9-11 Revisited: Sheri Saved Some Newspapers

This are scans of local newpapers from that day.  I still can't imagine the horror those people must have felt who were in the middle of this.   I imagine it was something like what people felt in Boston, or at Fort Hood.  We must be ever vigilant and not forget.  Terrorist are patient, and persistent.  We must not let our guard down too early.  I am thankful for those men who were prepared to take this fight over seas.  May we keep terrorists on their heals rather than giving them the opportunity to regroup.

http://whilhelmsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-911.html
My 9-11

My Poetry: This Christmas Your Son is Dead

My thoughts on the pat down situation.

 With the recent goings on in the media, full body and pat downs of regular citizens,no religious exception, unless you are Muslim. I don't understand.  It seems CAIR has us turned into knots.  It is time somebody stood up to CAIR, and we started using some common sense.  That would be nice.

I wrote this poem last year after the attack on Fort Hood.  This was a preventable attack, if we had been more worried about safety rather than political correctness.  I don't think the poem is very good, but the feelings were real, and I feel important in this debate.  It was also a reaction to the military general who talked about he importance of maintaining diversity in the military.

 

This Christmas, Your Son is Dead

This Christmas, your son is dead,

But don’t worry, diversity is alive,

Better for more sons to die,

Than for us to lose diversity in the military.

This year, your 80-year-old mother

Will be searched at the airport,

But it is random, we wouldn’t

Want to look like we are targeting anyone.

So the peaceful Muslim sitting next to you

Will not be searched, it’s the luck of the draw,

Islam is the religion of peace you know,

Don’t worry if he says his prayers, or makes threatening comments, or situates himself in such a manner as to be prepared for an attack, or shouts the name “Allah,”…….

He is a peaceful man.

Of course if you comment, or report him

Or do anything, I will think you are a bigot.

His is the religion of peace.

You are the hater.

This Christmas, your son is dead,

We were blind to all warnings

That this killer could be a terrorist,

Diversity is still alive.

My 9/11

Taking the kids to seminary, the radio announcer KNBR was interviewing their stock market broker in New York trying to figure what was happening.  This was after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center, but before the 2nd.  The question was, whether or not this was a terrorist attack, or an accidental plane running into the World Trade Center.  They weren't even sure what size of plane it was, and there was speculation it may have been a small plane.  But in the back of my mind was this feeling it was a deliberate attack.  Just before getting to seminary about 6 a.m. on the Pacific Coast or 9 a.m. in the East, the second tower was hit.  At that point everyone new it was a terrorist attack.

I hurried home, and turned on the T.V. so we could watch the morning's events.  That is when I was presented with the gravity of the situation, and the horror.  When this event first happened, people could not get enough of watching the planes crash into the towers with the plume of fire.  It is hard to find this on the internet anymore.  The people so desperate that they were jumping from the buildings, that was a nightmare.

I had to tear myself away to go and pick people up from seminary, and then again to go to work.  The first tower had collapsed before I went to work.  That was so unbelievable.  Who could think that the towers would actually collapse.  I thought that there would be a fire, but they would remain standing, like when they were bombed previously.  I was  so convinced of the invulnerability of our country.  I had another thought coming.

Shortly after getting to work, we were evacuated to the mental health administration where we continued to watch the events.  It seems someone had made a bomb threat to the hospital, and non-essential services were moved.

We continued to watch the T.V. at the administration building, and before noon they finally told us we could go home.  What a day, and I was still glued to the T.V. watching any new tidbit I could get.  I watched the video of President Bush, being informed, but acting in such a way as not to alarm the children he was with, of the planes being scrambled, of the Washington D.C. being threatened, the president hidden away, both towers collapsing, the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania, the loss of the first responders, the clean-up and so much more.

And then after all that, ten years of war, but through that ten years, no further attacks on our soil.  My son has been to Iraq, and who knows where he might serve in the future.  So 9/11 is not a single event, but a series of events.