Bluemerle

and the buildings fall.

Maybe it's because I was supposed to be on the Mall that day with my ten year old.
Maybe it's because the still unknown but ever-widening scope of the attack had hit me in pit of the stomach....

THIS is when I felt real sick fear instead of horror:


(I grabbed that pick from Lileks a couple of years ago. He recalled it as one moment he felt "naked and dead" - it was my breaking point.)

I thank the crew and passengers of flight 93 . I don't want to disgrace them with my banal platitudes, or anything, but I don't know how else to explain what their actions meant to me, and I think this nation. Their decision to stand and fight made me remember to get up, to stand and to fight and not crumple up in fear or with a broken heart.

That's one reason I think the proposed flight 93 memorial stinks. I don't just think of them as disembodied voices getting/giving a big hug. They were heroes, fighting heroes, whose unconquerable spirit needs to be recognized.
OK, I'm a light-weight, and maybe my little speech is just embarrassing. That doesn't change our right and obligation to remember them fighting back tooth and nail against those who would take our freedom.

Expressions of gratitude to Flight 93

A Tribute to Flight 93