Remembering September 11, 2001

September 11th, 2001...it started out an ordinary day like any other. People went to school and work that morning like they did every day, little did we know that it would be day that would change our world and everything forever...

I remember where I was on 9/11: I was a college journalism student at Tarrant County College working in the newspaper office when a student came by the room and announced a plane crashed in New York City. The class quickly went to the student center where there was a big-screen TV and we saw the WTC North Tower in flames and watched as a second plane hit the South Tower. We watched the devastation in silence most of the morning and when it was announced that classes were cancelled I went to work and watched the rest of the event there. I had a friend that lived on Staten Island at that time and another friend who was in the U.S. Army Reserves and was involved in "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Nov. 2001-Dec. 2002), thankfully he came home but I have another friend currently serving in the Air Force in Iraq.

I don't usually blog about anything political or for that matter anything dealing with current events other than movies, music or TV. I admit I am not up on current events as much as I should be and am much more preoccupied with entertainment than the world's problems right now. But in light of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I felt obligated to acknowledge those events that affected so much in our world and so many people. No doubt the Internet will be full of 9/11 features and articles today and even Yahoo! News has a particularly large website devoted to 9/11 Remembered. Not since the invasion of Pearl Harbor in World War II has there been such a single loss of American lives and devastation. For my generation, this was a pivotal moment in our history, not unlike the baby-boomer generation who experienced the assassinations of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. Such national tragedies like the Challenger explosion in 1986 or Columbia disaster in 2003 cannot even compare to the loss of life and destruction of September 11th, 2001. We live in a troubled time, never has such a travesty caused so much fear, anger, hate, confusion and suspicion than 9/11 and if it hadn't been such a major event we wouldn't be talking about it today. We look back on the events of 9/11, a day where everything stopped and we watched helplessly as a symbol of American prosperity and power toppled in a cloud of dust and smoke, making the ground shake.