Just wanted to mention that the History channel - and other channels I am sure - has a lot of 9/11 programming this week - as we approach the 15th anniversary. Some of it has aired previously - some is new programming. I can’t decide if it feels like 15 years or yesterday. But I do plan to watch, reflect and remember.
I watched this interesting short video (5.5 minutes) featuring British people watching a 9/11 documentary. I guess I was a little surprised at how some of them seemed to know very little about it. Provincial of me, I guess.
One thing I like to listen to is the complete FAA/ NORAD recordings from 9/11. It is nearly 2 hours long and you hear it in real time. It was compiled by Rutgers. One year, the NY Times published a link that played this, and on the side you could see a real time map of where each plane was at each time.
We were clueless.
Also, one of the last planes to see one of the highjacked planes was another highjacked (not yet) plane. Very sad.
I have been clearing out old papers and came across a drawer full of newspapers and Time Magazines from 15 years ago. Can’t toss those, just too painful. I still remember the silence in the air when all air traffic was grounded. We were celebrating when the we heard the first airplane noise above our house (we live in the Boeing test flight path, and we see a few silver (unpainted) airplanes).
H And I visited the 9/11 museum a few weeks ago. Took an hour tour and then spent another 3+ hours on our own. It was emotional, fascinating,informational and just plain, well, necessary. So glad to get there on this anniversary.
If you get to NYC, I would plan a visit. Buy tickets ahead of tiime on line. H and I got fairly early entry tickets. 10:00 am I think. Grabbed a cab outside of D1’s apartment, in UES, and easily got there. After we exited, it was packed. So plan ahead.
I remember coming out of a meeting that morning finding my secretary in the hallway hysterically crying about a plane hitting one of the Towers. I assumed it was some hapless Cesna.
We then had a helluva time getting any internet bandwidth to check the news. When someone was finally able to connect to a news site, a bunch of us stood around the monitor and watched the first tower collapse. Grown men sobbed. It makes me weep to even write this.
The best documentary I’ve seen about 9/11 is the one called, simply, 9/11 by firefighter/filmmaker James Hanlon and brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet. They were originally making a film about a probationary firefighter, and then 9/11 happened. It is an amazing, and up close in real time, look at what happened that day.
I love the Naudet documentary too. I’m having trouble finding the original version, where the narration was done by the older Naudet brother and not James Hanlon. They also have one where they interview the main firefighters 5 years later and you see where they are and what they’re doing. Chief Pfeiffer is an even bigger chief, the rookie is a bomb expert, etc.
There’s another documentary that follows a few people for 5 years after the attack. A very young man who lost his mother who was an investment banker, a woman who lost her fiancée, a firefighter, a woman who was badly burned, etc. To watch these people grow and heal over 5 years is quite a privilege.
It is fascinating to me that nearing the anniversary, the latest poll has the perceived “strong” candidate ahead. We are still so collectively frightened after 15 years. The trauma was deep, and lasting.
When I was young, I was puzzled by how often my parents and their contemporaries would talk about World War II, even though the war had ended more than 20 years earlier.
Now I understand. Our generation will still be talking and thinking about 9/11 as long as we live.
Some events are just that important.
@morrismm, I agree with you that visiting the 9/11 museum is time well spent. I was in NYC a month ago for a conference and had one afternoon free, so chose to make a visit. I found that 90 minutes was all that I could take, even though it is so well done. I remember touring the Holocaust museum with my mother and children years ago and we got to a point where my mom said she just couldn’t do it anymore. I understood that so much more after making this visit.
I was not personally affected by 9-11 (no relatives in NY or DC) and was watching from safety in IL and I would still say it was easily the worst day of my life.
I did have a woman who worked for me who was on a plane that morning at O’Hare but we knew she was ground-stopped for a few hours and would be fine.
I had/have friends in NYC and DC, one was in the WTC 15 minutes before the first hit. That morning was a frantic exercise in trying to find who had died (no one I knew, thankfully).
I keep hoping we as a nation can find a way to remember it without being afraid. So far, little success.
Friends have written a beautiful musical called Come From Away about 9/11.
It has played in La Jolla and Seattle and is currently on at Ford’s Theatre in D.C. Then it will move to Toronto and in February, to Broadway. The other night the audience was filled with survivors of the attack on the Pentagon.
I urge anyone who is able to , to go see this show.
@Nrdsb4 that was a very interesting video (worth waiting through the long advert before it) - I agree with the young man who said that even after all this time, the impact of the video doesn’t diminish. I remember sitting with my mouth open in front of the TV on that morning, watching with my son who was home sick from school (age 14) in disbelief. And then driving through the incredible silence to pick up his younger sisters at school and trying to figure out what to say to them. Still resonates deeply, the more so because of personal losses on that day.
My daughter was three at the time. I remember her looking at me as tears ran down my face and asking, “Mommy, are you sad?” That just made me cry harder. I will never forget that.
Watching this tonight - PBS documentary on the Pentagon attack.
D2, who until very recently worked in the new World Trade Center (and shared my response to low flying planes overhead), has just moved to DC and is discovering new friends for whom the Pentagon attack is the primary memory. It’s an interesting shift in focus.
I lost too many friends to count. Yet each one counts very much. I have never been able to cry over that day. Even now after all this time I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat with those faces in front of me. Maybe one day I will be able to cry.
Didn’t realize it had been 15 years already. I too remember the silence from the lack of planes overhead. I never really notice the noise normally, but the absence of noise was noticeable. When it happened, I didn’t even know what the WTC buildings were. We’ve been living with tickers at the bottom of the TV screen ever since.