From Culture11 - A Blessing and a Curse

One evening there was a young man there with white gauze over his left eye, holding a pan of baked ziti in one hand, and his wife’s arm with the other. He told me he was temporarily blinded by the first tower collapse when powdered glass abraded his eyes. A stranger led him across the Brooklyn Bridge, back to his building, up his stairs and into his apartment before telling him goodbye. And he never found out the stranger’s name. Cooking food for the surviving firefighters down the street – that was his way of saying thanks.

Webloggin has their annual bevy of posts. Wonderful stuff.

Captain Capitalism has an Old School 9-11 Tribute

What amazes me is that the death tolls of Americans/Allies versus how many of these terrorist scumbags we killed is rarely posted. You don’t see it on the news, there’s no running tally, it’s nowhere near as watched as say the score of a football game, yet it’s immensely important, if not the most important thing or measure for the whole war. Because the goal is to kill as many terrorist scumbags as possible.

Richard at No Libs has his annual remembrance of those who fought and died on United 93

Cassandra fights a War of Words at her keyboard.

We were supposed to retire.

That was the way life was supposed to unfold: a little house in the woods just big enough for the two of us, the chance to finally control our own lives. No more 12-15 hour work days and year long separations. Grad school for me and probably for him. We’d talked and dreamed about it for years. So many things came crashing down to earth along with those planes. Dreams. Plans. Sometimes a family’s entire life savings. We were the lucky ones, in so many ways. I didn’t lose a loved one that day, though I came close. Too close. Close enough to appreciate how bad it could have been. Perhaps that why I never understood the bitterness, the anger I read later in newspapers, heard on the evening news, mostly from those who didn’t seem to have suffered any direct loss at all. I suppose I never saw the point.

John of Argghhh! asks Where Were You? and his Denizens add their stories.

DaGoddess remembers the United part of the United States.

Seven years ago, I remember, amongst the horrifying images and all the uncertainty, a sense of community that bloomed quickly, reaching far and wide. It didn’t matter if you knew the name of the person standing closest to you, you instinctively looked to them for confirmation that you were still here, suddenly brothers/sisters/family, drawn together by the need to be near someone — anyone — who could hold your hand, hug you, or just stand close by and tremble with you.

Ann Althouse reminds us that we’ve been safe since that day, but may not be forever.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 3:08 pm and is filed under September 11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.