The Times We Live In

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Twenty three years ago, I watched TV commenters (through the world’s grainiest reception ever because we lived in Manitou Springs, and didn’t have cable) tell us that everything had changed.

I didn’t quite believe them. It was horrible, of course. But everything changing?

But I can see it now, tracing backwards. Without 9/11 and the situation of permanent crisis it introduced, we would not be where we are today.

No, I don’t think 9/11 was fake. I happen to know that fire does in fact soften steel enough for the horrors of that day. And I doubt George W. Bush knew or planned it. For all I am very disappointed in him, and have been for a good long while, I don’t think he chose that path. He wanted to be an education president, after all.

Did no one in our government know? Waggles hand. Next your going to ask me if no one in our government knew about the Trump assassination attempt.

I don’t know. I want to tell you those conspiracy theories are crazy. I’d tell you those conspiracy theories are crazy. But these days the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is about 2 weeks.

And the incompetence was astounding, and the opportunities were there in both cases, so maybe there was no collusion, but who knows? Our three letters have been corrupted for a long time. Either that or more useless than soggy toilet paper. (Waggles hand again.)

Anyway, we are stuck now in a conveyor belt of insanity. The events after 9/11, the ramping up totalitarian instincts in our so called “elites” and the technology, all combined to create the illusion in our would-be technocrats that they could control all and make us do everything they said and, you know, own nothing and be happy.

But they’re finding it hard going and they keep ramping up their insanity in response. Like deaf people, they think that the problem is we haven’t got the message, and they keep making it louder and more obvious.

I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what’s coming down the pike. And I’ve been kind of under the gun on personal stuff this year, so I have not, in fact, even given the elections much thought. Besides I’m fairly sure they’ve got it rigged. I just don’t know what happens next. Or maybe before.

And they can’t stand resistance even passive of the “make me” kind. So they’re going to get even crazier.

When you consider 2020, ramping up from that crazy is bad.

There was a meme making the rounds of facebook last night. It is this:

On this night…23 years ago, 246 people went to sleep in preparation for their morning flights. 2,606 people went to sleep in preparation for work in the morning tomorrow. 343 firefighters went to sleep in preparation for their morning shift. 60 police officers went to sleep in preparation for morning patrol. 8 paramedics went to sleep in preparation for the morning shift of saving lives. None of them saw past 10:00 am Sept 11, 2001. In one single moment life may never be the same. As you live and enjoy the breaths you take today and tonight before you go to sleep in preparation for your life tomorrow, kiss the ones you love, snuggle a little tighter, and never take one second of your life for granted.

As you guys know this week I got a reminder of the brevity of life, the unpredictability of the span of days we are given. I actually got three. I only posted one here.

And you guys know I’m writing the crazy novel (I really need to finish it, now bureaucracy agogo has slowed down. I’m SO close.) partly because I realized I was sixty and didn’t want it to die with me. (And of course, it spawned six more, the …. gah.)

No human being knows how long they have. I certainly don’t. And in these ridiculously dangerous, slippery times, we literally don’t know what tomorrow will bring, nor how crazy it will get.

What we do know is this:

1-Prepare, prepare, prepare.

2- If you feel there’s something that will be on your conscience for eternity because you didn’t do it now, do it now. Provided it’s not killing other people, or robbing the mint, if it’s not hurting other people or taking their stuff, do it now.

3- Do something you love every day. Tell someone you love that you love them every day. Enjoy your life while you have it.

And keep moving forward. It’s not over till it’s over.

Don’t lie down till you’re dead. And make it hard to kill you.

168 thoughts on “The Times We Live In”

  1. “Tell someone you love that you love them every day. Enjoy your life while you have it.”

    This right here! ♥♥

    Anyone on my fb page knows my family just got reminded how fragile life is. Don’t go to bed angry. Hug your loved ones. Let them know you love them. Life is too short and we never know when we, or they, will be called home.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. All of the above.

      But I have found that even having an approximate end-date makes nothing easier – just lets you unwind from a lot of things.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I use to wonder which was worse, knowing a loved one was going to die, or having them die suddenly.

        After losing my mother quickly to a blood clot then my brother die of cancer from 800 miles away I decided that I prefer the sudden pain of loss to the pain of knowing what is coming and being helpless to do anything.

        Like

          1. I’m a retired RN. I did some of my training on a cancer floor in our local hospital in CA.

            It was pretty painful to watch my wife deteriorate, and that deterioration accelerate; I was always wondering how much I should tell her. The end point was known, if not the exact date, and she was accepting of that. And clearly she knew her capacities were diminishing, and found that a little frustrating, so she knew Things Were Close.

            I was re-reading my emails to my kids; on the 23d I said I wasn’t sure she’d make it through that week, and I was gravely concerned about the following week. We went on as though she might be increasingly sick but hang on for months. But I was right to worry about that week.

            Liked by 1 person

  2. You’re still buying the gov’t story, this gov’t trying to poison you at every turn, starve you, kill you with imported Venezuelans, spending us into oblivion, starting/supporting wars everywhere they can, etc ad nauseum. Wow just wow.

    It takes a special kind of ostrich to go this deep into the ground.

    Like

        4. Apparently the Leftroids cosplaying in keffyas have badness scheduled for the 12th. Possibly just in permissive University areas. But never rule out a poorly-planned FAFO operation in Saneville.

          (grin) We’re your huckleberry.

          Like

        6. “…thinks fire can’t melt steel…”

          Is that what he’s on about? Apparently he never took any courses in anything related to physics, chemistry or metallurgy.

          Like

          1. If I were to be charitable, the “Fire can’t melt steel” is people thinking the steel must liquefy in order to considered melted, and they don’t realize – or don’t care that steel loses structural integrity well before it liquefies.

            And also they know nothing about steel in general.

            Like

              1. Critical temperature is 1500-1800F typically for straight carbon steels.

                Ordinary house fires routinely exceed 1500F.

                Like

        8. About 55 years ago I learned that steel I beams can be destroyed by fire.

          My family was camping along the White River (border between Vermont and New Hampshire) and came upon a small city. A 4-story department store, concrete and steel, had burned the day before. The image of huge steel beams, curving and corkscrewing out of the rubble, has been burned into my memory ever since.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Firefighters’ joke: we saved the foundation.

            Heard one firefighter tell of a time where there were steel beams in the foundation and the result was that they twisted and tore up the concrete. So they didn’t even save the foundation.

            Like

    3. If you are a “Bush did it” type or “jet fuel / building fire wont melt steel” type, or “controlled demo” type, please go poop somewhere else.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The other thing is skyscrapers are designed to implode like that if a fire goes for too long.

        Because otherwise it will fall over and fling burning wreckage across the entire metropolis.

        Just take a look for Chinese demolition videos online for examples of why the is A Bad Thing(tm).

