Category: 9-11

A proposal here to Unplug on 9/11.

To honor all those who lost their lives in the 9/11/2001 attacks (and all those who have lost their lives since as a direct result of them), I propose that we turn off our computers and stay off the internet all day on 9/11/2003.

Hmmm. Why?

1. Silence and reflection are an appropriate response to such an indescribably ugly day and to all the ugliness that has been created in its wake.

So are shouting and screaming. So are reflections on the tragedy, screeds of anger, poems of hope, and reaching out to others.

2. A day of disconnection from the Internet will create one less means by which unscupulous people can tell us how to feel about our country and ourselves.

Right. Better to let the “unscrupulous people” put forward their nefarious agenda without anyone to disagree about it. That makes sense.

3. The SoBig.F worm and other disruptive programs may be preparing for larger, more damaging attacks on 9/11. Let’s withhold host bodies from these parasitic infections. A computer with its power turned off cannot be infected by a computer virus, nor can it pass that virus on to other unsuspecting users.

Right. Live in fear of computer viruses. And if you keep your computer permanently turned off, it won’t ever get infected or used as a zombie.

4. I really just want to see if I’ve got the willpower.

Well, that’s not a bad reason. Though I’d reserve that for Lent. (Hmmmmm …)

My opinion? It’s better to stay connected. If someone is expressing an opinion about 9/11 and what it means, and you agree — great! The power of community was one of the lessons of that day. If someone says something you disagree with — wonderful! The strength of differing opinions and the freedom to express them is another valuable lesson from that day.

There are any number of folks who will try to hijack 9/11 to their purpose. That’s what makes a horse race. Some of it will be touching, some of it will be maudlin and cloying, some of it will be inspiring, and some of it will be enraging.

But that’s both the strength and the weakness of living in a society. Sitting in a darkened room to avoid hearing opinions you don’t like — from whatever end of whichever political spectrum you’re overly sensitive to — is to let them have the field.

But if you want to have some quiet time and reflection — well, yeah, that’s okay, too. Just do it for the right reason — out of strength, not out of fear.

Whatever you do on 9/11, don’t let anyone dictate it to you, and don’t let anyone take it from you. Your feelings, your values, and your country are your own.

That I can agree with.

(via WMT)

Okay, I thought it had already been settled, but clearly not. The “official” new plan for the World Trade Center replacement was announced yesterday — focusing on a 1,776 foot (get it?) main spire, and various “jagged” office buildings around it. The main tower would be the tallest in the world. A slide show of the design can be found here.

I still like the Think design, personally. The spire of the the Libeskind design is too skinny on the skyline for my taste (click on the thumbnail to the left for a larger image). And I’m not so much into the jaggy buildings.

And now, of course, comes the real test — digging up the money to do this, with whatever design strings may be attached to same, and figuring out who’s actually in charge of the whole effort — city, state, Port Authority, etc.

It should be an interesting challenge. And I’m glad they’re doing something bold, even if I don’t particularly care for it all that much.

The finalists for the WTC rebuild have been announced. I like ’em.

I think a generation will look back on the design choices made here, and applaud. They are not so “out there” that they will immediately look dated, but they are not the safe-but-dull proposals that were originally developed.

The final design will be picked by the end of the month.

(via InstaPundit)

Scrap steel from the Twin Towers is going to be incorporated in the USS New York, an US Navy amphibious troop carrier being built. Its launch date is in 2007.

Someone has a fine sense of irony.

The new list of WTC replacement building proposals is out, and, unlike the first batch, these show a bit more guts.

Indeed, the contrast is a stark one. Has the zeitgeist changed? Have we gone from fear, bruised, shrinking-back from big buildings to defiant support of them?

Of course, when you go hog wild, you end up with some butt-ugly designs, too, but these at least show some landmark gusto. Bravo.

(via Reenhead)

Nobody’s asked me to design a memorial at the Pentagon for the victims of that building during the 9-11 attacks, as well as the victims aboard the jet liner. But, had they, I’d probably have gone with something traditional — a spire, a plaque, some benches. Something comfortable and orthodox and appropriate to the setting, adding to the general background of monuments and memorials that dot DC.

Huh. Silly me. Don’t I know that the Memorial Biz isn’t about memory, it’s about Art (with an emphatic Capital A)?

Yeesh.

Not only did the S&P 500 futures contract close at 911.00 yesterday, but the 3-ball part of the New York Lottery drew — you guessed it — 9-1-1.

Dee-doo-dee-doo …

Which makes me feel like pledge week, in that if I could simply program your browser omit these posts for those wise among you who already read Lileks on a daily basis, I would. But I can’t, so you’re stuck reading it anyway.

No, it was a good day. We had an Indian meal, assembled from the shelves of the pungent market down the street. We drew on the sidewalk with chalk, we went to the park to play. Jasper ran after rabbits while I weeded the lawn. I went to the office for a while, and when I went outside to think about the column I watched hundreds of citizens stream to the Metrodome to watch baseball and attend the memorial. No fear on anyone’s face. And if you walked close enough to the Dome you could hear the crowd inside roar – not for blood, not for vengeance, not for death and fire, but for baseball. That was 9/11, 2002. I curse the terrorists for their horrible triumphs, but those bastards cannot even begin to count the ways in which they failed.

