Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Thursday, December 08, 2005
I read the news today, oh boy
Yeah, Imagine.
25 years. One of those times where you remember exactly where you were and with who, and how helpless you felt. I was too young for JFK, MLK, and Bobby. I was almost too young for the Apollo Moon Landing had it not been for my Dad and his insistence to stop at a distant relative's house on the way home from somewhere to watch it on live TV. I remember my father's excitement and the importance he prescribed to the event, but almost more than that, I remember the candy dots on paper that the grandmother of my cousins shared with us.
I vividly remember the Challenger disaster. I was in a hotel lobby on a coffee break at a conference for my first real job after college. Mid-morning. Everyone gathered in the hotel lobby for a coffee or a smoke. Shuttle launches were a yawn by then, but as we watched the mid-air explosion live, and slowly realized something awful had happened, we all kind of lost any sense of priority for the rest of the day. I sat in the lobby of a nameless Hilton in Pittsburgh, and mourned American heroes.
On the morning of 9/11 I was in my office, when things suddenly became a blur as we activated our woefully inadequate emergency preparedness plans to accommodate all the burned and injured victims we expected from the Pentagon and even perhaps from NYC. By 2:00 in the afternoon, it was clear that there was no one to save, and our teams would not be needed. I went home at 4:00 and sat in front of CNN for the next few days crying.
When John was shot, I had just come back from the library after studying for Freshman finals and found my dormmates huddled in the lounge sobbing. This was before cable, CNN, etc...
Nowadays, I would have gotten a call or text on my cell phone with breaking news.
If ever there was a day that could be labeled as "The day the music died"...
And with all apologies to Don MaClean...
One can only "Imagine"
Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace...
