I Remember
Eric McErlain says in French on his blog what I said in English on my AIM away message, borrowing the motto of the province of Quebec: Je me souviens — I remember.
The night before, all I worried about was whether I could fit my CS 4114 homework into the 1 hour, 45 minute gap between 0930-1045 20th Century Russian History and that 1230-1345 Formal Languages class. That time included two ~8 minute bus rides, since (if I recall correctly) the prof had been inconsiderate enough to require that all homework be typed, rather than scribbled illegibly on a sheet of engineering paper.
I rolled out of bed that morning at about 8:55, stumbled to my computer, and checked my e-mail. Then I popped up IE for my usual morning news fix before hustling to McB 208 to relive the Russian Revolution.
CNN’s down.
The BBC is down.
MSNBC is down.
I thought, but the Internet can’t be down, I got my e-mail — including a couple of subscriptions that were sent 5-10 minutes ago. At this point, I figured something big was up in the news department, so I had my computer try to load the Australian Broadcasting Company’s news site, while I spun 180 degrees to turn on my TV.
Then I found out.
Word of the Pentagon attack came in as I drove into campus about 15 minutes late to class, listening to Don Imus out of New York. When I relayed that info during a class break at 10:25, Dr. Nelson abandoned her plans to continue the lesson in the last 15 minutes, and turned on CNN — and even before we understood why we could only see one tower in the camera shot, it came down too.
That Formal Languages homework never got done — instead, one roommate and I discussed geopolitical strategy. Between my afternoon and late-night bus shifts, instead of playing an intramural soccer game, I drove to Roanoke for a prayer service at my old pastor’s new church, and stopped on the way back to top off my gas tank in case of shortages or price-gouging (which was already happening in the Midwest). And while I waited at base for a ride back to campus to get my truck and go home, I tuned into a strong signal on the portable shortwave radio I had picked up at Dixons in Stratford-on-Avon four months before, heard “This is the BBC in London,” and shivered as I thought of people drawing comfort from those same words while under Nazi bombardment sixty years earlier.
We’ve come a long way in two years. Al-Qaeda is reduced to releasing pre-filmed tapes of a dead man, and running wackos in Toyota pickups at US Army tanks in Fallujah instead of flying airliners at civilian skyscrapers in New York. But the war isn’t over, and it won’t be until meaningful, widespread reform happens in the Arab world. We have a large part to play in that.
Until then, I remember.
“‘Cause justice is the one thing you should always find…”
11 September 2003 / 3 Comments / Tags: media, politics, life