Matt Yglesias

46 Responses to “9/11/01”

1. John Emerson Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:17 am

   I was getting ready to go to work when I took a look at the internet. First I thought it was some kind of hoax like the Orson Welles War of the Worlds hoax. I actually asked myself “This isn’t April 1, is it?” Then I thought that the “towers” were TV towers or something like that on top of the buildings, rather than the buildings themselves.

2. steve duncan Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:18 am

   This morning an AM radio call in here locally had a bevy of phoners on a rant about evil Arabs. Lots of talk about how 9/11 served as a perfectly suitable and understandable reason for citizens to fear and loathe people from the Middle East. Someone tossed in the Beirut barrack bombings and things got on a nice xenophobic roll. I called and asked how many people felt the Oklahoma City bombing served as justification for fearing 20-something white males? How many affected families were lobbying Congress for new laws monitoring the behavior, travel, job training, educational pursuits, writings, communications and purchasing activities of 20-something white males? How many of them had written letters to the editor bewailing the influx of damned 20-something white males into our country? Chirp, chirp.

3. Aaron Cass Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:26 am

   I remember a friend telling me that one of the towers was gone. I had no idea what that meant. The only thing that would fit in my head was that maybe one of the towers had a hole in it, or that several floors might be empty like a construction site before the partition walls are added. How could one of those enourmous towers be “gone”? Even when my friend said “no, it’s gone” I still couldn’t imagine it at all. I later saw, on a TV set up in a conference room, just what he meant. It was still hard to believe. Horribly hard to believe.

4. right Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:26 am

   I woke up that morning, the day before classes started, and tried to finish the book I had been reading for several weeks. That book: Stephen King’s “The Stand.” After I heard people in the hall yelping about towers falling, I put the book down. Had a hard time picking it back up for the next few weeks, to say the least.

   It was an unbelievably beautiful day.

5. Freedom Fry Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am

   I was trying to skip out of study hall in school when I saw the librarian staring at a TV in horror. I honestly thought she was watching a movie and was wondering why she was so upset. It wasn’t until later that I found out what was going on and how serious it all was.

6. Syd O Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:39 am

   I often like to think back to what life was like before 9/11. I’m not saying my life is completely different now, but to remember what it was like before the everyday grinding news of Iraq and Afghanistan and the bitter in-fighting of which party will do more to protect the American people, seems like forever ago. Not to say it was “carefree” but it was “lighter” environment to be in.

   In 2004 the U.S. was still in hysterics. Barely a year into a war we were still figuring out how we got into and to scared to make any changes in the people who put us there. Now, I think we’ve calmed down but these same people, who voted for us to go, are agitating the fear once again and preventing us from making the decision we need most: to move on from the emotional ambiguity of 9/11 and the people who abused it.

7. Petey Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:40 am

   I had just gotten home from a pretty fun night out and turned on NPR to fall asleep to. Heard the news, and rushed out to a bar to pour coffee down my throat and watch the teevee. No one that I passed on the street had any clue of what was happening. Got to the bar just in time to see the towers fall.

   The bar filled up and everyone started making guesses of the casualty count. I guessed at the low end of the range, but was still way too high.

   ‘Twas a quite beautiful day.

8. Led Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:42 am

   Unfortunately, it’s also worth remembering that only people in small towns and red states love America. We cosmopolitain New Yorkers just get blown up for it. And, yes, that makes remembering 9/11 a little bit more painful. If only Obama really could end the culture war. I want my country back.

9. RoboticGhost Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 8:43 am

   I’m kind of surprised Matt was able to get on the Internet. That was my first clue something was up. I was at my desk downloading something for work when the download suddenly slowed down to a stop. No web pages were coming up. CNN, Slashdot, etc… were all timing out. After checking the usual suspects on my network that affect Internet traffic, I was reaching for my phone when a co-worker popped her head in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

   Its remarkable how well I remember every detail of that morning. Its crystal clear, and I barely remember the bus ride in this morning.

10. Don Williams Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am

    What’s painful is that –seven years later — the Washington
    political establishment is still lying to America re why that attack happened. Lying to the survivors families, as well.