        Liked by 2 people

        1. The one fundamental flaw of the way the Twin Towers were built is the way the design of the central core and the manner in which floors were stacked; it was particularly susceptible to the kind of collapse that occurred if there was a major fire, because the weight of each floor, once it lost support, would literally fall straight down onto the next floor. There have been a lot of pieces about the design of the buildings, and how the combo of any fire, fueled by all the paper and materials in the building, could lead to a collapse.

          I have no doubt that Bin Laden, who himself was an engineer, knew of this, and knew that if the attack was successful, the chances of completely destroying the buildings was very high.

          Liked by 4 people

          1. Investigation afterwards found the WTC was structurally overloaded. It was designed for large single person, pre-computer offices and had largely been renovated into high density cube farms full of lead brick CRTs.

            I don’t know if Bin Ladin even had to do much investigating; after the garage bombing in the Clinton years all the talking heads did the rounds saying how it was totally proof against parking lot bombs and what you really needed to do was light the top on fire and let it collapse in on itself.

            Our chattering classes are morons.

            Liked by 3 people

          2. I believe the outer shell on the Trade Towers also provided some of the support (thus permitting more open interior floor spaces than previous iterations). However, both buildings had large 737 holes punched in that structure. That added strain to the supports at the levels of the strikes which were in some cases damaged by the strikes. Last of all much of the fireproofing on the beams and pillars was blow off by the strikes. That fireproofing was intended to delay the catastrophic failure either long enough to extinguish the fire, or at least long enough to evacuate the buildings. With that damage the structures only hold for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours instead of the 3 to 6 they were designed to stand in expected worst case fires. Essentially buildings weren’t designed with enough redundancy to handle battle damage. The Freedom Tower has some of that in its design.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. one of the issues was that both fire escape stairwells were severed in one of the towers … just really bad luck … otherwise there was a chance for those above to evac … still dicy with alot of jet fueled fire everywhere … but a chance vs doing nothing which is what too many people above the impact floor had to do …

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Yeah. 1 WTC got centerpunched by AA 11. Smack in the middle of the north side about 90 floors up and it severed all three stairwells and the elevator core on the way through, which is why there were people in the 1 WTC lobby that got severely burned by fireballs blasting out of the lobby-floor elevator shafts. 2 WTC got hit on a corner so Stair A in that building was still somewhat intact while B and C were impassable. I think I read something like 15 people were able to use it to get out. But, that corner hit plus being hit about 15 floors lower caused 2 WTC to collapse first.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. ESPN (of all places) did a 13-minute piece on, “The Guy with the red bandana,” who got a dozen people down that stairwell and went back for more. Their justification was he’d been a lacrosse player for Boston College.

                  His mother saw a piece in the New York Times where a survivor spoke of the guy with a red kerchief and instantly knew it was her boy.

                  Very moving tribute.

                  Liked by 1 person

            2. Years ago, I saw an analysis (popular science, type, not a formal paper) that claimed that 1/3rd down from the top was the optimal point for a fire/collision to collapse the tower.

              Liked by 1 person

      2. Some people can’t cope without “secret knowledge” only they are smart enough to know.

        One of the things I learned back in college when the halfway houses were sited downtown around our university campus was it never pays to engage with crazy people.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. it never pays to engage with crazy people.

          The problem is when the crazy people want to engage with you, and have “you will be made to care” as their creed.

          Liked by 1 person

    4. 90% of which is pure incompetence. Their biggest psyop is that they actually control even a fraction of what they claim to control.

      And naive softheads like you lap it up and ask for seconds.

      Liked by 3 people

    6. See, you’re the kind of guy Bin Laden was so teed off at, in his video a year or so later.

      My arab-speaking buddy translated it as, effectively: “F- you, you jackasses! I planned the whole freaking thing, we executed it, and don’t you dare claim we didn’t strike a gloriousl blow for Islam!”

      Like

    7. I’m sure the voices in your tiny overheated neural cluster told you that was an awesome thing to claim, but unfortunately… it wasn’t.

      Like

  3. One of those people was a friend of ours. He used to hang out in our basement when we lived in New Jersey and make armor with my beloved and the other Scadians. He had two kids as I recall.

    The Viceroy of Ostgardr’s son (Ostgardr being the NYC area) stood by Holland tunnel, griping that he was late and needed to get to his EMT unit now…when the tower came down on them before his eyes.

    And I remember sitting at my work computer watching Fox (for some reason our computers could stream Fix and CNN) and seeing plane number two hit.

    But I also remember getting to the Red Cross after lunch and not getting in because the line of donors stretched around the building. Because that’s what we do.

    Liked by 3 people

      1. I was in traffic heading in early on the way into work here in SIlicon Valley, having not slept well the night before as there was a layoff planned for that day, and as a manager I was going to have to do the actual laying off of some of my people. I heard about all the stuff on the east coast on the radio, and called she who would become Beloved Spouse and told her to turn on the TV.

        My route passed the airport and airliners were already visible from the freeway all parked up along the taxiways.

        I got in to work and sat in my cube reading news feeds on the web, dreading then having to start our layoff process, when my director came around and told me “given the circumstances” they were delaying. I hoped for a permanent reprieve but we ended up doing the layoffs a week or so later.

        About a year and half later I and the rest of my team got riffed in one of the later rounds of layoffs, so at least I didn’t have to do that one since I was in it, and that 15k employee company is gone now. Such is the tech rollercoaster.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I had been laid off several days beforehand (Agilent, spun off from HP, then dissected.) Got on line, started to read User Friendly, and he (wracking memory… Aha! Nom-de-comic is/was Illiad) mentioned WTC at the head of the page. Turned on the TV in time for the second plane to hit.

          That was the easy way for semiconductor and semi-adjacent companies to say they didn’t want to hire a 49 year old laid off test engineer. OTOH, I had other contacts, and they knew a tester company that had more ambition than sense. Good paying job until they went under. (Edifice complex was part of the issue, too.)

          That paid enough to finish fixing up Casa del RC and let us move to Flyover County in deepest Oregon.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Re tech layoffs, yeah these were the first really big layoffs for us, delayed due to execs running our business on hope that things would get better again after the dot com crash the year before. We had had shipments of completed semiconductors that were refused at delivery loading docks, the receiving companies basically failing between when the truck left our end and arrived at theirs. Our c-suite kept dancing for about a year and then started round after round of layoffs big enough to require public reporting. The good thing for the company was that a week after 9/11 nobody even noticed our little layoff news release.

            In the end after I got riffed, the CEO left, they brought in some outsider kid, and just a tiny remnant was left struggling to try and make what had originally been effectively a hobby sideline work as the main line of business, and then that ended up getting sold. Friends of mine managed to stay until the end.

