And now, Dear Reader, this week's
borgaschmord:
- To start on a somber note: today is 9/11/09. Where were you on 9/11/01? I was on my way to my early shift at work, and had no real idea until I got in. For a bit of the feel of the time, check out this live thread at FreeRepublic, people posting as news developed. You won't like what everyone says, but it does remind one of the electric alarm and dismay, and mounting horror. Plus, note comment #38, made September 11, 2001 6:15:55 AM. FreeRepublic is where I go for breaking news, often. It takes sifting and discernment, but you often get "it" there far faster and better than MSM.
- In the days that followed 911 there was, of course, a national yearning for the government to do something to those who planned and perpetrated this diabolically ingenious assault. This was my favorite cartoon at the time for putting a perspective on what was happening. I wrote and thanked the artist, and he responded.
- Read some sober and sobering words about 911, Iraq, Afghanistan and President Obama. (Note: some rough language from a past president.)
- Aaaand, worrisomely, the President still doesn't get it. In his proclamation today, he says that we "must apprehend all those who perpetrated these heinous crimes." No sir, not crimes. Acts of war.
- Someone else really doesn't get it, either.
- A final 911 note. I have often lamented about how their execrable politics has kept the Hollywood of today from serving the nation as it did during World War II. Very few movies-worth-anything have come out, having anything to do with 911 and the aftermath. One notable exception is Flight 93 (2006). Really fine movie, very moving for its taut minimalism. If you haven't seen it, do.
- Now to lighter fare... though not exclusively.
- Reader Susan alerts us to a new Japanese approach to publishing. It's...er... kind of like a scroll....
- They say cats hate water? Well, evidently not all of them.
- Well lookie here at what's getting a thorough makeover. Oh my!
- In a bit of good political news, the President's combative snake-oil pitch doesn't seem to have swayed many to bow the knee to this tone-deaf, ill-timed, costly leap towards totalitarianism.
- It's scary when leftist/ertarian lesbian Camille Paglia makes cracking good sense. The Corner excerpts the heart of it. Paglia echoes my Clinton-era astonishment that the freedom-loving, anti-establishment hippies of my youth grew into massive-government totalitarian leftists.
- Then Paglia goes a little (though just a little) nuts when she turns her guns on Republicans, expressing dismay at their support of "interference in women's control of their own bodies." Really? I don't know any Republicans who want government to legislate women's "control of their own bodies" — well, unless she means drug use, self-abuse, and prostitution. But those concerns are hardly limited to Republicans. Hunh.
- Oh dear. Someone found a bit of my old school work. But hey... it was "brief"!
- All my fellow men will know the essentials when they see them.
- Preacher-dudes: need an illustration of Proverbs 24:30-34? I may have just the thing. Phew!
- Meannwhile, here's a cute little music video called A Homeschool Family.
- Your tax-money at work: you'll be cheered to know that, with wildfires raging in the West, the U. S. Forest Service is going to pour nearly $2.8 million of fire-fighting funds into Washington DC — "a city with no national forests and where the last major fire was probably lit by British troops in 1814." It gets better. This money, which will be used on festivals and such, comes from the "wildland fire mitigation" stimulus fund. Ah, the stimulus: the "gift" that keeps on taking.
- My DSIL points me to some awfully funny EXIT signs. Part of the humor is in their notes on the signs; here are a couple for you to puzzle over. To dangle a preposition.
- And now, for the woman who has everything — Lego earrings. (h-t reader Paula.)
Posts
29 comments:
I watched United 93 last night for the first time. It certainly brought back all those emotions from eight years ago. I had a friend who was in the air when the attacks happened - such a terrifying time not hearing from him from so many hours.
Where were you on 9/11/01?
I was in an 8th grade math class. The teacher was called out of the room for the moment, came back in very shaken, and then told us what was going on. We spent the next hour or so watching the news before we were encouraged to get back to our lessons.
I was on my way to work and remembering turning on the radio. You're hearing about planes hitting towers. For a split second, I thought the Rapture had occurred and I was left behind.
It seems that President Obama has declared this day Interfaith Day of Service. I guess I need to find some Muslims to pray with.
Where were you on 9/11/01?
We were in Canada, just recently home from P.R. on furlough. We were staying with my parents, watching a live Canadian Christian TV program, which suddenly reported the first airplane hit. We immediately switched to a U.S. channel and stayed with it for the rest of the day.
Late that afternoon my husband and I had to go out to run errands that couldn't be postponed. It felt so strange to see a clear blue sky and hear only peaceful, normal sounds. Downtown all of the stores had TVs or radios playing the coverage, and everyone was shocked and subdued. On that day we felt united with the U.S. in horror and sorrow.
