Rusty Coats -
On the morning September 11, 2001, I was boarding a plane in Minneapolis, headed for Dallas to share online research at a Freedom Communications conference. I made it as far as the jetway when the gate agent halted boarding.
For a few moments, we all stood in that soulless tunnel, figuring the delay was any of the inane hassles facing road warriors. Can’t find the crew. Bag left unattended. Last-minute wheelchair passenger. Mechanical whatnot. We made tired, cynical jokes, checked the time and pouted.
But when the gate agent announced we’d have to deplane because “all flights have been grounded,” our banter went dry. We dug cell phones out of our bags – mine was a blue Nokia the size of a C-4 brick – and started making calls.
Nobody knew anything at that point.
By the time I was back in the concourse, the airport had shut off all the CNN monitors; I was told this is policy. (I later used this detail in my novel, “Out of Touch.”) So we all stood there, phones to our ears, learning nothing.
We were in a total news vacuum. We even started lining up to rebook our flights.
OmniSky modem with Palm V
On a lark, I pulled out my OmniSky modem, which clicked onto the back of my Palm V. I pulled out the extendable antenna and opened the AvantGo application – an early news app, back when mobile information was tethered to whatever news you could download while updating your calendar, then read offline.
In my Yahoo! channel, I found a breaking-news story about a plane flying into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. No mention of size – from the paragraph, it could have been a jet or a Piper Cherokee. But it was enough.
It was news.
“Hey,” I remember saying, loud enough for the other road warriors to hear, “I think I know why we’re not going to Dallas.”
From that moment on, we forgot about rebooking. Other travelers gathered around my tiny, gray-green monochrome screen, waiting impatiently as the story refreshed pixel by pixel. A picture about as crisp as a QR code showed a tower, a hole, smoke. I handed the PDA around so others could see.
We became a small social network. Other travelers made contact with the outside world and fed information into our circle. With dumb phones and a painfully slow data connection, we pieced the story together. It was a jet. Tower’s on fire. And then: Another jet just hit the other tower.
It was around that time that we were instructed via loudspeaker to evacuate the airport. We walked as a group, handing the PDA back and forth, until we came to the main concourse. A huge clot of people had gathered outside an L.L. Bean store. We joined them.
That’s when we saw the first images that would be burned into our national psyche – on a wall of television screens designed to show scenes of people enjoying the outdoors in high-end khakis and wooly sweaters. While airport management had snuffed the CNN feeds throughout the airport, the store clerks – in an act of heroic news anarchy – tuned their giant commercial into a community news wall.
This week, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth told a group of journalists that social media would have made 9/11 “more horrific.” People trapped in the tower might have shared video. Passengers might have tweeted their last moments. And so on.
Smarter people than me have responded, some saying that social media would have allowed the victims to tell their own stories, write their own epitaphs. Others have talked about how social media may have helped us heal.
All I know is that, 10 years ago, I learned of 9/11 through makeshift mobile and social media channels – at a time when official channels of news were cut off.
(And why I still have that OmniSky modem.)
In personal correspondence, Rusty added this addedum:
When I finally made it home from the airport that night, I took my daughters - then 6 and 4 - onto the front door stoop with some homemade candles we'd made together from the multicolored wax remains of spent candles. We lit the brownish-purple reincarnations and sat in silence for as long as they could stand it. I still remember the blanched face of a woman riding in a car past our house, seeing us huddled on the stoop with the candles flickering, her hand pressed against the glass.We would spend the entire weekend making candles.
Susan Wells Bennett -
Ten years ago, I was at the end of a bad marriage. The morning of 9/11, my estranged husband called to tell me the world was ending and that he wanted to be with me. My answer? “If the world is ending, I don’t want to be with you.”
I was two months shy of my thirtieth birthday then. As I watched the towers crumble, I remember thinking how little I had done with my life. I had worked corporate job after corporate job. I had even worked in skyscrapers for some of them, although not in New York, but Phoenix. How many of those people – the ones who were at that moment dying at their workplace – hated their jobs and dreamt of a different life?
I wish I could say I changed my life immediately – that I quit my job and cut my energy-draining ex-husband from my life forever. Instead, the changes were gradual, but permanent. I have never made another decision without thinking this:
If the world ended today, would I be happy with where I was and whom I was with?