            That post-dot com downturn was very specific to tech, with the rest of the country seeing a little down blip then recovering, but tech was on the downhill part of the roller coaster throughout, no matter what the national business news people said.

            I am so glad I got off that tech roller coaster.

            Like

            1. The guy who was head of our semiconductor group was betting big on the Intertubez being the biggest thing evah. Did a bunch of big bets on high tech goodies. With the dot-com bubble bursting, no customers for those products, not then, so TPTB made the decision to sell off the semiconductor business.

              Mr Big Idea was fast on his feet, and managed to talk his way into the CEO slot even after semis were gone. The previous guy was “a nice guy”, but the company was scrambling (we were the original part of HP Before Computers), and part of the scramble was to dump any product line that wasn’t going to generate big bucks. Nice guy didn’t/couldn’t dodge the knives. Not sure what they’re doing now; last I looked it was some biomedical stuff. (Sold my stock long ago, no longer have any fucks to give.)

              Like

              1. Stock: I refused to buy any stock in the new combined company; wasn’t given any. Don’t know why. Employees were given fantastic terms if they bought through payroll. Got paid out the stock from company that was bought out, as it “vested” (thee payments), last one as, as the initial layoffs were hitting. Hubby asked if he should with our own investment money (never told him about the “offer”). About the only time I’ve weighed in, ever, and the answer was a solid “Hell No!” Employees who did take advantage? Lost it all.

                Like

                1. Oh. If the one of the reasons I got riffed when I did was because I did not participate in the fantastic employee stock buying opportunity? Um. Okay. I can live with that.

                  Like

                2. Jeld-Wen was A Big Deal in Flyover County. Beyond the window and door business, Wendt did a lot of real estate development, some brilliant, some baffling (“how can somebody be soooooo stupid?”).

                  One of the local rancher’s wives was at Jeld-Wen and was persuaded to put her retirement into company stock. All of hers. Then Wendt died, without any plants for somebody to take the reins. Don’t know if he had kids, if so, not interested or capable. That and the developments crashed and burned (at least one quite literally, see 2021 Bootleg fire). Company went toes up, stock value zip. Assets bought by a Canadian company, leaving a vestigial presence near Chiloquin (windows and some R&D, but nothing like before.) Lots of other secondary businesses (he had a bank, too) went south. “I’ll keep the company private” he said. “It’ll be fine.” God’s laughter resounds.

                  Wendt also single handedly prevented Costco from going into Flyover Falls, since he didn’t want the competition for labor. [Opinions redacted…] OTOH, he couldn’t stop WalMart.

                  Like

                  1. “Wendt died, without any plants for somebody to take the reins.”

                    …………………..

                    My last job. No stock. 100% private. While “technically” one of the children (youngest) “worked” there. (Quotes for a reason. This 30+ “kid” was the reason why hubby said “Quit.” Preferably “Now”, but held out until year-end bonus. Caps intentional. FYI at 59 1/4, didn’t care about references. I was Done!) OTOH so did the son-in-law (20+ years with company, he’d earned it).

                    While there was no question of the “kid” taking over (trust me, everyone else would have quit immediately), everyone expected the SIL to take over. I wasn’t working when it all happened a year later, but I got rumors. I guess SIL and wife (daughter) were expected to “buy” the business for some amount (by rumor there was a reason, not totally unrelated to wife’s half brother, yes, the “kid” mentioned). They decided they didn’t want to go into that much debt. So business sold to Canadian firm who buys “orphaned” software companies (otherwise contracts gave code to clients, and boy would I wish them luck with that with their IT’s, seriously). Business still going. It has been sold, again, to a company in Montana who has software that is more inline with what business’s specialty. Haven’t had any backdoor gossip now for, eek, 2 years. Sources dried up, dang it.

                    Retired 9 years come Jan 31. OMG almost 10 years!!!!

                    Like

            2. Tech: We were about 18 months, maybe 22 months, after being purchased by a conglomerate. Owners had tried to buy a piece that was local that made flatbed scanners. Instead got the conglomerate looking at their company instead. Offer was made that the partners couldn’t refuse. What the partners didn’t realize was that what was left of the “conglomerate” was that sister company. By Sept/11, the combined companies were headed for massive riffs. I survived 5 riffs, until mid-August ’22 right after official bankruptcy proceedings started. Downsized enough that the only pieces that survived were the minimal needed for the two different lines of R&D engineering for the flatbed and handheld, both terminal, and standalone computer, scanners. I was software. While one of the last riffs before being parted out, the software I’d been working on had had it’s final release. While, before being purchased, there was rumors of a similar software for C#, good for a small niche company, not something a huge company (which is where the two R&D sections ended) would bother with. Was I surprised to be riffed when I was? Yes (dang it). Should I have been? Not really. Though it felt really good when I had, not one but two, fellow engineers offer to be riffed in my place, for their own reasons, but still they made the offer. One quit immediately. The other didn’t for about 6 months (know why, no blame attached). Would have been riffed eventually anyway. It was the embedded software R&D engineers kept. Not exactly my lane.

              Liked by 1 person

        2. Our daughter was at Fordham, downtown campus; we had dropped her off the week before.

          Couldn’t get her on the phone for couple days. Guess where the primary cell phone towers in Manhattan were located …

          Liked by 2 people

      1. I’d been laid off the Friday before and gave myself Monday off.

        I didn’t get around to calling in my unemployment until Friday.

        I spent much of the day telling people on a board that there was a new topic for everyone to tell us they were safe.

        I didn’t hear about the plane in Pennsylvania from the news — past the “it happened, no connection is known” — because Jerry Pournelle posted a message from one of the men’s father. (And got a slew of “did you contact the news agencies?” responses.)

        Liked by 1 person

  5. The weird thing is, I didn’t have a TV during that. I actually found out about it from an online game forum I was involved in at the time: Major accident: Aircraft crashes into skyscraper. Basically the nightmare scenario for any aviation mishap. We were trying to figure out what could have gone wrong, when the second plane hit.

    The funny thing was,because I didn’t have a TV, I did not see the footage of the crash that day.

    It was striking how the very next day it had vanished from the airwaves. It was over a year before I even saw the footage, it was so completely scrubbed from the news. The biggest attack on US soil in almost 60 years, vanished like it was never there.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. We had a TV used to play videos for the kids as a big treat (or when I needed them out of my hair, so I could clean.)
      But it was awful reception. I only turned it on because of a phone call from my plotting partner.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. We had a similar TV on a cart at work, for showing training videotapes. As soon as we heard the news about the first tower being struck, our manager wheeled it out and between what its questionable reception let us see, and the news from online, we tried to follow what was happening. Our manager was a civil engineer, and he was describing likelihood of collapse and how it would probably happen shortly before the towers fell. A few other civil and mechanical engineers wandered in to ask questions about work stuff, but then ended up in the discussion and TV watching. One opined that maybe if the fire protection systems worked well enough and fuel load on the planes was low enough, they might stand, but he didn’t sound very certain. And then the towers fell. Up until late 2019 I worked within two hundred feet of the spot where I watched that video. Also, one of my cousins was just starting college in NYC that week, and saw some of it go down.