"To dangle a preposition."
Fear not! This is from the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, the standard style manual for book publishing in the U.S. (and Canada):
“Ending a sentence with a preposition. The traditional caveat of yesteryear against ending sentences with prepositions is, for most writers, an unnecessary and pedantic restriction…A sentence that ends in a preposition may sound more natural than a sentence carefully constructed to avoid a final preposition…The “rule” prohibiting terminal prepositions was an ill-founded superstition” (Chicago Manual of Style, 5.169).
September 11, 2001 was a very weird day for me. I spent the night in the hospital with my husband who was getting chemotherapy. A nurse woke us up to tell us the news and we watched the towers come down on T.V.
After I returned home later that morning, I found out that there was a Korea Airline 747 with an activated panic button headed for the airport two blocks from my house. Then I found out that all the students at schools in my town had been sent home because of the possibly hijacked airline headed our way, but the highway past the airport was closed as a precaution and my daughter couldn't get home and I didn't know where she was.
The rest of us walked to a ridge above the airport and watched the Korean planes (turned out to be two of them) land and the RCMP with guns surround them. The panic button, turned out, was because of low fuel and daughter had hitched a ride to the hospital to hang out with dad.
And my husband's brother from Sacramento was on the road to our home on the 11th. He was out of touch in the wilderness of northern B.C./Yukon and didn't find out about the attacks until he arrived midafternoon.
So it was a very weird day, full of personal memories as well as well as the public ones.
Shame on me, when I saw the first 9/11 images and that it was being called a terrorist attack, I thought it's just like the Americans, crying wolf.
But, 9-11 changed my view of the US for the better. I'm a South-African expat living in Canada and had believed, up to that point, all the negative nonsense about the US.
Dan, just so you're aware Paglia believes abortion is murder. She just doesn't mind that it IS murder.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index3.html
Direct Quote:
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.
I've always been impressed with her. She's about as consistent as a liberal can be, while being completely wrongheaded because she has (from our human perspective currently) been given over by God.
I was working from home on 9/11/01. My boss called me and told me to turn on the TV. My wife was handling a convention that was in town for a healthcare company..that was a nightmare.
Dan, just so you're aware Paglia believes abortion is murder. She just doesn't mind that it IS murder.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index3.html
Direct Quote:
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.
I've always been impressed with her. She's about as consistent as a liberal can be, while being completely wrongheaded because she has (from our human perspective currently) been given over by God.
I was working from home on 9/11/01. My boss called me and told me to turn on the TV. My wife was handling a convention that was in town for a healthcare company..that was a nightmare.
That 9/11 thread is haunting. I had worked 7p-7a in the ER the night before and had an early appointment in a neighboring town before I could go home and go to sleep. I remember getting into the car and hearing it on the radio on the way home. Sat up on the sofa and watched it all on CNN, in utter horror. So many rumors ran rampant in the days following, and I remember the following week, calling for a Medevac chopper from the regional trauma center to transport a critically ill patient, and having to wait for them to get FAA approval before they could take flight.
On a lighter note, here's a fine answer to a geometry test question.
We had just moved to another city to finish university. I was on a bus going to school, and someone turned around and asked everyone in general, "Did you see the news on TV!?" As they were describing it, I could only half believe it—it sounded like something straight out of a Hollywood thriller.
I got to school, and the lobby of the Engineering building was full with people watching the TVs there, and then we could all see exactly what had happened.
It was a clear, sunny autumn day, and like Gramma Mack mentioned, when I stepped outside into the crisp air and leaves turning orange and the peace and calm of the quadrangle—well, it was just surreal, compared to the human tragedy going on 3000 miles away.
And then the full weight of what happened—how many souls were lost, and under what circumstances—didn't even become clear until later that day.
It was a lovely morning. We were all busy working on upcoming tax deadlines. I remember all of us coming into the conference room to watch tv, way outside of normal where I worked.
Some of us knew people at Cantor Fitzgerald. We talked about how odd and scary it was for a plane to hit the building. We talked about how amazing it was that it remained standing. We all knew that the world had changed after that second plane.
Barbara: I like it.
I was stationed in Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territories. It was about 7:00PM, and as I was walking back from a workout at the pool someone came up to me and said that someone had blown up the WTC. I got back to my room and turned on the TV. Sky News was broadcasting live and I watched as the crews fought the fires.
I was on the phone with my wife as the towers fell to the ground. It was terribly surreal and I could not believe what I was seeing. I flew back to the States the Friday after the attacks for some meetings in Washington DC. I was there to discuss ways our unit in DG could support the upcoming efforts in Afghanistan (I was a Cryptologic Technician in the Navy).
