As I've mentioned before, I'm deeply involved in a Jewish Community Center. This position brings me into contact with all sorts of religious and civic leaders. As a result of some of these connections, I'm taking part in an event on Saturday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Here's an article about the event. This post is not meant to be an advertisement for the event, but here's a link to the flier if you're in Los Angeles and are interested.

I'm not a religious person and my center is extremely secular, but I'm very glad to have the opportunity to participate in what looks to be an appropriately dignified commemoration of 9/11. One of the religious figures who helped organize this event has been a huge supporter of my center with the full knowledge that we're extremely secular (not to mention a different religion), so I'm totally comfortable accepting an invitation to stand with them at an event that is more steeped in religion.

9/11, and the events and circumstances leading up to and following it, obviously had and still have an enormous impact on the entire world. I personally believe that human beings derive great benefit from formally acknowledging important events. I think our tendency is to avoid/block negative feelings and emotions, which I don't believe is healthy. When we take the time to stop and think about what we've experienced, we have a better chance of moving in a positive direction.

So, with that long preamble, I'm wondering what, if anything, you all are doing this weekend. Everyone thinks and operates in their own way, by no means am I casting judgment on anyone - the best thing for you may very well be to do what you'd normally do on a Sunday.

This thread can also be a place to talk about memories of the events, how they might have changed you or your life, etc. Anything along those lines related to 9/11 or the anniversary is fine.

A note: I am fully aware that it would be pretty easy to ruin this thread. Discussion that involves politics, religion, and other very touchy subjects are basically unavoidable. However, if you want to argue, fight, or otherwise troll, do it someplace else. While I really hope that we can be grown-ups here, there is absolutely a cadre of people who are gleefully hoping that this thread will be flypaper for trolls, and mods who are going to be more than happy to ban the trolls. Don't lower yourself - if you want to contribute, great. If not, move on.

Ok.......here goes.

We're having a typical weekend. I suspect my wife will talk me into going to Church with her, and then we'll fight the crowds to eat at whatever chain restaurant isn't filled to capacity at 12:45ish. Then.......I dunno, really.

In the back of my mind, I'm already wondering what tenth year anniversary atrocities are in store for us, just like what's been in the back of my mind for the last 9 years. I don't mean to think about it, but there are always those stray news blurbs that indicate that plans are likely/probably/possibly/maybe-maybe not being coordinated.

What makes me the saddest is that I have a hard time making myself look back at it for the tragedy that it actually -was-. All I can see are the awful political reverberations that it created, and the way it's waved like a banner by lots of people who are less interested in this sad event than they are in what it can sell for them.

I kind of envy you in that you are emotionally open enough to see it for what it actually was, and even feel strongly enough about it that you are helping out in a memorial event for it.

Is pretty dead on, at least for me.

Basically my thoughts as well. I find myself much less empathetic to the event then I feel like I should be because of what it's been used to do.

On Sunday I will probably play golf like I normally do, and then maybe catch one of what I am sure to be many specials on tv about the anniversary.

I am grateful for the opportunity. Almost everything involved with 9/11 makes me terribly sad, from the event itself to what's come after, etc etc etc. Being in a diverse group that has come together to hope for harmony just feels right.

My parents were scheduled to permanently move from the suburbs of Boston to our house on Cape Cod on 9/25/01, and I was planning on coming home to help them. Flights had resumed, so I flew from LAX to Logan Airport on 9/22 (I think, it might've been a few days earlier). LAX was still closed to everything except taxis and shuttle buses and the airport was mostly empty, it was incredibly eerie. I flew on a 767, there were perhaps 20 people on that huge plane. I was on American Airlines, the flight attendants were all wearing name-tags that listed the names of all the American Airlines crew that had been killed on the planes. I thought that discussing the attacks would be verboten, but it's all they wanted to talk about. So that's what we did on the flight, a small number of passengers and almost as many crew members just talking about it. When we landed, Logan was like what I picture airports in Israel to be like - tons of military with guns walking around, dogs sniffing everything. It was insane.

After I got my parents moved I drove to NYC. I stayed at the W in midtown, I think it's 39th and Lex. As soon as I checked in I started walking towards Ground Zero. One of the armories that was used as a crisis center was only a few blocks away, as I came upon it I began to see an absolutely astonishing number of flyers plastered on the walls of the buildings. Photocopied pictures of people with the words "PLEASE CALL" and such. Candid photos, vacations, people with their children. Until this point I had been mostly incredibly angry at the perpetrators of the attack itself, the hijackers, but as I stood there reading I began to weep out of sadness for all the loss, for all the hatred that contributed to this event. I started to feel self-conscious as I cried harder, but I looked around and saw that there were dozens of people on both sides of me doing the exact same thing - staring at the walls and crying, in the middle of a weekday in New York City.

Just FYI- tolerance for trolling, politarding, supafreying, etc does basically not exist in this thread. Play nice, or don't play at all.

probably just going to watch football, same thing I did during 9th anniversary

9/11 really had no direct connection to me in terms of people I knew or friends/family etc. Its probably not the PC/ProAmerica thing to say but I lived in Cali and it was basically just another crazy world event that happened a lot closer to home (US) compared to most where lots of people died and I watched it and the aftermath go down on TV 24/7. I wasn't really ever fearful or anything afterwards since I viewed it as basically a fluke event by a bunch of religious nutjobs. I've had way more friends die/get blow up etc in Afghanistan/Iraq war which seem like much bigger deals in my mind though the event of 9/11 obviously was the catalyst for those two cluster****s.

I think the combination of living in the tri-state area, specifically in the shadow of NYC and having family so deeply involved with it really affected me then and to a certain extent still affects me now.

One of the first things you will see entering my house is the article from my cousin's funeral in the paper, a recent article from the series they are doing now about the victims 10 years later, and then an FDNY poster with the names of the fallen on it. Whenever I have people in town I always take them to the street named after him. We were not extremely close, but still close enough that we would hang out for a few on Christmas and family reunions and so forth. I remember actually hanging out with him about 2 weeks before the attacks the day after a big gathering shooting guns in my uncle's backyard.

We were talking about it this summer at a reunion, just about the events and how it affected us all. A lot of the discussion was about how its become part of the family fabric and in a sense a form of pride.

They are doing a memorial in town on the 11th that I will be going to in the morning and then I will try to spend the afternoon with my dad. He was very shaken after 9/11 and losing a lot of people he knew in the attacks. When we lived together the office in the house had its own 9/11 memorial of people that my dad knew. Sometimes I think about just how close I really could have come to losing him that day, and as someone who is very close with him, how hard that would have been. After 25 years on the job he doesnt show a ton of emotion, and wasnt particularly emotional before that either according to my grandmother, but you can always tell 9/11 hits him hard, just by the way he talks.

not sure if the mods are cool with this but for those that want to read last year's thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...-doing-873253/

delete if inappropriate

BBQ and PennState game on Saturday. Football all day on Sunday. Supposed to be nice weather too.

Falcons Bears

This page shows how quickly the FAA shut down air traffic over the US. Pretty amazing.

http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/blog...f-air-traffic/

I'm going to be honest here and confess that whichever news channel is the one that decides to replay the live broadcast as it was happening is the one I'm going to watch, I just think it's fascinating.

I basically don't pray, but I'll say a prayer for my friend Yvonne who died in one of the towers, and one of thanks for my two friends who got out.

I was working right across from the towers, got off the subway as the second plane hit and stupidly went up to the office where I had an unfortunate birds eye view of everything, when the dust semi settled at 1pmish, I walked home to the Upper East Side (about 6 miles) I just moved back to the same neighborhood, so I think I may go down there very early sunday morning and do the walk again, stopping at Veselka for brunch or something with the lady and getting home in time for football.