        All the lunatics insisting it had to have been pre-planted explosives, that towers won’t collapse cleanly like that, no planes actually crashed into them, that steel doesn’t melt, etc. have pissed me off ever since. They differ in their explanations of who and why – Bush ordered it because he is literally Hitler, Deep State to usher in the police state, Mossad to get America to attack Islam, etc. Whatever their slant on it, they are as unpersuadable as any doctrinaire Marxist, Islamists, or Young Earth Creationist. No science or engineering facts you bring up will shift them one bit. At least not the ones I’ve regrettably spoken with.

        Like

        1. It’s a cult-type religion for them, and therefore impossible to refute with facts. Some people are just like that.

          Like

      1. Yep. And I think that was the first time I saw that too. It was memorable.

        And because I was in college at the time, I got to hear a lot of professors anticipating Vietnam 2.0.. Funny thing was, they weren’t the ones arguing we should simply glass the place over rather than getting entangled in it. I suspect they just thought we should sit at take whatever hits came.

        Not like their ivory towers were a lever going to get rattled. And even if they did, those ones were all very good at crawling on their bellies.

        Like

    3. The one from the street with firefighters IIRC on some unrelated non-emergency call, where the jet engine noise dopplers hard right overhead, they all look up, and camera catches the fireball, was playing in the rotation for a few days, but the vids that vanished without a trace day one were anything of or even mentioning the jumpers. Those were pulled and memory-holed with extreme prejudice. There were also reportedly traffic copter vid of those roof parties in NJ, but none of those has ever shown up, while the jumpers stuff has certainly surfaced.

      Can’t have people getting angry. Just go to the mall.

      And then that afternoon GWB basically declared war on an -ism.

      I still think he should have asked for a traditional declaration of war against the nation of Afghanistan for sheltering AQ and aiding in their attack, perhaps with a proviso that we would not be limited in pursuing perpetrators by any geographical boundaries, but instead they went after an -ism, which allowed redefinition of the -ism by Barry and subsequent administrations.

      I remain unconvinced to this day that green-glassing parts of Afghanistan would not have been better all around.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Before Alan Jackson and Toby Keith (RIP) did relevant songs, somebody on the net did a parody based on the Banana Boat song.

        “Come mister Taliban, turn over Bin Laden.

        Turn him over or we droppa the bomb.”

        Saw it once (South Park style animation), then it disappeared.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’ve seen it a few times , and the audio has been re-patched over “improved” video (or just covered by other artists) a number of times since.

          As Mr. Universe says in Serenity, “You can’t stop the signal, Mal.”

          Like

        1. I was more just pointing out that it hasn’t been entirely memory holed off the internet although it’s harder and harder to find.

          Like

    5. I was managing a RadioShack store at that time, so I had a literal wall of TVs on which to watch everything unfold. The first thing that came to my mind was the Tom Clancy novel ‘Debt of Honor’.

      It was probably the best sales day my store ever had, as people came in to get TVs, radios, TV antennas, and batteries, but I would have preferred to have an ordinary, boring day instead.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “Debt of Honor”

        Same here; we had a TV set up at work at [Big Defense Contractor], and when the second plane hit I mentioned to someone that I really didn’t want to live in a Tom Clancy novel. “The Sum of All Fears” was in the back of my mind, too.

        Like

    6. Next day? It had vanished before that night. I did my normal job that day (with steady foot traffic since the mall across the way had been closed) and did not see any footage before the evening, so I never did see any of the “jumper” footage. (Haven’t bothered to seek it out, either, because it’s bad enough to know it exists.)

      Actually, when I got back to my in-laws’ house (my husband looking for work in another state at the time), my MiL was so traumatized that I ended up switching to a Spanish-language news station so she wouldn’t keep coming in when she heard something. They emphasize different things on those stations, which is why I got reporting on how many tons of steel and how many windows were in the WTC buildings.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Is it 9/11 again already?

    Did they really do that appalling “debate” pantomime last night, the day before America’s tragic anniversary? Yep. They really did.

    I didn’t watch it. Too disgraceful. Megyn Kelly waxed eloquent about it later, said she couldn’t stop swearing because it was so disgusting.

    But I did see The Donald sticking up for Ashli Babbit, the sole casualty of the Jan. 6th Guided Tour of Congress. Murdered by a cop, is my opinion of what happened there. Shot in the neck because he pulled the trigger so hard his gun dipped, he was most certainly aiming at her head. It is plainly so in the videos.

    Not much more to say. I keep my stuff where I can find it in the dark.

    In the meantime, while we wait for them to work up the courage in their tiny guts to do the thing they want the most, writing is not the worst thing one could be doing.

    Sarah is fond of saying that everything is stories, and I find this to be true. So the stories that get told matter. Things that capture the imagination. And people. Characters who make the right choice because it is right, not because it is easy or convenient.

    I’m pleased to hear that Sarah’s ancient story is finally becoming real. I’ll buy one.

    I tried to write mine for 20 years, and I finally did. Published it too. Some of the people here have read it and said fine things about it. My characters are alive.

    Now there are ten books. Not published yet, but they will be. (Honest!) I think the people who killed Ashli Babbit and tried to kill The Donald will not like them. I’m good with that.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. And they tried to hide the identity of the kop (not a typo) and when it was finally discovered… it was the fellow so blisteringly incompetent he was previously in the lose for “losing” his sidearm in a public toilet. Kwality!

      Liked by 3 people

  7. I don’t know if it’s got anything to do with the debate, but the whole stock market is down today.

    I’m still trying to struggle through RazorFist’s critique of the debate, but Kamela just keeps repeating the same old lies in that grating voice so it’s hard going.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. now back from a miserable “Team Building Function” here at work.
    I was fueling SWA Flights and due to weather in Texas (Fog at Dallas or Houston) we had delayed flights, which means fast turns and back to back – back and forths. First was “a plane hit one of the towers. cessna maybe jet, fire etc. run out to next flight and mid fuel load, all the ground help disappeared. Um. 15 minute turn, why the luggage not going on? finish and went in OPs and everyone was in the break room watching the replays of the second plane. Pilot decided for more fuel. finished, topped truck, went into ops and the Pentagon was hit. Then it rained planes and airlines I’d never heard of let alone seen landed and taxied to any open gate. SWA said to get the fuel truck as far from the terminal as possible, so back to the old offices. Got lucky when the Supe told us we were free to leave, “Stay near a phone, but you can go home.” 5 minutes after leaving the airport was locked down, and all the people herded to the Hilton across Airline Hwy from the Terminal. Folks who should have gotten off work at 3pm got let out at 01:30 next morning.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Mom and Stepdad were visiting his kids in the DC area (Virginia and Maryland) around 9/11, and all the flights got stopped. As memory serves, they kept the rental car and driving back to the Midwest. Mom would have been doing the driving, P had issues…

