September Eleventh 6 Years Later

Here it is upon us, September Eleventh, six years later. While most of us have certainly heard and seen a lot about this day, it is a day that has and will forever changed the world. There have certainly been some other significant disasters and tragedies since the big events of that day Huricane Katrina the Tsuanami of 2004 come to mind, however the events of that fateful day continue to effect us. This was one of those days that the world was united, we could all feel the sadness and the outrage at the loss of human life. For a while we were all connected. So many of us were in disbelief that something so awful could be done by men to men. I have to think about the families that lost a loved one to the events ot this day. I feel a special connection to those families and to this day, because as the second plane hit the World Trade Center, miles and miles away, my mother passed away, losing a battle to cancer. Because this date is mentioned so often, I think of her often.

To the families that lost loved ones because of the events of this day, I just want to say that my heart goes out to you all. Thinking about the young children that lost one of their parents and will never get a chance to know them really makes you sad. The victims on this day were firefighters, policemen, flight crews, passengers on the planes, people working in and visitors to the World Trade Center, and any other group that I might have forgoten. People that work in high risk jobs such as firefighters and policemen kind of know that something could happen to them everytime that they go to work, certainly none of those firefighers and policemen had any idea that they were getting into this! For the people on the planes as well as those working and visiting the World Trade Center, they had no idea of what was about to come. Everyone of these people had a story, who they were and why they were where they were at the moment. Here is a guide to website tributes, this is not by any means an all inclusive list, but there are some tributes by families of the vicitms as well as those that felt compelled to comment with some ssort of tribute. The Writers Voice is another site of tributes. Wikipedia created a memorial wiki it is now read-only. Project 2996 was set up in honor of the fifth anniversary in 2005, the idea was that people could select one of the victims, do some research on them, and write about them. Here is a statistical look at Septmember 11th by numbers. From the New York Times comes this demographic info of WTC. Here are various victims lists from CNN. From the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui at Wikipedia comes this image of the victims photos put together. Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization of the victims' families, I must warn you that they are political, so keep this in mind if you check this site out.

A lot is written about firefighers, policemen, and the kinship that these two groups have. What boy doesn't pretend and dream about being a firefighter or policemen at some point in their childhood? Watching to work that these groups of people did, you couldn't help but be proud of them, they both brought a lot of respect and admiration to their professions. Here is the Wikipedia entry on FDNY. Here is the Official FDNY website. FDNY Firezone is an unoffical firefighter website as well as this unofficial FDNY tribute. FDNY Tribute is a nice slideshow with commentary (note I could only get this to work with Internet Explorer). The Bravest sells various merchandise from the FDNY. NY NJ Port Authority Police Deparment and Remembering the Heros are two sites dedicated remembering the policmen that have died.

I'm sure that many of you have wanted to known what happened on this day. Here is the 911 FAQ, it answers some questions and provides some interesting links. The 9-11 commision report is the "official account". From Wikipedia, here are some consipiracy theories of September 11th, these are certainly not all of them and you find a lot of sites dedicated to these theories if you look around. Here is the Wikipedia entry on the September 11, 2001 Attacks. Here is the BBC site on September 11th. This is from National Geographic, This is from PBS. From the New York Times here is a graphic on WTC structure (I needed to use Internet Explorer for this to work). Here is an animation showing the flight path taken by the two planes hitting the Twin Towers. This animation shows the flight path of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The Washington Post has provided this info on the Pentagon attack.

There has certainly been a lot of discussion about rebuilding. Here is an interesting site about rebuilding from the New York Times (I needed Internet Explorer for it to work). From the New York times, this site provides virtual tours for different proposals (I needed Internet Explorer for it to work). Also from the New York Times, this site provides plans for improving downtown transporation (I needed Internet Explorer for it to work). From the Washington Post, here is some information about rebuilding the Petagon.

Here are some other sites about September 11th that I have gathered...
Ground Zero Memoirs
CNN tribute
September 11th victims
theCat Gallery
memorial from the Library of Congress

If you feel compelled to do something maybe you could...

• Let your loved ones know that you care about them
• Live the Golden Rule and treat others the way that you would like to be treated
  
• If you personally know a family member of one of the victims, you could reach out to them
  
• Make a new friend
• Reach out to someone today show your support to someone that needs it (longer term would be better still)
• Help to show the world that mankind is good.
• Check out some of the links that I have provided
• Give your time and money to charity
• Here is the site for the United Way NYC

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