Traveling into Los Angeles on Saturday morning reminded me of catching a plan in Istanbul Turkey. There were barriers, armed guards, bomb sniffing dogs and a ton of questioning from customs agents. Something had fundamentally changed in the way we travel.
There are pictures of me sitting in the cockpit of a B-1B and standing underneath a B-52 loaded with bombs addressed to Bin Ladin. I am still amazed at how quickly we were ready to strike the Taliban and other supporters of Al-Qaida. The military power this country possesses is mind blowing.
al sends
I was a senior in college in PA, packing my lunch at my parents' house (I commuted). I gave my mom a quick call to see if the shrimp salad was too old to take, when she told me what was going on. I flipped on the TV and watched the 2nd plane hit, and minutes later, the towers collapse. All I could think was that this would lead to a war and my brother and fiance would be drafted (Praise God for no draft!)
Since moving to Long Island, I have met a number of people who were there or lost loved ones in the twin towers that day. The organist at our church had just gotten off the train at the WTC station (he worked at the World Financial Building) and came above ground to find the one tower on fire and people jumping out of windows. Something inside him "snapped" (Holy Spirit?) and he began walking as fast as he could in the other direction. He was over a bridge by the time the towers fell. It was hours before he could call home to his wife and kids.
Lots of the fire trucks here have logos on the side commemorating the men and women the fire departments lost. Nobody here will ever forget, that's for sure.
Where were you on 9/11?
A willful and disobedient Christian 25 year old... physically: at work.
That evening I sat in my apartment with my lovely Christian girlfriend watching the horror replay over and again on the news... sometimes angry, sometimes weeping... Realizing that the world really could unravel at any moment and that the only secure thing is God Himself. He used this event to remind me of the frailty of life and how I was wasting it on useless things.
I had serious "commitment issues," and the girlfriend was getting impatient, rightly so. This event convinced me that I wanted spend my life serving God and the people I love because that would be the only thing that would make my life count in eternity.
Four months later I asked that beautiful young lady to marry me, and next month we celebrate 7 exciting years of marriage and rejoice at the blessings our 5 year old son, and 3 year old daughter are in our lives.
9/11 did change everything. And God used it (in part) to change me.
I had just completed the night shift and heard the news reports on my drive home. Switching my radio between NPR and the local talk station, things were still unclear. Apparently this was just a horrible accident involving a small plane.
I needed to purchase a few items so I stopped at Wal Mart. Everyone was standing in the electronics department watching the story unfold. By this time, the second plane had crashed into the South Tower.
By the time I got back to my car, reports began to circulate about an explosion at the Pentagon along with erroneous reports about explosions at the Capitol building as well. I sat in my car wondering if we were undergoing a decapitation attack. Before I made it home, the first tower fell and the world had changed.
It was the middle of the day, and Ant was coming home for a half day. I had my first daughter in my arms and was watching a 24 hour news channel. I was numb with horror, tbh, but I do remember the sun streaming in through the bay window, feeling the heat on my arms and thinking how grateful I was to be safe at that moment.
Argh!
I fat-fingered in my iPhone and accidentally rejected a Sir Aaron comment. Sorry! Here it is:
Sir Aaron said...
Woah, Sandman. Incredible story.
I was in bed at the time. My friend in NJ with a perfect view of the towers called me. I didn't believe him. I went to work as normal that day...while most of the government employees took the day off (or rather got it off).
I was in New Hampshire at a conference/training for at risk teens. The location was a beautiful ski resort in upper NH. I had been living in NH for a year. One of the leaders announced it first thing in the morning when we gathered in the auditorium. I remember that I just wanted to come back home to Nevada to be with my (grown) kids and grandkids. I left NH at the end of Oct. and my husband-to-be (who grew up in NH) moved to NV a couple of years later. :)
My husband called from work to tell me to turn on the TV - a plane had the the WTC. The boys and I spent the rest of our homeschooling day watching the coverage. I was really concerned for DH who works in an office building attached to the Terminal Tower in Cleveland. Flight 93 was possibly out wandering around somewhere over Ohio and no one knew what other cities were targets. Many of the downtown businesses sent their employees home - including my husband's employer. However, the mad rush on the parking deck left him stranded in there for nearly two hours (to this day, he avoids them like the plague!). It was several long hours of fervent prayers with no news from him - he didn't have a cell phone at the time.
I watched the news coverage until the wee hours and finally crawled into bed around 2 AM. At 5AM I sat straight up in bed when I heard a plane flying over our house. Knowing that all planes had been grounded, I had a moment of raw fear until it passed by.
