9/11...20 years later

[sharkyvilla]

It was my first day at sixth form as well, I was walking round my mate's afterwards when his little brother came running up and said a plane had crashed.  I have no real recollection of what followed that, I couldn't tell you which bits I watched live on telly or not.  I'm pretty sure I must have watched everything but between getting to my mate's house and being at home when my Mum got in from work is a complete blur.  

[sne]

Still just as relevant 

 

[maqroll]

4 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Less than two years earlier, the new millennium seemed full of hope and optimism. 

It's really all gone belly up, hasn't it? 

[maqroll]

3 hours ago, regular_john said:

Nonsense

Made plenty of sense to me, and I'm American.

[Big Salad]

By Billy Collins, Poet Laureate at the time with the following poem. Just haunting and powerful the affects of these words:

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds -
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

[Rugeley Villa]

Our work van radio wasn’t working but we’d heard summat had happened from other people on site. Didn’t think much about it. We didn’t get in until nearly 7 because of traffic. It was then that I realised how bad it was. I’d never heard of Afghanistan, when my grandad told me it was by some group based there. I really don’t know what to think about why or how this happened, but either way it’s tragic and at the time Al Qaeda were certainly capable of pulling this off. I’m pretty certain it could have been avoided if taken seriously, because there was intelligence regarding this attack..

[bannedfromHandV]

I’d left college early and got the bus home, got in around early afternoon kind of time. Started doing the dishes and flicked the tv in the kitchen on, for a good 15 odd minutes I was sure I was watching a daytime film, changed the channel and it was the same thing, then the penny dropped.

I’m not sure there’s ever been or ever will be a more monumental and sobering event in my lifetime, it’s still hard to watch documentaries and the like without choking up. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

I was living in Birmingham but had gone shopping to Merry Hill.  One of the shops had the TV news playing without sound.  At first I thought it was reporting on a freak plane crash.  But the text captions started to tell a different story.  I remember telling Mrs Lifeboats that if the US linked the attack to a particular nation it wouldn’t be surprising if they bombed it off the face of the earth.  Mrs Lifeboats found the event so overwhelming that she only spent another 9 hours shopping and couldn’t force herself to buy more than a dozen pair of shoes. 
 

The US subsequently bombed a country that wasn’t slightly responsible for possessing weapons that they didn’t have.  They also invaded another that wasn’t harbouring the ringleader whilst being assisted by a country that was harbouring the ringleader.  But most importantly, Mrs Lifeboats never wore those shoes. 
 

 

[mjmooney]

10 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The US subsequently bombed a country that wasn’t slightly responsible for possessing weapons that they didn’t have.  They also invaded another that wasn’t harbouring the ringleader whilst being assisted by a country that was harbouring the ringleader.

This can never be repeated enough. 

[Brumerican]

46 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This can never be repeated enough. 

Two or three times at least  ( Or Ad nauseam in Olde English)

Edited September 10, 2021 by Brumerican

[Mandy Lifeboats]

Let’s also not forget that:

The evil Iran armed and trained Afghan Terrorists to fight the UK and US Liberators

Which is completely different to when:

The generous UK and US armed and trained Afghan Freedom Fighters to fight the Russian Invaders. 
 

But getting back onto 11/9 (like 9/11 but in the correct order)…..it was a day that shook me to the core.  I grew up during the worst IRA bombings on the UK mainland.  But we never had anything as big as the Twin Towers.  Whenever I see the clips again my heart goes out to the American public who lived through it and those innocent people who died on that day.  

Edited September 10, 2021 by Mandy Lifeboats
Speeling mishsteaks

[villa4europe]

2 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I was living in Birmingham but had gone shopping to Merry Hill.  One of the shops had the TV news playing without sound. 

Going OT but you don't really see that anymore do you? Can remember like dixons at merry hill have a shop window full of TVs and blokes often stood watching them

There was a shop down the pizza hut end where I watched the Spain vs Ireland shoot out during the World Cup in 2002 through the window 

[markavfc40]

I hadn't long bought my first house and had a young family so was working two jobs at the time one of which was working for a driving agency driving a truck straight after my regular job finished until about 1am. I didn't see any tele but I can remember listening to the radio and eventually driving in the dark along some really quite roads and the world seemed a really scary place and I was genuinely scared. Got home and my wife was still up glued to the tele and I can remember giving her a really big hug. Doesn't seem 20 years ago and in those 20 years the world certainly hasn't got any safer. Far from it. 

Edited September 10, 2021 by markavfc40

[bickster]

9 hours ago, regular_john said:

Nonsense

Are you saying he's misremembered his own feelings at the time? Were you inside his head at the time attached to his neurons?

If as I suspect it isn't that, then maybe you stop posting idiotic one word replies or at least stop and think before you post... does this make sense? Because it doesn't you know

[regular_john]

27 minutes ago, bickster said:

Are you saying he's misremembered his own feelings at the time? Were you inside his head at the time attached to his neurons?

If as I suspect it isn't that, then maybe you stop posting idiotic one word replies or at least stop and think before you post... does this make sense? Because it doesn't you know

Triggered?

[ml1dch]

Strange times.

Those confusing, disturbing days when Rudy Giuliani was seen across the world as a dignified, unifying leader.

[HanoiVillan]

9 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The US subsequently bombed a country that wasn’t slightly responsible for possessing weapons that they didn’t have. 

For every person that died on that day, something like 300 Iraqis met an early death.

[HanoiVillan]

David Squires, 2020:

Spiked, yesterday:

Brilliant.

[Big Salad]

I know won't have their problem here, but I already have had to delete some people who I thought were solid, decent folk off some of my social media for joking and/or making light of 9/11. That may seem like an extreme reaction to some, but its no laughing matter to me as an American and really shouldn't be for any human being regardless of nationality or creed.

Anyway, off to bed now I have a long day today that I am sure will be full of swinging emotions.

[DCJonah]

I was at Drayton Manor with some mates. One of us got a text about a plane hitting the world trade centre and we shrugged it off as some sort of small aircraft, imagining that a sole pilot had been killed. Later another text about a plane hitting the pentagon and again we all kind of thought it was nothing, I remember one of my friends saying "no chance a plane could get close enough to the pentagon to crash into it" it just seemed completely unrealistic. 

Then at the end of the day, we got back in the car and the radio told us the towers had collapsed. Just drove home stunned and got back to find my family glued to the TV and that was when I saw the images others had been witnessing all day.