I’ve been reluctant to comment on the events of Tuesday, September 11th, as I am afraid of contributing to what is becoming a wall of white noise. So much rumor and rhetoric is flying is every direction that I fear that any comments on the subject, regardless of their nature and content, will only help to bury us deeper in circular arguments and premature speculation.
It is for these reasons that aov has been dormant for the last few days. Rob made an initial post early in the day on Tuesday and a few readers replied. As it became clear what was unfolding we decided to remove the post (and the replies). I was afraid of the conversations that may ensue with such fresh anger and fear. I didn’t feel we (or anyone, for that matter) would have anything constructive to say so soon after the events and with so little concrete information. What I fear most is a permanent record of our short-sighted anger and ignorance at historical turning point.
In an email from Matt, he wisely remarked that “This is something that will be talked about for the rest of our lives; there is no need to begin today.”
A few strange days have passed and I have received several emails from regular aov readers honouring our decision but respectfully suggesting that the aov readership is both ready and capable of having a worthwhile conversation. I agree.
Some interesting phenomenon I’ve observed in the last few days:
- There has been a disappointing amount of disrespectful, dishorourable, prematurely speculative, and accusatory online discussions (as there are no social repercussions online – you can make an offensive comment, shut off your computer, and walk away).
- At the same time, there has been much positive and healing online discussion. A conversation of those who have found refuge and healing through music struck me as particularly fresh and constructive at the appropriately named Signal vs. Noise website.
- The simple technology of the Internet amazed me in a way that it hasn’t since I received my first email or sent my instant message. Amazon.com setup a simple donation-via-creditcard system for the Red Cross (which I’m sure many of you have seen by now). When I first discovered the page about $100,000 had been donated. I refreshed the page (a web-developers habit, I suppose) and the figure jumped by a few thousand dollars. Surprised, I refreshed the page again, and the figure jumped by thousands more. My best estimates put the rate of donation at approximately $100,000/hour. However, it wasn’t the amount that I found most compelling. Rather, it was the unfamiliar, tangible, and immediate feeling of community and participation I felt in knowing that so many people from so many places were doing exactly what I was doing at the time.
- “People don’t sacrifice themselves for no reason.” – from a post at Dave W.’s Scripting.com (link via Reinvented.net).
- “New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs.” – from the powerful article, An Afghan-American Speaks at Salon.com.
- This is a difficult thing to write about. Clichés such as “in the wake of…” are difficult to avoid. Words like tragedy, atrocity, and massacre seem cheap and inadequate. Even in this post, I’ve used the phrase, “the events of Tuesday, September 11th” for lack of a better description.
I was brought back to a family vacation years ago where I can clearly remember standing on the roof of the World Trade Center looking down at our tiny van below. I’m having great difficultly reconciling this memory with the images of this same building crumbling to the ground. I do want to hear how these events have affected you personally. I do not want to hear accusations and speculation.
I have found myself, like everyone else, having been staring at the TV in a daze for days. I was in the middle of a presentation at the curling rink in
Summerside last Tuesday when someone came into the room to tell what was going on. I drove home at lunch and the TV has seemingly been on ever since. One thing that has happened here in New Glasgow, PEI is that there are no passenger jets overhead flying between Europe and the US east coast. Usually there are 5 to 10 in the sky at any one
time. You notice the silence. I have seen two con-trails but am reliably told that it is likely a US military refueling tanker. Moncton airport apparently has about 5 US jets operating out of it now, according to a PEI air traffic controller. I flew the flag at half mast. Most people did around here. I have thought alot about the bit of business I have done in the US on four trips in the last year and the people I have met. I thought about the road in Connecticut I drove down with Dan and Nathan after getting a bit lost one evening trying to find the sea
from a place near Hartford. The road was parallel to the one we wanted as it turned out. It was fifty miles of large homes on forested lots – multi-car garages, guest houses. As we drove south cars passed us going north, going home for the night. When we hit the coast road, the commuter train station was full of people heading for what looked to us Maritimers as luxery cars, coming home from a workday in the City, in Manhattan. The next day, I bought a big Connecticut flag – like I like to wherever I travel. I flew it at half mast Sunday.
