Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the Trade Tower disaster

Where were you and what were you doing when the planes hit?

Was it one of those moments that you'll never forget?

Is anyone old enough to remember when Kennedy was shot? (which Kennedy?)

Well, I was doing exactly what I'm doing now - sitting at the 'puter, the t.v. was on and showed the burning of the first hit, when the camera followed the 2d plane into the second tower. Holy Shit! The morning was spent glued to the tube. Work was unimportant. I was stunned, shocked, blown away... much like I was when JFK was assassinated, only more so, as there were so many people who lost their lives.

I was puzzled as time went by as to the call for revenge - "we must get those that were responsible!" I still think those that were responsible were the one's that were in the four airplanes.

i was at work when my phone rang. my daughter called to tell me what had happened. i went upstairs to the city manager's office to see what news was had around here. he also had just heard. the city has a tv set used for seminars and such and nearly all the employees gathered around to watch with mouths hanging open as the footage of the catastrophe replayed and replayed. no one could believe what happened. our public safety department was on full alert. we waited, holding our breaths, to see if other attacks would be made. it was incredible to believe what had happened. it was incredible to believe that it could happen even closer to home.

when president kennedy was shot i was a youngun in college. i had just left the school cafeteria and was told on my way back to the dorm that the president was dead. it was a premature announcement, but it soon became reality. the student body went into some kind of shock and gathered in small groups and wept in disbelief.

the summer robert kennedy was killed i was travelling and did not learn what happened until the next day. it was unbelievable that this could happend twice within the same family.
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robert f kennedy "only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly."

I was asleep on my sister's couch in Dallas with my bed-mate Stella, the whippet.

The phone rang. It was my ex-girlfriend calling me from one of the fifty-story buildings in downtown Dallas where she worked.

"Well, they are sending us home because of what's going on."

"What's going on?" I said.

"Turn on the television, Lightning Rod."

I tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit. When the first tower collapsed and then the second, I was awed but at the same time fascinated the way you are at a disaster movie. I wondered if the whole thing was being produced by Dreamworks and Industrial Lights and Magic.

It reminds me of the way that I can still taste the hamburger that I was eating in the Jr high cafeteria when the principal came on the PA system and announced that President Kennedy had been shot.

Or the time when I was vacuming my car at a carwash in Austin in 1968. I had the radio on. The news of Bobby Kennedy's assasination came.

These are the moments when the Earth stands still and we all take a photograph.

anniefay--

It's amazing how parallel our experiences are. We were both writing these at the same time too.

When my wife called me from work and said, "A plane just hit the Pentagon or something . . ." ( she had only heard vague rumors around the Library), the first words out of my mouth were, "Civil War."

I fear we may yet see something like civil war, but not as long as the current electorate and grey Dawn of the Dead population remains entirely indifferent.

If there were a draft, then it might all change.

Except for the Bush Waffen SS boys rounding folks with cloths on their heads up, torturing them for fun and choking the Constitution until it turns blue, little has changed.

But listen to me (!). "JOIN ARNOLD" was all over my neighborhood on yard signs. I thought it was a bad joke, as I did when Ronald Reagan was elected.

But, by God, they "joined Arnold."

I voted for Peter Camejo, but I told all my friends I voted for the stripper.

It seemed more in line with the integrity of Sacramento as I know and love it. Not a bad town, really. It has a great zoo. ( animals)

As a friend of mine says, "Yeah. If ya like zoos."


I like Z's.



--Z

I was walking to work ( a six mile trek, but invigorating and a good way to start the day) deep in thought about the Holocaust and animal cruelty and the negative tendencies in human nature, generally.

A friend pulled over to give me a ride. When I got in she asked if I'd heard the news yet? What news? The radio was on and we listened as the first tower fell and the announcer began to speak about terrorism and the possibility that this was a Muslim terrorist attack on the United States. I started to cry. Through my tears I told my friend that there was no hope for us, we don't learn from the past, we don't learn that violence doesn't work. Six million Jews annihilated by Hitler sixty years ago, and now this ... it never ends.

When we got to work, every radio in the place was on. Everyone was talking about it, saying we were at war, what would we do? One person with a little portable TV with a screen about the size of a slice of bread had a big crowd around his desk. I remember meeting the eyes of one of our senior VPs -- someone I had known and worked for during my whole tenure at that company -- I had never seen him scared, never seen him helpless. The look he gave me was both helpless and frightened. I remember thinking that when a strong man like Wayne is frightened, there's something to be frightened of ...

As for the JFK assassination, I can only remember tiny bits. I was a small child. I remember the TV being on, my mother crying. I remember her explaining to me that someone had just killed the President ...

i was at university...yes...i'm in my 40s, but i was at university for a year...bless the government

that day i was in my basement checking my online sports pools with CNN on...they cut to the first crash and i said to myself "holy cow...poor buggers"...then they cut to the second hit and said immediately "holy crap...terrorists in the US"

that is true...i had worked on asymmetric warfare for the canadian navy a couple years earlier...this type of thing was being predicted for a while...the second that second plane hit my brain recognized what it was, as many others' did as well, i am sure

i was attending a class called "Goverment and Politics of South and Southeast Asia"...we were on the Pakistan module, so naturally we extended into Afghanistan...so in the days following 9/11 i understood more about its background than probably 99% of the world's population

but still i cried...yes, folks die unnecessarily all the time, and in bigger numbers too...i cried for the loss of the innocent age, i cried for my american friends and sisters and brothers, i cried for the globalism that was now abundantly clear


and then a year later i was heading over there....different story...

Welcome, knip

I'm so glad you are here. (oh, not because you are one of my favorite human beings, but because we need more rascals like you)

S writes me that she spent her recent birthday flying in an ultralite over the vinyards of France. Now she's back for another hitch in Sierra Leone.

s is having a time, i am sure

proud daddy, ye

good

yes, proud

but envious as well

I've always wanted to do the ultralite thing


Are you back at home? What's shakin'?

i'm studying at our defence college in toronto for a year

i see family on weekends.....4 and a half hour drive each way

tis a good thing, relatively speaking

of course, sunday i have a mandatory garden party thingy, which sucks


but tis what tis

I was asleep and the phone rang. It was my mom and she told me I'd better turn on the tv.
I remember that I was so angry at Bush.
I was also scared, wanted to run but nowhere to run to.
I truly thought that bush was taking us over into a dictatorship.
Heck, I still think that.
People told me I was being hysterical. That Bush was gonna save the day from the terrorists!
Yeah, right. He and binnie laden.
And now today, we can glorify the memory of it!
bleah.
why do we always glorify these things in memory?
we'll have 9/11 day and barbeques and fireworks I'm sure.
we'll go around in hushed grave voices saying, "happy 9/11 day" to each other.
go figure.
GO OH OH figure.