A relatively short post today. Last Sunday I asked your thoughts about 9/11/01. All week long I thought briefly about it, but wasn’t getting too deep into it because, well, it seemed that life was going on, and people were saying they were ready to move on.
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I changed my mind. I’m not really going to dwell on it all day long. However, it’s important to show a few images from that day, some very disturbing things, and then close with something sort of positive, though not exactly what I wanted to show. And this article is posting at the time the first plane hit.
This first clip is of the first tower of the World Trade Center being hit. There’s graphic language, but I believe it can be forgiven this one time:
This next clip is of the second tower of the World Trade Center being hit, with commentary about the first one going on before you see it. Strange thing that there’s not a single clip of anyone on the other side of the WTC getting a real shot of it being hit, but seeing this plane, which I saw live at the time, is still chilling after all these years.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any real clip of the Pentagon after it was hit, and the same obviously goes for the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. The folks who helped take that plane down and giving their lives for many others took a lot of courage, and in my mind they were heroes as well as anyone else.
This next clip was the first large assembly of people in the country after this event took place, and I watched it live because I wondered what they would do. The WWE has always been upfront in its support of the troops of this country, and they didn’t let me down here.
This final clip isn’t the one I wanted to show, but NBC has a lock on the copyright and, to date, has never allowed the clip to be seen by anyone after the first few copies got out. Saturday Night Live did a show 4 days later, which was the opening show of the new season. They asked Paul Simon to come in and sing The Boxer, and had Mayor Rudy Guiliani and a host of police and firemen standing behind him as he performed the song by himself with just his guitar. I thought it was drastically inspiring, and why NBC has kept a lid on it I’ll never know. No matter; here’s a different clip of Paul Simon singing the same song, in an odd way more of what New York City used to be than it is now, or actually was on 9/11/01.
Still can’t watch those first two clips, Mitch, but enjoyed the last two. Thank you for this.
I understand you completely, Charles. Oddly enough, it’s the first year since 2001 that I was able to watch it again.
Hi Mitch, It must be devastating to the victims. The tragedy was in human.
Thanks for sharing Mitch. Very poignant and I still remember watching the news and being shell-shocked that it was a deliberate attack not just a plane losing its way.
Aussie firefighters travelled to US to run across the country and arrive in NY on Sept 11th in solidarity with firefighters there in honour of all those who lost their lives all those years ago. They already do an amazingly dangerous job and could really identify with all those who lost their lives or were injured. We are all thinking of those who paid the ultimate price. It is showing on all our news reports here in Perth and throughout Australia.
Patricia Perth Australia
That was a nice thing for them to do, Patricia. Yesterday turned out to be a very weird day nationally; for me, I stayed home. 🙂
It was not a religion that attacked us that September day, it was Al Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion .
Although we don’t really know what happened that day, the truth is that a lot of people died and this is what matters the most. I want to know who’s really responsible, but I would feel better to know that these kind of things will never happen again.
That’s not a bad take on it all, Mia. It seems like the government here has done a very good job at ferreting out those who continue planning and trying to do some bad things in this country. I like being safe, but I have to admit a part of me wonders how the government’s been able to do it.