In Rememberance of 9/11

[marutidas]

In two days, it will be the 5th anniversery of one of the most horrible events in American history.
Here is a poem written in memory of the week following 9/11, its called

September's Song, A Poem in Seven Days
By Lucille Clifton

1 Tuesday 9/11/01

thunder and lightning and our world
is another place no day
will ever be the same no blood
untouched

they know this storm in otherwheres
israel, ireland, palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one is exempt
the world is one all fear
is one all life all death
all one

2 Wednesday 9/12/01

this is not the time
i think
to note the terrorist
inside
who threw the brick
into the mosque
this is not the time
to note
the ones who cursed
Gods other name
the ones who threatened
they would fill the streets
with arab children's blood
and this is not the time
i think
to ask who is allowed to be
american America
all of us gathered under one flag
praying together safely
warmed by the single love
of the many tongued God

3 Thursday 9/13/01

the firemen
ascend
like jacob's ladder
into the mouth of
history

4 Friday 9/14/01

some of us know
we have never felt safe

all of us americans
weeping

as some of us have wept
before

is it treason to remember

what have we done
to deserve such villainy

nothing we reassure ourselves
nothing

5 Saturday 9/15/01

i know a man who perished for his faith.
others called him infidel, chased him down
and beat him like a dog. after he died
the world was filled with miracles.
people forgot he was a jew and loved him.
who can know what is intended? who can understand
the gods?

6 Sunday Morning 9/16/01
for bailey

the st. marys river flows
as if nothing has happened

i watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad as are we all

so many ones to hate and i
cursed with long memory

cursed with the desire to understand
have never been good at hating

now this new granddaughter
born into a violent world

as if nothing has happened

and i am consumed with love
for all of it

the everydayness of bravery
of hate of fear of tragedy

of death and birth and hope
true as this river

and especially with love
bailey fredrica clifton goin

for you

7 Monday Sundown 9/17/01

Rosh Hashanah

i bear witness to no thing
more human than hate

i bear witness to no thing
more human than love

apples and honey
apples and honey

what is not lost
is paradise

* * *

This thread is to remember where we were 5 years ago, when
the towers fell. To remember those who lost there lives.

I remeber that I was getting ready to go my massage therapy class,
I saw on the news, the towers smoking, and for the first moment I thought it was a movie, that this couldn't be real. And my heart sank when the towers fell. Afraid of what was to come.

And now 5 five years later, have we moved on, to move toward peace?
Are we any safer than we were 5 years ago?
Are we to point fingers, blame those who, are our Borthers and sisters, to let the blood flow?

I ask all,
To remember.

[NonLemming]

I am so sick of our seeming idolatry of September the 11th. We need to move on. Five years ago was a hard day for many of us and many of us gave in to being led like sheep after that and feeling fear when we were told to.

Say a prayer for the vicitims if you wish, but don't watch any tv show making money off of it (way too early for that), don't waffle into victim mindset and go all helpless, and don't watch the countless fabrications of what happened. We will not know in our lifetime.

We knew this would come after Fat Man and Little Boy and it finally did. We need to improve security and move on.

[Daniel]

I cannot watch film footage about the event without getting agitated and have strong emotions about the event, the way it has been portrayed and especially, how it has been used politically.

My husband and I were listening to the radio that morning and heard the announcer break in and say that the airports were closed and the Trade Center had been hit by a plane. We turned on CNN. My guy got on his bike and went down to the new pier south of 68 St here on the West Side of Manhattan. He saw the towers fall from there. I stayed at home and tried to call a friend who was going to be coming into work at the opera at that time from Brooklyn- right under the towers- not knowing that the subways had already been shut down. My mother called and we got cut off. Twice. Then as we were talking the third time, CNN showed people jumping/flying from the building. I think I went numb at that point- told my Mom I was Ok, but I couldn't keep talking. The phones were jammed all day after that. Hours later, we saw people who had walked all the way home- a good 8-10 miles- covered with white dust from head to toe.

The opera season was supposed to start that night with Wagner's Flying Dutchman, which was cancelled. When we did open on Friday, it was as much a protest as it was a healing service. People came to be together, and in doing so, somehow push back the darkness. We sang the National Anthem before we started, and I have never had anything to do that was as hard as that. Everyone was in tears, before, during and after. It was surreal. Everything kept going forward, but we all felt like we were standing still. In many ways, I think we still are.