    What’s painful is that the 911 Commission refused to address Bush’s Big Lie — that it happened “because they hate our freedom”. See Ernest May’s comments to the New Republic and the new book “The Commission –The Uncensored History of the 911 Investigation”. But hey, the idea that the American people could expect the Truth from Lee Hamilton is comical.
    That they could not expect it from his Democrat enablers is less so.

    It appears that we can elect Republican Liars or we can elect Democratic Liars. But when the sun rises tomorrow morning, they will still be lying.

    And our smug Mainstream News Media has maintained the coverup as well –even though their own archives have the 1997-1998 interviews Bin Laden gave to them explaining why he was declaring war on the USA. The News Media protects the same special interests that the politicans protect: Big Oil and the Israel Lobby.

    That’s why the real tragedy of Sept 11, 2001 is that Al Qaeda hit the World Trade Center towers — and that they missed the US Capitol Building and the New York Times building.

11. Matt B Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 8:51 am

    I was watching “Today” over breakfast when the first plane hit. I thought “Well a plane did once hit the Empire State, but it sure doesn’t look foggy.” Then I took a shower. By the time I’d gotten out, the second plane hit. “Oh, shit.” Then I went to class.

    We took a break either before or during class to watch a TV in one of the labs. By then the Pentagon was hit, too but I think we missed the two collapses. When class got out, both towers were down.

    Wisco has a permanent blood donation center Thurs + Friday when class is in session. I happened to be volunteering there — it was totally packed that week.

12. low-tech cyclist Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:03 am

    9/11/01 and the days surrounding it were some of the most impossibly beautiful days the D.C. area has ever seen.

    The contrast was almost unbearable that week.

13. Pan Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    I recall it was a beautiful morning as I walked into the Pengton at 7 that morning. I watched an airplane take off from National Airport flying by the building. I had a TV in my office and watched the events unfold in NYC (I’m from NYC)in disbelief. I joked that the Pentagon police should be careful in case we’re next, not knowing how right I’d be in just a few minutes. When it happened, I could’t comprehend it when we were told to evacuate the building, since I didn’t feel a thing (I was on the opposite side of the building from the impact), and the evacuation seemed to be more like a fire drill. It wasn’t until I made it outside that I saw the smoke drift over the building. I decided not to stick around the drove home on the deserted roads heading west out of town. I heard the WTC collapse on the radio on the way home and was there by 10:30. My wife was hysterical when I got back. That day was surreal. I’m still emotional about it and all the people ther perished.

14. Jason Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Yes, it was a gorgeous day. I was in Arlington – if you were outside, you could see a crystal blue sky with a jagged line of gray smoke cutting across it. Amazing to think that there were so few televisions in buildings back then – I went to the Marriot hotel in Crystal City where about 30 of us watched in horror as the towers collapsed.

15. low-tech cyclist Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:09 am

    The bar filled up and everyone started making guesses of the casualty count. I guessed at the low end of the range, but was still way too high.

    Here’s to the memory of Rick Rescorla. On account of him, Morgan Stanley’s 2,700 employees were either out of Building 2, or most of the way down the stairs, before the second plane hit.

16. AlexG Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Watched both planes hit the towers from my apartment window as I got dressed for work. I never made it to the office that day. Listened to Howard Stern as I took phone calls from frightened friends and relatives. Had to listen to one friend tell me how we deserved this. I didn’t like that. The weirdest part of the day was hearing the rolling scream that worked its way uptown as the towers fell. One of the saddest was standing outside St. Vincent’s hospital near the outside triage unit they had set up. It was empty.

17. djeri Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    My mother and I didn’t so much hear as feel the explosion at the Pentagon. We were in my parents place on the bluffs overlooking the Potomac just south of Alexandria. I turned around and saw a huge pillar of smoke, so we turned on NPR and the news of the first NYC crash was still more or less in the process of being verified. So she took me down to National Airport to rent a car. While I was there, the power that be closed the airport. The crowd was very well behaved. Once I got back to my parents’ place, the emails (from Russia and the Netherlands) and phone calls (my wife was in New Zealand) started coming along with the video from NYC and Kabul.

