Please take a moment away from discussing last night's festivities to remember that morning 23 years ago.
It was a morning here in DC almost as spectacularly beautiful as this morning is, with barely a hint of a cloud in the sky. For my part, I was settled in at work when the first 'news' of the day's events came from our legislative assistant who was one of two people who had a tiny TV in her office (to monitor CSPAN). When I peeked at the images, I didn't think too much of them at first, thinking some sort of small plane had veered tragically off course. When it became apparent a little while thereafter that things were more ominous, the internet bandwidth quickly became overwhelmed and of limited utility for getting updates. Funny how times have changed in that respect in terms of communications. At one point that morning, there was a rumor that a plane had hit the white house, which is maybe 5-6 blocks away. I walked over to the south side of our offices and looked out the conference room window to see a thick pillar of black smoke from that direction -- so thick that I thought the rumor was true, even though that pillar came from several miles further away on that line of sight, at the Pentagon. (As it happened, Mrs. A was heading over to the Pentagon City mall with our young kids that morning, and of course had to turn around.) Watched the first tower go down live and felt sick to my stomach at the massive loss of humanity, and of course, at that point, you knew the second one would follow in due time. Cried a little. At lunchtime a lot of people were trying to go home, but getting no where in traffic, so I decided to just go home later in the day. But the eerie memory of the lunch hour was the extreme silence on the crowded street, except for the sound of Bob Marley's "One Love" from some guy's car radio. Probably the closest I'll ever come to Jacob Bronowski hearing "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" while entering downtown Nagasaki to do his BDA.
My office overlooked an adjacent local firehouse. In the coming weeks, those poor bastards were run ragged every time somebody put their brief case down next to them. I made them a dozen stromboli and dropped them off one morning.
It was a morning here in DC almost as spectacularly beautiful as this morning is, with barely a hint of a cloud in the sky. For my part, I was settled in at work when the first 'news' of the day's events came from our legislative assistant who was one of two people who had a tiny TV in her office (to monitor CSPAN). When I peeked at the images, I didn't think too much of them at first, thinking some sort of small plane had veered tragically off course. When it became apparent a little while thereafter that things were more ominous, the internet bandwidth quickly became overwhelmed and of limited utility for getting updates. Funny how times have changed in that respect in terms of communications. At one point that morning, there was a rumor that a plane had hit the white house, which is maybe 5-6 blocks away. I walked over to the south side of our offices and looked out the conference room window to see a thick pillar of black smoke from that direction -- so thick that I thought the rumor was true, even though that pillar came from several miles further away on that line of sight, at the Pentagon. (As it happened, Mrs. A was heading over to the Pentagon City mall with our young kids that morning, and of course had to turn around.) Watched the first tower go down live and felt sick to my stomach at the massive loss of humanity, and of course, at that point, you knew the second one would follow in due time. Cried a little. At lunchtime a lot of people were trying to go home, but getting no where in traffic, so I decided to just go home later in the day. But the eerie memory of the lunch hour was the extreme silence on the crowded street, except for the sound of Bob Marley's "One Love" from some guy's car radio. Probably the closest I'll ever come to Jacob Bronowski hearing "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" while entering downtown Nagasaki to do his BDA.
My office overlooked an adjacent local firehouse. In the coming weeks, those poor bastards were run ragged every time somebody put their brief case down next to them. I made them a dozen stromboli and dropped them off one morning.
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