The firehouse behind Lincoln Center lost 13 of their members. Their pictures are now backstage. I walk by them every day. You'd always see them at 'Fairway', the famous market on Broadway, a few blocks up. They would park 2 or 3 firetrucks out front every couple of days and do a big shop. Great guys.

The skies were silent for a good while after that- except for the boom of airforce jets that circled the city- which came- btw- too late. It took me a long while to get used to seeing planes fly overhead.

[Giancarlo]

Originally Posted by NonLemming

I am so sick of our seeming idolatry of September the 11th. We need to move on. Five years ago was a hard day for many of us and many of us gave in to being led like sheep after that and feeling fear when we were told to.

Say a prayer for the vicitims if you wish, but don't watch any tv show making money off of it (way too early for that), don't waffle into victim mindset and go all helpless, and don't watch the countless fabrications of what happened. We will not know in our lifetime.

We knew this would come after Fat Man and Little Boy and it finally did. We need to improve security and move on.

I cannot. I will remember them because it is my right, and I will say I recognize them. I think making this into a political issue as some want to is irresponsible. Whether it be republicans or democrats. September 11th is a day that should be remembered, just as much as Pearl Harbor and the first day of the invasion of Normandy.

Please don't play politics with the lives of those who were lost.

I hold equal anger at both the pro-Bush and anti-Bush people.

[Jennifer5]

In some ways to me this still seems so unreal... I've never had TV so when it happened I only got little clips of it. I've seen where the towers were and still some how it feels unreal. Hearing people speak of 9/11 makes me want to ignor the fact that it ever happened, and I wish I could... but who ever planned that attack was very smart, because forever the United States will remember that on september 11th.. to many lives were lost, and to many families and friends had there lives changed over this... as much as I'd love to be able to say lets move on like NonLemming has, I just can't. People aren't quite ready, we all need some time to heal

[Daniel]

Rich's remarks are...well....very apt. We're both New Yorker's and see things in a similar fashion.

I've posted the article in its entirety for the simple reason that one must be a subscriber to read it on the NYTimes webpage.

Originally Posted by NYTimes

September 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?

By FRANK RICH
“THE most famous picture nobody’s ever seen” is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. “In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world,” Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, “the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo.”

Five years later, Mr. Drew’s “falling man” remains a horrific artifact of the day that was supposed to change everything and did not. But there’s another taboo 9/11 photo, about life rather than death, that is equally shocking in its way, so much so that Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos kept it under wraps for four years. Mr. Hoepker’s picture can now be found in David Friend’s compelling new 9/11 book, “Watching the World Change,” or on the book’s Web site, watchingtheworldchange.com. It shows five young friends on the waterfront in Brooklyn, taking what seems to be a lunch or bike-riding break, enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away as cascades of smoke engulf Lower Manhattan in the background.

Mr. Hoepker found his subjects troubling. “They were totally relaxed like any normal afternoon,” he told Mr. Friend. “It’s possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it.” The photographer withheld the picture from publication because “we didn’t need to see that, then.” He feared “it would stir the wrong emotions.” But “over time, with perspective,” he discovered, “it grew in importance.”

Seen from the perspective of 9/11’s fifth anniversary, Mr. Hoepker’s photo is prescient as well as important — a snapshot of history soon to come. What he caught was this: Traumatic as the attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.

What’s gone right: the terrorists failed to break America’s back. The “new” normal lasted about 10 minutes, except at airport check-ins. The economy, for all its dips and inequities and runaway debt, was not destroyed. The culture, for better and worse, survived intact. It took only four days for television networks to restore commercials to grim news programming. Some two weeks after that Rudy Giuliani ritualistically welcomed laughter back to American living rooms by giving his on-camera imprimatur to “Saturday Night Live.” Before 9/11, Americans feasted on reality programs, nonstop coverage of child abductions and sex scandals. Five years later, they still do. The day that changed everything didn’t make Americans change the channel, unless it was from “Fear Factor” to “American Idol” or from Pamela Anderson to Paris Hilton.