    I agree with lowtech cyclist and the others who were in DC. The weather was marvelous. Two days later when I got up to Lehigh in Bethlehem PA some of my students were talking about folks who died in the Towers.

18. Jeffrey Davis Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am

    I love the “9/11″ novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I almost never finish novels since by around the 2/3rd mark, the upshot of most of them is fixed and the author is just running his mouth. But I finished this one.

    My chief memory of the day, from the safety of the hinterlands, is that most people were peculiarly unmoved by the events at first. I’d seen an alert about the 1st plane on the Web and went and found a TV. Just in time to see the 2nd plane hit. It was numbing, but almost all of my co-workers were either bogged down in work or uninterested. I thought about the crowd around the TV when the Challenger exploded. I kept trying to figure out why the Challenger had been compelling and why these smoking skyscrapers didn’t matter. Eventually, I was able to move a TV into the office where I could keep an eye on things, and by the time of the 1st collapse, everyone had quit working and were just watching quietly. I think finally it was simply the enormous scale which made it less immediately compelling than the Challenger explosion: there weren’t enough neuron connections in the brain to process it.

19. Pan Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    MSNBC is currently replaying that morning’s broadcast. I’m reliving all the emotions that day in real time.

20. Eric Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am

    I was in Times Square at the time. I remember everyone assuming that midtown might be next. It took hours of inactivity before we felt reasonably sure that the attacks were over.

    I remember rumors that the WH was hit…that there was a car bomb at the state dept. It was crazy.

    I agree with the poster who said that he/she remembers everything about that day and can barely remember details from this morning. I can’t believe that it’s been 7 years.

21. Andrew Fly Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    I woke up and turned on the TV, which had be on ESPN when I turned it off the night before. So I found it odd that Yassir Arafat was being interviewed on ESPN, since I was expecting SportsCenter. ESPN was simulcasting the ABC News feed.

    Later that day, I tagged along with my friend to return his cable box to the cable supplier. We drove by a line about a quarter-mile long of people lined up outside the nearest blood bank. This was in Tampa.

    These are only two of the thousands of things that happened that day that probably had never happened before.

22. charlotte Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    It was beautiful here in Arlington that morning. I’d taken my little boy to his first-grade class. My husband had come in the night before from a business trip to Poland. I was making the bed, listening to Susan Stamberg on NPR doing a bit about a young African-American teacher, I think … The broadcast was interrupted with news of the first plane hitting. I’ve often wondered what became of the young teacher who’s story was nixed mid-stream.

    What made me want to pull my hair out by the roots when I heard it was the story of the class of youngsters with their teachers en route to a treat in LA. They were in the plane that struck the Pentagon. I still cringe whenever I think about that. Agony.

    And I remember all throughout that day how my husband and I looked at each other asking Where the Fuck are Bush and Cheney?

23. Andrew Fly Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    btw, Arafat must have said “this is a terrible thing” (in English) about 8 times

24. Edward, the mad shirt grinder Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    I can’t believe it’s been 7 years, either. I was on the West Coast; I woke up in a hotel room and turned on NPR which at that hour was running a BBC feed. I heard the announcer’s distinguished-sounding voice say something like, “There have been reports that a small plane has hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan.” I thought “hmm, that seems unusual” and turned on CNN, just about in time to see the reports of the second plane. Later that morning I saw the collapse of the second building, live on TV. Like pretty much everyone above, it took hours for my brain to wrap itself fully around the reality of what had happened.

25. M Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am

    Today is my father’s birthday.

    http://www.clivejames.com/poetry/james/fires

26. burning flock Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    I like what TNR did.

27. Mark Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    I will never forget that day. I was managing a B&N just a mile or so down the road from the Petagon. We had just opened the store that morning when we heard what happened in NY. We turned on a radio to hear the news. I remember walking out back to look at National Airport to see if planes were still taking off. Shortly after that we got word that the Pentagon had been hit. I went behind the store again and could see the smoke and smell the jet fuel. It was awful.

