9/11 Anniversary - Moratorium on CE Posts

[Donoghus]

We're putting a moratorium on CE forums posting today in observance of the eighteenth (has it really been that long?) anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.   It'll be back to normal activity tomorrow. 

Thanks for understanding.

[gift]

weird

[Donoghus]

weird

Why's that?

[celticsclay]

I think this is interesting. Is this the first time the forum has done this? I definitely think it is nice to think people should stop debating politics for a day to reflect on our country's history and some of the things that have happened and those that have been lost. I wonder if this would be a more natural thing to do on memorial day though?

That aside I wanted to add that though I rarely participate in them, I really do enjoy the current events discussions on this forum. I learn a lot about what is happening around the world from them and get a lot of different perspectives than I would normally hear from my circle of friends/coworkers/neighbors.

[nickagneta]

My remembrance of the day:

I worked close to Green Airport in Warwick, RI at the time so it was commonplace to see helicopters and airplanes overhead and hear the noises they made. It was a gorgeous day. Comfortable without a cloud in the sky.

I got a call from my wife telling me what happened. Then everyone else in the place did too, from people in the office to all the people on the manufacturing floor. There were lots of requests to go home early as families were scared and panicking.

I remember running out for lunch and noticing the complete silence everywhere. Traffic was non-existent. The skies were open, blue, empty and eirily quiet. The silence was deafening

I did nothing that day but try unsuccessfully to get on an internet news site and talk to my wife. I just felt shocked, anger and remorse and wondered where all my loved ones, friends and family were.

I didn't see any video until I got home after work. Then we watched it all night. My thoughts went to the fact that we now would live in a very different world. War was coming. My oldest son was about to turn 15. Would there be a draft that he would need to be a part of? How would this affect business that had been great for years?

So much was about to change and yet we were still wondering if tens of thousands had died, while they showed video of thousands of people leaving the island walking over the bridges.

It was all surreal.

[Donoghus]

I think this is interesting. Is this the first time the forum has done this? I definitely think it is nice to think people should stop debating politics for a day to reflect on our country's history and some of the things that have happened and those that have been lost. I wonder if this would be a more natural thing to do on memorial day though?

That aside I wanted to add that though I rarely participate in them, I really do enjoy the current events discussions on this forum. I learn a lot about what is happening around the world from them and get a lot of different perspectives than I would normally hear from my circle of friends/coworkers/neighbors.

Its something that had been done on the old site for a handful of years and was discussed by staff for doing today.   Certainly a day that was jarring for a lot of us and plenty have an indirect or even direct relation to that day. 

Simply a small reprieve from the sometimes heated discussions of the CE forums.   It's a single day.  Posters will survive.

[Somebody]

This is certainly not an incident to joke about, but my remembrance of that day was that I was very anxious to get out of my mother's stomach

[Celtics4ever]

My coworkers laughed at me when I said it was a terrorist attack but I knew because Flights don't fly over the city at building level and it was easy to surmise with some one with some military intelligence background.

A dark day in our history, my heart goes out to anyone who had family there.

Good call sorry I did one this morning, I did not know.

[Amonkey]

This is certainly not an incident to joke about, but my remembrance of that day was that I was very anxious to get out of my mother's stomach

My birthday is on 9/11 but a 'few' years before the event happened. On that day, they made an announcement at school and let us out early. They didn't explain too much of what happened so we left feeling a little confused but went home regardless. On top of that, my family and I were moving as well so we watched TV while packing. The TV was the last thing to be packed because we were so fascinated by what was happening.

In my school there was a brand new teacher whose husband was in one of the planes. She left and never came back. My wife lived in Westchester County, NY and many of her classmates had parents who worked in Manhattan. She had a little more direct impact as students were calling parents and couldn't get a hold of them. Luckily for her, her dad works in a whole nother area.

I strongly recommend the younger generation to watch the news of the event as it unfolded. It was a scary day but also a moment where all Americans came together in support of each other. We will never forget.

[Surferdad]

It seemed like a moratorium in ALL posts, not just Current Events which I think was a good decision by the mods.  At first I was a bit disappointed, but now I'm glad this was done.  I did think more about 9/11 as a result.

I also thought about the first WTC attack, the bombing in 1994.  My cousin was in the building.

Lastly, I thought about the Challenger disaster.  I was home from grad school that day and watched it live.

[Roy H.]

I lived in Boston at the time. It was scary as hell. Subways were shut down for awhile, the cell network was overloaded so that you couldn’t make phone calls. So many rumors, too: 10+ airliners unaccounted for, a plane crashed into a school, etc.

I have so many vivid memories of that day. Listening to Howard Stern as the planes hit and him announcing it must be terrorism.  Learning from a stranger that the first tower collapsed as I commutes to law school. Huddling around a television at school. As this was all happening, I made a phone call to Verizon to have DSL installed, and it was a perfectly normal, mundane conversation with this nice southern gentleman in the midst of this national tragedy.

[BringToughnessBack]

I was downtown on Houston when the first plane flew by and changed everything. We saw it clearly and were about A short walk away .My office kept us til late in day out of fear of train strikes as well. I will not get into what it was truly like to be down there that day and how traumatic it was for everyone there but I will never forget that day and all the people who lost their lives in those towers and the ones who ran into the towers to try and save people. True devastation...true heroes....truly the best and worst of what it is to be a human on display that very day.

[slamtheking]

My wife and I were both home sick on what was our second wedding anniversary (today being our 20th).   we had the Today show on when they started talking about the first plane hitting the WTC and sounding like it was a freak accident with a plane of unknown size.   They shortly had shots of it and shortly afterwards you could see the second plane hit the second tower. 

a true feeling of dread went through us in realization this was a deliberate attack and so much speculation over other planes being hijacked and what could be done to prevent more strikes. 

truly a tragic day that changed this country.

[Donoghus]

Thanks to everyone who shared their stories & thoughts yesterday.  Some solid reflections on what was a very rough day. And thanks to those of you who understood the moratorium.   

Everything’s back open.