      One of the prospective employers I was talking to was based in Boston. They lost people on the flight. Between that and the Dot-com bust, they went closed-clamshell for a while.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. Drifting through life trying to find some peace in a world gone crazy. Legs starting to go, the nerves are going. But I stand, I walk, until I can’t, and then I will crawl if needed. You can’t stop me from being free, that is my God given right and I shall not relinquish it to you for all your claims of protection for me, for my own good. Freemen decide their own fates, you cannot give me anything I didn’t already have. Your false God is failing you, it always fails you in the end, and now it is making you insane to boot. I do not fear you and your machinations, I pity you for your foolishness, and you know that as well it is what is driving you insane. Keep your powder dry and hug a loved one if you can.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. A friends elderly mother usually traveled into Manhattan from her home in Queens on Tuesdays. She did volunteer work at the Right-to-Life center, riding the bus both ways. That morning she was enjoying the ride on a gorgeous, clear fall day when she realized there were a lot of sirens, police & EMT passing the bus…In fact as they approached Mid-town the whole city echoed with the deafening sounds of sirens; every vehicle headed toward the financial district. She got off the bus at her stop and saw people pointing toward the plumes of smoke just visible above the roofs. Pondering what was happening, she crossed the street and could more clearing see the rising smoke cloud and groups of people agitated coming out of offices and looking. As she hesitated,wondering, standing there on the sidewalk, the express bus to Queens pulled up to the stop. She walked over and got on, deciding it was a poor day to stay in town, whatever was going on. As it was an express, it rolled out of Manhattan, and over into Queens, delivering her back to her own street just before the bridges were closed.

    Thus one elderly women was saved from being trapped in the chaos, without a way home.

    It is a tiny moment of grace I remember from a day with so much suffering.

    May it also be a lesson to listen to your gut in what seems like more and more dangerous times.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. I was told a few days after, about a child who would not let Daddy leave the house, with the result that he missed his bus, missed his train, and arrived just moments after the first plane hit.

      Brother of a friend, and I couldn’t even say which friend at this point, but there were apparently a lot of such incidents. Every one a personal miracle.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. The line from That Hideous Strength about “No, I don’t want to hear about how you got of TOWNNAME that day” and subsequent paragraph or two about so many decent people who got out before NICE was smited.

        Liked by 2 people

  11. I lived in L.A. then. The news broke while I was at the gym early that morning. Went in to work, unsure if we would close – but we stayed open, and incredibly, all my patients showed up for their appointments. I remember the tallest buildings in L.A. were closed, Disneyland, all the courthouses/federal buildings. I was just so numb I felt as if I were sleepwalking the entire day.

    Liked by 2 people

  12. My first thought after seeing the news (on my computer) about the attack was that it had to be an Internet Hoax. [Sad]

    One thing I remember about that time was the “run on gas”. People apparently thought that there would be another oil embargo.

    Liked by 2 people

  13. Living on the west coast the early morning hit on 9/11 meant this is what most of us woke up to. Not many of us were up at 5:46 AM PST, let alone had our TV’s on. I was at least 90 minutes late to the constant replay by the time the alarm went off, showered, and turned on TV for first cup of coffee, and a bagel. Didn’t finish either. Did drive into work, but don’t remember getting anything done.

    All I can do is hug those close to us. Let them know they are loved and cherished. I can reach out to those who are estranged/remote, family and friends.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I’ll never excuse “Mister Bush” for not asking Congress for an old-school Declaration of War that very day, giving those camel-humping bastards 24 hours to unconditionally, abjectly surrender, and dropping MOABs on Riyadh (and every place else they danced in the streets about it) when they didn’t. It still grates that we deployed legions of Grief Counselors here at home instead of returning that Grief to the sender.

      We shoulda/coulda/woulda had energy independence back then, and a civilized dar es-islam now.

      Instead, “Mister Bush” chose to save his chances for a second term, and helped to pave the road to October 7.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. To this day I still think that the “nation building” crowd should have been fired the second they opened their yap.

      Fired from a cannon, preferably, but I would accept (however grudgingly) a more figurative firing.

      Don’t have a link handy, but Tom Kratman’s suggestion of how to respond definitely struck a chord with me. The TL;DR is basically a campaign designed to turn buildings into big rocks, and then small rocks, and go in with the goal of hammering the [excrement]heads so hard that for at least several generations whenever little Achmed says “I wanna go jihad” his father, brothers, and anyone else in reach would beat him to a bloody pulp for even suggesting something like that.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. Was living and working in NYC on that day in 2001 … saw the smoke from the first tower streaming over lower Manhatten as I walked to my subway … by the time I got to my office in midtown we already were hearing rumors of a plane hitting one of the towers, but the rumors were of a small plane … was standing in our breakroom watching the TV live when the second plane hit … saw the explosion live … at that point I told everyone they should go home immediately … lost several friends/aquaintenaces that day …

    had a good friend standing in line in the WTC lobby to get his security badge when the first plane hit … he got out of there safely … (btw the same gentlemen was in the lobby of the WTC when the truck bomb was set off in 1993 … he will never be visiting the rebuilt WTC ever again)

    I was still in the office when my wife called and told me to come home immediately because one of the towers had just collapsed … (yeah a huge shock …)

    By the time I got home everything in NYC was shutdown … no trains, subways or even cars where out and about …

    then the ghosts started walking up 1st Ave where I lived in the 50’s … I called the survivors ghosts because to a person, they were covered in a heavy gray dust, head to toe, with only their faces exposed where people had given them wet rags to wipe off with … (when the towers fell the dust cloud blasted everyone still alive downtown anywhere near Wall St.)

    the next 24 hours was a whirlwind trying to find out who was ok and unfortuneatly who was not … one of my work associates from Denver was in town for a conference and her family was desperate for any information about her … given that all air travel was shut down, all they could do was ask for help from some of us who lived in NYC … I had the sad task of filing the missing persons report on her with the NYPD the next day …

    I know numerous people who were supposed to be in the WTC that day for interviews or work and for one reason or another were either delayed or didn’t go in and survived when many others did not …

    Liked by 3 people

  16. Maybe, just maybe, Harris will implode in the next six weeks so badly that even the Deep State will have to throw in the towel and admit they cannot rig it hard enough.

    But, Sadly, So Sadly, my money is still on “Friend, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets worse.”

    The Nomenklatura is playing for Endgame now.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. I remember all the various stripes of politicians all swearing on the flag, all claiming to be loyal Americans. Now, 23 years later, many of those politicians have turned their backs on America.
    I will remember.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. They are loyal Americans. It’s just that the America they’re loyal to is the Deep State of America.

