...but the widow's mites were pretty much only two cents as well.
I remember where I was when I heard about the towers--sitting in a side room in a legal office doing some administrative cataloging, when one of the ladies working in the office next door poked her head through the doorway and and announced, "they're attacking the twin towers!" It was still early in the morning. Next door, everyone (legal aides, secretaries) was clustered around a small tv showing live footage of a smoking, burning hole in the side of one of the WTC towers. I walked in to see the fuss, stared at the screen, not comprehending much.
Flashback to the morning of April 19th, 1995. It's probably around 7AM, and my dad has put on the usual Mozart march that annoys me enough to roll out of bed, walk out of my room, and show him that I'm awake so he can turn it off (or turn the volume down). After I get out of the bathroom, post-morning freshening-up, I see Timothy McVeigh's handiwork on the television--a wrecked shell of a building, debris everywhere, and people running about to save lives, people reporting on the scene, and probably people trapped in the rubble as well. It didn't really sink in much: I was in 6th grade, and the immediate problems of my 6th grade loomed much larger in my head than the idea of mass death and destruction caused by the discontent of a couple of evil men. But I never forgot the sight of the bombed-out building--empty rooms, broken concrete, ripped steel, as if someone had cut through the front two layers of the building facing the street with a mammoth chainsaw. Many years later, scenes from sci-fi movies showing ships destroyed in space combat would subconsciously remind me of the same feeling of a diorama created in the most wrong fashion, exposing the innards of something that wasn't meant to be exposed to the outside.
The second plane hit. I didn't realize until later how the jet fuel must have been burned hot enough to buckle the load-bearing portions of the towers' internal structure. Fire burns much longer after a crash than I had thought, but I did know that firefighters were inside the building, evacuating everyone they could. Maybe the emergency staircases were spared by the impact craters. The news cut to a local/state perspective, detailing government building lockdowns and heightened security measures everywhere.
I went back to my desk and continued my office tasks in a detached manner. I checked CNN.com often, but the servers were down for much of the initial wave of net activity after the attacks. Later, they managed to put up a text-only frontpage with limited news coverage of the attacks. It was only after the 9/11 attacks that CNN.com became a mainstream news site, I remember, and it only picked up its pro-American, "skewed" bias reputation after this event as well.
Not long after, the buildings collapsed along with my sense of detachment. I found out as I walked into the room with the tv, where the ladies were still glued to the screen, and I saw the newscasters replaying video of the tower collapses. What I did understand was that a very large amount of concrete and steel, with people inside, was collapsing and falling into the structure below it, where more people were. I felt sucker-punched in the gut. Who would do this? Why? How many people inside were falling, seeing their hallway fall with them, only to be crushed by the walls around them and thousands of pounds of glass, steel, and concrete beyond those walls? The camera cut to a small figure who had taken matters into his own hands and jumped out of the falling building, falling on his own terms, outside the glass and steel coffin. Another soul departed.
I sat down at my desk and sorted out my thoughts with the newfound empathy. This was disaster in its rawest form. This was terrorism. I checked CNN, and the Pentagon had been attacked, surprisingly impacting a section that had been partitioned off for renovation but not sparing the areas around it either. Having read Without Remorse and Executive Orders, I was familiar with the concept of using jet liners as kamikaze weapons, and this was, no doubt, the mark of the same terrorists who had tried to topple the same towers in 1993, said the newscasters. I wasn't inclined to disagree. The frontpage of CNN now sported a graphic that showed dust-covered people, fleeing Ground Zero. United Flight 93 had crash-landed in a field, with speculative connection tying it to the concerted WTC/Pentagon attacks. Only later would we all discover the homegrown heroism of a few people who couldn't sit and watch someone else control their destiny.
The rest of the day was a blur. Songwriters struck resonating chords in the collective consciousness of America with sad songs, angry songs, and inspirational songs. Afghanistan suddenly found itself with a new parking lot, and Toby Keith's American Soldier and Courtesy Of The Red, White, And Blue (The Angry American) nicely expressed the accompanying sentiment. The human tragedy played through a sustained andante movement, down from the shrill allegro of the attack. Some found their loved ones; some couldn't find their loved ones. Office workers inexplicably delayed by a late ferry never arrived at work in the towers before the planes hit, much to their families' relief. People slated to fly on United 93 somehow didn't make it on. Survivors were frantically extracted from rubble until the search and rescue mission was solemnly recast as a search and recover mission. New York's finest showed their true colors in responding to the attack. Giuliani was so effective in many ways we know that Nagin wasn't. The photograph of the FDNY officers raising the flag became the Surinami of 9/11. I saw flags flying everywhere, USA spraypainted on banners, and a proliferation of patriotic bumper stickers and yard paraphrenalia. Rescue workers from all over America streamed into the heart of Manhattan to help with operations from the news of the initial attacks. There was a muted resilience in people's faces now; laughter did not come easily in the days following the attack. Death was too fresh, mortality too visible, to make light of any situation. (Though that has not changed, people have put it out of mind.) And now, five years later, still that symphony of tragedy plays on, in bass, sometimes muted, tones of the never-ending grave. That song has never left my ears, and though I may not hear it every day, it crescendos quickly during political discussions and fades slowly.
The globalists, the anti-US protesters, the world at large were all silent for New York. Bloodied but unbowed, Lady Liberty exchanged her robes for Kevlar, shod her feet in combat boots, and put down her torch to pick up an M-16. Lady Justice abandoned her scale, which was too small for her imminent task, and resorted to using her bare hands. The weight of the task was too great at first, but Justice prevailed and is gaining strength, though not yet sufficient. America's critics rose from their respectful pause to scrutinize the government's actions. Life was back on track, and yet not. Five years later, the world is as ever dangerous as it could be in an era of global terrorism and asymmetric warfare. We should remember 9/11 so that we may be prepared to prevent another one.
