This is not the post I planned on writing today…

I didn’t get up this morning planning to write a post about September 11, 2001, then I started reading some of the amazing posts out there in the PRB and I changed my mind. Instead of trying to write a pithy and emotional post I’m going to direct you to some of the posts that I read this morning.

Before I do so, I want to put my state of mind in perspective. I wasn’t in New York on September 11th. I was supposed to be there,  but things changed and I was safely at home in my bedroom in Seattle. At the time I was working for a subsidiary of IBM as a technical software trainer and that year I was spending a lot of time in downtown Manhattan where we had an office. I would fly out on a Sunday and be in the city for a week on some trips and on some trips I was out there for two weeks. There are definitely worse places to have to go on business and I was loving my spring, summer and early fall visits to New York. I always stayed at the same hotel, which was across the street from the World Trade Center. If I got in early enough, or was there on a Sunday, I could enjoy the Sunday New York Times, a cup of coffee and bands playing in the square at the World Trade Center.

My schedule for this company was built out 6 to 9 months in advance. Like I said, I was supposed to be in Manhattan that day, I was scheduled to teach a class that week. Then my sister decided to get married.  With her wedding the weekend before the class started I would be unable to get to New York in time to setup my classroom and then start the class bright and early Monday morning. So I traded classes with a colleague of mine and really thought nothing more of it until Bryan called me the morning of the 11th and told me to turn on the news.

After shock, my very next emotion was a huge wave of guilt. I didn’t know where my colleague was, if he was safe, etc etc.  He was there in my place, as a favor to me and now I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Luckily late that day I found out that he had been at the office a few blocks away when the planes hit and the buildings came down. He’d lost everything but the clothes on his back since his hotel was destroyed (it was one of the hotels attached to the World Trade Center), he’d had to walk across Manhattan to get to New Jersey to begin the process of getting home, but he was alive.

I’ve been reading posts all over the PRD about that day and these are the ones that resonated with me and I hope that you’ll take the time to follow the links and read them as well.

• Ashton Cruz profiles Mark Bingham, one of the heros of flight 93. (site is very nsfw)
• Snackiepoo remembers by dancing and promises to never forget
• Dawg, a first responder, remembers those EMS Responders who fell in the line of duty
• Joe describes his day in New York
• Lewis gives us a perspective from a flight attendant almost ready to leave the gate
• Maggie tells about the life of Jean Roger

As you can imagine I, like so many of us, have mixed emotions about the events that have followed these horrific events. I’m not sure the country has gone in the right direction, I’m not sure our response to the attacks has been the correct response and so on. Amongst all the posts I’ve read today there are two bloggers who were able to put some of the doubts and questions I’ve had into perspective.

• Avitable thinks that most people in the US are sheep and need to…

realize that our goal should be prevention of another 9/11 in the future. Not through warmongering and oil chasing. Not through spying on our own country. Not through quasi-fascist govermental actions, far right religious pundits, far left liberal political correctness, or blind ignorance. But through understanding, acceptance of all religions, orientations, races, and cultures, and embracing the idea that the US cannot and should not capitalize on a tragedy and shit on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

• Britt wonders where we went wrong and…

can’t help but think that six years after Pearl Harbor this country would have had a lot more to be proud of – a lot more worth “remembering”.