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-   -   Nearly a year's gone by (https://www.bikeforums.net/general-cycling-discussion/14332-nearly-years-gone.html)

oceanrider 09-07-02 11:26 PM

Nearly a year's gone by
 
Does a tear or outright sob still come through when you look at newsclips from 9/11? I don't think the pain will ever go away. I didn't know anyone in New York much less the WTC but it doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this should have been posted in The Lounge but it just didn't seem respectful. This week we're going to be reminded about the events of last year and it's going to hit home again. I just want to give everyone a big comforting hug as we relive these events together through the media the next few days.

filark 09-07-02 11:40 PM

Yes, this will be a hard week. I didn't know anyone in the disasters, but have family living in NJ. We didn't hear from them for a few days and it was quite scary. I will never forget. I'm a vietnam era veteran and have chemical and biological weapons training and yes it is scary too.
But the main thing I'm focusing on is where my hope comes from.
We shed a lot of tears and felt like someone ripped out our hearts. We've walked through depression and fear and have come out of the other side with hope in our hearts for the future.
Filark

WorldIRC 09-07-02 11:59 PM

My cousin was right across the building when everything happened. He had a meeting or something. He was scared to death.

goodcatjack 09-08-02 01:22 AM

when I'm talking with people about the big picture it's just that -- talk. it's pretty abstract; my opinion of current actions and policy and feelgood security measures, etc. but when I hear or remember the individual stories, I can't handle it. there are some stories I've heard through the news or through people I know who were there or who knew people who were there that I just can't finish telling. I choke up and I can't talk anymore. it's just on the outskirts of my mind right now as I'm typing and you know, I've gotten pretty good at making myself not-think about it, when necessary.

there's my friend's brother who lost 24 people on his block. there's my good college friend who was supposed to be in the towers for a business trip that day which had gotten postponed. there's the father on that last plane who was able to reach his wife on his cellphone, who got the kids out of school in time to tell each other goodbye for the last time.

this is probably a good place to stop.

so in the meantime I try to remember what's really important to me. and I resent and outright viciously hate the filler material exploiting this anniversary that I'm seeing more and more often in the media.

you know, everytime I'm on the bike and I have the presence of mind to think about it, I'm thankful that I have a sound body and two good strong legs that take me where I want to go, and when. there's probably a lot more I could say in this vein, but like I said, this is probably a good place to stop.

take care, everyone,

--alex.

velocipedio 09-08-02 06:55 AM

I don't want anyone to be offended by this, but please bear in mind that I am not an American, so my emotional connection to the events of last September 11 isn't as strong as yours.

I see September 11 2001 as an historical event. It's amazing how much the pictures of the smoke billowing from the twin towers resembles -- in my eye -- the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. I don't feel any particyular closeness or personal grief over it; a certain anmount of anger and resignation, perhaps. I find myself thinking about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Sabra and Shatilla, the killing fields of Cambodia and the Balkans, and My Lai. There's a sense of horror, to be sure, that people could do something like this to other people, but it's not a personal involvement.

What seems to affect me more is what has happened in the year since. I won't get into a discussion of policy, but I find the world has changed in the last year. And it hasn't been a good change. I don't like what the world has become. I blame the terrorists for that, and I also blame the way some people reacted to the terrorists. As an historian, I wish it was possible to openly discuss the historical context of the events of September 11, and how prior events, policies and currents led to them, but it isn't.

I find that, for so many of my American friends, September 11 is not an historical event to be understood, but a mythic moment to be honoured, sanctified and ritualized. I understand that. Families do it with the premature deaths of children by marking each birthday-that-would-have-been; people do it for departed spouses and lovers, communing with was he or she would have thought or done in certain circumstances. You see it in rooms that remain untouched, as shrines.

I guess it's part of mourning.

But I must confess, as an outsider, I can't relate. I find that America has discovered a sense of civic piety that it brings out at almost every possible opportunity. September 11 won't just be memorialized this Wednesday, it has been memorialized -- publicly and piously -- every day for the last year, with the ribbons, the television shows, the televised pronouncements and the way people's voices go low when they refer to the event. I understand and respect this, but it has left me numb. In many ways, after a year, I find that my emotions respond more to that picture of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud or the images of bodies at Srebrenica.

A year later, I just feel tired and inexpressibly saddened -- at the deaths caused in the September 11 attacks, at the world we have created in their wake, and at what the event has become in the national mythology of the United States.