      Even in 2001 we had been in a state of Cold Civil War for some years, with the politicians and other elites seeing us as The Enemy and Muslims as over-enthusiastic friends & allies against The Enemy. So they wanted, and mostly got, a response to 9/11 that could be easily repurposed into an attack on The Enemy – “right-wing militias” “right-wing hate groups” “Newt Gingrich supporters” “opponents of blessed Assault Weapon Ban” “bitter clingers” “deplorables” “Trump supporters” “ultra-MAGA semi-fascists” etc. etc.

      Like

  18. 23 years ago I was sitting in my cubicle hell in Columbia, SC, with no idea anything was going on because the website I spent the most time on, Free Republic, had been blocked as a “hate site” and I got yelled at for excessive Internet usage. The first indicator I had that anything was wrong was seeing one of the loan processor ladies run–not walk, RUN–by me sobbing hysterically. When I got back to my desk my neighbor had his radio up and had live coverage going at about 9:30. None of the news websites would even load, so I tried Free Republic again and the net nanny didn’t block it that day…FR was barely loadable but I was able to get the gist of what was going on. We couldn’t get TV coverage inside the building (no cable).

    About 1 pm they got us all together and sent us home (we were not government workers, but we were a government-sponsored enterprise similar to Fannie Mae). They emptied all of downtown Columbia out at the same time so traffic was insanity. I got home and watched the endless replays until Wife Unit got home (she worked a block down from me at a law firm and they kept her there all day). We watched more, including President Bush’s speech. Then it was back to work like normal the next day.

    We’d been married for two months. And September 11, 2001 was my thirty-fifth birthday. And I’m STILL irrationally pissed at those bastards for forever ruining my “special day,” as minor an inconvenience as it is compared to what thousands of others have faced.

    I haven’t forgotten. I will not forget. And I won’t forgive those who do. It’s why, as much as I love a good conspiracy theory, I have a near-violent hatred of 9/11 Troofers.

    Liked by 3 people

  19. This one is not mine. A friends cousin worked in the 2nd tower. When the first got hit, she left without waiting. Tried calling her family. No response. Decided to walk home because chaos from the bombing in the 90s.

    Her 17 year old son was just leaving for school when he saw the report of the first hit. He ran there to do what he could to help his mom.

    2nd tower had been hit when he got there. He ran in….

    From what we heard later his mother was not crazy but was no functional for a long time.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. My story was standard. My wife called me about the first strike. Our company had just enabled the network so we could watch TV on the desk computers. So I pulled it up,while talking with her and telling coworkers about it.

    Caught the shot of the 2nd one hitting.

    Left work. Pulled our kids from school. Sat at home. After a couple of hours, I went back to work. It was a big engineering firm. She had worked there so we both figured they were putting together a response already.

    Went in for an hour or so…..they were already routing basic emergency supplies to thr city from different sites. But were being stopped from entering the city. So I sat thinking….I asked who benefits from this as the jews did it and bush did it were out in force.

    The answer when it came was so simple. The people singing and dancing in the streets and their leaders benefited. Everyone who hated America benefited.

    I still think Jerry Pournelle had the right response. In every city where the crowds cheered and danced and celebrated…..we go in and completely demolish an area the size of the footprint of the buidings hit….then build a monument with the names of the dead on it and tell them that if they deface it or defile it we will clear cut another section and another until they stop.

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Many years ago, I read The Face of Battle by John Keegan. One of his research goals was to find out what it was like in, say, East Belfast when the casualty reports from the Battle of the Somme came out. I used to wonder myself. Since 9/11 I don’t wonder any more, I know. lest we forget, here is the list of graduates from my old school who died on the day or from the effects after. About half were firemen, the other half mostly worked in finance, That’s what working class people in my old neighborhood did.

    Shawn Bowman, Brian Cannizzaro, John Casazza, Tom Celic, Michael Clarke, Carl DiFranco, Marty Egan, Steve Fiorelli, Steve Hagis, Dennis Hogan — a cousin of my own though I didn’t actually like him — Steve Huczko, Joe Ianelli, Sean Kenney, Vincent Laita — his wife is a friend of mine since childhood, she was pregnant with their first child who never met his father small world the son went to school with my #2 son, Stephen Lauria, Neil Leavy, Chuck Margiotta, Scott McGovern, William Micciulli, Christopher Mozzillo, Pete Mulligan, Patrick Murphy — we were friends from childhood all through grammar school — William O’Connor, Raymond Ragucci, Keith Roma, Frank Spinelli, Jeff Stark, Ned Thompson, Joseph Visciano.

    They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old

    age shall not weary then, nor the years condemn.

    At the going down of the sun and in the morning

    We will remember them

    Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.

    Liked by 3 people

  22. 23 years ago, I was waiting for the Spectrum cable guy.  At 10 to 9, he showed up and told me a plane had hit the world trade center. I was not too concerned, I knew that the Empire State Building had been hit by a plane in the 40s. He fiddled with the cable, and went to his truck for parts. His radio said multiple hijackings were underway. He looked at me and said, “Let me get this fixed so we can see what’s going on. We got a picture on my tv just in time to see the second plane hit, on CNN.

    It was chaos, even in Dayton. A lot of planes launched from Wright-Patt, ans sonic booms were the order of the day. My friends gathered at my house, since I was “the Place”, and had never heard sonic booms before. (Younger than me.) They thought someone was bombing us.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Yes, I remember. Fighter planes doing air cover, and sonic booms, and then an uncanny quiet after the civilian planes landed. Sonic booms I knew, but there’s never a day with that quiet of air in a town along so many flight paths. Until that month.

      Liked by 1 person

  23. A former boss of mine once told me he was on a phone call with a client that had an office at the WTC. Mid-call, he suddenly heard screams and yells, and then the line went dead.

    A woman I used to know in the analog world was also a Facebook friend. After the 2016 election, she used to post more and more Q-Anon stuff. I started largely ignoring her, aside from a very occasional correction on items she posted. But one day she wrote a post that took as an accepted truth that 9/11 was an inside job. I slammed her for the post, and quit following her.

    Liked by 3 people

      1. Q-Anon is just another epithet to them, like Trumpist, white supremacist, racist, Islamophobe, transphobe, hater and all the others. Like them, it’s a handy all-purpose label they can throw at anyone who disagrees with them.

        Like

  24. I don’t waste time blaming Dubya for stuff. He was just a hollow, possibly well-intentioned frontman for older and wilier politicians. He would probably have been a happy, harmless city council member in some mid-sized city if his father and grandfather hadn’t been ambitious so-and-sos plugged into the wrong crowd.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The odd thing was, based on what I’ve heard he wasn’t the Bush son that was supposed to go to the White House. Jeb was. George W. was supposed to stay satisfied with his governorship, and not seek any higher office. But he ran for the White House, instead. And George W. making his presidential run effectively blocked what probably would have been the best time for Jeb to do so, in 2004.

