work, I passed the father of a boy in my son’s class and waved. He was a pilot for American Airlines and was the co-pilot for one of two crews that did the Boston to LA run. When they announced that it was the American Airlines flight from Boston to LA, I knew Steve was not on it. But he knew every crew member on the flight.

      6 hours ago ·
    • Peter Duncan I was at work when Raminderpal Singh yelled from an office down the hall “Guys!!! check CNN!!! A plane just hit the WTC! The monitors in the halls at IBM (usually used for internal communications) were then tuned to CNN and we were encouraged to check them as often as we needed. It was a very sureal time, and none of us really knew what to do. We watched, mostly in silence and disbelief.

      6 hours ago ·/div>
    • Craig A. Damon I was there with you. I don’t remember what the talk was about any more, but I do remember you checking your watch while someone else was talking and telling us about the first plane.

      3 hours ago ·
    • John CohnCraig A. Damon i was posing a graph theory problem related to interconnect networks on chips. I was trying to characterize the ‘snarl’ factor of parts of a network and use that as both a routing metric and as a partitioning metric.

      3 hours ago ·
    • Craig A. Damon I remember that problem now.

      3 hours ago ·
    • Leandro Thezolin I was getting at work, at that time at America Online, and saw the news on TV… got shocked

      3 hours ago ·
    • Martin Sona

      I was inside of a bank building where I stopped to run an errand on my way home from school. A few friends were with me and a TV was showing a news channel. It absolutely looked like a movie to me and only as the second plane crashed I real…ized that it was live coverage. We talked about it for the rest of our way home and emotions were running high. I watched the news for the rest of the day. Shortly before I had read an article about terrorist threats against America and about the large network of Osama Bin Laden and I suspected him to be behind the attacks. My guess was as good as anybody’s. We were all sure, whoever was behind those attacks, would be dead within 48 hours.See More
      2 hours ago ·
    • Cesar Carrasco I was working on an F-15 at RAF Lakenheath… then sent home to pack my bags…

      about an hour ago ·

I remember leaving the university.. driving to work.. and finding everyone I new at work were gathered around a tv.. everyone was silent.. though some were crying. I went home to intercept the kids.. and tried to work.. I remember a conference call I was on.. none of us could think . Diane was away at a yoga retreat.. she called and headed home. I remember the numbness through though next couple of days..I remember we were painting our house.. I remember Sam had a broken arm or elbow.. (one of several times he broke them)

 

You know..some folks have said to me that it just feels like yesterday to them.. it does not feel like yesterday to me.. It seems a very long time ago.. below the horizon that was sams’ death.. In fact. maybe that’s why I’m a little numb-er than I thought I might be.. as large as 911 looms in our consciousness.. its so eclipsed in my mind by sam’s passing. ..

As with our loss.. there’s a process we must all go through in grieving for 9//11 .. for its victims.. for our sense of well being.. for the sense of stability in the world.. and even for the perpetrators.. .. we must go through all those horrible stages.. of anger , denial, bargaining.etc.. and finaly.. I hope to peace and forgiveness…

and we have to get there.. because in the end, .. that’s the only thing that  allows you to keep moving forward in the world. I hope you all find some peace

nite all, nite sam

-me

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