h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My roommate woke me up, the first tower had just been struck. We thought it was a terrible accident. Then we saw the second plane and watched in horror as it struck the building. We sat and watched the coverage for hours, shocked. It's left me with a terrible feeling of saddness. I dont want to live in fear, but have to admit im scared.
The first few weeks after I was amazed by the flags flying, and the patriotism i witnessed. Then was dismayed by the many corporations that seemed to use it to their advantage $$$ spoken here. We can never be secure or naive again.

I woke up and turned off my alarm. As soon as I went upstairs(my bedroom is in the basement), my mother approached me and told me, "Hurry, come upstairs to my room...Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center!" She showed me the news on the tv in her room, and I couldn't believe it. At school, we had an emergency assembly, and all day it was all anyone could talk about.

But the most moving thing about the whole experience was the international response. The next day on the news was a scene that brought tears to my eyes; a church in England playing "the Star-Spangled Banner" on their organ. I want to thank all of America's friends all over the world for their kindness and support...it truly does mean a lot.

Thank you.

I remember thinking that they'd have to close off the area while they tried to rebuild it. That they'd probably have to tear at least one of them down. Then, when the first tower fell, I was asking myself if they'd still call them 'the twin towers'.

More than anything, I remember the confusion of the American news studio ... the reporter at Ground Zero telling us that the second tower had fallen ... the guy in the studio not getting it at all: "The North Tower has fallen?"/"No, the South Tower has fallen, too!"/"The South Tower might fall?"/"No, it HAS fallen .."/"What the hell is he talking about? ..."


Feeling secure. Hm. Watching the mayor this morning ( the one whose name nobody will ever remember after Rudy ) reading the Gettysburg Address, it occured to me that - ideally - the repetition of those values the America is supposedly founded on - a free state, that all men are created equal - that the re-clarification of those values in the ruins of the WTC would give the average American pause. People directely affected by loss have ( apparently ) been acting on a need for greater community and kinship, and less by the political need for vengance. Nobody suggests ( well, actually, quite a few people do suggest ) that 9/11 is what America needed, but it may well have the result of giving what is still a adolsecent country a overly harsh slap. Not deserved, but a reminder of what it orginally set out to do. In 2002, England's Jubilee Year, the Union Jack was reinvented as a status symbol ... the golden jubilee, the world cup, and the death of new major royal family members all conspired during a normally good weathered summer to produce a genral feeling of pride and patriosm, without the usual stigma of racism. In the same year, the Stars And Stripes were a lot more in evidence, and so was this feeling that America was right, and good .. but with a lot less brashness, not only because that would have been deemed inappropiate, but also because america had been bloodied in front of the entire planet. It is still licking its wounds. We hope that it acts on the compassion and grace it has been speaking of in the past 12 months and acts spilling little blood. We don't have to level quanties of corpses here. A bully with a bloody nose is still a bully.

perhaps complacent would have been a better word then secure. A nation is only as good as it's population. Which to me means we have both good and evil, smart and stupid. I do not have rose colored glasses on, I do not believe we are without our faults. Did we need a comeuppance? I dont know. This nation has many faults, but I havent been able to locate one that doesnt. I havent found anywhere else I'd rather live. I guess when you have freedom, and allow all sorts of folks to speak their mind and voice their opinions you must suffer the fools as well as the rightous.