story1774.xml

story1774.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-05

I've kept a journal for 30 years, more or less, and I currently write in the morning, on the commuter train to the county hospital where I work as their webmaster. On September 11, 2001, I had just returned from a web conference in San Francisco. The first entry is from the train, before I got in to work, and heard the first news report. The second entry is from September 12.

"Sept. 11, 2001

OK. Back from San Francisco. The conference was excellent, but depressing. I learned that I was right about everything I proposed about the web, that we're doing it all wrong here and that I'm grossly overworked.

So what. Who cares. It's 8:30, I'm on the train, and the train is PACKED!

There's no food in the house. There's a stack of laundry hip deep. I have to make plans for the High Holy Days with Astrid.

Seeing Paul and his tribe was wonderful and at the same time somehow heartbreaking for reminding me of the ones who are gone.

Sometimes you just have to say their names out loud, just to prove that they were alive once. Scottie Neail. Sheldon Lurie. Nick Cannon. John Borella. Mark Allen Wayne. Ken Cutthoff. Rick Whitney.

In a way, being there revitalized me in my commitment to Care Resource. Knowing... I don't know what I know. I'm just sure that it's important to keep going. That no one should have to go through what John did - abandoned by family & his belongings picked over and his wishes ignored after his death.

I have to fill out my travel reimbursement forms and write a report about the conference."

"Sept. 12, 2001

8:20AM on the train. That sounds so normal, but yesterday the world changed. A day that will live in infamy. No, that's been used. OH! The humanity... um, no-- that's been used too.

I watched the mighty World Trade Towers fall. Over and over, caught on film -- the jet, turning, banking, aiming to the heart of the building and plowing -- full throttle, into it. Mid-level. The explosion. The fireball. The collapse.

Lower Manhattan looked like Nagasaki. Inches of ash and debris. Burned out hulks of cars. Hollow eyes.

John Warner looked and sounded presidential. Dubya did not. Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded intelligent and shaken but resolute. Dubya did not. Dubya didn't speak to the nation until 12 hours had passed. And then he tried to spin the human side of the story, but I think we all understand that aspect. What we don't understand, what we can never understand, is why.

Why innocent victims are the enemy because they live and work in America. Because they pay taxes in America. Because accident of birth made them Americans.

This horrible, senseless violence has made me feel differently about this country. Somehow.

I'm not any prouder of being American. Somehow though, I'm fiercer in my defense of it..? That's not right, either. I don't know what I'm feeling.

I called Jayne and Danny. He was south. He saw it all. Jayne watched from the roof as the first tower fell. She said the sidewalks were filled with people 25 deep on both sides of the avenue, trying to cope-- wandering dazed. Hollow eyed.

Today's Herald had a photo - color and clear of a man plummeting head first from one of the towers. I never want to see that image again.

This is a moment in time like JFK's assisination. We will, all of us alive today remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard. When we saw.

This is Pearl Harbor with an anonymous enemy. With a civilian death toll of thousands. Many thousands. Dozens of thousands, maybe. Incomprehensible numbers.

Bob Dylan's latest was released yesterday. I had it in my bag all day, but never opened the shrink wrap.

Oh! The humanity."