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: A bulletin interrupted the morning news in my apartment on September 11, 2001: ?An aircraft hit one of the World Trade Center?s Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.? The radio report cut to an eyewitness in the south Tower. He described the crash in English with a Jamaican lilt. Companies in the World Trade Center employ thousands of citizens and immigrants from the West Indies and Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. At 9:00 A.M. I flipped on the TV, stomach churning. Manhattan is where I was born and raised; my mother, family, and friends live there. The TV image showed a smoldering north Tower. Suddenly, I saw?live?a plane traveling at demonic speed slam into the south Tower. In mourning, I left to drive to work. The highway from Washington, D.C., to my employer, a university in northern Virginia, passes the Pentagon. Traffic was thinning as I glimpsed a shiny blur low in the horizon. It was the hijacked Dulles flight. Fifteen seconds later the military complex was fading in my rearview mirror, and the jet had plunged into its target. On a cloudless day cars heading toward the Capitol turned on their lights, vehicles and drivers gaping wide-eyed. When I arrived on campus minutes afterward, few seemed to know what had happened. In my office the phone rang. I grabbed the receiver and heard my mother crying: ?are you OK?? At the Manhattan school that she helps to run, I could hear children playing. Some of their parents, she said, might not return to them. ?What about the Pentagon? Is the White House under attack?? She asked. My wife, I choked, is blocks from the White House. As another pirated flight hurtled toward the Capitol, I phoned my wife at her job but there was no answer. Two hours elapsed before she contacted me. It would be the last call until late afternoon, with communications jamming in the panic. In the unnatural quiet we realized the worst: an immense death toll of parents, spouses, sons and daughters, artists, athletes, dreamers, loved ones. My lecture plan for the day was to introduce the great empires of ancient Africa but I could not teach. Half the class straggled in, angry and bewildered. Recriminations poured forth. America was bearing the brunt of foreign extremism, students growled. I urged them to recall the 1998 embassy attacks in Africa. When our citizens were murdered, Kenya and Tanzania suffered horrible casualties as well. We reflected on the Oklahoma City bombing. Two terrorists convicted for that diabolical crime gouged the nation. History records their names as Timothy and Terry, U.S. citizens. They believed the mythic Anglo-Saxon heartland was under threat from a Big Brother, immigrant-loving state. Their target, a government building, was filled with people from the heartland, many of them children. In the wake of detonation, Timothy and Terry slithered into hiding, while some Americans bayed for ?Arab? blood. Students remembered this event and spoke of respecting law-abiding people. Now that the U.S. military glares at an erratically defined Islamic enemy I wonder: Will we be able to engage in painful dialogue about the origins and consequences of September 11, 2001? I have taken solace from the international messages that my family received in the aftermath of the colossal violence. An ?aunt? in Islamabad, a Pakistani who fasts at Ramadan, was praying for us. Another ?cousin? from Tunisia, a muslim and scholar of Romantic poetry, sent his love. Calls and emails from friends in Pietermaritzburg, Johannesburg, and Durban offered heartfelt solidarity to my family and all the victims. Such support came at a crucial moment. We were seeking ?unaccounted for? people. Today, I learned the last of my ?unaccounted for,? Nick the school buddy and New York City fireman, was alive. So many other families would be hollowed out by loss and sorrow. Firemen down the avenue from Nick?s unit raced to the burning Towers. Their stationhouse now sat empty--every truck and uniformed man entombed in the rubble under a choking mist of pulverized concrete. As the horror sinks in and those responsible are ?credibly? identified, what else will be entombed? Will it be our ideals of justice; our critical understanding of America?s role in the world; our struggles for sensible openness? More important, will the drive to retaliate pull Americans from a pit of tragedy into a cloud of vengeance? We grieve for so much. written 9/14/01 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 story57.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. yes 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. 2002-02-13 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 140.247.82.236 Annotation Annotations to this item. Afganistan/Mideast Arabs in U.S. Civil Liberties/Discrimination Firefighters Internet Military Pentagon Personal connection to someone at site Religion Students/Teachers U.S. retribution DC:2 Sep 11- Sep 21, 2001 Feature