9/11 Anniversary

Cartoon by Jeff Parker, Florida Today

On September 11, 2001, I left my apartment in Brooklyn at the usual time of about 8:00am to start my daily commute to work in Port Washington (Long Island). My route put me on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway directly across from the southern tip of Manhattan, with the World Trade Center prominent in my sightline, and then north, driving parallel to the NYC skyline to the Long island Expressway. Even after having done the commute to Long Island for well over a year, the City-view with the early morning sunlight ALWAYS made me take note. That particular morning was perfectly clear-- no clouds at all.

For some reason I was listening to a CD that morning instead of my usual ritual of NPR. About 45 minutes later, I arrived to a state of confusion at the office as people were trying to make sense of the jumbled news reports that there was an explosion at the World Trade Center. I had just passed by there on my way in, but clearly had just missed it. We had no television, and the portable radio was inadequate, so I called Dad to see if he was watching the Today Show and could tell me what was going on. I relayed the information from him to my co-workers that there were rumors that a small plane had crashed downtown. Then the confusion was compounded when dad said "A plane just hit the the World Trade Center." I said that we had already heard that, and he said, "No-- another plane just hit the second tower!"

Now, it is certainly a testament to just how naive I was that my first reaction was that something was somehow malfunctioning with the airplanes and air traffic navigation systems at the NYC airports causing planes to crash. I truly believed that for a brief moment, until Dad said, "No-- this is terrorism." In unison with the rest of the civilized world, as has been proclaimed ad nauseum in the media since tht day, I/we lost our collective innocence on that day. We were suddenly living in the "after" version of our world, and we hadn't even begun to realize how deeply it had just been rocked.

The confusion became utter disorientation when I looked out the window of my office looking over Manhasset Bay and the Long Island Sound and could see two distinct billowing streams of dark smoke rising up from behind the hills off in the distance. I knew intellectually that I was seeing the smoke from the WTC. However, until that moment, I had always thought that the window of my office faced north. I tried to rationalize that the smoke must be from something else since (in my skewed geographical view of the world) my window faced north. When I managed to "get rational" again about the directions, I was shocked by the distance. All those hours and hours of sitting in my car driving back and forth to Long Island, and I was just over the hill from the City, and I was actually watching the smoke from the WTC rise into the sky in front of me-- not on television, but right before my eyes. When I thought back on that later, it was mind boggling how fixated I had become on the direction and distance to Manhattan.

Everyone has their own story of where they were and what they were doing that day, and it really seems to me that, at least among New Yorkers, we all share a deep understanding of the craziness we all experienced that day as we waited to hear news of unaccounted for friends and colleagues. The hastily crafted "Missing" flyers that appeared on lamp posts and blanketed the sides of buildings by the thousands became their own lasting reminder of the frantic desperation that so many felt. I can remember passing one of the walls and realizing that people were actually stopping and reading them in detail. I saw one face that seemed strangely familiar, although I couldn't place where I knew her. I finally realized that I had seen her sister holding up a copy of the flyer for a news camera and pleading for anyone with any information to call her.

For hours, even days, we watched the television, waiting for the talking heads to add something new from their last live report, but instead seeing more and more people with their printed flyers as hope gradually began to fade. The image of these "Missing" flyers has cemented itself in the American psyche.

This cartoon is brilliant. The message is conveys is disturbing.