The test of a writer is the ability to paint a picture in the absence of one. I'm going to attempt to describe something I saw earlier this week — which may indeed defy simple description, because it bordered on the spiritual.
On Tuesday night, I boarded the 8:30 p.m. shuttle to Washington after Nightly News. A few minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia, after we had climbed out to 10,000 feet and had reached our initial leveling-off on a southern heading, the flight attendant on the sparsely-populated plane called my attention to the window next to me, on the left side of the aircraft. It was a stunning sight.
The two powerful beams of blue light, switched on each year at nightfall on September 11th, marked the spot amid the twinkling lights down below, in Lower Manhattan, where the towers once stood. They sliced open the sky — brilliant, powerful poles that shot up past our aircraft through the humid, boisterous air over the city. The only impediment to their skyward progress up to the heavens was a passing cloud about 5,000 feet above us as we passed by. The cloud caught the light and trapped it — gathering up the powerful upshot of blue and absorbing it completely, until it moved on, yielding that spot in the sky, and clearing the way for the beam to shoot up, past a point where the human eye could follow it.
I lost sight of the blue beams as our aircraft made its unsentimental progress above the Jersey Shore, heading south to Washington. We could feel the acceleration as the pilots pushed the throttles forward, having received permission to step up to our given cruising altitude. I looked back at the blue light until I couldn't anymore. I was a bit surprised that the pilots hadn't brought it to the attention to those on board. I looked forward and saw them all sitting in the dark, unaware. I wanted to tell everyone on the aircraft what they were missing, but common sense took over, and I assumed that such a mission (going from seat to seat to inform my 20-or-so fellow passengers of a striking sight out the window) would violate one of the many in-flight rules instituted after the very same attack that the blue lights were meant to commemorate. The aviation rules we now live under are the least of what has happened in the name of that attack. Our pilots that night were all business. So were the National Guardsmen who watched me go through security. It all goes back to the blue lights.
The flight attendants crammed around the window in the row behind me, and we talked about what we had just seen. Soon, the process the airlines euphemistically call "beverage and snack service" was underway, and before too long, we were landing in Washington. During the ride to the hotel, past the fortified monuments and the police cars that now stand watch outside places like the Department of Agriculture, I thought about what I had seen on the plane.
Six years later, many of us consider it an embarrassment that there's no memorial to 9-11 inside the sad, tragic expanse of Ground Zero — just a commuter train station and a lot of construction equipment. What we saw from the air was a towering memorial.
The arrival of September 11th each year is always a setback for many of us who live and work in New York. While some of us were affected by the attack more than others, we all deal with it in our own way. In my experience, the day always feels sullen and heavy, and the evening hours begin to bring a sense of coming relief, when the clock and calender both approach "12." That was not the case this year. More than any other event during the day — the tolling bells, the long list of names, the wreaths and roses and the steady rain — the two blue towers of light visible off the left wing of our aircraft were as impactful in the darkness of evening as anything in a long day of remembrances. Exactly as they were intended to be.
Reprinted with permission from the NBC News blog, The Daily Nightly.
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All those warnings and Bush Co ignored them.
What a guy.
Why not use this sentiment to uncover the lies and coverups of the Bush administration and expose their hypocrises? They are stealing our democracy from under us.
I was day trading, starts early on the west coast, when the market feeds stopped. The news stopped. Everything stopped. By myself in a remote cottage, connected to the world only through the internet, I finally saw a photo of the WTC with a big hole in it. The caption, plane crashes into WTC.
I was a sentinel moment for us all. But when the Queen of England, Elizabeth, ordered the American anthem played at the changing of the palace guard, I wept. I did so because of the sweet humanity of that gesture.
And that humanity, that attempt to share the burden of our national grief has transcended, in my mind, the brutal trampling of that kindness by an administration so craven that they would turn that upwelling of decent sentiment into political advantage. For whatever shame Bush has brought upon us in his hell forged plans for a permanent Republican majority, I will always remember that once we were regarded as a people whose conduct and creed merited the honoring of our loss by other nations.
The world had reason to expect better of us than we gave.
I've always thought the two shafts of blue light were the most impressive memorial possible for the 9-11 victims.
Mr. Williams; On September 11 2002, I happened to be in Paris with a large group of Verdun High School graduates. As we walked the Champs, two wonderful beams of light went up from the center of the city. It was the first year memorial of the Twin Tower attack but the tribute was given by the French. At that time the world was willing to help us do whatever was necessary to avenge the attack. We lost all of that support by attacking Iraq and since have whittled away with arrogance any
compassion or understanding from those who were strong allies.
Of course there are alot of Americans who don't care what the rest of the world thinks, my thought is, Politicians come and go..especially Presidents. This one has produced more hate for Americans throughout the world than all of the others put together. I am thankful that where ever we go peoples of the world are fully aware that we shouldn't be judged by whoever happens to be the temporary figurehead.
On September 11, 2001, I was in Houston, in the waiting room of a dialysis center where my Father was receiving dialysis. I had stepped out for a few minutes and when I came back in, the television in the waiting room was already covering the results of the first plane crash into the tower.
I honestly could not tell you what station I was watching - I was not paying any attention.
Now to current day. 9/11/07 - on MSNBC, I was watching their rerun of their coverage of the events of that day. Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Tom Brokow were covering the disaster. As I watched the replay, it became obvious to me that this was not the station I watched on that horrific day.
As events unfolded one of the three would state what they were seeing. But it was done in such a manner, they could have been covering the traffic on the NY City thoroughfares. There was absolutely no emotion in their words. When the first tower collapsed, it was stated in such a calm unemotional way and the same when the 2nd tower collapsed. Just stating "Tower 2 just collapsed" and then "The second tower just collapsed", with no emotion. No gasps of horror, no breaking of their voice, nothing.
