Monday, September 11, 2006

Five Years Ago Today...

I was teaching 16 Third Graders when I found out. Where were you?

13 Comments:

Blogger Just Shu said...

I had an 8:30 class that morning, which remarkably I was at, and the initial details were real fuzzy, and it was assumed tat it was nothing major. Throughout class people were getting updates on their cell phones and what not. Not sure if we stayed in class the whole time, but I did spend the rest of teh say in front of the TV watching the news.

September 11, 2006 6:09 PM  
Blogger Just Shu said...

I had an 8:30 class that morning, which remarkably I was at, and the initial details were real fuzzy, and it was assumed tat it was nothing major. Throughout class people were getting updates on tehir cell phones and what not. Not sure if we stayed in class the whole time, but I did spend th rest of teh say in front of the TV w atching the news.

September 11, 2006 6:10 PM  
Blogger SHEV said...

i was in 6th grade and my quarter got stuck in the canteen and i got one of the big girls to come shake it out for me and elisheva gotlib came over to us and starting saying how the twin towers fell and i remember thinking what were the twin towers and why do i care? so scary, i remember every detail of that day

September 11, 2006 6:16 PM  
Blogger stillruleall said...

I was on a bus going to New York from Providence. My friends all updated me on my cellphone what was going on, and i told the driver, who drove into a gas station to call his boss. Then we turned around and went back to Providence. I took the next bus into New York, three days later.

September 11, 2006 6:52 PM  
Blogger torontopearl said...

I had just gotten to work, was in the lobby waiting for the elevator. My co-worker came out of the company gym, met me at the elevator and told me she'd heard on the radio while working out that a plane had just gone into one of the Twin Towers. I thought it was a freaky airline accident.
We got into our offices, people began to talk, radios went on, a mini TV was played and the phones began to ring. Work was very disruptive and people very upset and they let us go home just after noon.
I went home, turned on the TV news but kept flipping channels 'cause I wanted to see what was going on and I didn't want to see too.
I had to keep busy and was doing and folding laundry and doing menial household tasks to keep my mind off of everyone and everything. Needless to say I was very upset and very scared.

September 11, 2006 7:42 PM  
Blogger The Zwicker said...

I was in my office preparing for a deposition that was scheduled for 9:30 that morning. Drew of Drew and Mike mentioned a plane hit one of the Twin Towers. Like the radio hosts and many others, I assumed that it was an errant plane that wouldn't cause much damage, much like that famous WWII-era photo of the Empire State Building. The show kept going when, a few minutes later, the show's producer interrupted Drew and Mike to tell them another plane hit the other tower. After the producer explained that he was serious, we all knew that we were under attack. Fortunately, the witness did not appear for the deposition.

September 12, 2006 6:15 AM  
Blogger docyaak said...

i was in the north tower elevator on the 57th floor and the thing just stopped so i climbed out the top and slid down the cables of the elvator shaft to safety!

September 12, 2006 9:13 AM  
Blogger Just Passing Through said...

long story short, I was down the block when the second plane hit. Being the moron that I am, I had to get closer to watch and was a block away when the south tower came down.

September 12, 2006 9:40 AM  
Blogger Noahdaddy said...

An adjuster from an insurance company that insures US veterans was meeting with us to see if the company was going to send us business. One of the attorneys walked into the offices and said that while he was at Starbucks he saw a plane crash into the WTC. I said "by accident?" and he explained that this was a SECOND plane, the first one having crashed into the Tower moments earlier.

We tried to go about our business, but very little billable work was done that day. The adjuster ended up sending us some work.

September 12, 2006 11:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was getting my then 5 month old son ready for his first Mommy-n-Me class. I saw it on tv, but didn't get it. Went to the class, we sang and shook musical instruments at our babies, and were all quite confused as to what had happened.

I remember feeling freaked out for months when seeing planes flying across the horizon.

September 12, 2006 3:54 PM  
Blogger Olah Chadasha said...

lish, what year were you in??? It was the next night, Wednesday night, when we were evacuated from Brookdale for the bomb threat. I was on the 3rd floor, looked out the window, and saw all the cops stationed on the corners running for their life, eastward. When you see cops running, that's when things are serious. I was in class on Lexington and 32nd, in the Sy Sims building. I was in my MIS class, so we were all on the computers. I was trying to be a good student that day, so I didn't go on the internet. Then, some girls in the back started loudly whispering about a bomb going off. I thought another terrorist attack happened in Israel. Then, some girl busted in the class and said that one of the Twin Towers had just fallen down. I was stupid and started walking down in that direction. I have a picture of the smoke cloud about a minute after the North Tower fell.
-OC

September 13, 2006 4:25 PM  
Blogger bec said...

i was teaching a class of eleventh grade english students when one of my students was text messaged. (he later found out that his best friend's father, who was a fire fighter, died that day in the wtc.) i grabbed my radio from the bookroom and all of my classes just sat listening to the news, trying to call their families on their cell phones. later that morning the cloud of smoke came into brooklyn and wafted over bedford avenue. even with the windows closed in the teachers' lounge, i could smell the smell of burning and i stood there in the hallway, only a few months pregnant, retching into a paper bag.

September 14, 2006 11:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was at work and first heard on the radio that "a small plane has crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center".

One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports. These "hijackers" somehow managed to board all four airliners with their tickets, yet not even ONE got his name on any of the flight manifests. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name, more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Further making themselves look guilty, the Bush administration steadfastly refused for over a year to allow a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed, only agreeing to it on the conditions that they get to dictate its scope, meaning it was based on the false pretense of the "official story" being true with no other alternatives allowed to be considered, handpicked all its members making sure the ones picked had vested interests in the truth remaining buried, and with Bush and Cheney only "testifying" together, only for an hour, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with their "testimonies" not being recorded by tape or even written down in notes. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastic far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.

November 03, 2006 6:49 PM  

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