    After that everything became surreal. We had a group of about 6 army soldiers come in the store looking for a phone to use. They had been driving to the Pentagon when they saw the plane hit. They turned around and stopped in our store to regroup. With them was a general apparently of some standing. I set them up in the office where they made calls. They let us know about the 4th plane headed to DC before any of the reports on the radio. The radio was chaotic. It was broadcasting any rumor that came to them – building on fire in Rosslyn, car bomb at the state department, etc. I thought it was a war zone out there.

    Once things settled down, we closed the store and sent the staff home. My guys who lived in DC had to walk home as they closed all the bridges. There was a huge line of people walking south on Rt 1. It was all so odd. I stayed with the army guys, volunteering the store as a staging area if needed. They found out where they needed to go, borrowed some maps and left. As I drove home around 2pm the roads were empty. 395 south was a ghost town. I was the only car on the road and at every exit were army personel, guarding the road as 395 noth was closed. It felt like something out of a post apocalyptic movie – only car on a major highway with nothing but army vehicles around. Except, as others have said it was beautiful outside.

    Still hard to think about.

28. bdbd Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    I was about to leave the office to catch a train for Washington DC, to participate in an aviation activity forecasting working session. I didn’t go, the meeting didn’t happen, and so much changed in those next few hours. I too could not have predicted that we’d be where we are now, nor that so much would be squandered.

29. Tom Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    My brother (in Denver) called me (in Seattle) to tell me someone had set off a bomb somewhere in downtown NYC, but that our parents were okay. My dad was out of town, nobody was quite sure where he was or how to get in touch with him. It took me a day to get through to Mom on the phone, and the same amount of time for Dad to get back into Manhattan. Yes the weather was gorgeous that day and the whole following week, I spent a good amount of time in my backyard looking up at the contrail-free blue sky.

30. Brent Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    My senior year of high school- I remember being really annoyed that all my teachers would make a token remark at the beginning of each class and maybe turn the TV on for five minutes but would then continue to plow through school work. How could anyone concentrate at a time like that?

    And on the way home from school every gas station had lines out to the street. Everyone was just sure we’d have some sort of gas shortage or price surge. How pathetic that this was our biggest concern in southeast Ohio. And yet, in retrospect, I’d say that’s appropriately symbolic.

    I also remember being amazed at how many people had never heard of “Usama” bin Laden.

31. daveNYC Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    I was taking the day off, so I found out when a friend called and told me that the towers were gone. Spent the next few hours watching the news. Ended up going for a run around the Central Park reservoir just to get a break from the news. I remember hearing the roar of the CAP that was up over the city by that point.

32. a guy Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I lived in Manhattan on the upper east side at the time. The thing I remember most was walking back from school with my dad and brother. The streets were essentially deserted and anyone we did see looked like hell. Occasionally we’d see someone covered head-to-toe in soot. Fighter planes would pass overhead, really low in the sky. It was surreal. Also I remember how much misinformation was spread during the day about other planes, car bombs, various terrorist groups claiming responsibility, etc. Then at night my neighborhood smelled of something that I’d never smelled before and hope never to smell again. All our windows were closed but it still permeated our apartment.

33. pseudonymous in nc Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I didn’t see what happened live. I stepped on a train at the equivalent of 9.00am ET and listened to the BBC describe what was happening on the radio. When I got off that train, four hours later, the local newspaper had rushed out a special late edition with an artefact-ridden digital photo on the front page.

    Earlier that year, I’d been up 4 WFC after business hours and heard stories of how as light aircraft would fly in down the Hudson, the pilots waved at the people in the Merrill Lynch offices. On that trip, I flew out of Logan, and told everyone I knew that it was a security nightmare waiting to happen.

