Category Archives: Historical Record

We are all amazed and disbelieving. Early during the workday terrorists hijacked four planes, crashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, crashed another into the Pentagon, and apparently were aiming somewhere else with the fourth, which crashed in rural western Pennsylvania. Roughly half an hour after each airplane crash — and they were large passenger planes loaded with fuel for transcontinental flights; — large explosions leveled the towers. Two one-hundred-ten-story buildings, as well as another 47-story building in the area, are no more. Although the news has been focusing very little on this issue, there were reports of car bombs outside the Capitol and State Department.

Though we first learned of these events at just after 9:00, the information rolled in throughout the morning. We were quite confused as to why this is happening, and still no one has claimed responsibility. We were unsure whether this terrorism was an act of war, whether more acts were to follow, and who was responsible. US intelligence officials now say that there are indications that Arab bogeyman Ousama Bin Laden is responsible.

I am not a vengeful person. Indeed, I oppose capital punishment. But today several times I found myself wanting the responsible parties to pay.

I wonder what the next few days will bring.

Looking back on this first entry, I am surprised by how newsy it is. I suspect that raw facts (and rumor, it would seem) were all that I could push through the enormity of the event. What I remember most from 9/11 is the workday, trying to figure out how long I should stay holed up in my office with the big window looking out upon the perfect autumn day before fleeing home to Newton and Lisa.

When I saw my comrade Chris in the company president’s office trying to get news off the Times website, I knew something unusual was happening; no one in my group ever set foot in the bossman’s office despite the fact that it was right in the middle of our work area, two doors away from mine. We were all confused but not yet horrified. Lisa called a few minutes later with news from her mother, who was telling us what she saw on her television in Oregon as she prepared for work. I remember logging into the C-SPAN website and watching the jumpy live feed of the Pentagon burning. When the A/V guy set up a couple of TV’s in the café a couple hours later, I couldn’t bear the prospect of anxiety and confusion.

I ran into Diana in the hallway in the middle of the afternoon. Like so many of us in New England she knows people who live or work in New York. I was anxious thinking of Dave, who worked at the AmEx, and his fiancée Rachel. I wondered if we were still going to be able to see their wedding in Manhattan in November. I worried about Jenn, who lived in an apartment close to the Pentagon. These friends were my closest connection to events 200 and 500 miles away, tragedies common to all of us whether we were there or not.

I remember being horrified at the carnage I was hearing about but hadn’t seen pictures of yet, at the unknown loss of life, at the unthinkable barbarity of the acts themself. But I was still rather numb. The rest of the day in my memory is a blur of incomprehension at the images once I saw them at home and an accute desire to know who was hurt, why this was happening, and whether it would happen again. I remember wondering why I wasn’t really feeling anything, until much later in the evening when I felt that unique, bottomless sorrow that I had last felt when my stepfather died. For me, the thought that thousands of people were experiencing their own versions of that feeling is the worst thing about the events of September 11, 2001.

GWB and friends have a refrain that they “live in a September 12 world everyday.” I know what they’re trying to get at with this rather calculated and callous metaphor. I’m just glad they don’t say they live everyday like Sept. 11; I suspect that wold be too much for anyone to endure.

Is this what everyone’s life is like? I’ve been busy, productive, and strangely in flux. Most days are routine, but the minutiae of human experience is always different and leaves me wondering what will happen next.

I’ve had a number of things on my mind lately: projects and work, my mother, the “Getting Things Done” methodology, the grad school application process, the Blues, my relationship with others, current political events, and ice cream. I shouldn’t leave photography out of the mix either. Plus, my birthday is just over a month away.

My father and brother both called today. . . . My brother is doing well. He was recently compelled to move to a new apartment after the state of Iowa restructured its Section 8 program for low-income and medically-needed citizens. I’m amazed that heavily rural states like Iowa can keep most of their neediest from falling through the cracks. Heaven knows that my brother doesn’t have anyone to really take care of him outside of the public-private partnership that check up on him and help him manage his commitments.

The younger George Bush has proposed divesting some of the money (at least the federal portion) that goes to programs like the one that helps my brother and giving it to religious and “community” organizations who will — so the story goes — spend it on similar projects. . . .

Plus the economy remains “soft.” The surplus (outside of Social Security) has completely evaporated, and we haven’t yet seen G.W.’s 2002 budget. It’s expected that almost every department will have proposed cuts. This is needed, of course, to pay for the $1.6 trillion “tax relief” package and the several hundred billions for the nuclear missile defense shield that we don’t need and probably won’t work.

The President, the V.P., the Secretary of Defense, and NSA appear to be rekindling the fires of the Cold War. They have managed to enrage China and North Korea, ignore strategic opportunities with Russia, and propose an anti-ballistic missile program that will greatly destabilize nuclear politics around the globe. I used to think that presidents made decisions like this based on secretive meetings after they became officeholders when confronted with a bevy of conclusive evidence, but this administration set this inflammatory tone well before assuming the presidency. We’ll live through this, of course, because other nations are more sensible than we are. I’m worried about reliving the nervous nuclear days of my youth, though.

Lisa was talking to a prof. at the Heller School the other day. During the conversation he recalled his impressions of the days after Reagan to power. “My G-d, he’s against everything we believe in!” he remembered saying. That is precisely how I feel about this administration.

Well, I’m not exactly grouchy, but I feel myself leaning in that direction. So, I’ll end for today.

A bit more than five years ago I started earnestly keeping a journal of occurrences in my household, events at the office, and thoughts in my head. Now, despite having this public forum online, I still record most things in those unlined black notebooks. It has become an invaluable part of my “historical record,” if you will.

Shortly after I started journaling, the attacks of September 11, 2001, became the principal subject for a while. In fact, it’s quite interesting to look back upon the record and find where normality returned, where events other than the attacks and their aftermath started reappearing. (It was on my birthday in early October, by the way.)

Starting in a few week weeks, I will include some entries from my journal here. It may be interesting to remember how truly unusual and cataclysmic those times were — how different they are than now. I don’t know a person who doesn’t remember the shock accutely, and for most Americans alive today hearing “9/11″ will alway bring us to an uncomfortable place. Along with Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, it is one of those rare American occurrences with such power. But, contrary to what we are told by people in authority, looking at my journal it is clear to me that those attacks, the subsequent wars, and other threatening events have not changed us much as a nation or as individual people.