I was gonna post this yesterday but I wrote it at the office and the email and internet access was down for the entire day. So here it is, belatedly. These are my memories of hearing the news, and I might be off on some of the time details. The human memory is faulty.

A year ago I flipped on the radio to hear the Howard Stern show as I began my drive to work. I was late, as usual. The radio show was all confusing; I was hardly listening until I realized they were simply playing the audio from a local newscast, and Howard kept mentioning a plane flying into the Twin Towers. How horrible, I thought. I assumed it was some drunk or suicidal guy flying his Cessna like an idiot, and that the people saying it looked more like an M-80 were just overreacting, or even, maybe, the whole thing was some sick joke for the show. But then a second plane hit, and it was becoming clear that this wasnÕt some skit or prank. Howard and his fans were angrily calling for bombing towel-heads and kicking them out of the country. By the time I got to work I had changed the station to NPR which was also broadcasting the news instead of the usual classical music. In the office everyone was packed into the conference room to watch TV. My coworkers looked drained and stunned. The Towers were standing there puffing away like two giant smokestacks. They replayed the second plane hitting the tower a few times. I went upstairs. I didnÕt really know what to do so I called P who had just been tipped off by a call from my mother to turn on the television. Then someone told me that one of the towers had collapsed; I ran downstair and saw replays of it on the conference room TV. People were crying now. I called my sister in Brooklyn and got through on the second or third try. My brother-in-law answered. ÒI guess we canÕt call them the twin towers anymore, huh?Ó He always went to work late, otherwise he might have been stuck in a subway underneath midtown right about now. Of course now nobody was going to work.

It was a little after 10 and it was time for our weekly production meeting, which our boss insisted we do despite what was happening. Me and G, who grew up in the NYC area like I did, were appalled that she make us concentrate on our stupid trivial magazine during a time like this when thousands of people were dying, more reports of attacks kept coming in, news was changing every minute. The people from the art department came in half an hour late, saying quietly that the second tower had collapsed. I was furious that I had to be in a meeting instead of keeping vigil at the television or talking to my family on the phone. As soon as possible the meeting ended and I called my sister again. This time it took much longer to get through Ñ I kept getting a recording that all of the circuits were busy due to an emergency Ñ but I finally reached her. She had watched the towers fall, live, in real-time. ÒI just saw thousands of people die,Ó she said softly. She had also seen people leaping to their deaths. All of this I missed, which I was partly thankful for and partly angry I had missed it. I just wanted to experience what everyone else was.
I wanted to drive down to Brooklyn right away, and I wanted my sister to leave Brooklyn right away. I was incredibly sad that Bush was going to be deciding what our country was to do. I was feeling a nauseous mixture of exitement, terror, helplessness, and sadness. I knew nothing would ever feel
the same. A dark cloud had just passed over the country and would stay over us for a very long time.