      So Jeb was forced to sit out the 2004 Presidential election. And then everyone knew that having Jeb try and directly succeed George W. would have been a massive failure. So Jeb had to sit out 2008. Then Obama was in the White House as a seemingly popular candidate, and Romney was the heir apparent on the Republican side in 2012. So Jeb sat that one out.

      That left 2016 as the next opportunity. Oops!

      It’d be funny if George W. – for all of his faults – ended up accidentally saving us from a much worse presidency by his brother. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why George W. ran for the White House was as a way of pushing back against the negative views of those around him due to his prior alcoholism. They had written him off when he became addicted to the bottle. But against their expectations, he rose to the highest office in the land. Meaning that George W.’s drinking possible saved us from a Jeb Bush presidency.

      Mind you, I have no idea how the two brothers compared as governors of their respective states. Or how Jeb would have differed from George W. in the White House (there would have been differences, just as any two people are different), aside from likely being much more openly pro-legalization of illegals..

      Liked by 1 person

      1. That’s interesting, I hadn’t realized he’d managed to crowd Jeb out like that. I had vaguely known that he was considered the “Ruprecht” of the family and that it was believed his political career was motivated by a desire to prove the naysayers wrong.

        “Ruprecht” here being my extended family’s slang for the underperforming family member who’s given an important-sounding but meaningless sinecure at the family business. Coined by salesmen in the family after accidentally pitching to a couple of Ruprechts. The reference is to Steve Martin’s persona in the joint scam he and Michael Caine in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before the girl shows up, and specifically to the fact that Michael Caine’s persona has promised their mother to always take care of Ruprecht. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3ePAOUK7U

        Like

  25. one of my best friend’s little brother was in WTC when the planes hit. He and another coworker managed to get out as the buildings came down. they found themselves on the street covered in dust and the coworker asked BFLB what to do. Let’s go find a bar was the answer so they walked across the island — best part of a mile — to South Street where a bar was opening. They walked in and the barman said “Dude, you’re all f-cked up”. and indeed they were with broken ribs and other damage blood everywhere. They walked over To Beakman Hospital — couple of blocks — and then the pain hit.

    My BIL was a captain in NYPD and was in his car responding when the towers fell. He told his driver to pull over and in response to his driver’s protest pointed out that they couldn’t do their jobs if they were dead and now that the towers were down their job had changed. I’m pretty sure he was the first NYPD captain on-site after the towers fell.

    My FIL was working in the FDNY command center and I have the full transcript of the FDNY response including end when the dispatcher was calling the roll of the destroyed companies Rescue 1, no response, Rescue 2, no response, Ladder 11, no response, Engine 22, no response, engine 53, no response…. It’s bloody horrifying.

    For myself, I was in Hong Kong and living in the UK, I was one of a very select few who flew after the towers came down, Heathrow Airport was surreal. Anyone who’s ever been there early when the flights from US, Asia, and Sfrica all land with an hour knows what it’s like. On 9/12/01 it was empty. Just two flights landed. The poor British Airways flight atttendant spent most of the flight talking to me. I’m fairly sure I was babbling since I watched the towers fall on TV and then boarded the airplane, I used to work in WTC and knew there could be more than 20k people there at that time of day. I didn’t know how many were dead and wondered if we’d just nuked Iran or something.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. A couple of years back, my eldest had the 8th grade trip to the East Coast. One of the things on the schedule was the 9/11 memorial museum. I went with him to the history side (we would not have had time for all of it) and audio recordings with transcripts and notes were playing in little nooks with content warnings posted. That was hard.

      I also overheard one of the docent survivors (I think it was one of the ladies who made it out from above a plane strike) talk about how working there was helpful. Didn’t converse with her directly but did point her out to my eldest.

      As we walked out to the waterfall footprints, he somehow managed to walk straight to the name of Todd Beamer.

      Liked by 1 person

  26. It’s also the 12th anniversary of the Benghazi attack where our Ambassador was cruely tortured and murdered with 2 others.

    But, as Killery Klinton famously asked, “At this point, what difference does it make?”

    None to TPTB, that is for darned sure.

    We are all just potential Regrettable Casualties.

    And if it turns out Millions of Regrettable Casualties, well Regrettable Statistics then.

    Liked by 3 people

  27. Pingback: 2996: Too Sad to Say | Aliens in This World

    2. Apparently he really did. I’m not sure of the context. I gather Trump commented last night that he hates Kamala and then this.

      Mind you, I’ve figured the palace intrigue between Dr. Jill and Kamala was probably near, “I, Claudius,” levels.

      Also, the crowd at the WTC were cheering Trump and calling for his return….in front of Schumer, Biden, Harris and Bloomberg. Their faces were, ah, interesting.

      Liked by 1 person

  30. The context appears to be that Joe was at an event in PA for 9/11 and spoke of the unity of that time. And wishing for its return (presumably by all of us voting Democratic for all eternity). He offered so meone a hat, and an audience member then offered him a Trump hat in return. He then put it on and grinned. I don’t think he kept it on very long, but it was long enough for the photos to go out.

    Like

  31. Em and I were in Montgomery AL; I was working on a project at Standard Systems Group Air Force. We found out about it as soon as it happened.

    I was OK; didn’t get allowed off base until that evening, then wasn’t allowed back for 72 hours or so.

    Em had a harder time, as her sister and sister’s husband were living in Westchester, but BIL was a pulmonary physician at New York Hospital, so he was called back in to work because they were anticipating a flood of casualties which never materialized.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. I’ve been posting here for awhile and now there is another “Doug”? Did I just not notice before??

    Anyway, everyone everywhere (in the US at least) over the age of about 25 has a 9/11 story and I think they are all worth telling.

    I was working overnights at Walmart (in Texas) and 9/11 was my day off. To switch from nights to days on my days off I would get off work at 4am go straight to bed for 4 hours and get up at 8 or 9 and be up all day. So, I got up and went into my roommates room to say hi and he told me about the planes. That would have been about 2 hours after they hit (I’m fuzzy on the exact time I was asleep, but texas is 1 hour behind) I spent the rest of the day watching TV and checking the web for news. I remember we crashed the CNN website that day.

    Years later I worked selling long distance for AT&T and I talked to a guy who was on Wallstreet that day. HIS story was really interesting as they got evacuated before they even knew what had happened so they were being escorted out of the building and seeing the smoke in the sky with no idea what was going on.