@Sandman - Awesome story - beauty from ashes!
Stephan said, And then the full weight of what happened—how many souls were lost, and under what circumstances—didn't even become clear until later that day.
Emphasis on the word SOULS.
Speaking of the draft, did y'all know that "illegal aliens, legal permanent residents, and refugees" are required to register ? (BTW, is that a pic of Tony Jones on the website? Do we need to report him to the pacifist patrol?)
RE the stimulus $$ for firefighting: In our little rural county they're getting $100K in $timulu$ money to pay teenagers minimum wage to spruce up the fair grounds. IOW, I, ME, MOI, I, I, I, am paying someone else's teenagers minimum wage, while MY, MY, MY personal teenager was slogging through a strawberry field this spring picking berries for .60/quart. Grrrrrrr!!
I can't believe I watched all 3 minutes of that cat. I'm a dog person. Schnitzel von Krum thinks I've gone off the deep end.
What's up with the moderation?
I'm not a morning person, so I got up at 8 AM Central to hear of both planes in the WTC. I ran out of bed and watched CNN in utter disbelief. Being a news junkie, it was hard to do pull myself away to go to work, but I did. After putting out my weather forecast---a beautiful day, such as it was---I then went to lunch, invited by my colleagues to go with them. They asked me to do a prayer, and I gave them the works. Prayed in Jesus name, asked for comfort to those affected, but bit my tongue about the repentance part, shouting over the TV blaring CNN. Anyway, we went back to work afterwards and everything was dead. We found out employees could leave (we're 60 miles west of Chicago), and they did in droves. And we did as well...
I remember the horrible feeling in my stomach most of the day, and questioned my faith in ager at one point...if I had the peace of God in me, why do I feel no peace? Then the military planes flying high overhead all night, guarding the nuclear power plant 20 miles away, and Chicago to our east. And, gas station lines a mile long as students at our university in town panicked and ran the pumps dry. I got my gas after lunch, expecting this, and it was a good thing. Some charged $6 a gallon (and were subsequently prosecuted for gouging). And I remember wanting to comfort others, but not given the opportunity; everyone was just stunned, not crying, not angry...just stunned.
Seeing all those people at the tops of the towers, with no hope of escape...
That haunts me still, even as I think about it now, after so many years.
I remember thinking, while seeing people jumping from the tops of the twin towers, how sad; some of these people, wanting to escape the fires, are plunging themselves into an
eternal fire.
I even attempted to use that as an opportunity for witnessing with some people in the days that followed. Unfortunately, it was met with a great deal of hostility, along the lines of "you don't know those people, or their hearts!"
In October of that year, one of my nieces - un-saved family - got confirmed in her Methodist "church"; as her "God father", I was invited to attend. The minister's "message" that day was all about the household of faith, with it's many members, from many different "tribes and tongues".
At one point, he said "someday, we all, even the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11, will be seated together at the great banquet table in heaven."
My jaw about hit the floor, but, looking around the sanctuary, all I saw were heads nodding in agreement! On the way out, filing past the minister, all the blind sheep were saying how wonderful the message was!
I later emailed him a question, asking if he meant to convey the idea that everyone eventually ends up in heaven. His reply was a definitive "yes", mis-using "there is no Jew or Greek" texts as the basis for his belief.
"A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit?"
Tom W.
For another 9/11 related movie that is worth seeing, I recommend highly, "World Trade Center" with Nicholas Cage. Told from the perspective of Port Authority officers buried in the rubble. It's brilliantly done and if you watch the extras on the DVD, will see and hear from a couple of the actual men who experienced it. That Oliver Stone did this movie still astonishes me but I guess every Hollywood director can tell the truth at least once.
Absolutely right, MJ - on both counts.
In United 93, also, if you look down the cast listing, you see a great deal of "Himself" or "Herself."
I was on my way to school to meet with my Poli-Sci teacher to study for an exam. I told him about the first plane, and he just kind said 'oh.' I left the room to put my instrument in the band room; by the time I came back (about 5 minutes) the second plane had hit, and he had canceled the exam and wheeled in a TV cart. Instead of going to my classes, our Poli Sci class watched the whole thing unfold together.
On 09/11/2001, I was walking into a conference room for a "really important" meeting, just minutes after the first plane crashed. And I was preparing to do battle, so to speak, over an IT policy issue...because it was, you know, really important. When a couple of people came in to announce what had happened, I figured that it just had to be mistake, an exaggerated news report gone completely wild.
Once I realized that I was wrong, that meeting, and the issue I was so passionate about, suddenly became much less important (and the meeting was postponed to another day).
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