Something to remember...

[SweetWitch]

I received the following in an email tonight, from a friend in England:

I just thought that I would share this with you. [My wife] has been clearing out her craft room and during the tidying of one cupboard she came across a carving knife. It is billed as the World's sharpest knife and has a cardboard guarantee sleeve over the blade that says:- ".................This guarantee shall be enforced for the lifetime of the World's Sharpest Knife Company, which assumes only the representation written here. Twin Towers Trading, PO box 6553, Freehold, NJ07728"

I found it very sad to read that, I would assume you will too.

Gives us something to reflect on.

 

[DesertPirate]

Wow!

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I received the following in an email tonight, from a friend in England:

I just thought that I would share this with you. [My wife] has been clearing out her craft room and during the tidying of one cupboard she came across a carving knife. It is billed as the World's sharpest knife and has a cardboard guarantee sleeve over the blade that says:- ".................This guarantee shall be enforced for the lifetime of the World's Sharpest Knife Company, which assumes only the representation written here. Twin Towers Trading, PO box 6553, Freehold, NJ07728"

I found it very sad to read that, I would assume you will too.

Gives us something to reflect on.

The Twin Towers were in Manhattan, New York. This says Freehold? Something is off here.

 

[TE999]

A thousand and one memories. 9/11- Never Forget

 

[Elianna]

I was going through my drawers and found notecards that were made in memorial of the event by children. They were "Prayers for America" I have a hard time sending those notecards out...yano?

 

[SweetWitch]

The Twin Towers were in Manhattan, New York. This says Freehold? Something is off here.

Their PO Box was in Freehold NJ.

 

[slyc_willie]

I recently saw the 1977 remake of King Kong, in which the Towers were integral to the end of the movie. Sent a shiver down my spine when I saw them. Same with Escape From New York and a whole host of other movies from the eighties and nineties in which the WTC was prominent.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I feel the same about the Yankee hordes coming here and bulldozing all the local landmarks and citrus groves and forests.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I recently saw the 1977 remake of King Kong, in which the Towers were integral to the end of the movie. Sent a shiver down my spine when I saw them. Same with Escape From New York and a whole host of other movies from the eighties and nineties in which the WTC was prominent.

I get the same feeling when I see the Jamie Fox movie Bait. It isn't anything special as far as story and action, but the towers were showcased in every other scene.

After the towers fell, new movies being made and had shot them started editing them out digitally, as if they were trying to hide that they ever existed. One directer said that he wasn't going to join in. He filmed them and he was leaving them in. I wonder if it was that movie (yes, I know it came out the year before, but I think that was new enough for some people to go back and edit for the DVD releases).

 

[SweetWitch]

I recently saw the 1977 remake of King Kong, in which the Towers were integral to the end of the movie. Sent a shiver down my spine when I saw them. Same with Escape From New York and a whole host of other movies from the eighties and nineties in which the WTC was prominent.

That's the one with Bridges in it, right? I remember it well.

Now with the hotel bombings in Indonesia the other day, we get to remember all over again.

 

[slyc_willie]

I get the same feeling when I see the Jamie Fox movie Bait. It isn't anything special as far as story and action, but the towers were showcased in every other scene.

After the towers fell, new movies being made and had shot them started editing them out digitally, as if they were trying to hide that they ever existed. One directer said that he wasn't going to join in. He filmed them and he was leaving them in. I wonder if it was that movie (yes, I know it came out the year before, but I think that was new enough for some people to go back and edit for the DVD releases).

I find it hypocritical that they would edit out the Twin Towers from some movies, but then film a disaster movie in which the Statue of Liberty, or the Arch, or the Washington Memorial is destroyed.

 

[KarennaC]

My daughters and I watched a movie a couple weeks ago- being that my mind is like a steel sieve, I can't recall which one at the moment- and it showed the main characters looking out over New York City from a tall building. Then the camera moved out and showed that the tall building was one of the Twin Towers. I said, "Oh, wow, it's the World Trade Center! The original one!" My 14-year-old had to walk away; she was 6 when the attacks happened, and she remembers and gets a little emotional about it. At the time, we lived near a military base, and there was some concern that something might happen there at first. She remembers the fear at school that day. She also has a couple friends who lost family members in the attacks.

