Where were you on 9-11?

[Dan74]

I stayed up late and had the TV on when the program was suddenly interrupted with footage of the smoke billowing from the Tower emerged. I remember being stopped dead in my tracks (I was on the way to the kitchen). The US is in a sense very far away but it was clear that this happening had global significance and sure enough some years later we had the wars with Australian involvement as well as the tragedy in Bali that took 88 Australian lives, as well as 114 people of other nationalities.

[Thales]

I was 11, in math class. It was still early morning. The teacher turned on the news on the radio, though it was more a mass of confusion than news at that point. it was being reported that up 50,000 could be dead and they weren't sure if it was a missile strike or a plane. and of course i remember coming home and seeing the striking footage...

[cooran]

I was in Ferndale, a tiny community at the edge of northern California, on my way to do photography in Oregon.
It's one of those quintessentially "American" looking towns--often used in movies and TV shows.
There is a main street complete with soda shop, bookstore and of course a beautiful old Grand Hotel which was in it's glory when loggers were cutting redwoods and making fortunes. It smelled like cows, wet grass and old wood. Of course, there was a Baseball field. How could there not be a Baseball field?
It was small and homely, overgrown and slightly disheveled, but that was Ok with me. I played out a few games from my childhood, certain no one was looking. I ran around the bases. I may have even hit a home run that won the game. What a blast to be in this small piece of the great American experience! At that moment it seemed we had really done what needed to be done, as a country. We were at peace, our economy was going great, everything was looking up and pointing forward. And then...

To be continued, if any one wants to hear the rest of the story.

Please continue - love to hear.

with metta
Chris

[BubbaBuddhist]

I was just out of bed staggering around with my first cup of coffee barely awake when I turned on the TV and saw the first tower in flames and smoke. I thought it was a movie. Then the second tower went, and I thought, "This is no movie." I knew immediately it had to be the actions of hijackers. I said aloud, "Whoever did this is going to be annihilated."

I thought the military response was not the correct response. I say this even though I had friends who died that day. If I had been asked, I would have called for a total economic embargo on the Middle East until everyone connected to this attack was identified, arrested, and turned over for trial. Yes, it would have caused inconveniences. But no one left me in charge, so it's a moot point.

M4

[Nicro]

If I had been asked, I would have called for a total economic embargo on the Middle East until everyone connected to this attack was identified, arrested, and turned over for trial.

???

[Ben]

I remember like it was yesterday - its etched indelibly into my memory.
We had a young baby at home and I was workign for a company writing abstracts and indexing newspaper articles on the graveyard shift. It was truely Dickensian and as an aside, the owner was eventually put into jail for fraud. We were aware of the events unfolding in the wee hours as one of the editors accessed news sites to download articles. As per usual, my co-inhabitants of that miserable cubicle farm were madly writing, re-writing and indexing as quickly as possible. As a result of the health effects of working graveyard shift continuously for months I was feeling...numb. Then my sister phoned me on my cell phone. As a concession to my wife having a baby the management relaxed the rule against having a mobile phone on at work. My younger sister said, "turn on the TV - its the end of the world" she said with an air of manufactured hysteria. I told her that i was at work and what was she talking about. "The twin towers"
"Yeah, I know - we're covering it"
Then going home every television channel was playing footage, analysis, replaying the footage. For about a week there was nothing else. I was reminded of some words my father said to me when he was on his death bed - his regret that he didn't spend more time with his family when we were growing up.
Shortly after 9/11 I gave my notice and quit my job. My wife went back to work and for the next three months I was a stay-at-home Dad looking after my infant son.

[Tex]

I had just gotten to work and logged in to my computer when I heard a coworker say, to no one in particular, "Wow, a plane hit a building in New York." We all assumed it was an accident. I remember one coworker saying, "Must be fog or something?" I checked a news website for more, but there were no details other than to clarify that it was the WTC that had been hit. So I went about my work. Shortly thereafter another coworker exclaimed, "Oh my god, another plane hit the Trade Center!" Our looks of disbelief changed quickly as the horrifying reality of what was happening sunk in.

Radios were turned on: reports were sketchy, but both towers had been hit by planes and were on fire. We decided that the 9th floor of a glass and steel tower in the nation's fourth largest city was not a place we wanted to be. Who knew how many more times we'd be hit, or where? Most of us didn't wait for management to tell us to take the rest of the day off.

We raced down the stairwell and outside to find that the rest of our building and the surrounding ones had also decided it was time to go. The streets were already gridlocked. So we milled around in the courtyard and chain-smoked and talked. Who could have done this to us? Since we weren't going anywhere for a while, several of us decided to head to a nearby restaurant to watch the news until the traffic died down.

We got there in time to see one tower belching black smoke from near its top, surrounded by a massive gray plume of debris that had been the other tower a few minutes earlier. The broadcaster informed us that the Pentagon had also been hit.

Everyone knew the remaining tower was going to come down, too. We all stopped mid-sentence when it did. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen. No one could speak for a long time. People just looked at each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Some cried. Some prayed. When people finally did start speaking again, it was in hushed voices, as if whispering about it could somehow make it less awful. Eventually, people slowly started filing out of the place. I went home and watched the news all day and into the night. I couldn't turn it off.

I don't have the words to describe the rage I felt. There was no limit to what I would've done to the guilty on that day. I don't think I could possibly be moved to such anger again after the past few years of Buddhist practice, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

[SamKR]

On Sep 11, 2001 I was in Kathmandu, Nepal at my home. After my dinner, I along with my family watched live broadcast in CNN.
It was about three months after the Nepalese Royal Massacre, and the people were still in shock because of the massacre. But I think 9-11 changed the people's attention to the US, and it created intense hatred towards the terrorists, and kind of "Islamophobia".

[BubbaBuddhist]

If I had been asked, I would have called for a total economic embargo on the Middle East until everyone connected to this attack was identified, arrested, and turned over for trial.

???

I guess to clarify, the perpetrators of the first Twin Towers bombing in 1993 were arrested, tried in New York City, and sentenced to life in prison. It is important
that evildoers be brought to trial and made to pay for their crimes. Instead, a weird series of event followed which really made no sense. Fists were shaken in the wrong direction. If I were Leader of the Free World I would have called upon my International Allies to join my country in stopping economic trade with Saudi countries until they coughed up the people responsible and delivered them to us in chains.

Ron Paul suggested that Letters of Marque and Reprisal be issued against Bin Laden.

M4