Please accept these comments as the honest words that they are. I really don't mean to insult or offend anyone. I merely wished to express what I personally feel one year later.

orguasch 09-08-02 07:01 AM

I pity the victims of 9/11 and hate those people who planned and stage it:crash: :crash: :crash: :crash: :crash:

JustsayMo 09-08-02 08:21 AM

I've never been one to be overtly patriotic but last September 11th I realized just how amazing the USA is.

In the weeks following the attack there was a solidarity and pride in being American that I don't believe my generation (Viet Nam era) has ever experiened. It didn't matter what color you were or what your ecconomic status is. We were united to help the victims and prevent future attacks.

Our nation has demonstrated incredible charity and restraint in it's reaction to the events of last year. We didn't "kill em all and let god sort them out." We reacted in a calculated manner. It was not a perfect solution but FAR less violent than it could have been.

I don't know if the world is a better place since September 11th. I suspect it is.

Was Afganistan better off under the Taliban? I think not. Were we safer from terrorism prior to 9/11? Again I think not.

Do we better understand that policies that perpetuate tyranical regimes either through direct support or indifference pose a danger to the world? YOU BET!

While we aren't a perfect nation and we have our share of shortcommings, there is still NO BETTER PLACE ON EARTh!

wabbit 09-08-02 09:29 AM

I don't know about anyone, but I'm getting to be a tad weary of the endless 9/11 coverage. It doesn't mean it was not a horrible tragedy, but the overkill has worn on me. The events haunt me, but what's happened since is just as bad if not worse.

What bothers me about it is that, instead of saying 'gee, let's make the world a more peaceful place' the US used this to abet more warmongering- going on about the axis of evil, drawing more american teenagers into a useless war that will drag on for who knows how long, sending more kids to be cannon fodder, and aiming and toppling more dictators to possibley replace them with worse dictators. It's a disaster because it seems to be causing more disasters, death, doom and tragedy. IT's a disaster because no one seems to have learned anything. Maybe there was this wonderful good will afterward but it doesn't seem to have translated into an effort for world peace.

Feldman 09-08-02 10:24 AM

How about minimizing or not driving a car at all on 9/11/02?
Out oil imports from Saudi, Qatar, Yemen, etc. DIRECTLY fund terrorism. If you love your country, step on the Look pedals, not the gas pedal!

oceanrider 09-08-02 11:59 AM

I'm reminded of John Lennon's Imagine lyrics. There was a lot of wisdom there. What if there were no countries, no borders to defend and protect. No reglions to purify. Just what if...

Just like the rest of the country, my chest swelled with patriotic ferver. We must take care that our patriotism is honest. unstaged, spontaneous with malice toward none to borrow the words of another great man who was killed before his time. It's karma. Let's watch our karma.

wabbit 09-08-02 12:46 PM


Originally posted by oceanrider

Just like the rest of the country, my chest swelled with patriotic ferver. We must take care that our patriotism is honest. unstaged, spontaneous with malice toward none to borrow the words of another great man who was killed before his time. [/B]
You mean Ghandi?

psycholist 09-08-02 01:47 PM

I understand what you are saying, velocipedio.

Maybe one reason this event strikes such a nerve with Americans-aside from the obvious ones- is that until September 11th we had been the fortunate ones. We as Americans don't know what it is to live in constant fear of a militia attack on your village, where many of your family are marched away at gun point. We don't live in bombed-out remains of cities with no clean water or electricity, and with no means of rebuilding. To millions of people in this world that is their reality, but not to Americans, and I think we have been walking around with blinders on. How many Americans who sat in their livingrooms and watched the towers come down thought to themselves "This can't be happening, not in America"? We thought we were immune and now we have had our wake-up call.

goodcatjack 09-08-02 02:20 PM

"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." Abraham Lincoln

lotek 09-08-02 03:11 PM

Sept 11 stunned me, and I found myself being
more effected than I would have thought.
I find the rehashing, the constant remembering
just a little bit overblown.
Please Don't get me wrong, I belive like
Velocipedio state that 9-11 is an Historic event
and that we should study it and what caused it.
What I believe is that we should try (and yes
it won't be easy) to remove the emotion from
the telling.
Do we really need "The Babies of 9-11" (about children
of the victims) ? Do we need TV to add more emotion
to an already highly emotional event? I don't think so.

I do believe alot of people need to see the towers
come down again, that the lessons of 9-11 are
already fading. I just don't think we need to treat
it like a made for TV movie.

Ok, Flame away.