My almost-11-year-old just gave me a strange look. She was only 3 when the attack occurred, so she doesn't really remember, plus she doesn't grasp emotional impact the way most people do, so to her the World Trade Center and 9/11 are just things she's learned about in school.

 

[SweetWitch]

My daughters and I watched a movie a couple weeks ago- being that my mind is like a steel sieve, I can't recall which one at the moment- and it showed the main characters looking out over New York City from a tall building. Then the camera moved out and showed that the tall building was one of the Twin Towers. I said, "Oh, wow, it's the World Trade Center! The original one!" My 14-year-old had to walk away; she was 6 when the attacks happened, and she remembers and gets a little emotional about it. At the time, we lived near a military base, and there was some concern that something might happen there at first. She remembers the fear at school that day. She also has a couple friends who lost family members in the attacks.

My almost-11-year-old just gave me a strange look. She was only 3 when the attack occurred, so she doesn't really remember, plus she doesn't grasp emotional impact the way most people do, so to her the World Trade Center and 9/11 are just things she's learned about in school.

I was Program Director at a TV station when it happened. I was taking my baby to daycare and running late, as usual. Just as I pulled up to the daycare, the announcement came over the radio that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. My first thought was "drunk pilot", since drinking pilots had recently been in the news. My second thought was, "Oh man, the station's gonna be a madhouse today. I need to get there fast."

The station programming was my job. For each show that was interrupted or completely pre-empted, there's paperwork to do. I knew the news reports would be extensive. Just after arriving at the station, the second plane hit.

We got the news feeds and information before it ever went on the air. No one knew what was happening, but I just knew we were under attack. Some of the stuff they were feeding us from national was never put on the air because it was too horrifying. As Prog Dir, it fed directly into my office set. I watched things that I'll never tell anyone, saw things that no one should ever see.

I called my mother at her office; she thought it was just the one plane crash. I told her I thought we were under attack. The sound of her voice was not pretty. She called several times to get updates throughout the day. When DC was hit, I was ready to head for the caves and caverns back home.

It was 100 solid hours of nothing but news. Every TV affiliate across the nation hemorraged revenue like water through a paper towel. At one point, with our entire viewing public nearly suicidal from the total news blitz, I begged the station manager to let me put on some silly, mindless movie we had in the vault. He agreed.

I got thank-you cards for it. There's only so much horror anyone can stand.

 

[Isid]

agree... silliness has it place

 

[Handley_Page]

I guess anyone with a Microsoft Flight Simulator might feel the same way.

I hate to say this, but there were a lot of different reactions over in the UK when we saw the TV pictures. Sadness, obviously, horror, sympathy and all that. But this nation had had several years of some rotten git blowing things up in London, Birmingham as well as Northern Ireland. Then there was 7/7.

Bearing in mind that a lot of the finance was reputed to be from the USA, a great many folk did not think much of the wailing, sackcloth, ashes, and general ballyhoo to be seen on the TV.

No-one should have to go through that, and there was a lot of genuine sympathy as well as a fund for the injured. My admiration went to the Firemen and that guy who got all his workers out, but died himself.

I don't mean this in a mean way. Just that we'd seen it before, if not in quite so spectacular manner.

 

[SweetWitch]

I guess anyone with a Microsoft Flight Simulator might feel the same way.

I hate to say this, but there were a lot of different reactions over in the UK when we saw the TV pictures. Sadness, obviously, horror, sympathy and all that. But this nation had had several years of some rotten git blowing things up in London, Birmingham as well as Northern Ireland. Then there was 7/7.

Bearing in mind that a lot of the finance was reputed to be from the USA, a great many folk did not think much of the wailing, sackcloth, ashes, and general ballyhoo to be seen on the TV.

No-one should have to go through that, and there was a lot of genuine sympathy as well as a fund for the injured. My admiration went to the Firemen and that guy who got all his workers out, but died himself.

