Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource September 11 Digital Archive Stories Description An account of the resource This collection is the bulk of the archive, representing the reactions and experiences of thousands of individuals beginning in 2002. 911DA Story 911DA Story: Story Tell us about what you did, saw, or heard on September 11th. Feel free to write as much or as little as you like. Tell us your story: On that particular day, I had gotten up earlier than usual to do some last-minute studying for an exam I had later that afternoon. I'm a student at the University of Missouri Saint Louis (UMSL). I had stepped out to get some breakfast, and when I returned home at about 6:45am (7:45am in New York), my neighbor met me on the porch with a 7-month-old kitten in her arms. The cat had been found stray a couple weeks earlier outside the Fox Theater downtown, and she apparently wasn't getting along with my neighbor's other cat. So my neighbor, Mary, asked me if I would like to have the kitten. I asked what her name was, and Mary said she hadn't named her yet and that I could pick a name. Well, I didn't have a name in mind, but I took her in the house anyway. About an hour later, I was taking a break from studying and was chatting online with a friend from Spain. She didn't speak a lot of English, so her posts to me were laced occasionally with Spanish. She said, "Gary, Gary, big trouble in New York." I said, "What do you mean?" And she replied, "Guerra." I knew that this was the Spanish word for war, but I didn't know exactly what she was talking about. I thought maybe some gang war or something had made web news and that's what she was talking about. So I said, "Oh, don't worry, it's fairly common in big cities like that." She said, "Not like this. This is bad. This is evil." So I moved away from my computer, turned on CNN just a couple minutes before the second plane hit 2WTC. I just thought suddenly, "How many people have just lost their lives in front of my eyes?" And I just dropped onto my sofa and cried. I didn't care that guys aren't supposed to cry. There was no other reaction possible. The kitten jumped up on my lap and curled up, purring, right then. I petted her for a bit, still staring absently at the TV screen. I just whispered, "New York." And the cat jerked her head up to look straight at me. I looked into her small face with huge shiny green eyes, and I said, "New York. That's your name." I named her in honor of all those who died and all those who risked their lives on that day. At the time, I hadn't yet heard about the Pentagon or Pennsylvania, but she seemed to respond instantly to "New York," like it was the right name to give her. So it stayed. I spoke a couple days later to my friend in Spain, and she told me that when I didn't come back to our conversation, she knew I was glued to the TV. She waited for me for 10 minutes, then went back to her own TV. She said she just gave in and cried for the next several hours. Our pain was felt and shared half a world away. She is a member of an organization at her university in Barcelona, and they gathered together that night for a candlelight vigil and said prayers for the dead in NY, DC, and PA. After all, those terrorists didn't target the "American Trade Center," they targeted the "WORLD Trade Center." It was an attack not against America, but against the world. And the world felt it. And as one of the earlier letters states, from Switzerland, "We were ALL Americans that day." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource story5607.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. story Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-09-11 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 152.163.188.6