On Sunday, it will be ten years since Sept 11.
I've been reading some stuff on the Internet, about people who were there, or were involved, ten years on and what they're doing now. One of them was the photographer of the Falling Man and one was the woman who was photographed covered in yellow ash from the falling towers.
They were on the Australian Yahoo website. You can post comments underneath the stories. And, as you might imagine but not condone, people were making stupid jokes out of the whole thing. I was going to post a few in this blog but I decided against it. Why give morons more publicity? Of any kind?
Is it really 9/11 fatigue? Is it something we should all just ignore now? We can make stupid jokes about it and no one will care?
Is it only over here that this is happening? I really hope so. But it still makes me ashamed to be an Australian.
4 comments:
I actually just wrote my own account of it the other day for a scheduled post but I'm not sure now if I'm actually going to use it. I lived in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 so I wanted to give my account of it. I'm still in the air about it. I don't know if I'll post it or not.
I don't really care what anyone says about that time, if they weren't there to see it with their own eyes, then they have no real idea of what it was like.
Of course, some people are just idiots. :)
I can assure you that nobody is laughing about it out here.
VA where did you live? At that time, I was on Clinton St. between Houston and Stanton.
It's certainly not just over there and you shouldn't feel ashamed in the least. Unfortunately, the world abounds with assholes and, as their population is generally relative to the total population of a place, we have the dubious honor of having over 15 times the number than you do. We all remember what we were doing and where we were, just as my parents and older brother told me happened when JFK was killed. I was sitting in a chair in an empty room of the house I was selling due to a very sad divorce while the buyers were walking around checking it out. 9/11 was also my anniversary (9/11/93). I have been watching the coverage on TV and found myself in tears yesterday. It is absolutely devastating to think of all those lives lost and all the lives that were connected to those killed. All of us, in some way, were connected. There will be more 9/11s all over the world, more wars, more tragedies, more genocide. The way we honor the memories of those lost define us as humans, just as the way those that make jokes define them. These are not ambassadors of Australia or the US or of whatever country they are in... these are people who are closed off the the very meaning of being human.
It's most likely happening everywhere. Ignorance is the one fire we can't seem to put out anywhere.
I agree with VA, if you weren't there to see it with your own eyes, you can conceive of the devestation, the misery, the hope, and the anger that happened in those days. I was living right outside the city then, close to where I live now, and had been interviewing for jobs in the city around that area. I didn't have an interview that day and slept in and woke up to several hysterical phonecalls from family and friends. I remember calling my boyfriend at the time, who was in the military on a training excersise, and he had had no idea what had happened. We had countless friends and family there who we couldn't reach for days. The fear was unreal.
I'm glad you posted this and that you didn't want to give morons more publicity.
Post a Comment