'Frank, we're not having a very good day on Earth.'
Astronaut Frank Culbertson got that message when he contacted Houston with some data on the morning of September 11, 2001. The man on the ground explained what had happened. The International Space Station was over southern Canada at the time, so Culbertson went to a window in the Russian section of the station to take a look.
This is what he saw.
Along with President Kennedy's assassination and the Challenger tragedy, this is one of the events I will always remember the way my parents remembered Pearl Harbor. The moment I heard the news is indelibly etched on my mind. I was sleeping in that morning. I got a phone call from my wife. She simply said, "Turn the television on."
Years later, while living in the Washington, D.C. area, a heard the story of a co-worker of a college friend who lived not far from the Pentagon. When the first plane hit, he was getting ready for work. He realized that he was watching history, and decided to go in late that day.
He watched the second plane crash into the South Tower. And then, about half an hour later, a shadow passed over his apartment building, followed by a loud roar...
The dust from the explosions contained an unbelievable witch's brew of poisons, caustic chemicals, and carcinogens. Most of the First Responders who worked at Ground Zero suffered some degree of permanent damage to their health. A shocking percentage of the New York firemen and policemen who were rightly hailed as national heroes had to take early retirement because of health issues related to their work there. A large percentage have died.
Something good did come out of the tragic events of that day, however short-lived. A nation bitterly divided by the most contentious presidential election in modern history came together as one that day. For one brief moment, George W. Bush wasn't a Republican. He was simply our President. Something similar must have happened with regard to FDR on December 7, 1941.
There was no North or South. There were no liberals or conservatives. There were only Americans. Flags flew, it seems, from every front porch. Ribbons with flag designs adorned almost every lapel. We have not had a moment like that since, and we would well to remember and to savor it.
There have been several times in our history at which we, as a nation, have been at war with one another. We were literally at war with one another between 1861 and 1865. The bitterness which broke out in the Civil War had been brewing for decades, and when silence descended over the battlefield at Appomattox and over Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield, the bitterness remained. In some respects, it has never gone away.
And then, there was the tumultuous decade of the 'Sixties and the Vietnam War. Once again the nation was divided against itself, this time to a large extent between generations rather than sections. The divisions which have plagued the country since and reached a head in Bush v. Gore and later in the election of Donald Trump have so poisoned our national life that we've almost become two nations in a way perhaps more profound than we did in the 1860's. We don't simply have different sets of values and a different perception of the world. We don't just speak two metaphorical languages. We almost literally live in two different realities. The events which shape those realities may or may not have even taken place. No matter; they are perceived as real, and that gives them a kind of ghostly life that defies their lack of basis in actual fact.
But for one, brief moment in the aftermath of 9/11, we became one. In the midst of one of the greatest of American tragedies, for an instant, we all remembered what unites us and forgot what separates us.
9/11 and its aftermath was an unspeakable tragedy. But by far the greater tragedy is that it took a tragedy 9/11 to teach us that lesson. A greater tragedy still is how completely we've forgotten it. Still greater is that barring another catastrophe of a similar magnitude, it's increasingly hard to imagine our coming together that way again.
But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that so few of us even seem to care.
This is what he saw.
Along with President Kennedy's assassination and the Challenger tragedy, this is one of the events I will always remember the way my parents remembered Pearl Harbor. The moment I heard the news is indelibly etched on my mind. I was sleeping in that morning. I got a phone call from my wife. She simply said, "Turn the television on."
Years later, while living in the Washington, D.C. area, a heard the story of a co-worker of a college friend who lived not far from the Pentagon. When the first plane hit, he was getting ready for work. He realized that he was watching history, and decided to go in late that day.
He watched the second plane crash into the South Tower. And then, about half an hour later, a shadow passed over his apartment building, followed by a loud roar...
The dust from the explosions contained an unbelievable witch's brew of poisons, caustic chemicals, and carcinogens. Most of the First Responders who worked at Ground Zero suffered some degree of permanent damage to their health. A shocking percentage of the New York firemen and policemen who were rightly hailed as national heroes had to take early retirement because of health issues related to their work there. A large percentage have died.
Something good did come out of the tragic events of that day, however short-lived. A nation bitterly divided by the most contentious presidential election in modern history came together as one that day. For one brief moment, George W. Bush wasn't a Republican. He was simply our President. Something similar must have happened with regard to FDR on December 7, 1941.
There was no North or South. There were no liberals or conservatives. There were only Americans. Flags flew, it seems, from every front porch. Ribbons with flag designs adorned almost every lapel. We have not had a moment like that since, and we would well to remember and to savor it.
There have been several times in our history at which we, as a nation, have been at war with one another. We were literally at war with one another between 1861 and 1865. The bitterness which broke out in the Civil War had been brewing for decades, and when silence descended over the battlefield at Appomattox and over Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield, the bitterness remained. In some respects, it has never gone away.
And then, there was the tumultuous decade of the 'Sixties and the Vietnam War. Once again the nation was divided against itself, this time to a large extent between generations rather than sections. The divisions which have plagued the country since and reached a head in Bush v. Gore and later in the election of Donald Trump have so poisoned our national life that we've almost become two nations in a way perhaps more profound than we did in the 1860's. We don't simply have different sets of values and a different perception of the world. We don't just speak two metaphorical languages. We almost literally live in two different realities. The events which shape those realities may or may not have even taken place. No matter; they are perceived as real, and that gives them a kind of ghostly life that defies their lack of basis in actual fact.
But for one, brief moment in the aftermath of 9/11, we became one. In the midst of one of the greatest of American tragedies, for an instant, we all remembered what unites us and forgot what separates us.
9/11 and its aftermath was an unspeakable tragedy. But by far the greater tragedy is that it took a tragedy 9/11 to teach us that lesson. A greater tragedy still is how completely we've forgotten it. Still greater is that barring another catastrophe of a similar magnitude, it's increasingly hard to imagine our coming together that way again.
But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that so few of us even seem to care.
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