For those directly affected by the terrorists’ attacks, this resilience can be hard to accept. In New York, far more than elsewhere, a political correctness about 9/11 is still strictly enforced. We bridle when the mayor of New Orleans calls ground zero “a hole in the ground” (even though, sadly, he spoke the truth). We complain that Hollywood movies about 9/11 are “too soon,” even as “United 93” and “World Trade Center” came and went with no controversy at multiplexes in middle America. The Freedom Tower and (now kaput) International Freedom Center generated so much political rancor that in New York freedom has become just another word for a lofty architectural project soon to be scrapped.

The price of all New York’s 9/11 P.C. is obvious: the 16 acres of ground zero are about the only ones that have missed out on the city’s roaring post-attack comeback. But the rest of the country is less invested. For tourists — and maybe for natives, too — the hole in the ground is a more pungent memorial than any grandiose official edifice. You can still see the naked wound where it has not healed and remember (sort of) what the savage attack was about.

But even as we celebrate this resilience, it too comes at a price. The companion American trait to resilience is forgetfulness. What we’ve forgotten too quickly is the outpouring of affection and unity that swelled against all odds in the wake of Al Qaeda’s act of mass murder. If you were in New York then, you saw it in the streets, and not just at ground zero, where countless thousands of good Samaritans joined the official responders and caregivers to help, at the cost of their own health. You saw it as New Yorkers of every kind gathered around the spontaneous shrines to the fallen and the missing at police and fire stations, at churches and in parks, to lend solace or a hand. This good feeling quickly spread to Capitol Hill, to red states where New York had once been Sodom incarnate and to the world, the third world included, where America was a nearly uniform object of sympathy and grief.

At the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush found just the apt phrase to describe this phenomenon: “Today we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called ‘the warm courage of national unity.’ This is the unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress.” What’s more, he added, “this unity against terror is now extending across the world.”

The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can’t forget the dead of 9/11, we can’t forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle.

When F.D.R. used the phrase “the warm courage of national unity,” it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Another passage is worth recalling, too: “We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.”

What followed under Roosevelt’s leadership is one of history’s most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties — to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good — with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad. What followed Mr. Bush’s speech at the National Cathedral, we know all too well, is another story.

On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference “how much of a sacrifice” ordinary Americans would “be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines.” His answer: “Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever.” He, too, wanted to move on — to “see life return to normal in America,” as he put it — but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.

This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush’s war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher’s irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding “all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Fear itself — the fear that “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” as F.D.R. had it — was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of “no sacrifice whatsoever.” Speaking in Washington about how it was “the time to be wise” and “the time to act,” he declared, “We need for there to be more tax cuts.” Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

[hankzzz]

Oh, I know the security will be heightened. It's just that I don't look forward to them replaying of the attacks over and over again... If we can make it through this 5 year anniversery in relative peace, that will be just fine with me.

Also, I think that all the media spotlight on bin Laden only makes him more of a folk hero among the radicals.

[NonLemming]

Originally Posted by Giancarlo

I cannot. I will remember them because it is my right, and I will say I recognize them. I think making this into a political issue as some want to is irresponsible. Whether it be republicans or democrats. September 11th is a day that should be remembered, just as much as Pearl Harbor and the first day of the invasion of Normandy.

Please don't play politics with the lives of those who were lost.

I hold equal anger at both the pro-Bush and anti-Bush people.

I certainly did not mean that people should not grieve. They should, especially the people of NYC, the city that was attacked. But the way we are over-exposed to, beaten over the head with it on the television seems like a weekend long jerk-off pity party. My tv will be off on Monday and I will use the day to live life and try to do something good and not buy into any hyping of the anniversary. I will then get a good night's sleep as I'm sure we'll have many going through 9-11 withdrawals on Tuesday.

I wouldn't and have not played politics with any lost lives. I will say that if you are angry at pro-Bush and anti-Bush people, that's a lot of anger to hold on to. Just a thought.

[NonLemming]

Originally Posted by hankzzz

Also, I think that all the media spotlight on bin Laden only makes him more of a folk hero among the radicals.

Sadly we helped secure his guaranteed folk status by letting him go.