Emjae Edwards -
I was running late that day. I didn't hear the news before I dashed out and I was listening to music in the car as I drove. My first inkling that there was a problem was approaching the Vincent Thomas Bridge to go to my client in the former Naval Shipyards. Dozens of police cars were scattered around the access ramps, police officers were wearing their Kevlar, some even had rifles resting on their hips. We commuters were summarily turned around, no explanation given.
I made an awkward U turn and headed back to the freeway and an alternate route to my client. I pulled out my mobile as I drove - yes, there was a time when it was legal to chat and drive - and called my client to apologise. My God, he said, haven't you seen the news? Planes are attacking us. We're at war!
I looked around, nervously, and then and only then realised that I was one of only a few drivers on a piece of road that was usually thick with cars, motorcycles and transports. I pulled to the shoulder and started calling anyone who might have information and at the same time tried to find out what was happening on the radio. Phones rang endlessly while phrases were tossed at me; twin towers collapsing, terrorists, bridges, highways, the Pentagon, missing planes, Logan Airport, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.
I had just moved to Los Angeles before the big disaster trifecta of the nineties; fires, riots, earthquakes. And now, war.
I managed to get through to a cousin in San Francisco who told me all the bridges were shut down, that threats had been made against them. As he spoke I looked up into the sky and realised something even more eerie than an empty stretch of the 110 - the skies were empty. I was sitting a mere five minutes from wheels up out of one of the busiest airports in the world, and there wasn't a single plane anywhere on the horizon. But, if planes were smashing into bridges and buildings, I was glad not to see them queued up across the valley, waiting to land.
I decided to go home. That's what one does in time of crisis. As I drove through the streets of our busy little borough I was overcome by the silence. There were few cars in motion, and few people on the street. Occasionally a big, angry firetruck would zoom by, but all the rest was quiet. An entire nation stunned into silence.
Later we would cry and military jets would scream up and down our coast night and day, and people on the television would jump up and down uttering rally cries, but in that surreal morning, when the unthinkable happened, the sounds of life throughout the country were shut off.
Boss Bean -
Where I was really isn't remarkable. From the moment I woke to the sound of frantic pages and phone calls, I was in the same place as almost everyone else: in front of a TV, watching the same images over and over and each time hoping there would be a different outcome, hearing the same words and hoping they were mistakes. Ironically, I was supposed to be in Pennsylvania later in the week for a corporate wide conference. Everyone who contacted me felt I should thank God that I wasn't going there that morning.
Why? My being on a plane didn't change things for those thousands of people, and the hundreds of thousands friends, family members, co workers, responders, soldiers and civilians who were affected by what happened. Yes, it's true I didn't become part of a fireball over the city of New York, but in a way my country had. It was hard to be grateful for my personal safety when everything I knew changed in that fraction of a second.
In Rusty's comments he mentioned the statements of the Washington Post publisher who said social media made this event more horrific. How? It was horrific. The ability to talk about it couldn't make it worse. The ability to share information, to begin, almost immediately, the process of healing by sharing didn't make it worse. Was some misinformation dispursed? Yes, but no more than what was coming out of the mouths of the talking heads on our television screens. For the most part, social media was the way we learned what happened and let ourselves grieve, console and unite. Our primitive smartphones, our computers and pagers were this century's radio to gather around and learn.
Has this changed us? Not really, not in the most fundamental way. The United States of America has a collective identity unlike any other; when bad things happen here, regardless of why, we come together. For the time it takes to know, understand and overcome tragedy we come together regardless of politics, religion, skin color, gender or age. We hold one another, we rage against injustice together, we wipe one another's tears and then we roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess together. Next week we'll be back on opposite sides of the fence, but when we're needed, we'll be there.
So maybe everything I knew didn't change.
We welcome your comments.
On the morning September 11, 2001, I was boarding a plane in Minneapolis, headed for Dallas to share online research at a Freedom Communications conference. I made it as far as the jetway when the gate agent halted boarding.
For a few moments, we all stood in that soulless tunnel, figuring the delay was any of the inane hassles facing road warriors. Can’t find the crew. Bag left unattended. Last-minute wheelchair passenger. Mechanical whatnot. We made tired, cynical jokes, checked the time and pouted.
But when the gate agent announced we’d have to deplane because “all flights have been grounded,” our banter went dry. We dug cell phones out of our bags – mine was a blue Nokia the size of a C-4 brick – and started making calls.
Nobody knew anything at that point.
By the time I was back in the concourse, the airport had shut off all the CNN monitors; I was told this is policy. (I later used this detail in my novel, “Out of Touch.”) So we all stood there, phones to our ears, learning nothing.
