And then one day we wake up and the world is on fire. We hear the voice of veteran broadcaster Peter Jennings crack, go silent as the second tower of the World Trade Center crumbles.
And then it’s gone.
We feel knotted and twisted. Fixated on the surreal images playing on the TV screen. Death. Disorder. Rubble. We sink into a malaise of horror and disbelief.
And then we want to do something. Anything. Like give blood or pray. But United Blood Services has donors lined up around the block. And what do we say to an all-powerful, all-knowing creator-type being? “What’s going on, God?”
—RN&R View From the Fray, Sept. 13, 2001
It’s been a year, yet the emotions come flooding back with the slightest impetus. We asked five northern Nevadans to write about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, with the perspective of the past 12 months. Remembering is one way to deal with the chaos and pain of realizing that our nation is not immune to the struggles that plague the rest of the world. It also gives us the tools for future change. “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness,” wrote the philosopher George Santayana in the early 1900s. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.” May this act of remembering result in healing and growth.
Terrorism is banal and other observations