9/11 Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

9/11 plus 25

Day of Remembrance

It’s 9/11 plus 25 years, and my thoughts are all over the place. I recently received an email for a Day of Remembrance blood drive from the American Red Cross. “We invite you to honor the heroes and victims we lost with a simple act of kindness, a blood donation. Our community is strongest when we come together to support one another. The patients who receive your blood may never know your name, but they will always cherish your generosity.”

I’m always in favor of blood drives. Back in 2001, I had a donation scheduled for a couple of days after the awful event. The ARC called me NOT to donate because so many people were already doing something, such as donating blood, ostensibly to give to the survivors. Except that there were relatively few of them in NYC after the buildings collapsed; for instance, about 20 were pulled from the Twin Towers rubble. The Red Cross knew that I was a “regular” and that I would come back.

Forgetting?

2008: I wrote, Even three or four years after September 11, 2001, there was this public conversation that people were “forgetting” 9/11. Or more precisely, had “forgotten the lessons of 9/11.”

If you watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center, you didn’t forget 9/11. Seeing the two towers practically evaporate, you didn’t forget. Nearly three thousand sad stories, and actually, exponentially many more. The anniversary memories I am hearing now are poignant; one I heard recently involved a then two-year-old who doesn’t remember her mother except for a recording, for her mom was a first responder who was killed trying to save others.

My family and I went to the 9/11 Memorial in November 2013. “In honor of the 25th anniversary, 9/11 Memorial & Museum Chairman Mike Bloomberg will match every gift to The Never Forget Fund.”

As horrifically sad as the day was, there was a sense of community, collective grief, and, dare I say, camaraderie. People suddenly didn’t hate the elite New York City folks. Everything You NEED to Know About SNL Season 27 (2001-02) shows how the Saturday Night Live writers and actors pivoted in their approach to comedy.

My wife and I finally got to see Come From Away in 2025, and it is very much in the 9/12 spirit.

Forgotten?

But what were the “forgotten” lessons of 9/11? Newsweek has been running a series, The Road to 9/11, which requires a subscription. Here’s the intro – August 7, 2001: “The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published a secret report on ‘Iraq‘s Reemerging Nuclear Weapon Program,’ part of a raging debate within U.S. intelligence community agencies as to the state of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program. United Nations inspectors had been banned from inside the country since November 1998, leaving U.S. intelligence to largely speculate as to what was going on.”

September 1, 2001: In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance detected a build-up of Taliban forces on September 1, evidently in preparation for an upcoming offensive. The intelligence portended something much larger, but at the time, the CIA failed to see the gathering pieces.

Iraq?

2011: I crashed Albany Pro Musica to sing the Mozart Requiem on a very windy 11 September 2002; that was the only day ever that I wore a tuxedo to work. Exactly two weeks later, I began my weekly vigil, with a number of people who had been there weeks and months before, in my opposition to the war in Iraq. What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Took a bit of grief over that. And it would have been one thing if it were only “regular people” who jumped all over France for failing to support the curiously illogical war in Iraq; it was the US Congress that opted for the jingoistic ‘freedom fries’. How embarrassing.

Indeed, we are still learning from the event. Just this week, from the NYT: After 9/11, Documents Suggest New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality. New York City officials are making public more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What lesson?

So if the “lesson” was that we should adopt the so-called USA PATRIOT ACT, or that a new and unwieldy Department of Homeland Security is necessary, or that Islamophobia is acceptable, then I feel we totally missed the point.

From journalist and former Carter White House speechwriter James Fallows, thoughts on the legacy of 9/11, 25 years after the terrorist attacks: 9/11 changed the U.S.; can we change back?

But if we’ve decided that we can – to quote the cliché – disagree without being disagreeable, and look out for each other, that’s the lesson I can get behind.

Sunday Stealing: 10 Questions with Nigel

less world suck

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. “Back in 2010, blogger Nigel Vanstone from Away from a Bit asked his readers this series of questions. He said he was tagged by another, unnamed blogger. But I’m not tracing it back any further. Nigel Vanstone is a cool name, and that’s enough for me.”

10 Questions with Nigel

1. What’s your life’s motto?

Young Simba: Hakuna Matata?
Pumbaa: Yeah. It’s our motto.
Young Simba: What’s a motto?
Timon: Nothing. What’s a motto with you? [laughs]

Well, THAT’S not it! Create less world suck, I suppose, per the terms of the Vlogbrothers.

2. Where were you living 13 years ago?

Same place we are living now. The daughter was in elementary school, which made the commute from our house to her school really easy.

Green-eyed?

