Twenty- three years at 8:41 AM. 23 years since 9/11. Let that sink in.
I find a very famous quote haunting me once again. The quote is from our Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I am glad we are free, but I wish people would stop killing Americans, including other Americans. And on our own soil, I wish the petty tyranny of small minded government officials in local municipalities, Harrisburg, and Washington DC would cease.
I am proud to be an American but petty tyranny and unnecessary death and destruction makes me sad. Hate spewing and vitriol assails us at every turn. I actually have gone from being a news junkie to a news avoider. In that vein, politics is pretty much just ugly today. And I will indeed lay that at Donald Trump’s fat little feet and big gut. I will also lay that at the feet of the fake hillbilly and generally speaking, twisted opportunist, J.D. Vance.
I was once proud to be a Republican, so proud I was a media relations volunteer at the RNC 2000. Then came 2016 and the news that Trump was the nominee. The day he became a nominee, I stopped being a Republican. First I tried on Independent for size, which truly fits me better, but I ultimately became a Democrat for two reasons: the rights of women to do as we choose with our bodies and lives and the fact I wanted to vote in primaries. If Pennsylvania was not so backwards on this this and other issues, we could easily exist as an open primary or semi-open primary state.
Today I wrote this post as one thing only: an American woman. In 2001, I remember when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was at this moment I was pulling into my garage back then where I worked for then Wachovia Securities in Conshohocken. I was listening to the radio in my car. I remember the tears just starting to roll down my face because I knew, I knew they (terrorists) came back because I had walked out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse in 1993 when they blew up the garage.
And when I say I remember exactly when it was as the bomb detonated in that garage in 1993. I was standing on the sidewalk outside looking at Century 21 with my friend Deirdre. If life has been different I might still have been working in New York City on September 11, 2001.
I also remember as I walked into my office that fateful day in 2001, and all the brokers were riveted to television screens in their offices and their computers, at that point in time most people didn’t believe those were terrorist attacks. They just thought like a small plane had gone into the World Trade Center. It was a crazy surreal morning as the news started to unfold. It’s crazy how clearly I can still remember it. I think this is like it was for our parents the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You remember where you were and what you were doing.
I also still remember calling my late father, who was on his cell phone on an Amtrak train to New York for some kind of an appointment, and when he answered the phone I remember saying “Where are you? Where are you?” And he told me they had just stopped at Metro Park, New Jersey, and I told him get off the train. Take another train back. And he told me oh no the AMTRAK conductors said it’s fine, it’s nothing and he would be back that evening. With the aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, he couldn’t get out of that city for days.
Another of the other things I remember on this day now twenty years ago, two sisters I grew up with who were close childhood family friends and still are. One, at the time, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other I think worked for Marsh and McLennan at the time (can’t remember for sure), but she did work somewhere in the World Trade Center. I remember being in a panic for days until I found out they were OK. One or both were out of state visiting their parents. And one sister had actually just left her job to go back to school or she definitely would have been there.
One of the sisters, if not both, were posted on missing persons lists that kept coming out back then at a rapid-fire pace. You have no idea how surreal it was to see familiar names on these lists. Especially because at this point the missing persons lists were also presumed dead lists.
I remember the days and weeks that followed when people were checking lists for the dead, found, and alive every damn day. Once upon a time I remember a conversation with an ATF agent a couple of years after 9/11 who had been in the Pentagon on 9/11, fortunately for them, the other side of the Pentagon.
Of course I also remember when my sister who had been studying in Strasbourg in 1988 changed her flight at the last minute to get a couple of more days in Europe before coming home. Originally, she was supposed to have been on Pan Am 103, which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The 36th anniversary of that is September 21, 2024. These were the pre-cell phone days and I remember making transatlantic phone calls and then waiting until she called.
I am also going to once again pause for a moment to remember the OTHER terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center. February 26, 1993.
In 1993, I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district. 44 Wall Street. Gabriele, Hueglin & Cashman.
On that day, I had accompanied my office friend Deirdre to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse above the garage. We were back outside of the World Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan.
Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February.
Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.
People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown.
We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage. That much had come over the Bloomberg machine.
I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.
Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two after that fateful 1993 day. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this 1993 “incident.”
Like it never happened. Only it did and on February 26, 2025 it will 32 years.
If you were there in NYC , like I was, you always remember that day as well. And I am sure I am not the only one who was in New York City downtown in February 1993 who felt as I did on September 11, 2001: that immediate “they came back” feeling.
Tomorrow morning is 23 years. And here we are. But where are we? We are a constantly devolving country full of politically driven mis-information and ugliness. A mad man, a truly dangerously sociopathic malignant narcissist who quite literally should be in jail somewhere wants to pollute the White House again. Right now he just pollutes all the airwaves with his bullshit. And people think he’s the messiah. The irony is the majority of people who think he’s wonderful have not and will never benefit from any of his drivel. They don’t get that this old man doesn’t see anyone except himself. He uses everyone and everything in his path to suit his own desires. He’s not about making America anything except broken, like so many of his companies and business ventures. If he is re-elected we will lose social security, more healthcare stuff, and women will be back to chattel with no control over their bodies. If you want to be a Stepford wife, I suppose that’s ok, but is that your America? It’s not mine.
The ugliness in this country takes your breath away some days. And when it comes to the Middle East? That is not our war and the atrocities exist on both sides. So pardon me if I do not get why overprivileged spoiled kids think they understand what’s going on. If they had a basic knowledge of the the centuries of this crisis in various forms, I might actually respect their efforts. But I do not. On either side. We need a more humanist approach. I mean does anyone remember the Crusades of medieval times? Hell probably not because there is probably something wrong with teaching that history too.
Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge-an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all Oh and humanists can and do believe in God. Some say humanism and Christianity are opposites. I do not necessarily find that accurate, and they do share common ground.
Back to 9/11. People, we need our country back. We need to be free of MAGATs. They are not Republicans. If you need to further cement that look at how polluted what was the party of Lincoln has further become with plopping Trump’s plastic ridiculousness of a daughter in law who makes screaming goats sound good in as co-chair of the RNC. That is actually offensive and wow can’t the GOP see the goose steppers they have become? And yes I did say that and I can say that, it is accurate. And First Amendment rights are not subjective so I reject any criticism of that comment which will occur. And I remind them that the term “goose step” can also be used figuratively to describe someone who acts in accordance with the commands of another person, or to practice unthinking conformity.
But back to our world full of a lack of reality, “influencers”, and just plain ugliness. If you think ANY of that is OK you don’t even get the symbolism of 9/11 or 1993 or 1988. Or at any time over the course of our world history.
We can’t sugarcoat the past and we don’t sugarcoat the history of 9/11 so stop dumbing it down from coast to coast. If we ignore our history, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes that precede us, only worse. Look no further that World War I and World War II.
So on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 make a difference in your world. Do something GOOD. And this coming November? Vote like your life and country depends upon it.
Wake up America and remember the dangers of false idols.
Here is a link to the 9/11 Report:
https://dpcld.defense.gov/Portals/49/Documents/Civil/911Report.pdf
Here are other posts I have written over the years:
