A Clear Blue Sky
Lee on Sep 11 2008 at 6:50 am | Filed under: Lee's Page
(NASA)
Today is the 11th. The unwelcome anniversary. Everyone remembers where they were when they heard. I was awoken by a phone call on the day. “The country’s under attack!” the phone said. You wake up rather fast when that’s yelled into your ear early in the morning.
Shortly after that I was glued to my television set with a client on the phone yammering about God knows what. It hadn’t sunk into her yet what was happening. It was 9:59EST when the South Tower collapsed and she started screaming. I guess I hung up.
Strange people I hadn’t spoken to in years started calling me. Relatives, old acquaintances, former business associates. Everyone wanted to talk and I remember being uninterested in the “please comfort me” soul-searching conversations they wanted to have. When I finally drove into the office, the president of our company asked me what I thought: “whichever state sponsored this needs to disappear” was my reaction. By then analysts were leaning toward Afghanistan, and I was thinking about how bloody that was going to be; “graveyard of the invader” and so forth. Cauterize the place, thought me.
I walked outside later that afternoon and for the first time in memory saw a truly clear blue sky over the United States. You get contrails and aircraft overheard even in the remotest corners of the country these days. With all civil air traffic grounded, the sky was a pristine cobalt blue, untouched, and so ominously so.
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