Remembering 9/11

Remembering 9/11

In a few days, America will have an anniversary but

it’s not the kind that is celebrated with festivities. It

is a time for us to painftdly remember our vulnerability and mourn the loss of those who perished during that terrorist attack.

It is also a time when we remember those valiant souls w ho stepped forward, many of those also losing their lives, to help fellow Americans in deparate need. .

It was another tragedy that was vividly televised for the whole world to witness as a sign of the worst and best in humanity.

Waves of patriotism flooded this country after 9/11 with the red, white and blue proudly displayed on car bumpers, windows, house porches, office buildings and lining the streets of communities across this country.

We looked to our leaders for strength and guidance and some kind of understanding as to what had happened and how could it have happened and would it happen again.

The shield of seeming invincibility had been shattered. The United States had been penetrated and slapped about in a way never thought possible or allowable.

We were now in the limelight of a thundering violence that was only supposed to rock other countries in other places with unpronounceable names and cultures too foreign to understand or care about.

Now it was our turn and it hurt and continues to hurt.

Like the fall of Achilles, a weak spot had been found and we stumbled beneath its piercing effectiveness.

This attack was not the behavior of civilized peoples and their drive to do us in carries a momentum of rueful purpose and ferocity that few Americans understood or understand today or really know hoW" to deal with at all.

Watching movies made in New York before 2001, whether they be mysteries, comedies or love stories is always a jolt of perspective now.

You can clearly see those majestic Twin Towers in the backgrounds of many scenes.

But they are no more. And part of us is no more as well as we remember that fateful day in another September.