By Don Wiltshire
Once again, the “Never Forget 9/11", also referred to as the “Patriot (Act) Day” has come and gone. Time to recall the gut-wrenching events of that day and reconsider the goat-head of 9/11 that has been festering in my brain ever since.
The first indication that anything at all was wrong was at 8:13 a.m. when the transponder on AA Flight 11 out of Boston’s Logan Airport stopped transmitting. Thirty-two minutes later Flight 11 crashed into WTC-1, the North Tower. This was the same building that I marveled at in 1972 while in NYC applying for theater work. The South Tower was just a hole in the ground then.
It was at this time that our daughter in Syracuse, New York called us in Magdalena. “Do you have your TV set on?” she said. We did and it never went off for two days.
Forty-nine minutes after the first indication of trouble, UA Flight 175, also out of Logan Airport, slams into WTC-2, the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.. There is no indication of any type of military air defense.
At 9:06, President Bush, who is reading My Pet Goat to school children in Booker Elementary School in Florida, is told of the second “attack.” There is finally an appropriate phrase to place in the empty thought balloon above his dumbfounded face. It comes form the latest Bud Light ads: “Here We Go.”
At 9:38 a.m., AA Flight 77, out of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. supposedly crashes into the outer ring of the Pentagon. The plane’s wreckage was never seen and the hole in the wall seemed impossibly small.
At 10:05, the South Tower collapses neatly into it’s own footprint, a little over an hour after being hit. This never seemed quite “right” to me. Heavily reinforced steel and concrete buildings do not simply “fall down.” This has tweaked the curiosity of many, many architects and structural engineers as well.
At 10:10 a.m., UA Flight 93, out of Newark Airport crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. There is still no evidence of any sort of Air Force defense.
At 10:28 a.m., the North Tower “falls down,” an hour and 42 minutes after being hit. For those of you who were watching, this was simply horrifying. The thought of all of those people trapped inside, trying to escape was practically unimaginable.
For the evening’s “entertainment,” at 5:20 p.m., the 47-story Building 7 of the World Trade Center “falls down.”
Call me a “conspiracy nut” if you will; I’ve been called worse. The whole event just seems “too smooth,” too “well staged” and too much of a “convenient truth” to me. It has conveniently justified two wars, the dismantling of our Constitutional Rights, torture, racial and religious hatred and intolerance, runaway defense spending in the name of “National Security” and now almost a Koran burning event.
For crying-out-loud, the hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia, yes, the same Saudi Arabia that we’re going to supply with $60 Billion worth of war planes if Congress thinks it’s OK.
The whole event has been turned into a convenient pill to be swallowed by us and our children without a moment’s thought, reflection or question.
We can’t even seem to get a health care package for Ground Zero cleanup workers through Congress. The bill would have been paid for by a tax on foreign owned businesses operating in the US. That was more than our Representatives could “afford.”
Another thing that we don’t usually think about was discussed at our last Water Meeting. Stefanie Beninato laid out the history of frantic, greedy Land Grants for us with quiet humor and a resignation that things have always been as they are today: “get it and exploit it while you can.” The Water Rights section of her program was laid out on top of this “patchwork quilt.” The final effect was rather hopeful: “nothing is written in stone.” We just might have a chance to defeat our water grabbing opponents here in South West New Mexico.
The next meeting of the Summer Reading Program for Adults on “Water” will take place on Wednesday, September 22 at 7:00 p.m. at the Magdalena Public Library. We don’t have a speaker scheduled, so I’m hunting around for an appropriate documentary to screen.
A likely candidate is Home, a breathtaking documentary by French Director, Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Glenn Close narrates this examination of our planet Earth and the havoc we are wreaking on our home as we extract the last of our oil, water and natural resources. Again, it’s a two hour film, so we will start promptly at 7:00 as the Library closes at 9:00.
Thank You Lucy, for all of your years of dedication to the Magdalena Library. You helped us to become a Real Library. Guess I had better curb my political “yap” while I temporarily cover.
If you have any comments, problems, solutions, upcoming events, Librarian Candidates or Empty Milk Jugs, contact me at mtn_don@yahoo.com.
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