I don't mean this in a mean way. Just that we'd seen it before, if not in quite so spectacular manner.

I don't see it as meanness. At some point, you become hardened to such tragedy. You still understand the horror and the loss, but the shock is no longer there. There's sympathy, but no surprise.

Until this, we saw ourselves as untouchable. We have this huge nation that takes a large third of an entire continent. WE have peaceable neighbors to the north and to the south. Other than what can be considered the minor annoyance of illegal immigration (drug runners, other types of criminals, and those unfortunates who crave a better life) we thought our borders safe from real enemies. It was a hell of a wakeup call. My oppinion, for what it's worth, is that those of European nations have been living with this sort of thing all their lives.

I remember watching the Belfast bombings and other tragedies on the news when I was a kid and thinking, "Those poor people--I'm glad I don't live there." Now things are different. US citizens have always been targets, but usually only when they traveled abroad. This brought it home. We were no longer safe in our own borders, but that's what the terrorists wanted to give us. They succeeded in that much.

 

[Katyusha]

One day I was going through a bunch of papers in drawers and I found something I'd sent to Gizz when he was away for training after he was first hired with the TSA. I'd sent him a little care package with a note explaining why I felt each item should be included. One of those items was a little pewter airplane, and I'd told him I was sending it as a reminder of what happened on United Flight 93, and the regular passengers who ended up giving their lives to prevent more lives from being taken. I asked him to keep it as a reminder of just why he had taken that job and what he was there to do. He kept that note all this time and asked me not to toss it after I found it again, so I folded it back up and it's still hiding away with other special notes.

I still have trouble with the news stories and images of that day and I haven't yet been able to watch the films that were made in the years that have followed. I remember the three days of silence in the skies of Tucson, a city whose skies are NEVER, EVER silent because of Davis-Monthan and the pilots' training that's constantly going on there, and just how frightening that silence was. I think about that and think of some of the things others have told me, who live in other parts of the country, about what their towns and cities were like in the immediate aftermath, and how scary it was for them too.

We have a poster with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground and off to the right, and the Manhattan skyline with the Twin Towers in the background. I don't remember what we were doing but we saw that in a store shortly after 9-11, and we bought it and framed it. We just absolutely had to have it. It hangs on the wall in our living room.

We also have a painting that we bought shortly after moving to Chicago. It's a collage of significant events in United States history, and of various U.S. symbols. The main features are the Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, and the three firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero. You can also see the soldiers who raised the flagpole at Iwo Jima and the moon landing of Apollo 11. The entire scene is set against an almost fantasy sky of spiral galaxies and bright stars and planets. This hangs on the wall in our front room.

Everybody has their ways of honoring and remembering, and these are some of ours.

 

[Handley_Page]

Thanks, Sweet

 

[Katyusha]

I guess anyone with a Microsoft Flight Simulator might feel the same way.

I hate to say this, but there were a lot of different reactions over in the UK when we saw the TV pictures. Sadness, obviously, horror, sympathy and all that. But this nation had had several years of some rotten git blowing things up in London, Birmingham as well as Northern Ireland. Then there was 7/7.

Bearing in mind that a lot of the finance was reputed to be from the USA, a great many folk did not think much of the wailing, sackcloth, ashes, and general ballyhoo to be seen on the TV.

No-one should have to go through that, and there was a lot of genuine sympathy as well as a fund for the injured. My admiration went to the Firemen and that guy who got all his workers out, but died himself.

I don't mean this in a mean way. Just that we'd seen it before, if not in quite so spectacular manner.

The only meanness I ever heard of was from those who said we deserved it. What you're saying comes across to me as though the general reaction across the UK was along the lines of, "Oh no, not you guys now too. We've been there too many times and know what it feels like, and we are here if you need us for anything," rather than, "Ho hum. It happens, there are terrible people out there, get used to it." In other words, compassion born of experience instead of glibness born of experience.

If that makes any sense.

 

[SweetWitch]

Thanks, Sweet