[Giancarlo]

Originally Posted by NonLemming

I certainly did not mean that people should not grieve. They should, especially the people of NYC, the city that was attacked. But the way we are over-exposed to, beaten over the head with it on the television seems like a weekend long jerk-off pity party. My tv will be off on Monday and I will use the day to live life and try to do something good and not buy into any hyping of the anniversary. I will then get a good night's sleep as I'm sure we'll have many going through 9-11 withdrawals on Tuesday.

I wouldn't and have not played politics with any lost lives. I will say that if you are angry at pro-Bush and anti-Bush people, that's a lot of anger to hold on to. Just a thought.

I actually think this is quite insensitive, and I think people should be constantly reminded. My TV will be on and I will be remembering the people who lost. Someone I know was gravely injured in the attacks.

A lot of anger to hold on to? I think they are both being foolish and don't deserve power in this country. I really hope we get some moderates in power in 2008, because both sides have showed unacceptable behavior.

Besides, this only happens once a year.

[NonLemming]

Originally Posted by Giancarlo

Besides, this only happens once a year.

We can agree on this, at least. It's only once a year.

[Dash]

You know, it's strange for me...I still have a hard time looking at the images that held me in terrible thrall that day. I have not yet read the poem you posted, Maritudas...I don't know why. I will not go see any movie about 9/11, and as interested as I am in the political controversy over ABC's miniseries which begins tonight, I'm not sure I can watch it.

It was an important moment in my life (as in everyone's) but I don't think I have found all of the wisdom that I need from it yet. So, I'm still very shy about returning to that place, but ponder it from some distance and avoid the answers that others offer.

[suzer1013]

My partner and I have watched a couple what I would consider to be the better documentaries about that day, and it's still hard to watch. Though I did not live in NYC in 2001, I did live there in 1993 when the WTC was bombed, and that was pretty awful. I watched the helicopters taking people off the roof from my brownstone apartment in Brooklyn, and we all knew then that those buildings would be a target again.

I do not like the publicity that now surrounds 9/11 every year. It makes me physically ill. My cousin experienced 9/11 first hand. She worked at the World Financial Center, and thank God was late to work that day. Her train was rerouted to Rector Street, and she headed to work thinking nothing was wrong. As she got closer, and saw people were running the other way, she finally realized what had happened. She's a photographer and always has her camera with her, and hardly thinking, she took a few pictures before heading uptown on a long walk back to Queens. No one thought the buildings would come down. She was at Houston Street when the first building fell.

My cousin saw the people who leapt from those buildings, she experienced the screams, the thuds, the death, first hand. She was covered with ash and grime and thankfully got a ride over the 59th Street Bridge.

No, I do not want to see representations of what happened over and over and over again ad nauseum. There's something very sick about allowing ourselves to be retraumatized by this again and again. I agree that we need to pray for those who were lost, and for those who lost friends and family, and for our country and where it is headed. But we don't need to revel in the tragedy, which is what seems to be happening. We will never forget, but we also do not need to relive the pain, in glorified Hollywood form, again and again.

Tomorrow, one of the news stations is apparently running the coverage from 9/11 over again in its entirety. Thank God I'll be at work, busy preparing for a trial.

I've gotten e-mails and read posts about "fly the American flag" on 9/11, but for me this is not a time for patriotism. It is a time of sorrow, a time of remembrance and prayer. I don't need to fly a flag to show my love of my country, and I don't need to relive a tragedy so many times that it haunts me. Frankly, I think Bin Laden and his ilk are probably chuckling over our strange need to continue reliving what he considers his "triumph." I'd rather not give him that satisfaction.

Susan

[pnggrad79]

9/11 is strange and at the same time wonderful for me. It is strange because I was and still am in Houston, Texas when the towers fell and I flew my American flag like everyone else. I thought and still think Bin Laden is a major threat to our security and as long as we are reactive people instead of proactive, I think we will always be scared of when and where the next attack is going to happen, and put countless innocent people through the mill at airports because of a few brilliant but consummately evil people.

It is wonderful to me because my wife and I got married in Niagara Falls, Canada on that day in 2004. It is our second anniversary today. We choose to celebrate it instead of mourn it. It is sad though that in America we don't have that freedom to marry. That very freedom and all freedom is venerated on Sept. 11. Why do we still not have it?

