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Posts for the date of Saturday, September 15, 2001
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:23 AM |
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INTERCOT: National Day Of Prayer & Remembrance
A few updates today. Different thoughts about different issues written yesterday during a day of remembrance.
I still want to tell the story of Intercot and the community that encompasses. Proof that an online community can be a true community.
Above is John's new front page. It should be noted that John, the Intercot webmaster, has done an amazing job of keeping this online community together and focused. He stands head and shoulders above the rest of the Disney community and is a shining example of a compassionate human being.
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:21 AM |
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After all the planes were grounded on Tuesday I suddenly realized how I viewed the sky. As a traveler I see it as small. An avenue to get me to where I want to go. But Tuesday, driving home from work, I did not see a single plane. There was no traffic in the sky. It was huge.
And it was quiet. I’ve never realized the ambient noise the planes that constantly flew overhead made, and how I had become accustomed to it.
But that’s not all that was quiet. Driving, with my window open, I never heard the thump of teen-aged bass. Drivers weren’t gunning their engines. There was no yelling, no kids screaming in the neighborhoods. There was a strange calmness. Most radios were tuned to talk radio. Sporting events were cancelled, Brownie meetings, malls were closed. People were staying inside to listen to the news. Would they find any hope? Glean any good?
No. There was little, and there remains to be little.
Wednesday night, after it seemed all hope was lost, I wearily trudged to bed. I had a lot on my mind, as does everyone else. It was a nice night, so the windows were open. I lay in bed, trying to calm down my mind so that I may relax and fall asleep.
I finally began to drift off. Then my heart was seized with an icy shock. There was a jet in the sky. The unaccustomed silence had been sliced with a familiar sound. But now it had a new context.
Our airport hadn’t been reopened yet, so I felt a moment of fear. The sounds I was hearing was clearly a jet with its flaps up, slowing its forward velocity in preparation to land. And it was big. It was a military jet, to be sure. But it sounded huge. I don’t know where it was going, or what it was doing, but I have an idea I’ll hear more in the coming weeks and months. And, I have a pretty good idea that I’ll know exactly what they’re preparing for.
Yes, it seems we are at war, though no enemy has been declared. No enemy is known right now. The biggest enemy is fear. And this war is nothing we’ve ever experienced. It may be long, protracted. How many countries will be involved? How many neighbors will be asked to risk their lives?
Will we ever recover? Will our lives ever be the same? No. But we must go on.
Because there is no nation to target, people seem to want to point fingers as a racial group. Arab-Americans. Muslims. Please, do NOT attack Arab-Americans. They are here to escape the terror that we are now experiencing. They too want to live a better life. They, too, are Americans.
These terrorists, bastards that they are, no more represent the religion of Islam than David Koresh represented Christianity. They no more represent Arabs as a whole than Hitler Milosovich represented the whole of the Slavic people.
Think straight. Look in the right direction. Please.
So what can you do? What can we do? Donate money of course, blood, time. Focus whatever spiritual feelings you have towards good will and a world of peace.
But the best thing I can say is raise your children to reject hate. Teach them tolerance, understanding. Teach them to be good human beings and not to embrace beliefs that preach pain, hurt and hate. Teach them that human life, above all, should be cherished.
Horrible people will always exist. We cannot get rid of them. But we can teach our children that the world doesn’t have to be a horrible place. That they don’t have to accept this sort of terror. That they can rise above horrible acts and show the world that peace can be achieved through understanding. That you can accomplish amazing things without the need to shed blood wantonly.
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:20 AM |
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Grief. Anger. Fear. Disbelief. Shock. After the images, stories and information we’ve all learned over the last few days those words just don’t seem to have the power to convey the mixed emotions all of us are feeling these days. It feels as though the world we put to bed on Monday night will never awaken again. We now have a world that looks similar, though scarred, but it feels different.
No words can express how we all feel. Or what we don’t feel. The images we have seen over these last few days, the death, destruction, the fear, will never leave us. As our children grow, what we have seen will become a distant memory. Yet, we will never forget the moment we learned that an airplane hit the World Trade Center. And then another. Then the collapse. Then another. And the Pentagon.
It felt like a full-scale attack. One event after the other. It kept happening more destruction, more death. More pain.
There is no precedent for this attack on the American people. People have compared it to Pearl Harbor. To Oklahoma City. But those are only similarities. Those events were different. They had different circumstances.
The point here is that the people of America have been attacked. Not the government, not the Armed Forces, but the people. You. Me. Our children. Any one of us could have been in that building. The people who have died were doing no more than earning a living. Getting their morning coffee. They committed no crimes against the world. They made no contribution to America’s foreign policy. They did nothing more than hope they could make a living, feed a family, get home that evening to whatever sort of comfort they had.
The people on the planes were going home, on business trips or vacations. There were families on those planes. I’ve even heard that one plane had a group of elementary school students who had won a National Geographic trip. They were with their teachers. That morning their parents kissed them goodbye, felt the sharp tinge of pain thinking they were sending children off alone into the world. They were loosening the strings of protection. As those kids stepped onto the plane, that sadness was mixed with pride. “My child has achieved something. My child has done something good.” They are now mourning their children.
