Thinking Back Five Years . . .
Like many, probably most, I'm feeling unsettled this morning. I usually write this blog late at night, but today, being the anniversary that it is, I thought I'd write a little more in the moment.
In September 2001, I was in my first semester at ETSU. I'd lived through 41 9/11s and had no reason to think the one that year would pass any differently than the others. I'm sure that I awoke early in the house we rented on Franklin Street, kissed my wife goodbye and got Raleigh to school, maybe driving him or walking with him or following in the car as he rode his bike. I remember it was a beautiful blue Tuesday morning.
My teaching schedule included two Tuesday/Thursday sections of ENGL 1010, the first semester of freshman composition course; one met 9:45-11:05 and the other 11:15-12:35. I was in my office preparing for class by 8:30 at the latest--door closed, computer on but ignored. While all the events of that catastrophic morning were taking shape, I was completely oblivious. I knew nothing about the lives changed in the first moments of the hijackings and the turning of the planes toward New York City and Washington, D.C., nothing of the struggle to retake control of Flight 93. I was in my office when the WTC was hit and in class when the Pentagon was hit, when the twin towers fell, when Flight 93 crashed. I've been told that the world changed that morning, but nothing changed in the light or the air to warn me that a threshold had been crossed.
I never really liked that 9:45 class. All semester I would come into the room and find them sitting there quietly without the lights turned on and without speaking to one another. If any of them knew that the towers had been hit that morning, they said nothing to me about it. And so we carried on with business as usual. The first thing I heard about any of the events that morning was some comment from a student in the hall as I passed by on the way to my 11:15 class. I don't remember what the comment was, but I remember thinking that something must have happened--another plane crash, another reason for my not liking to fly. The 11:15 group was much more alive and began talking to me about what was going on as soon as I came through the door. But as I recall, I thought their intention was simply to get out of class early. They'd been talking excitedly--and I'd been listening--for about ten minutes when my department chair knocked on the door and told me that the university was closing. Only at that moment did I realize that something serious had happened.
I went home to join millions of people on couches around the world, and we all sat and watched the bad news together. . . .
In September 2001, I was in my first semester at ETSU. I'd lived through 41 9/11s and had no reason to think the one that year would pass any differently than the others. I'm sure that I awoke early in the house we rented on Franklin Street, kissed my wife goodbye and got Raleigh to school, maybe driving him or walking with him or following in the car as he rode his bike. I remember it was a beautiful blue Tuesday morning.
My teaching schedule included two Tuesday/Thursday sections of ENGL 1010, the first semester of freshman composition course; one met 9:45-11:05 and the other 11:15-12:35. I was in my office preparing for class by 8:30 at the latest--door closed, computer on but ignored. While all the events of that catastrophic morning were taking shape, I was completely oblivious. I knew nothing about the lives changed in the first moments of the hijackings and the turning of the planes toward New York City and Washington, D.C., nothing of the struggle to retake control of Flight 93. I was in my office when the WTC was hit and in class when the Pentagon was hit, when the twin towers fell, when Flight 93 crashed. I've been told that the world changed that morning, but nothing changed in the light or the air to warn me that a threshold had been crossed.
I never really liked that 9:45 class. All semester I would come into the room and find them sitting there quietly without the lights turned on and without speaking to one another. If any of them knew that the towers had been hit that morning, they said nothing to me about it. And so we carried on with business as usual. The first thing I heard about any of the events that morning was some comment from a student in the hall as I passed by on the way to my 11:15 class. I don't remember what the comment was, but I remember thinking that something must have happened--another plane crash, another reason for my not liking to fly. The 11:15 group was much more alive and began talking to me about what was going on as soon as I came through the door. But as I recall, I thought their intention was simply to get out of class early. They'd been talking excitedly--and I'd been listening--for about ten minutes when my department chair knocked on the door and told me that the university was closing. Only at that moment did I realize that something serious had happened.
I went home to join millions of people on couches around the world, and we all sat and watched the bad news together. . . .
posted by mac | 6:01 AM
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