Entry 3: September 11

I know it's cliche when people say you'll never forge where you

were and what you were doing on September 11, 2001.

Well it's completely true.

The morning of September 11 I was running late to school, per usual,

and my mom was about to drive me to Oak Grove Elementary School.

Fourth grade was not my favorite year, so I leisurely got ready. 

While I was in the bathroom, I heard the phone ring, recognized it was my dad,

and was perplexed as my mom continually said, "Oh no". 

For some reason I thought my dad's building got robbed.

My mom briefly explained what she knew had happened, which was confirmed

by the radio as we drove to school.

Once I got to my class, I immediately told my teacher a plane crashed into one

of the Twin Towers (at the time, only one had). My teacher told me I was lying. Great lady.

Anyway, after we went to music class, my teacher sat my class 

down and told us what happened. A lot of my classmates took it 

really hard; a couple of them had parents whom were traveling, one from Washington.

One kid locked himself in a locker. I'm not really sure what we did the rest of the day...

I think we colored, and I know we weren't allowed outside for recess. 

When I got home that night, my parents were transfixed by the television. I honestly 

think I was too young to grasp the gravity of the day, but I'll never forget seeing 

the huge dust cloud after the second tower fell and images of people

jumping out of windows. This summer I went to the Newseum in Washington, which 

has an exhibit dedicated to 9/11. Although I hadn't really looked at footage

or papers in a while, I remembered seeing specific covers of papers

I had seen almost ten years earlier on my kitchen table the morning after.

Maya Lin's point that other memorials were "propagandized statements about

the victory" is applicable to September 11, and likens it to Vietnam 

because the central purpose of the monuments are to commemorate 

the life lost. With 9/11, there was no disagreement of the role of the monument,

but because Vietnam appeared different than any other U.S. war. Today the media

is very open with the 9/11 memorial, and there is a national agreement. The controversy 

of the Vietnam Memorial reminds me of the dispute about the placement of 

a mosque near ground zero. While America maintains the common

epithet of the "melting pot", the debate of appropriateness of the location contradicts it. 

I feel like the media and politicians blew this out of the water, although I get the 

gravity of it. Regardless if its right, I thought the whole issue took

attention away from where attention should have been: those who

lost their lives.