I was one of the few people who unfortunately watched the events unfold live start to finish (let’s pray they are finished). I usually get up and watch CNN/CNBC in the morning while I get ready for work. I turned on my TV just as they switched live to the first tower that had been hit by the jetliner. They were calling it an unbelievable accident. Speculation about the accident was already becoming apparent as CNN reporters tried to report the facts, but let there bias slip out in moments of awe. Then as I sat and watched the first tower burn, a second plane came into view….live….. The commentators on station I was watching (can’t remember if it was CNN or CNBC) were yelling “ANOTHER PLAN! ANOTHER PLANE!”. Then it slammed into the buildings that I once stood at the bottom of. The buildings that I couldn’t go to the top of in ’91 because of the war in the gulf. I immediately called Steve (AOV CEO) and as I talked to him the first of the towers collapsed. I can’t remember what I said or how long we talked, but I urged him to go home and watch TV.
A close friend of mine and silverorange had bought a ticket for flight 11 but canceled it a week before the incident.
My parents own a resort on PEI. September and October’s reservations were all canceled within 48 hours.
News websites couldn’t handle the traffic.
Commerce around the world, including the commerce done on E-commerce websites hosted by silverorange, screeched to a halt.
Children’s fathers died.
Father’s children died.
I fear that a small evil has stirred up an even larger one.
I now live in fear.
I was teaching at the time of the attacks. One on the maintainence people passing by mentioned it. i looked at my students not knowing how to react. But then it sunk in. i quickly ended the class and accessed the net, thinking, “Is this a joke? It must…” I got as far as that as my NYTimes page popped up with the images looking straight out of ‘Independence Day’. It wasn’t a joke, it was real. All of a sudden, borders dissolved in my mind. We were no longer Canadians. They were no longer Americans. Thousands of innocent human beings were murdered in less than one hour. Thousands. We talk of global villages, our village has been violated. I’m still reeling from the ramifications of what this is all about. I visited New York years ago. Growing up in a small hick town, my ‘Camelot’ was New York City. I’ve always had a love for the place. Now this. Sorry for the ramble, and thanks Steve for being one of the few ‘media’ outlets that are not jumping to conclusions.
I was looking after my wee son Oliver on Tuesday morning while Catherine was at a meeting at the PEI Crafts Council. Actually, our friend Carol was looking after Oliver while I was supposed to be hard at work. Turning on the computer, I checked slashdot.org for recent news, and saw their first bulletin about the attack about 3 or 4 minutes after it happened. Carol and Oliver and I then spent the next 5 or 6 hours glued to the television as the day played itself out, later joined by Catherine when her meeting ended.
I can’t say as though the true immensity of the attack hit me until last night when I was watching Late Night with David Letterman (this is odd, I realize). First came an uncommonly tear-filled rant from Letterman himself, followed by a very odd interview with Dan Rather, who kept breaking down himself, obviously overwrought with grief or confusion or just a plain old need to let loose after 5 days of keeping it together as one of the triumvirate of America’s Trusted Voices. Somehow this seemed to crack through the play-by-play and colour disaster commentary that we’d been watching, almost non-stop, since last Tuesday, and tell me more about the Enormity of the situation than anything else.
Midway through the interview, Letterman asked Rather to try and characterize the evil doers behind the attacks. Rather’s response suggested that they are hate-filled people who hate America because of “our democracy, our freedoms, our way of life.” This seemed hard for Letterman to grasp — he someone couldn’t picture people filled so much with hatred that they would commit such a heinous act.
This is my first Major Disaster Event as a father. Much as I never would have thought this fact would change my perspective, it has. I am, in a sense, an artist of my son’s future world. Or at least a contributor. The problem, in my eyes, is not how quickly or efficiently can find and kill who did this (which seems to be the Official American Line) but rather how quickly or efficiently can we start down a path where we’re not forever calling each other names, funding wars against each other, trading drugs for guns or guns for drugs to fight guerilla wars, and gradually constructing a world where the haves have, and the have-nots don’t, more and more and more.
Everything for me comes back to the playground: some kid hits Oliver… what do I want him to do? Beat the crap out of the other kid, ignore the assault completely, or do something else. Deep in my heart, I think it’s got to be the something else. Unfortunately I’m not exactly sure what that entails.
Editorial from Issue #2 of The Cadre, available Sept 19th:
The American flags that are waved so frequently on television look different lately. The easy confidence with which they are usually brandished has been replaced by obvious determination accompanied by fear and uncertainty, often with anger.
The concept of “horror”, long tossed about as if it were a two-cent word appropriate for tragedies as mundane as a rise in the price of gasoline, or as trivial as a Hollywood divorce, has been recreated as a tangible thing, delivered as obviously and unequivocally as a punch in the stomach. I have seen nearly a hundred planes hit the World Trade Center in the last week, and the same feeling of horror is present every time. A feeling of nausea which is not easily dispelled remains with me.