That certainly was not what I heard on 9/11/01. In the voice of those doing the reporting on whatever station it was you could hear the horror, the inhumanity, the disbelief.
Were Couric, Lauer and Brokow instructed to report calmly? If so, the person who gave those instructions was wrong.
Many of you feel there was no need to have to see those videos again. However, I feel that by watching them again, it restores in us the feeling we had that day. The feeling that, over the last 6 years has slowly waned. I think we need to go back and remember what we felt that day as strongly as we did that day.
WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What happened on that emotional day should have been a wake-up call, not a call to arms.
It's precisely the emotional, knee-jerk reaction you're talking about that BushCo used to con us into supporting the mess we currently find ourselves in.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
I sat and wept as I watched those towers come down. I wept for what would I knew would surely follow.
Interesting you should bring that up. I too watched that airing of the NBC as-it-happened coverage and had *exactly* the same reaction you did. It was surreal and profoundly disconcerting how utterly flat and emotionless their commentary was. "Humm . . . yup, looks like that tower's coming down so let's go back to our man at the Pentagon." Not a gasp or an "oh no!" I realize, of course, that they were all just as profoundly shocked and horrified as the rest of us, but there was a "Stepford" quality to the three at the anchor desk that was just so strange. As I watched I found myself thinking how glad I was that I'd been watching a different network that awful morning.
The United States government, in an attempt to profile future terrorists, stated (I believe in the NIE) that 'the transformation of an individual to a terrorist is triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation'.
Why are these oppressed, suffering, desperate people of the world our enemy?
Who is causing their opression and suffering?
It couldn't be regimes supported with money and weapons from the United States could it?
Nahhh. The MSM would never let the government get away with this kind of hypocrisy!
Mutex - Hit the nail right square on the head.
That's why candidates like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel have either been vilified (FOX News?) or ignored (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC)...they both had the 'audacity' to tell the truth about the Bush administration's craven policy of selling (or outright giving) American-made armaments to countries whose 'leaders' will do our bidding.
In the days following 9/11, I heard the same question over and over. Why do they hate us?
Just guessing here, but maybe Osama was pissed that the U.S. had maintained a military base inside his home country, Saudi Arabia, for over ten years?
I shudder to think about what would happen if a Wahabbi oman decided to pitch a tent in the parking lot of the local First Baptist Church.
I think they were designed by Paul Marantz who has lit many Las Vegas establishments and the New York Public library among other things. He may even have had help from David Hersey the lighting designer. These guys should get a mention..at least Marantz..I'm not sure if Hersey helped.
It MUST be a cause for pause, especially juxtaposed with that first night when nothing but a handful of fighter jets were allowed in the air. I remember going out for a cigarette and looking at the blank night sky and thinking that it had to be the least amount of air traffic this country had seen since Kitty Hawk.
There is tragedy throughout the world. So much so that, should we build a monument for every unfair, brutal death, we would all be living on a cemetary planet (and in a way, we already are). But bloggers like NMFNMH should recognize that this particular tragedy effected so many people in this country, and sadder still, set us on a course of so much more ruin, that we HAVE to ponder what happened and what it means, or there is no way to correctly steer the ship from this point forward, let alone try to help others.
"Before you take the spliner from your neighbor's eye, you must remove the twig from your own."
Are you claiming that the effect of this atrocity was more terrible than all the others? Especially the ones that I mentioned?
Then, let us be truthful about another matter that you raise. The destruction unleashed that day did not set us on the course we pursue today. As a matter of fact our current course has almost nothing whatsoever to do with that attack or the perpetrators and those who motivated it. It was used as an excuse to perpetrate that which was already held in many an American heart - and those foolish enough to believe the train of thinking that you suggest.
To claim that we have a 'twig' in our eye to our neighbor's 'splinter' is pure, self-centered straw man falsehood. Especially considering the plight of many people in the world today.
It's true that 9/11 was the excuse used by the powers that be to unleash a long planned policy. It's not politically popular to sing Noam Chomsky's tune regarding America's roll in creating the pot within which we stew but the fact remains that he is often correct. As an example, had this country followed Gerald Ford's and Jimmy Carter's late 1970s energy policies, if more people paid attention to the policies established by California's present Attorney General who was once dubbed Governor Moonbeam by the right, had voters been a little more willign to sacrifice some personal creature comforts, we would not be anywhere near as energy dependent as we are today.
Our leaders love to harp about the strategic significance of the Middle East to the US and unfortunately by their logic such statements are accurate. What they miss is a simple truth: The people who live in this region have an important roll to play with respect to who they trade with. The US government sells the notion that our national interest equates to everyone else's national interest but those who live overseas don't often see things in this light. And when the internal politics and policies of certain countries work contrary to our national interests, we often take it upon ourselves to correct the problem be it through assassination, coup de etat, bribery, bullying, or whatever works. I look at how the US government presents our country to the world and having traveled a good bit of it let me tell you that I sometimes feel ashamed. Ashamed not of my country and its people but of its leaders and government.
I've heard that parable this way: "you must remove the 2x4 in your own eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck of dust from your neighbors eye". It refers to self hypocricy, not to comparing different tragic circumstances.
Well written piece. Thank you for sharing that moment.
sure ,well written piece of letrature.....clap clap clap
"letrature"
Huh?
This was the humble monument to the 800,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans killed in 1994
http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/7997
and here
http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide/engels/monument/monument/index.html
What will they do for the people of Darfur? Those who are dying and suffering as we speak?
What about all the people who die needlessly day after day far outnumbering the toll on that one September 11th?
Should not all of their lives be equally celebrated? Why so much emphasis on this one day?
Let us hear the words of Elie Wiesel to put it all in perspective.
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects...
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Posted September 13, 2007 | 11:39 AM (EST)