IN MY SHOES: Nine Years And Counting …
As we watch footage of that awful morning unfolding minute by minute in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, PA, and observe a moment of silence at precisely 8:46 am, 9:03 am, 9:59 am and 10:28 am – no need to explain why - we remember where we were, and what we were doing when the pilots of the four hijacked planes carried out their terrible mission in the name of Allah.
We remember the workaday Americans and first responders – some of them our friends, neighbors and loved ones – who perished, as well as the profound sense of relief that washed over us when we learned that someone we knew had been spared through some quirk of fate, such as being late to work because the alarm clock didn’t go off as usual.
And we remember the bravery of ordinary office workers who helped their less agile colleagues down flight after flight of stairs and of the passengers on American Airlines Flight 93 who knew they were living on borrowed time, but succeeded in bringing down the missile of destruction they were unwillingly riding where it could do little damage.
Being a voracious consumer of media, The Stiletto also can’t help but remember how that horrifying day brought out the best and the worst in coverage. In her mind, the most graceful contemporaneous account was Daniel Henninger’s “I Saw It All. Then I Saw Nothing”:
I saw the airliner at the instant it hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. A little later I saw the flames burst out of the south tower when the second airliner hit it. I saw people fall from the top of the World Trade Center. I saw the south tower fall down. A little later, I saw the north tower fall down. I have, in the past several hours, looked into lower Manhattan, and each time, where the World Trade Center stood, there is absolutely nothing. …
For awhile, aside from the flames and smoke, it was oddly uneventful. Sometimes windows would fall off the building and float down; sometimes a piece of smoking debris would arc downward. Then people started jumping off.
They were all so far away, but you always knew when a person was coming off the building because they all came down the same way - spread-eagled, turning, falling fast, and disappearing behind the Woolworth Building. It was awful, and one's head filled, irresistably, with awful thoughts. Did they jump rather than be burned? Did the fire force them off the building? Just an hour before, they were probably on the ground, like the rest of us. …
Then the first building fell down. … [W]hen it fell, it fell not merely with thunder, but all the way down, as rubble. It was so quickly nothing.
And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous: In their article, “A Death Better Than Fate’s,” which examined why people jumped from the upper floors of the World Trade Center, Washington Post reporters Gene Weingarten and David von Drehle observed that one woman leaped while "primly clutching her handbag, as though she might have to hail a cab when she alighted.” It never occurred to them that she wanted enough ID and personal effects with her so that her family could identify her remains and could have whatever keepsakes of her that survived the plunge she would not. If there is a hall of shame for stupid reporting – a reverse Newseum – this would be Exhibit A.
Did you see the experiment described at the bottom of the article on why people jump? They subjected a lab animal to excruciating pain. The animal could escape into another chamber where it would be beheaded. Other animals were allowed to observe this so they would know and then themselves were tortured to see what they would do. Speaking of channeling, apparently someone is channeling Joseph Mengele. I have an experiment I would like to conduct involving staking a "scientist" out over an anthill. As to why people jump, quoting a firefighter, "People will do anything rather than burn to death." I agree. The cab reference was crass.
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