Monday, March 11, 2002

REMEMBERING: Sean McCray has some links to various bloggers' reactions on 9/11. And Ken has his up. My local paper, the Inquirer, which has a terrible website, has a story on a survivor who was on the 78th floor of the South Tower when the plane hit. My own memories are of my co-worker telling me the UPenn station reported a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and her saying "it must be serious, this station never puts any news on." I took out the black and white tv from under my desk that I keep there to listen to March Madness coverage once a year and put it in the office and watched. It was the only tv in my office so people were filtering in all day to catch up. And then I went to class that afternoon and had Howard Stern on the radio since he was right there, and I remember noticing for probably the first time the huge American flag flying over the Flower World in Pennsauken. Driving to class I pictured the other people on the road with me, no doubt fixed on the radio coverage like me, but still driving to class or to lunch or whatever. It felt weird, because it was weird --everything had been disrupted.

So I made it to class but don't remember what we did, I just remember wanting to get the lab over as soon as possible. Like a lot of us that day I had a real thirst for information, which is my explanation for the warblog explosion, a lot of people just trying to get as much information as possible and sort of cope. The central horror for me of that day remains people who were getting coffee one minute and the next having to decide between death by fire and death by jumping. That's what sticks with me, for whatever reason.

UPDATE: Fred Pruitt has his rememberings up too.

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