Thursday, September 11, 2008

Thoughts on 9/11

You can feel it in the air.

Today is no ordinary day.

I live about 25 miles northwest of ground zero. I will never forget where I was at the time.
I had turned on CNBC to check out the market when they started reporting about an accident that had happened downtown. It was reported that there was a plane crash. Since this was so close to Wall Street, everyone was right there. The details coming out were very sketchy.

Within minutes, they got the live shot set up and switched over. I stood there and I watched in horror to see the second plane fly into the South Tower as it happened.

My husband crosses the Tappan Zee Bridge every day to go to work. He called to say that he saw the smoke from the bridge. I informed him that the second tower had fallen.

That weekend, we crossed the bridge. It was impossible to look away. Down the Hudson you could still see all the smoke, but impossibly, the towers were just GONE! The brain just doesn't compute this, and tries to fill in what is missing.

Now we have the speeches and memorials. Starting with Bush, all the politicians have managed to make themselves a part of this, some even forging a career on it. They will all either show up today, or make a speech.

The day does not belong to them! It belongs to the family and friends of all those wonderful "ordinary" people who decided to get up in the morning and go to work!

To all of the secretaries, traders, lawyers, custodians, firemen, policemen, pilots and passengers on the planes, we will always remember you!

...And to all the politicians - JUST GO HOME!

Just one New Yorker's opinion!

2 comments:

Kendra said...

My sister had just moved to New York City the week before 9-11 (she was starting at NYU). For the longest time, she didn't visit Ground Zero because she didn't feel like it was right...she didn't want to feel like a nosy tourist, even though she was living there and experienced it all first-hand.

The whole day scared the crud out of her, but she's still in New York and absolutely loves the city.

I do understand that this doesn't belong to the politicians, but at the same time, by not acknowledging it, it looks like they don't care. And the last thing we need is for ANYONE to not care about what happened that day. Of course that's just my humble opinion. :-)

Stitchingranny said...

I am not in the USA but people from all over the world worked in those buildings and were on those flights, so I hope you will allow me to comment.

I came on to say I fully agreed with you, but then read Kendra's comments and maybe she too is right. I think the point is for them to mean they care and not for them to use it to futher their careers. I think it would be an insult to the people who died for anyone to use this horrific event.