23 Years

The day dawned with promise. Bright sunshine, and the warmth of late summer. I will never forget that walk through the fields with Olivia, truly a human on four legs. What a dog! She chased a few deer into the woods and met me back at the house.

I was sitting at my computer, working out my work travel schedule for the next few weeks, doing some paperwork, listening to Livingston Taylor, when the phone rang.

“Does your brother still work in the World Trade Center?” a friend asked.

When I answered yes, she yelled, “Go turn on your TV” and hung up.

I think it was just about when the second plane hit, but things were replayed so much, I’m just not clear. What I know is that the world changed. As a native New Yorker, this was not an abstraction to me. I remember visiting the site as it was being built when I was a kid. A marvel, they said.

I remembered the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as the planes hit, and was saddened that it happened again. Although even hardening the garages against further bombings couldn’t have precluded the aircraft attacks. And then the Pentagon and the field in Western PA. So much tragedy for one day.

In certain ways, 9/11 was the last group memory our country had as a people. Remember that while CNN was around, and Fox News was still in its infancy, most people got their news from the big three networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. Most people still read newspapers. Cell phones cameras had been deployed the year before, but few people had them: the era of the “citizen journalist” was still several years away, so the images were authentic and acquired from media that was also, at the time, legitimate.

Years ago, I was in a graduate school class with a man. They sat us alphabetically, and we were right next to each other. It turned out that we had the same birthday, in the same year. He pointed out to me that despite the fact that we were of very diverse backgrounds, hailed from different parts of the country, and had diametrically opposed political views, if we talked about group memories, we knew the identical images: the girl in Vietnam on fire from Napalm, running; John-John saluting as his dad’s coffin passed by; Neil Armstrong taking a step on the moon; the Beatles arriving at JFK in NYC; Martin Luther King giving his “I Have a Dream” speech in DC. If you are of a certain age, you saw those images in your mind’s eye as you read the descriptions.

A lot of what is wrong with this country is that there is so much less “shared history” than there used to be. There are people today (including ex-presidential candidate worm brain) who are not convinced that 9/11 occurred, nor that it was a terrorist attack.

I am flashing on two things: one that happened about a week after 9/11, and the other a current thought.

I was on the first flight out of BWI once planes started flying again. The flight was to leave at 6:30 a.m. and we were told to be there by 4:30. Our luggage was opened and inspected. We were all patted down. TSA had not yet been founded. It was all by airline staff, under the eyes of armed cops. No one objected, we were all happy to comply. The flight I boarded was headed direct to Salt Lake City. There were maybe 20 people on the plane. We were all on our way to Hill AFB just north of Salt Lake. We all had our assignments, and the few people with whom I spoke were sanguine about any risks. No one talked specifically about why we were going, but in certain ways, we all knew.¹ For the next several years, I was on the road 50 weeks each year, exclusively to military bases throughout the US. There was a sense that “we’re all in this together”, despite those of us who thought Iraq was a bridge too far, and that too many military mistakes were made.

The young kids troops who were flying through the airports weren’t allowed to travel in uniform, for safety reasons. But they were easy to spot, carrying their olive duffel bags, with their crew cuts. As a civilian, to show support, I painted my nails red, white and blue, and applied decals of the different services. I was told on the various military bases to not call attention to the troops, so nails were about all I could do. We weren’t even supposed to thank them for their service.

I have never been able to forget those years. I have tried. The people I knew who perished on 9/11, the courage of the young boys and girls I worked with who never came home from war.

Which brings me to today. I am heartbroken over the polarization of our country. The hatred from one side against the other. And it isn’t our side with the hatred. We are saddened that their brains have been corrupted, and that they cannot separate fact from fiction. But we don’t want to kill them, don’t want to put them in camps, don’t want to harm them in any way – only to keep them from harming us.

I wonder if it will be possible to ever mend the rifts.

I leave you with this completely unrelated thought: perhaps there is an increased chance that the Convicted Felon will get actual jail time (or home confinement) since Judge Merchan pushed the sentencing date to after the election, to avoid actual election interference.

Just a thought.

I’ll be back in several hours with my thoughts on last night’s debate.

1. No, I can’t tell you what I was doing. Even today.