The Obligatory Reminiscence...
Tuesday, September 11, 2001: Several of us from the office were at InterOp in Atlanta. I was in a session and came out for a stretch break. A bunch of people were gathered around an information kiosk in the convention center lobby that had a TV showing the news. I wandered over and asked what was up. Someone told me, "There's been a terrible accident. Some airliner just hit the World Trade Center!" I thought about where the WTC was, where the airports in and around NYC, and looked at the smoke pouring from the building and it just clicked in my head. Just as I turned to her and said, "That was no accident, no way was that an accident," when the second plane hit.
That evening, we went out to dinner, if memory serves at Max Lager's. Sitting on the back patio in the city with the world's busiest airport, there were only two airplanes in the air - a pair of USAF F-16 flying circles over downtown, low enough that we could see the live missles on the rails.
InterOp was cancelled and we headed home, up one person who couldn't fly back to Gainesville. It was weird over the next few days seeing no contrails, no blinking lights in the sky at night, just an occasional glimpse of a fighter.
The events themselves were NOT, as I've mentioned on Facebook, a tragedy. They were rather an ATROCITY, a carefully planned series of attacks calculated to cause maximum damage and generate the greatest possible number of fatalities. The tragedy is that so much of the world today lies thrall to the political, social and religious monster that provided the impetus for the events of September 11, 2001. As long as there is Islam, there will be no shortage of repeat appearances.
That evening, we went out to dinner, if memory serves at Max Lager's. Sitting on the back patio in the city with the world's busiest airport, there were only two airplanes in the air - a pair of USAF F-16 flying circles over downtown, low enough that we could see the live missles on the rails.
InterOp was cancelled and we headed home, up one person who couldn't fly back to Gainesville. It was weird over the next few days seeing no contrails, no blinking lights in the sky at night, just an occasional glimpse of a fighter.
The events themselves were NOT, as I've mentioned on Facebook, a tragedy. They were rather an ATROCITY, a carefully planned series of attacks calculated to cause maximum damage and generate the greatest possible number of fatalities. The tragedy is that so much of the world today lies thrall to the political, social and religious monster that provided the impetus for the events of September 11, 2001. As long as there is Islam, there will be no shortage of repeat appearances.