Marty

cycletourist 09-08-02 03:37 PM

My TV will remain turned off for the next week or so. I'm tired of hearing about Sept 11.

wabbit 09-08-02 04:47 PM

NOt at all, lotek. Let's face it, not everyone is going to feel exactly the same way about everything, and for a year, everyone's been telling you how to feel, how to mourn and how to react, and if you don't all feel the same way you're not a good american. For me, being canadian, that's not an issue, but there was a similar pressure here to all have the same groupthink. Why can't we all decide how we want to feel about it? It's like the tour de France. Not everyone wants to root for Lance Armstrong!

Feldman 09-08-02 05:05 PM

It should keep any of us in the US profoundly grateful to live in a country that at least gives lip service to separating church and state--and to realize that those two things cannot ever be separate enough!

cycletourist 09-08-02 07:45 PM


grateful to live in a country that at least gives lip service to separating church and state--and to realize that those two things cannot ever be separate enough!
Amen :-)

That quote, or something very close to it, should be posted in every school room in America.

Dahon.Steve 09-08-02 08:35 PM

1. "Does a tear or outright sob still come through when you look at newsclips from 9/11? I don't think the pain will ever go away."

I worked for almost seven years by Battery Park and used to exit from the World Trade Center every day. I used to do a lot of shopping in the Mall below spending hours in those two book stores. My graduation was held on the first floor Hotel just 6 months before that horrible day. Those were beautiful buildings.

I had an interview one day for a job on the 78th floor of tower one about 4 years ago. That interview was one of the worse in my life as the manager made a fool out of me! I still haven't forgotten it. I wonder if he's still alive.

I still bike commute around Ground Zero every day to go to work. It's like riding through a cementary.

Bokkie 09-09-02 05:32 AM

UK TV is now flighting lots of programs and interviews about 9/11. The culmination is growing and I think we'll all relive that this coming Wednesday.

Unfortunately, and please understand that I don't intend this as a personal comment against the suffering, but I see a more cynical aspect about it.

I find it too coincidental that Bush and Blair are now rallying to raise support for a war against Iraq. I wonder if they, their spin doctors, and advisors have considered that the best time to gain national support for war against Iraq is to do so while national patriotism is at it's peak?

There was a particularly nasty little ***** by the name of Jo Moore who was a spin doctor for the government here. In a leaked email, she wrote (on the day of the attacks) "now would be a good time to bury bad news." As I say, a nasty little *****.

There is still a lot of pain in the US in particular. To all you guys and families who feel that, our thoughts are with you.

chewa 09-09-02 06:26 AM

I agree that it was a terrible personal tragedy, but I don't like the way it is being used to garner support for a potential war, when the real reason is thick, black and comes out of the ground.

ChipRGW 09-09-02 07:03 AM

The tragedy of 9-11 was just that. A horrible tragedy of epic proportions. Clearly the worst tragedy in US history. US history being key. I LOVE my country! I DO believe that it is the best place in the world to live, BUT... I rarely talk about that fact. We Americans do way too much of that. We are arrogant. We think we are the leaders of the world. We influence foreign governments with threats of economic ruin, or promise of economic fortune. Failing that we will threaten with force. Even when the rest of the world tells us to mind our own business, we bluster on.
That is why they hate us.
To borrow the words of another famous American...

"Can't we all just get along?"

I think of all those sattelite photos we see of various places on Earth. You know what stands out most for me?


No lines.

Bokkie 09-09-02 07:07 AM


but I don't like the way it is being used to garner support for a potential war, when the real reason is thick, black and comes out of the ground
A journalist once asked, would the Gulf War have happened if Kuwait's only export was peanuts?

Bikes-N-Drums 09-09-02 07:30 AM

I will never forget what I saw that day. I will never grow tired of being reminded of that day through the radio, TV and www.

Duffy 09-09-02 08:10 AM

The constant images of hand wringing and people crying a year later does bother me. I don't want to diminish the attacks and what they meant to the U.S. and the impact it will have on the rest of the world. However,it projects an image of weakness to our potential enemies. America over the past decade or so has become soft and would rather cry about "it" and have the rest of the world feel sorry for us. Thankfully our parents and grandparents didn't react this way to Pearl Harbor. If they had we would have been defeated by the Japaneese and Germans. Another aspect that bothers me is how some victims families are getting rich as a result. People gave the money for the victims and their families but I do not believe it was intended for these folks to never have to work again. I would like to see Americans get mad and stay mad until this menace is wiped off the face of the earth. Fortunately we now have a president who takes his oath seriously and will do what is necessary to complete the task at hand. Watch out Sadaam!


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