    Somebody should right a book. I’ve always thought it was odd that I’ve only seen one movie about it. I think too many Hollywood leftists think that any 9/11 movie would have to be seen as “right wing”

    Liked by 1 person

  33. I was about 50 miles north in the exurbs, sleeping. SOMETHING woke me up briefly. Went back to sleep a short time, then my sister came home from dropping nephew at daycare and told me.

    The first thing I said to my sister was two planes is deliberate, the country is under attack. The second thing I said was that the country had forgotten that world was a dangerous place after the Cold War ended, and this was a reminder.

    Given our position, I have always been convinced that what woke me up was either one of the low flying planes on approach, or a ground tremor or boom from one of the towers falling.

    I’ve got several VHS tapes of news coverage (FOX and CNN, since the other NYC stations lost their transmitters on top of the towers) of that day and a couple days after while the country was just starting to come out of the shock and confusion. I never brought myself to watch them, and now I don’t even have the equipment to play them back (none that I’d trust not to eat the tapes, anyway).

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Depending on timing it could have been the 102nd fighter wing F-15s, which reportedly exceeded the speed of sound getting south to cover NYC from their Otis ANG base up by Cape Cod.

      Like

      1. I remember that my area of SW Ohio was rocked by a boom late afternoon. We thought something had happened at the nearby airport, fueled by the reports of a fire near of private airport.

        Later I saw a report the G.W. Bush had arrived back in DC from the Omaha area. The same new broadcast said something about an Indiana Air Nat. Guard plane “accidently” going too fast.

        I pulled out a map and drew a line from Omaha base to Andrews base … my little neck of the wood was practically dead on that line. I don’t care what the news said, or Wright-Patt, I believe to this day that what we all heard that late afternoon was the escort planes for Air Force 1.

        Like

        1. And the escort was likely that Indiana ANG plane going too fast – in the afternoon they were scrambling as much stuff as they could get armed and turned to try and push out the sanitized airspace bubble around AF1 as GWB relocated back to Andrews. The Air Force and the Secret Service had wanted to keep him at in Nebraska in that base’s bunker because it was easier to secure, but he finally overruled them, so there was much fast tasking happening. That IN ANG pilot had likely just been expediting in burner trying to get on station where the AWACs had told him to be and failed to keep it just under Mach 1.

          Like

          1. I’ve heard a sonic boom before. Not during 9/11, but in the mid-80s when I was a teen in Central Illinois. There was an F-4 ANG unit based at the local airport and one Sunday morning there was this loud noise and the windows in the house started shaking for a bit and then faded. Apparently one of the F-4s went a bit too fast.

            Like

            1. During the Vietnam War in the 1960s F-4 squadrons returning to NAS Alameda often “accidentally” produced sonic booms banging across pre-Silicon Valley as they flew home from their inbound carriers. Such stopped as the war became more unpopular, but I clearly remember those bangs from the west when I was a wee sprout – the thump sounded like one of the heavy solid garage doors of the time banging shut when a spring broke.

              Like

  34. I was working retail and had gotten on a bus at 5:30 or so to travel in 10-15 miles from the town where I was staying with my in-laws. A couple of stops later, a person got on who had heard maybe 15 seconds of a broadcast and told us that the Pentagon was on fire. I joined the discussion when someone started worrying about fire affecting weapons storage and informed them that the Pentagon was a planning building, no [mass] weapons storage on site. The bus driver was so intent on the conversation that he missed a turn and had to do a three-point turn across four lanes of traffic. (I would have just circled a block…)

    It was at a hub where I changed buses that we heard the rest. And someone cracked a cruel joke, and it’s the first time I wanted to punch someone. (I didn’t.)

    Like

  35. I was working for the Catholic Diocese of Peoria (IL) newspaper at the time. I had gone to work early to get a head start on the day, and about 8 a.m. Central Time, my editor called to say that two planes had hit the WTC. I said, “Did you say TWO planes?” “Yes”. So I ran downstairs to turn on a little B&W portable TV, rarely used. So we were glued to it most of the day but kept trying to work.

    My brother and SIL had just gotten married the previous Saturday. They were planning a train trip across Canada for their honeymoon. They flew from Chicago to Seattle on 9/10, and were going to take a train across the border to Vancouver BC that morning. They did eventually make it although the train was delayed by at least 5 or 6 hours while everyone was thoroughly searched. They completed their train trip and everyone was extremely nice and sympathetic to them since they were Americans and newlyweds.

    A book about 9/11 that I highly recommend is “The Day the World Came to Town” by Jim DeFede, about the flights that were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland with more than 7,000 stranded passengers. It’s a great feel-good story of how the townspeople welcomed the passengers and many formed lasting friendships. (You’ll love the description of the Newfie custom known as “kissing the cod”.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The 9/11 story where the stranded passengers out numbered the town’s population, or were a severe percentage of the population?

      Like

  36. Just re-watched Serenity with my 15-year-old (he hadn’t seen it, but I think I have another browncoat here!) this afternoon, remembered when I caught it in theater in ’05, and have to wonder if some part of the Firefly premise wasn’t J. Whedon’s answer to the now-infamous Patriot Act.

    Like

    1. You know, all the Hollywood types whenging on and on in celluloid and video bits about GWB being that Austrian fellow with Charlie Chaplin’s mustache, and the Emperor with Cheney as Darth Vader, and the Patriot Act and such being the Most Evilest Thing Evah… and then Barry keeps it all, plus he drone strikes American Citizens.

      2008-2016 must have been a confusing time in Hollywood.

      Liked by 1 person

  37. At the time I was between jobs, and had a bit of a minor nest egg saved up so I wasn’t in a big hurry to find the next job (though in 20/20 hindsight I would probably have been better off today if I had), so I was dinking around in online chatrooms when the first strike was mentioned by another member.

    I didn’t have cable in my room at the time, so I went to the talk radio channel. I barely left the room for most of the day.

    This being back when usenet was still A Thing(tm), I hit the feeds, including a group I had been regularly following, alt.books.tom-clancy.

    Yeah, that book was mentioned repeatedly.

    (AFAIK I didn’t lose anyone close in the attacks, so I don’t normally talk about my reactions that day. I feel a little uneasy about even this post, given how minor an inconvenience I faced compared to real suffering and pain that others felt that day.)

    Like

  39. @ Sarah > “And the incompetence was astounding, and the opportunities were there in both cases, so maybe there was no collusion, but who knows? Our three letters have been corrupted for a long time. Either that or more useless than soggy toilet paper.”

    We should probably embrace the power of “and,” although perhaps the uselessness is part of the corruption.

    https://www.floridabulldog.org/2024/09/new-evidence-narrative-9-11-lawsuit-toxic-for-saudi-arabia-fbi/

    Like

  40. One of my great aunts had died so one of my mother’s cousins was out of state for the funeral. Her husband worked in the WTC but because of the funeral he was home watching the children. A small mercy.

    Like

Comments are closed.