Why? For what reason?
The point is, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon touches us all. Not because of the national significance, though there is that, but because of how close it comes.
How many people did you know? Did they get out? Even if you didn’t know someone, you know someone who does. Or someone who was close, or had a close call.
The sheer amount of human life that was lost may never dawn on us. One senseless death is difficult to deal with. Two, doubly so. 100? 600? 1000? 5000? It seems unfathomable.
But the dead and missing are beginning to get faces and stories. But they are only sketches, highlights, moments. Brief lists of accomplishments, family. It’s all we can handle. Only short stories, not full novels. Were we to know more, the complete destruction may be too much for us to handle.
But ask yourself this question. How many children are waking up without a parent? How many husbands and wives are going to bed alone? How many brothers and sisters out there are desperately searching the hospitals and crisis centers in New York and Washington for missing loved ones? How many are on their knees now, praying that there will be some miracle and those rescue workers will find their loved ones. How can they give up? They need to hope. Hope allows us all to survive.
There may be as many as 5000 dead. But there are millions wounded.
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, September 12, 2001
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 7:27 PM |
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Not going to be much of an entry today, though I've got a big one for tomorrow. I've been watching the events around the attacks unfold and have been stewing over them. I was upset at my place of work as, I feel, they treated the events as a local event. Not a national, or global one. No information was shared. No comment was made, except late yesterday to let us know that only our colleagues were unaffected. And then today, there was some rhetoric.
Not that I can fully blame them. Nor can I say their reaction was wrong, per se. They did what they had to do as a business, and in a way, it's admirable in the face of the global circumstances. They didn't allow terror to infiltrate the way they worked. However, they could have allowed compasion to enter a little more than it did . . .
Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to write about the amazing part the Internet played in this whole thing. Particularly my favorite site, Intercot. And, more importantly, how its webmaster and the community banded together. Virtual or not, a huge group of Internet users were together to share information, comfort one another and try to understand what had happened.
To be part of it was amazing.
Talk to you tomorrow, more or less. Tonight, reflect. And help me find the words to explain to those callous few who don't understand why I should be so affected by these events.
Why? Because I am human. New York, DC, America. Human. Families were torn asunder and lives were ended. That is enough. Enough.
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Posts for the date of Tuesday, September 11, 2001
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 6:30 PM |
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In light of today's events, I'm not doing a real update. I'm too . . . sickened.
Rather, I encourage you to hug your loved ones. Be thankful for what you have and revel in the love you have around you.
Life is fragile, and can be shattered at any moment. Be thankful for it. Before you go to bed tonight, look at the stars or the moon. Watch your kids sleeping. Pet your dog. Find a bit of beauty and serenity in the world and hold on to it.
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Posts for the date of Monday, September 10, 2001
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 11:37 AM |
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Warning: The below is boring and pointless. Just something that’s bugging me. No insight, commentary or comedy follows. In fact, nothing interesting follows.
Ah, the pain we put our parents through. We never understood, because we viewed them as a sort of indestructible force. Parents are intended to save us kids from the dangers of the world. Even though they could never possibly understand us, we knew that they could comfort us.
I bring this up because twice in the past week I have seen my daughter as this fragile being who must learn the ways of the world. I wish I could protect her from some of the pain I know she must be feeling but I can’t. Sometimes the best lesson in the world is that pain, and learning how to rise above it.
The first time she tugged at my heartstrings was when she was getting on the bus. At the bus stop we were discussing the previous day. She told me, forlornly, how the day before her two friends wouldn’t sit with her and she had to ride the bus alone. Her eyes were filled with the loneliness that no adult understands. A child’s loneliness is a complete, utter feeling of being alone. I could sit on a bus alone, without a care in the world. But a six-year-old? That moment is all she had. She was alone. Her family was elsewhere and her friends had chosen not to be with her. At six, she has no frame of reference to “count her blessings.” That moment was the painful present, with no escape until the future came bumping into it.
When she got on the bus that morning, those two friends again chose to sit elsewhere. As the bus pulled away, this little blonde face looked at me, hurt. Waving as if this bus would take her to an inevitable future where there would never be anyone to talk to. A future from which she would never return. The sadness on her face was complete. She knew she had to leave me behind, but without her friends by her side she wasn’t sure how she would cope with the moments ahead.
Turned out she survived. I, however, had this lingering feeling of desertion. I felt as though I cruelly sent her into an extended period of isolation. I should have held her back and said, “Forget school! Who needs those people when we can have fun and learn all by ourselves!” Sigh.
The second painful moment came when we were discussing the baby. She had told her mother that she was afraid that people would forget about her after the squirt is born. We tried to reassure her, and tell her that we’ll never, ever forget her. But, we had to face facts. The baby will certainly change life as we know it. We can’t lie about that. She knows it. How can you assure a child that a baby isn’t a replacement? That you can share love amongst everyone?
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