34. Luke Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    What I will never forget is how united we seemed after the attacks. It may not have been real. It probably wasn’t. But when the flags popped up everywhere, when people cried together, when I watched the Yankees in the world series and actually didn’t hate them for once, it was the most American that I’ve ever felt. For once, people from small towns and big cities, people of every race and political party, had something in common, some united cause. That was the proudest of my country I have ever been. Here we are in 2008 and I often feel ashamed to be an American, because of the way our leaders take the emotions we felt at that time and twist them again and again to dupe us. I feel like something uniquely American came out of the woodwork and cut through the bullshit for once after 9/11. Something that the founding fathers intended to happen shone out through the twisted wreck this country has become. I think back to that time whenever I read about the newest government scandal, petty campaign squabble, or idiotic way our president has embarrassed us this week. I will never forget that feeling, and I hope that this polarization will end so that we can get back to it someday.

35. Bedtime for Democracy Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    My then fiance and I were getting ready for work that morning in our apartment in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn). This was to be our last day of work that week before heading off to New Orleans for our wedding on Saturday. Needless to say, we were distracted. We had NY1 on as we usually did and were watching the footage of the smoking north tower as she was ironing her skirt and were bantering about how her commute was going to probably suck as she needed to take the A/C/E. My upstairs neighbor at the time was a news colleague and he came down and invited me to check it out from the roof, so we did. As has oft been told, it was a stunningly beautiful day—clear blue sky and near perfect morning temperature. As we all marveled at the day, we noticed that we certainly weren’t alone in finding a better vantage point. Neighbors on their rooftops as far as we could see. Then there was the tower. The smoke was ominously thick and my buddy remarked that it seemed overly so if it had been a small plane. After a while, we all started to head back down when suddenly we heard it: the high-pitched whine of jet engines, faint but quickly growing louder. It took a few minutes but when we saw it my whole body went cold. Some folks started shouting about it and soon everyone was yelling back and forth. It felt like you were watching a drive-in movie from way in the back of the lot. Everything was smallish and slightly soft-focused. When it hit, there was a collective cry from the rooftops. Horror mixed with disbelief, lots of ‘holy shit!’ repeated as if it were a mantra. My friend and I stood in shocked silence before heading down to our distraught girlfriends and the eventual chaos in our neighborhood and our city. My whole life had just been derailed and yet I wouldn’t know for months how far the ripples would spread. See, I didn’t lose any loved ones in the towers that day but I lost my city and I lost my friends over time. Our wedding, postponed one month, was a happy occasion, just not quite the same. I’ve not been back to NYC since leaving in 2003 and my life has flourished in so many ways. Beyond the anniversary each year, little things pop up to remind me how how blessed I was to have been there to witness it firsthand. I will not allow the catastrophic failures of the past eight years, nor the GOP gutter politics of this election cycle to subjugate this experience within false narratives or overheated rhetoric from the likes of Rudy Giuliani. Peace to NYC and all Americans on this day!
    b4d

36. J Hertzberg Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Late that evening, I was driving on I-91 in central Connecticut, when I came upon a line of fire engines moving south in convoy. It was the fire department of Hartford, CT. Evidently the call had gone out across the whole region to come to the aid of the NYFD and its hundreds of missing men. Passing cars were honking their horns in salute.

    Witnessing this solemn procession was a sort of coda that summarized for me the gravity of the day’s events. If the mighty city of New York needed help from the small and bankrupt city of Hartford, we had all been struck very low indeed.

37. JonF Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 8:27 pm

    I was camping on Lake Superior in Canada that day, and I didn’t get the news till the next day when I stopped at a store/trading post/tourist trap run by the local Ojibway. They had a tiny TV and a crowd was gathered around it. I must have stood there rooted for an hour.
    I ended up cutting short the camping trip and headed east to Sudbury where I holed up in a hotel with the TV on. Eventually I made my way down to Toronto, where I had planned to spend the weekend anyway.
    The Canadian reaction in those days was moving. There were American flags flying everywhere (how many Americans could produce a Canadian flag were the roles reversed?), churches with signs reading “God bless America”, and the American consulate in Toronto was besieged with mounds of flowers. The Toronto airport was closed too, and the area had an errie feel, like in one of those end-of-the-world movies.
    Ocasionally I hear rightwingers claiming foreigners didn’t care about 9-11, or even rejoiced, and I want to punch their damn lights out.

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