Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource September 11 Digital Archive Stories Description An account of the resource This collection is the bulk of the archive, representing the reactions and experiences of thousands of individuals beginning in 2002. 911DA Story 911DA Story: Story Tell us about what you did, saw, or heard on September 11th. Feel free to write as much or as little as you like. Tell us your story: I teach at a large university, and on the morning of 9/11 I was in a Department meeting until 11:00. I'd heard on the way to work about a "small plane" hitting the World Trade Center, but at that point the radio announcer had not sounded alarmed. Toward the end of our meeting a colleague walked in and whispered something to the Dept chair. I'll never forget him announcing that the twin towers had been hit by two airplanes and "collapsed." I thought he must mean that the *planes* had collapsed, not the towers. But then he said that 50,000 people worked at the WTC, and I realized that, somehow, beyond comprehension, the buildings themselves had crumbled. My wife works on the other side of campus, and as I walked down the avenue toward her building I was in a daze, trying to fathom what this meant. I didn't realize at the time that many people had had the chance to escape the towers before they fell, and I kept thinking that this was the equivalent, in a single day, of virtually all the soldiers we lost in the Vietnam War. And in the midst of my dismay I thought ahead to how the Bush administration would use all of this to push its military agenda--that we would now be sunk in that agenda for years, and billions of dollars, all in the name of protecting U.S. security and supremacy. Though I am a long-lapsed Catholic, I stepped into a church on the way to my wife's office. There was nobody inside, and I sat down to think, to imagine, to mourn. All that death. All that awful death and destruction. We drove through the thick traffic to pick up our son at his school, and returned home to watch the recurring images. Over and over the planes hit, the towers fell. The announcers droned on, struggling for words, for metaphors and analogies. "Attack on America." "America's New War." The ideological machine was geering up, moving forward already, telling the public what to think and who to blame. It was impossible to sleep that night. Impossible to do anything but place myself, again and again, inside those buildings and inside those planes, living in nightmarish fantasy what for others had been real. What could be said? It was loss, utter loss, and no war would bring anyone back. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource story23.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. anonymously Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. story Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-01-30 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 136.142.136.209 Annotation Annotations to this item. Foreign Policy Military Peace Politics and politicians Radio Coverage Television Coverage U.S. retribution DOMESTIC