3. Is anyone jealous of you?

I have no idea. I’m working on the theory that there are people who perceive me as easygoing, casual, and engaging, among other things. However, the truth is that I’m only those things in spaces where I feel comfortable, such as at church or the library. In other places, I tend to be shy and cautious, so if people only see me in the gregarious space, I think they may perceive me differently than I perceive myself.

4. Where were you when you heard about the 9/11 terror attacks?

I wrote about this at length in 2008 and subsequently.

5. Do you consider yourself kind?

Most of the time.

6. Can you change your car’s oil?

I’ve done this in the distant past. Could I do it now? Doubtful.

7. What’s the last thing you heard about your first love?

I received an unexpected email from her in February 2025. She stumbled across my blog – probably this post – while trying to prove some Binghamton, NY-related television trivia. We’re both in long-term relationships.

8. Have you ever been burned by love?

Oh, heavens, yes.

9. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?

Indian food from the restaurant a block away, five days ago. He gives a 5% discount for cash.

10. Do you hug your friends?

It depends on the friend. When I was at my previous church, Trinity United Methodist, there was an older woman named Helen Knapp who referred to me as the Trinity hugger. Then she added, “Which is better than being the Trinity mugger!” She said that a lot, and, oddly, it never got old. I hug some folks at my current church, but especially a 95-year-old woman, who has become more of a hugger later in life.

Their bones

Do they matter?

Frank S. Robinson wrote an interesting, though chilling, book review of “We Carry Their Bones: A Florida Horror Story.”

“This book by anthropologist/archeologist Erin Kimmerle relates her authorized official investigations at the site of the Dozier School, a “reform school” in Florida’s panhandle, operating from 1900 to 2011. Actually a prison. Incarcerating thousands of boys, sentenced for mostly minor notional offenses, some as young as five, mostly Black.

The resolution caught my attention: “Kimmerle made great efforts not only to find burials but then to identify whose. Generally, the bodies had been interred unceremoniously, hence with little left to exhume. But the team was able to extract DNA even from bone fragments and thereby identify many victims. Amazing modern science…” So it is.

“Yet, though we are embodied in our physical selves while alive, afterward the dead corporeal remains should lose meaning. Our connections to our dead reside in our hearts and minds, our remembrance, not in their disintegrated bones.

“Those families already knew, basically, what had befallen their kin. Receiving a box of remains really adds nothing. I think we’re too fixated on such physicality; it’s a kind of superstition.”

I agree with about half of that. It is a bit of superstition, I suppose. But the box of remains does signify something significant.

Civil War

I saw this piece on CBS News Sunday Morning: Honoring a Civil War veteran lost to history.

“There is an unmarked African American burial ground on their farm [in Tennessee]. ‘They took me there, and for that, I’m eternally grateful,’ said Cheryl. “Because we had no idea it was there. We only had a hunch.”

“Cheryl hired an archeology team with experience finding America’s missing-in-action from more recent wars. Of the 38 graves they found here, they zeroed in on one – its size, date, and fragmentary remains matched every known detail of her ancestor.

“‘Sunday Morning’ was there with the families and local veterans when Private Sandy Wills’ remains were placed in a casket, and solemnly marched from the knoll, through green fields, to a waiting hearse.”

WWII

The Operation 85 project aims to identify unknown servicemen who perished aboard the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“In September 1947, after the pressures of war had subsided, 170 unknown servicemen were exhumed from their graves in Hawaii and brought to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory, where over 100 were identified and their families subsequently notified. The disinterment was a remarkable success despite the remaining 70 men being declared ‘unrecoverable.’ Those men were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu (unofficially known as Punchbowl Cemetery because of its location at Punchbowl Crater).

“It is these ‘unrecoverable’ men that Kevin Kline, grandnephew of Gunner’s Mate Second Class Robert Edwin Kline, who perished aboard the Arizona, wants the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to identify and return to their families.”

9/11

In January 2024, the “1,650th victim of 9/11 was named after 22 years. More than 1,100 remain unidentified.”

With the amazing advancement of technology, we’ll likely be able to find more victims of airplane crashes, weather disasters, and terrorist activities. Is it worth it? Worth, as a subjective term, is difficult to encapsulate.

I support the efforts because it completes the line from their death for whatever tragic reason to burial by their families, who, even if they are generations removed, still feel a sense of pride and dignity. If that is a superstition, then so be it.

Sept. rambling: Suicide prevention

Way Less Sad

NAMI: Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. “It’s Okay to Talk About Suicide”

Food insecurity soared roughly 9% last year for Americans

The LMNOPs of Caring for the Nursing Workforce: Healthcare systems can do more to prevent staff burnout

A Guide on Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African Americans.