Notwithstanding, here is a poem and I post it as my remembrance and with the hope that someday, GLBT people will be included in the freedoms granted by our Constitution and for which we are fighting in Iraq .

One


As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.

As we carried each other down the
Stairs of the burning building,
We became one class.

As we lit candles of waiting and hope,
We became one generation.

As the firefighters and police officers
Fought their way into the inferno,
We became one gender.

As we fell to our knees
In prayer for strength,
We became one faith.

As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.

As we mourned together the great loss,
We became one family.

As we cried tears of grief and loss,
We became one soul.

As we retell with pride of
The sacrifices of heroes,
We become one people.

We are:
One color
One Class
One generation
One faith
One language
One body
One family
One soul
One people

We are the power of one.
We are united.
We are America.

(Author unknown)

[marutidas]

I agree with nonlemming, it is time to move on.
But it is not so easy for people who where at Ground Zero.
The wounds, even after five years, are still fresh in our minds.
I do not have family who live in New York, but that doesn't mean anything.
I may not have lost anyone I know, but that my point, we become indifferent after the crisis is over. Those who were not not there, move on with their lives, but those who lost Husbands, Wives, Brothers Sisters,Aunts Uncles, It is as if time stopped.

It is important to move on, to rebuild our lives, to not live in fear.
But it is more important not to forget the Lessons of that fateful day.

We must remember of the way it was on that day, when the lines blurred.
And we came together as one people, just likepnggrad79's poem.
Why does it take an overwhelming tragedy to get that kind of cooperation?

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by pnggrad79

9/11 is strange and at the same time wonderful for me. It is strange because I was and still am in Houston, Texas when the towers fell and I flew my American flag like everyone else.

It is wonderful to me because my wife and I got married in Niagara Falls, Canada on that day in 2004. It is our second anniversary today. We choose to celebrate it instead of mourn it.

Pnggrad- Your words are a beacon of light in a dark place today. Thank you for sharing them. May you and your spouse be blessed this day! May your love grow and shine for all to see. I rejoice in your joining and happiness.

[Daniel]

http://365gay.com/Newscon06/09/091106churches.htm

Originally Posted by White

"If all the gay organists quit playing on Sunday morning," he said, "there would be silence in Christendom."

La Verita.

Let the silence speak!

[suzer1013]

Elizabeth Kaeton offers a powerful commentary on 9/11 on her blog. Read it, if you get the chance.

http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/

Susan

[tdogg]

I have a very difficult time watching any footage of 9/11 - especially the planes going into the buildings and the people jumping/falling out of the towers. just too much for me to handle. I did watch a documentary Monday evening, the one with Robert DeNiro narrating. I thought it was well done, gave a very different perspective on what happened and brought a personal touch into the events. It was the only thing I could bring myself to watch. It breaks my heart to think of those who experienced this horror firsthand and died, it breaks my heart to think of those alive who's loved ones perished this way and who are without them.

My sister's birthday is 9/11 - since 9/11/01 it has not been easy for her to share that day with what happened. It's like a blow to an otherwise happy time. With all the shows, newscasts, articles, remembrances, memorials, etc., that's what she hears and almost wishes she could forget her birthday every year. It's very hard for her.

I'm not saying to forget or not remember in your own special way. But I think that perhaps this whole thing is a bit overboard as far as the media is concerned. We don't ever have to forget, but it would be nice if we could do this type of remembrance on positive events at least as well. And if the media exploitation could be lessened, it might be beneficial to those who are still alive.

[Steven E. Webster]

Originally Posted by tdogg

My sister's birthday is 9/11 - since 9/11/01 it has not been easy for her to share that day with what happened. It's like a blow to an otherwise happy time. With all the shows, newscasts, articles, remembrances, memorials, etc., that's what she hears and almost wishes she could forget her birthday every year. It's very hard for her.

I am sure it is very hard for your sister. Maybe it might help to know (as someone must have already reported elsewhere on this board) that 9/11/2006 also marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Gandhi's Satyagraha ("truth force" or "soul force") campaign in South Africa on 9/11/1906. I believe that in the long run Gandhi's movement will be more remembered than the tragedy of 9/11/2001.

Steven Webster