2026.09.11
* Lynette was there working at one One World Financial Center: facebook.com/share/p/14qpGSz7e2b/ . You should read her story. The sense of fear and overwhelming uncertainty of that day should not be forgotten.
* My mom had lived in NYC in the mid 1990s, and was there with Salvation Army support service after the (too easy to forget) 1993 WTC bombing. She had been moved to London by 2001, but here are notes from visiting Ground Zero as an SA rep 6 months later: kirk.is/2002/03/15
* My connection was minor; I had worked in the South Tower for a few days in 1997 or so, and then we happened to visit the area two years to the day before the attack, 9/11/1999. Those stories here: kirk.is/2001/09/13
* Like Lynette points out - we can't forget the trauma people in this nation faced, but also how it was used to justify other violence:
"best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]."
"Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
--Transcriptions from one of Donald Rumsfeld aides right after 9/11 and the WTC.
* Why were the terrorists so focused on WTC? Besides the towers' physical and financial prominence, this article about how the towers incorporated Middle Eastern themes has stuck with me. Such a vision of a blended world is anathema to all kinds of fundamentalists.
(And a reminder that when you let the fundamentalists dictate what some belief system is, the terrorists win.)
(Oh, and for what it's worth: my experience on the day - I remember hearing about a plane crash on NPR, in the parking lot of the Whole Foods on Route 3 near Burlington. First reports were it might have been a small plane, and I thought about that bomber airplane that ran into the Empire State Building during WW2... figured if buildings survived that, a small plane shouldn't be a problem.)
Weirdness as a kid you figure out years later