"9/11 a Year Later"
It is funny how days can slowly slip by piling up to an entire calendar year so quickly. Its hard to believe it has been a year since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington occurred. Every paper you pick up, every channel you turn on will bombard you with images of planes ripping buildings in half ( tune into the rebroadcast of CBS' 9/11 tomorrow at 9pm if you missed it 6 months ago its be might be the most extraordinary documentary I have ever seen.), people covered in soot, heroic accounts of the NY police and fireman, stories of narrow escapees, and many stories of lost loved ones. Granted it is overwhelming, but its important that the day is remembered. Not that the major networks had a choice in the matter refusal to air any coverage would be seen as insensitive. I couldn't justify ABC running reruns of According to Jim in place of retrospectives, even if that means having to see Peter Jennings face for a prolonged period of time.

A year ago tomorrow morning the sun rose on the World Trade Center for the last time. A year ago the towers dwarfed the landscape. A year ago from when I post and publish this people didn't think most likely someone was marveling at the size of this towers completely in the dark. For the last time people headed out the door of their homes to work. For the last time people laid eyes on their loved ones. Some used their cell phones to express their final words later that day.

The weather of September 11, 2001, was prefect. Not a cloud graced the blue sky in South Jersey nor over New York City. Of course all of that changed with in a few hours after Manhattan was engulfed in black cloud.

I had a morning work shift before heading off to class. As I was brushing my teeth, I overhead the news channel saying something about the World Trade Center. For some reason I thought they were just talking about the anniversary of when a car bomb was driven in to the towers. Apparently I forgot about the fact that it was snowing lightly that morning in 1993. When I first saw the image I couldn't get over how black the smoke was. My first reaction was some Arab (or terrorist of some sort) has set a bomb off in there. For some reason I thought that the fire would be put out in hours.

Then one of the news channels was speculating about a plane that had hit it. There goes the media blowing things out of proportion again, I thought to myself. Within a minute of seeing that I witnessed another ball of fire, so focused on the towers I didn't even notice the image of the 2nd plane slamming in the WTC. Driving to work I had Howard Stern on, there is not doubt about he said...we are at war.

Later that day I watched on TV at work, like the rest of that nation. Like all Americans I thought to myself the unthinkable is happening before my eyes. How much more did these people have in store for us? Then news footage flipped to the pentagon, and what was more disturbing is a customer still wanted me to wait on her. I spent 10 minutes selling a washer as word came that 3rd plane crashed in Pennsylvania some where. I couldn't help but think we were in the middle of the whole thing.

The reporter on the news cast I was watching at work, mentioned the whole tower shook. I thought maybe a bomb had gone off or something. However, about a minute later the tower began to collapse. The sound the reporter heard must have been the tower starting to implode. The tower disappeared in a giant cloud of smoke. For some reason I thought that other tower would remain standing. I guess I was in denial or something. When the 2nd tower went down, I knew I was watching one of the most important moments in America's history. I also realized how meaningless my problems were, and how I should just be thankful that I didn't know anyone who lost their lives that day. Life is silly that way. Later that night Ryan, Lima Beanz, myself and met Price and his father at Champs in Cherry Hill. It was a bizarre experience having footage on all the televisions there.

Human beings jumped to their death picking that as an option to go makes you understand the hellish conditions that they experienced. Thousands of horrifying images exist. Thankfully these images exist for future generations to have a perhaps some sort of understanding what happened that day. Images I will most likely remember for the rest of my life. Even the aftermath seeing the largest almost ridiculously huge buildings in history reduced to tomb of cement and metal. The are various erie images on the Internet, including a shot of the landmark sculpture the sphere which stood outside one of the towers dented and mangled.

The weeks that followed had everyone on edge. I still have the tendency to think to myself...that plan is flying a little low isn't it? Or looks a little too slanted? Isn't the Philadelphia airport in the other direction? We saw New York late night funny men David Letterman and Jon Stewart reduced to tears. We saw American flags on dozens of cars, we lit candles one night collectively as a nation. We discussed it in our classes, we tried to figure out who did this to us and why. We pondered about what could be done to make it safer. We realized what a poor condition the FBI was in. Missteps such as not having enough people to translate Arabic while intercepting messages, lack of organization,cutting the FBI during the 90's, and perhaps being a little too forgiving for the bombing of the USS Cole, and the WTC incident of 1993.

Eventually we got back to about our everyday lives at least those of us who didn't lose anyone directly did. It wasn't long before the liberals began exaggerating about prisoners of war. Ludicrously comparing it to Nazi prison camps. When an extremist liberal starts telling me it makes us no different from our enemy. I tell them about how they captured journalist Danny Pearl not only murdered him, but decapitated him on film. I also tell them the prisoners are in better living conditions than the were before. I also wonder how people expect to get any kind of information about future attacks. Ask nicely?

It wasn't long before we as nation debated if the word God should be in the Pledge of Allegiance. Baseball players childishly quibbled over money. People were wondering if that fruity white kid with the afro would become the American Idol (although hopefully none of my readers were not). The media exploited subjects like Anthrax, and came up with any thing they could to scare up viewers.

As I type this we are under an Orange state of an alert. It could be prisoners just trying to give us a good scare, and maybe we are wise enough to thwart any efforts of a repeat, even on a minor scale. I hope and pray that we will.