September 11, 2013

Once again, we are forced to remember a grim holiday no one wanted, and yet, how can we forget? As I played bridge prisoner today and navigated a screw up that makes Gov. Chris Christie's issue in New Jersey seen like an amuseument park ride, I couldn't help but thin that I was going to work, like the nearly 3000 people massacred that day. Only going to work. Such a simple, innane act that became deadly. I can't bear to think of those people in the planes, clutching their purses, and carryon bags, and boarding passes. Thinking about making connections, planning the rest of the day, not realizing their were boarding flights into eternity. I show my classes images of that day, where we all sat 13 years ago studying Faust and Moby Dick, with no idea of what would happen. It is now 22 mins. after the first plane hit the world trade center. The eeriness of the silent skies that day still deafens me, when no planes where flying, the first time in my life I can remember something like that. They had been grounded after the attacks, and only Airforce I could fly over head. I saw fighter jets on news footage escorting innocent planes and their pilots to our local airports. Chilling, to say the least. I think of the woman who used to work across the street who was there that day, and of my colleauges who sat next to me on 9/11/2001 trembling because they had family at The World Trade Center and at The Pentagon. Thankfully, they were found safe. But, the 27 year old brother of one of my colleauges was not safe; he was killed in one of the Twin Towers. The people my cousing was talking to at Cantor Fitzgerald simply disappeare; the line went dead, and they all belonged to the ages after that. He still can't forget it; one second he was talking to someone, and in an instant, they were gone. Our headquarters are a block away from Ground Zero; people were frantically trying to exchange calls, some that said "are you ok?" and finally, the ones that said, "we're fine, devastated, but we are fine." How can we forget? Or blame ourselves for an act that was so evil and cruel? With Bengazi to add to the legacy of pain, how can we not live in fear? Yet, here we are at our jobs. Email works, the phones are ringing. Stores are open, people are travelling. May we all get through this day, and may it only be a terrible, tragic memory in the future. God Bless all of us, and God Bless The United States.