I first heard about the attacks from the mailman, who I wanted to believe was wrong, confused or exaggerating, but the reporter on the radio shared the same story. They shared the same incredulous tone of voice – that tone that countless people adopted for days, one that said “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, or that it is true. But I am. It is.”
As that incredulous tone quickly became harder-edged, much of the media coverage has focussed on the apparent sophistication of the terrorist attacks. The image of an organized group of terrorists, capable of inflicting such catastrophic damage is indeed frightening, but I find the single-minded hatred they possess much more disturbing than the efficiency with which it was articulated.
The war that the US government assures the world is coming, and that many of the people who wave its flag angrily urge as the only answer, seems to be a response that it is doomed from the outset. Wars are conducted against large groups – a race, a religion, or a people – but it is a far smaller group of criminals responsible for the terrorist attacks. Certainly it will be a much larger group that will end up suffering, the vast majority of them no more guilty than those who died in the World Trade Center.
That the world is marching toward war, seems at times as inevitable as watching the World Trade Center crumble for the hundredth time. I do understand the United States’ need to act. I understand the incredible strength of will required to avoid a war. However, even if there are no credible alternatives yet, war cannot be chosen by default.
Matthew Dorrell
Editor-In-Chief
I was interested in reading Peter’s comments as a first crisis as a Dad. The same is true for me. I have these echoes of war in the past that the 1990’s had silenced. When I was a child in suburban Ontario in the late 60’s I remember asking my mom if we were at war. We were watching Vietnam on TV. I remember having bombing dreams after Dad told me for the millionth time that when he was my age, Hitler carpet bombed his grannies house along with their whole town – Greenock, Scotland – for three days. I remember heading about the fall of Saigon on the school bus heading to junior high. I remember the fear in high school and undergrad that Ronnie R. and Leonid B. would vaporize us all. I remember in law school wondering with the rest of the team if the intermural basketball game should go on given that the US had just started bombing Bagdad. And Rwanda and Bosnia…and then nothing… No big events for eight years. Relatively speaking peace was breaking out, the UN acted in Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo. Things were being handled. I moved into a good career, got married, got a mortgage and a couple of kids. Then the buildings fell down…Driving to work the other day I actually got a start when I saw, coming down the Brackley Road, low on the horizon a Dash Eight coming into land at the airport. I saw in my mind that building. One one hand, we gen’ x’ers have some experience of this stuff. On the other hand, we gen’ x’ers have some experience of this stuff…
Alan, your post reminded me of the Gulf War Song by Moxy Früvous from the Bargainville album.
The following stanza always rang true for me.
A good reference but, for me, at 38, having lived my first 28 or so during the Cold war, the presence of war and the potential to be sucked into one personally was never “violence unthinkable” despite how the life of a Canadian 20-something gen’ x’er in Nova Scotia was so peaceful and fun. On top of the fears, I wrote about above, my folks moved in ’56 to avoid the Third World War believed coming due to Hungary, French-Indochina and the Suez. When I got my UK Right of Abode in 1981, my mother thouht Maggie T. might draft me for the Falkins. The fear of the bomb. We were living in our own minds on borrowed time and as a result were in no rush to prepare for kids, mortgages and careers. My 20’s were different from your – perhaps until now. From the fall of the Wall until the falling of the WTC there was a period of freedom from “the bomb” that I think I will not experience for a while.
Like everyone, I am still thinking about what has happened and how things have changed since 11 September. One thing I think has changed is that irony and cynicism as a guiding principle for one’s life has been severely undermined. In North American popular culture for 20 years or so, the ability to comment upon any proposition with a tongue in cheek reort has been acceptable, almost expected and often a winning point in a conversation. David Letterman was an early adherent. We were so witty that we could turn any philosophical proposition or political stance around to show its paradoxical components and therefore its lack of integrity. Few principles could sustain the probe – wealth was bad but being a bleeding heart helping the poor is pointless emotionality; liking art was lightheaded but disliking art was neanderthalic; being involved with politics was self-interested, not being involved…well that was OK because that serves irony. The dominance of irony seems to have been swept away this month. Friends, beauty, nature, reflection are all assets we are being told to lean upon to understand the world now. Causes are largely just, protests are mute and people have gotten nicer on the highways. Will it last? Will street people have enough coin to get things to eat? Will we like our new neighbours and ask to try their strange foods? Will we stop thinking about our own inadequacies at work or home and enjoy the day?
good post al. good questions.
Exploring these ideas further, read David Beers article, Irony is dead! Long live irony! at Salon.com.