Still as painful & horrible as 10 years ago; knew then that immediate loss of life would be high (though no idea for hours that would include so many responders, and no survivors would be found), and that there'd be even more loss of life in military retaliation (though no idea of how long & geographically widespread).
Small rays of hope then:
- that Flight 93 banded together to fight hijackers & change crash site
- that airphones allowed passengers to both alert authorities & talk with family
- that most people could separate bin Laden & al-Qaida, from Arabs in general
- that so many Arabs that hated USA, would denounce bin Laden & al-Qaida
Small rays of hope now:
- that so many are remembered still, and for day-to-day strengths, leading to heroics of crisis
- that children-then have found ways to grow, beyond survival & coping
Where I was ...
work-from-home project manager for IBM, on a teleconference call including a few IBMers in NYC, who broke the news
turned on TV minutes before 2nd plane hit World Trade Center
had just returned to CA after the death of my mother in NC -- I'd returned late Thursday to attend a class Friday, needed for project management degree from George Washington University
so checked on Dad, who like many senior citizens always checked CNN regularly, and thus already knew. As a native New Yorker & WW2 vet, he took especially hard.