Nobody’s talking about it at the office. No knots of folks reminiscing or discussing or debating. Business as usual, if maybe slightly hushed.

Are they embarrassed to emote?

Are they afraid that everything about 9/11 has become politicized, and it might offend?

Are they just tired of it, and want it all to go away?

We have holidays all the time. We expect them. We’ve grown up with them. We know what’s coming.

Christmas. Independence Day. Memorial Day. Gifts for loved ones. Vacation time. Religious services. Fireworks. It’s all programmed.

11 September is different. Nobody knows what to do. It’s not a holiday. It’s both more and less (for most of us) than the anniversary of a loved one’s death. It’s … different.

Margie nailed it as we talked about it last night. There’s been as much (if not more) talk about how do we mark 11 September as there’s been remembrance of it. Should TV stations show commercials? Should we watch replays or favor live broadcasts? Sit at home with the lights off, or wallow in the pathos. Wait for the films and documentaries to come out on DVD, or be in the now of it, ready or not? Should we be angry still? Fearful? Should we be getting on with our lives?

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a new holiday. Bright and shiny, but what to do on that day is obvious. If you have the day off, you take it (and mutter about the banks and post office being closed). If you don’t, you work (ditto). If you’re a kid, you get treated to Black History Month, or History of Color Month, or whatever it’s called this year. Simple.

This is the first national event, though, that’s been so commemorated. Was there national mourning the first anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake, or the Chicago Fire?

Pearl Harbor comes to mind, but by December 1942 we were neck deep in war, distracted, still bloodsoaked. There had been many more casualties, many more defeats — and a few victories — and while “Remember Pearl Harbor!” still rang true, it was followed by “… and Let’s Get Back to Work!” And now, sixty years later, it’s an historical footnote, as that generation passes on, a day to consider our national relationship with Japan and grainy black and white footage.

Will 11 September go that way?

There’s a sense that tomorrow, everything will be different. Again. Or back to the same. That the obligatory year of wearing black and hanging crepe will be over. Will it? Will the US go back to caring only about the latest music video, and simply mutter and lob a few cruise missiles at those who attack us? Will the changes in the law be rolled back, or become just part of the background noise of government?

Have things really changed?

What will 11 September be like next year? And the year after? Will there be non-stop news coverage, total saturation of the op-ed pages? A quasi-national holiday?

Probably not.

Whether it will fade away, evolve into something more institutional, or be supplanted by the memories of some even more dire (or more recent) tragedy, it will be different.

Life goes on.

Here is a series of satellite photos of both the WTC site and the Pentagon, pre-9/11, the day of, and in the months since. Amazing stuff. Space Imaging sells satellite photos to news agencies, but is offering up all its 9/11-related pictures for free.

I’ve been saving some links to particularly striking 9/11-related web articles and blog entries, rather than pepper everyone with them all month long. I’ll start posting them here, in this entry, now, and as I (inevitably) run across more, I’ll updated them here, too.

I realize, by the way, that I’m indulging in just the sort of sappy sentimentality and emotion I was so decrying the Mass Media for. So be it. Know that at least from me it’s genuine.

• Dave Barry writes of the hallowed ground of Somerset Co., Pennsylvania, not that very far from Gettysburg.
• James Lileks writes of a little girl, his own daughter’s age.
• VodkaPundit urges us not to wallow, but to act.
• Lileks (natch) has a marvelous post (of course) just this morning on what the He of Today would tell the He of a Year Ago.
• Truth Laid Bear talks about how this was an attack, not an earthquake (can you tell the difference from the coverage), and, more importantly, there is victory in the ashes.
• I linked to this a while back, but this compilation of what’s know (via cell phone, mostly) of life within the WTC after the crashes is … moving.
• Mark Twain’s “War Prayer” is always worth a read.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The poem “Flanders Fields” was written in 1915 by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, a the day after the funeral of a friend and former student. He fought on the Western Front in 1914, but was reassigned to a French hospital. His asthma exacerbated by poison gas exposure, he died of pneumonia and meningitis while on active duty in 1918.

Okay, so this will be a pretty self-indulgent day. Humor me.

I still feel sad. Sad at the destruction, the waste, the deaths. Sad at the broken skyline of New York, at the broken lives left behind, at all that was lost, and all that could have been which is lost.

I still feel fear. Fear at what might happen next, at who might be threatened. At what might happen if we take the wrong step, or even if we take the right one. At how it might threaten my loved ones.

I still feel anger. Anger at the killing, the wanton disregard for human life — no, not disregard, but appropriation, intentional theft of human life, just to make some bloody point.

I still feel … joy, admiration, pride, awe at the folks who survived it, at the heroes who did not, at the passengers on Flight 93 who took their fate into their own hands.

In some ways, I feel more today about all of this — bound up and conflated with the events of the days and months after 9-11 — than I did a year ago.

Is that a good thing?

Remember, remember
11 September,
Aeroplane terror and plot.
It would be an error
If 11 September
Should ever be forgot.