Other than airport lines, I think that I can honestly say that 9/11 has absolutely zero impact on my daily life.

though i will say this one will be a bit different given its at least nice to know that one of our guys put a bullet threw Bin Laden's head

Already watched "Reign Over Me" last night. Sort of related to the event. 911 rarely enters my mind until September every year. Then I tend to get pretty re-interested in it. Truly a sad, despicable, yet fascinating event. I always wondered what was going through the minds of people on board the 2 planes that hit the Trade Centers. Did they ever have any clue what their fate was once they got so low going nearly full speed? How terrifying was it for them, or did most never even have a clue that anybody could be this crazy? The one guy on the 2nd plane with his wife and 2 year old daughter on board talking to his dad on the phone as it happened trying to comfort him saying "don't worry dad, if it happens it will be fast. Oh my God...Oh my God...Oh my God...........". Then total silence. I'm sure that has to haunt that father to this day. Such a sad day of events.

I don't know that I'll do a ton (other than my lolstandard Sunday routine involving opening weekend of football), but it's been on my mind more this week, obviously.

I was active duty Army on 9/11, stationed in Texas. It was my day off (not for long) and I remember lying in bed half asleep with the TV on when they started talking about the first tower and I was thinking how bizarre it was that some pilot could get that far off course. And then the second tower was hit and I remember sitting up and thinking "Holy **** these aren't accidents." It pretty much went all down hill from there.

My next few weeks were endless days of gate duty in full gear and a ton of calls and stuff on the MP desk (which was my position at the time). I was usually so exhausted when I got off work that all I wanted to do was relax, but every time you turned on the TV, there it was. It was pretty depressing and surreal, although we pretty quickly got mostly fed up with the base restrictions and stupid "suspicious package" calls.

I didn't have anyone I know die in the attacks, but a couple of people I later met in the military were heavily involved with the aftermath, including one guy I knew who was part of the body excavation detail at the Pentagon. It's just one of those things that scars your psyche just a little, I think, no matter who you are and where you were.

9/11 Television Archive

ABC CBS NBC BBC FOX CNN

Should probably add truthering to that list.

For me, I'll probably just watch football and make it through the day without realizing it's the anniversary until it's mentioned on TV.

Pretty disconnected from the fear and anxiety I had when it happened that came from not knowing if our country was under attack, if things like this were going to start happening everywhere with a greater frequency, and wondering why out of every city in the nation, Pres. Bush had to fly into mine within hours of the buildings getting hit.

Was listening to an interview of the Air Force One pilot this morning. They thought that Air Force One was under attack, so they were really just flying around. It sounded like their first stop, at Barksdale AFB, was chosen simply because it happened to be the closest AFB at the time they decided to land and Bush needed to be on the ground to speak to the nation.

Their second stop, Offut AFB in Nebraska, was purposely chosen because it has an underground bunker and houses the Strategic Command.

My mother will be in NY to be with family. Her step-brother, Tommy Gambino Jr., Rescue 3 FDNY, was killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. She will not be at Ground Zero on Sunday as her step-mother and Tommy's family will. They will all gather on Sunday evening to remember Tommy's life.

Mom was actually flying back to the States from London that morning. Her flight was scheduled to land at Kennedy just a couple of hours after the attacks took place. Her plane was diverted to Gander, Newfoundland and she did not get home until late Saturday night. I remember frantically searching my desk for her flight info just to confirm that she was not near NYC at the time of attack.

I am going to spend Sunday at work that morning, and will make my way to the bar I watch football at that afternoon, talking with friends and aquaintances. I co-organize the DFW Jets Fans Meetup, so that evening will be spent with fellow NY'ers and will probably be a bit emotional. In fact, by the time I get home, I expect to be an emotional, spent wreck.

On Sunday I will be attending a wedding with no open bar.

I'll be at the 9/11 memorial stair climb in Sacramento. 343 firefighters climbing 110 stories in gear with the name of a fallen FF from 9/11 placed over their own name on the back of the turnout coat they are wearing. I'm an alternate in case someone gets held on at work and can't make it. It's a pretty cool event, all proceeds will be going to the Orphans and Widows Fund and there is a 5K race as well for the general public.