Household COVID-19 risk and in-person schooling

Fines Double for Refusing to Wear a Mask on a Plane

‘I’m learning firsthand how difficult it is to be shunned by people you love’: The vaccine wars are getting personal

Once-in-a-Century Weather Events Every Week

Why ‘I’ Hurricane Names Are Most Likely to Be Retired

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind, -Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11

How can America wake up from its post-9/11 nightmare?

Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy (Erik Prince, 2010)

A Dozen Observations about Abortion, Texas, and the Supreme Court

Power Move: Charles Blow wants Black people to reverse the Great Migration and form majorities in the Southern states.

Journey with Jesus: Richard Rothstein on “The Color of Law”

Is it Better Not To Know?

‘SNL’ Alum Norm Macdonald Dead At 61

Sporting News

every_data_table — **https://xkcd.com/2502/ Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.**

Pittsburgh Pirates lineup from Sept. 1, 1971, the first time an AL or NL team had fielded an all-Black and Latino starting lineup.

60+ Key Stats About the Olympic and Paralympics

The Woman Who Invented Stuffed Animals

John Green: My Two Favorite Jokes. From the comments: “I went into the library and asked the librarian for a book on turtles. ‘Hard back?’ ‘Yeah, with little heads.'”

How Much of the World’s Bourbon Is Actually Made in Kentucky?

Surf the Vintage Internet

ZOOM: Celebrating 10 Years of Zoom: “Some of you have only known Zoom since early 2020.” Including me.

What Is a Squinting Modifier?

A 13,654 stick bomb

Now I Know: The Friend on the Bench and The Man Who Gets People Out of the Hospital and The Magical Place Where Everyone Can Play

MUSIC

Elegy by Mark Camphouse

I heard this song called Way Less Sad by AJR this week for the first time last week. It came out in February 2021. For the life of me, I recognized but could not immediately place the horn riff. No, not Chicago or Blood, Sweat and Tears or Earth, Wind and Fire. Finally, it came to me, without looking it up: the way too sad My Little Town by Simon and Garfunkel! Paul Simon even gets a writing credit for Way Less Sad.

Times Will Be Better – Elena Romanova

I Bought Myself A Politician – MonaLisa Twins

Flivver Ten Million by Frederick Shepherd Converse, played by the Buffalo Philharmonic, conducted by JoAnn Falletta

Michelle – Julian Neel

Arlington from John Williams’s score to JFK

17 Quotes on the Transformative Power of Music

When New York Had Her Heart Broke

I was planning a flight to a conference

When my daughter was in middle school five years ago, she had a homework assignment to interview an adult about 9/11 and she got to transcribe the answers. I was the interviewee.

1. Where were you when the attacks occurred?

In my offices in downtown Albany. [I was planning a flight to a conference in Dallas scheduled to start the next day. It was quickly canceled. One of the planes that crashed into one of the towers was in Albany air space]

2. How did you find out about the attacks?

Somebody in another office across the hallwas watching it on TV.

3. What were your first feelings/emotions when you heard about the attacks?

Well, when the first plane crashed into the building, I thought it was an accident. When the second plane hit, I knew it was a siege.

4. Did you know anyone in the Towers, Pentagon, or one of the planes? If yes, did they survive?

I knew one guy. Met him at a conference two or three times. I didn’t know him well, but a nice guy, and very helpful. He was in one of the buildings. He did not survive.

looking back

5. Do you “relive” the feelings you felt when the attacks actually happened when you see videos or read articles? Explain how it made you feel.

Right afterward, I did watch a lot of TV, over and over. {See below.] Now it seems when I see pictures of the burning towers, it still reminds me of the day. If I watch the videos, it reminds me, but I tend not to watch videos if I can help it. [What I still remember was just how beautiful the day was before the attacks.]

6. What aspects (parts) of American life do you think we changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

I think, in the short term, there were a lot of people coming together. In the long term, I think people got a whole lot more paranoid, and rightly so. We lost a lot of unity when we decided unnecessarily to go to war in Iraq.

[I’ve written a lot more in the past about the so-called USA PATRIOT Act and Islamaphobia, and lots of other topics. This is enough for today, except…}

Mark Evanier recently wrote about people who may be too young to remember: “Thanks to the Internet and its hoarders, there are hundreds of places where you can download or just watch the news coverage from that day. Here’s one of many. Pick out a channel and watch its broadcast from just before the reports of the first plane hitting the North Tower until you’ve had enough. That was how most of us experienced it that morning…staring at the screen.” Including me.

John Hiatt: When New York Had Her Heart Broke –