Anniversary

My personal story of 9/11 isn't dramatic. I usually didn't get on-line to check the net till the evening in those days mostly to see if any new posts or replies had appeared on ATPo. I don't even remember what I was doing that day, except I hadn't heard the radio or seen the TV. I'd walked down my little back street to the community mail box and as usual saw no one. I came back in and as was my habit in those days I turned on one of the Spanish channels for a news magazine they had. I heard immediately the phrase "America bajo ataque" which I thought either I'd misunderstood or was typical media hyperbole. Within a few minutes they replayed one of the planes striking a tower and I realized it was time to switch to an English channel to see if this was really true.

My first thought was to get on-line. But then I realized that was a very bad thing to do. At least in those days much of the Internet was dependent on long distance lines and those lines would be jammed practically cutting off New York and Washington. So I waited till the next day and found so many people frantic for word from people they knew only from the Internet who probably were nowhere near those places, even those cities, directly affected. It made me realize how much the Internet was bringing us all closer. How much good it was doing even in evil times.