We were in a total news vacuum. We even started lining up to rebook our flights.
OmniSky modem with Palm V
On a lark, I pulled out my OmniSky modem, which clicked onto the back of my Palm V. I pulled out the extendable antenna and opened the AvantGo application – an early news app, back when mobile information was tethered to whatever news you could download while updating your calendar, then read offline.
In my Yahoo! channel, I found a breaking-news story about a plane flying into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. No mention of size – from the paragraph, it could have been a jet or a Piper Cherokee. But it was enough.
It was news.
“Hey,” I remember saying, loud enough for the other road warriors to hear, “I think I know why we’re not going to Dallas.”
From that moment on, we forgot about rebooking. Other travelers gathered around my tiny, gray-green monochrome screen, waiting impatiently as the story refreshed pixel by pixel. A picture about as crisp as a QR code showed a tower, a hole, smoke. I handed the PDA around so others could see.
We became a small social network. Other travelers made contact with the outside world and fed information into our circle. With dumb phones and a painfully slow data connection, we pieced the story together. It was a jet. Tower’s on fire. And then: Another jet just hit the other tower.
It was around that time that we were instructed via loudspeaker to evacuate the airport. We walked as a group, handing the PDA back and forth, until we came to the main concourse. A huge clot of people had gathered outside an L.L. Bean store. We joined them.
That’s when we saw the first images that would be burned into our national psyche – on a wall of television screens designed to show scenes of people enjoying the outdoors in high-end khakis and wooly sweaters. While airport management had snuffed the CNN feeds throughout the airport, the store clerks – in an act of heroic news anarchy – tuned their giant commercial into a community news wall.
This week, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth told a group of journalists that social media would have made 9/11 “more horrific.” People trapped in the tower might have shared video. Passengers might have tweeted their last moments. And so on.
Smarter people than me have responded, some saying that social media would have allowed the victims to tell their own stories, write their own epitaphs. Others have talked about how social media may have helped us heal.
All I know is that, 10 years ago, I learned of 9/11 through makeshift mobile and social media channels – at a time when official channels of news were cut off.
(And why I still have that OmniSky modem.)
In personal correspondence, Rusty added this addedum:
When I finally made it home from the airport that night, I took my daughters - then 6 and 4 - onto the front door stoop with some homemade candles we'd made together from the multicolored wax remains of spent candles. We lit the brownish-purple reincarnations and sat in silence for as long as they could stand it. I still remember the blanched face of a woman riding in a car past our house, seeing us huddled on the stoop with the candles flickering, her hand pressed against the glass.We would spend the entire weekend making candles.
Susan Wells Bennett -
Ten years ago, I was at the end of a bad marriage. The morning of 9/11, my estranged husband called to tell me the world was ending and that he wanted to be with me. My answer? “If the world is ending, I don’t want to be with you.”
I was two months shy of my thirtieth birthday then. As I watched the towers crumble, I remember thinking how little I had done with my life. I had worked corporate job after corporate job. I had even worked in skyscrapers for some of them, although not in New York, but Phoenix. How many of those people – the ones who were at that moment dying at their workplace – hated their jobs and dreamt of a different life?
I wish I could say I changed my life immediately – that I quit my job and cut my energy-draining ex-husband from my life forever. Instead, the changes were gradual, but permanent. I have never made another decision without thinking this:
If the world ended today, would I be happy with where I was and whom I was with?
Emjae Edwards -
I was running late that day. I didn't hear the news before I dashed out and I was listening to music in the car as I drove. My first inkling that there was a problem was approaching the Vincent Thomas Bridge to go to my client in the former Naval Shipyards. Dozens of police cars were scattered around the access ramps, police officers were wearing their Kevlar, some even had rifles resting on their hips. We commuters were summarily turned around, no explanation given.
I made an awkward U turn and headed back to the freeway and an alternate route to my client. I pulled out my mobile as I drove - yes, there was a time when it was legal to chat and drive - and called my client to apologise. My God, he said, haven't you seen the news? Planes are attacking us. We're at war!
I looked around, nervously, and then and only then realised that I was one of only a few drivers on a piece of road that was usually thick with cars, motorcycles and transports. I pulled to the shoulder and started calling anyone who might have information and at the same time tried to find out what was happening on the radio. Phones rang endlessly while phrases were tossed at me; twin towers collapsing, terrorists, bridges, highways, the Pentagon, missing planes, Logan Airport, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.
I had just moved to Los Angeles before the big disaster trifecta of the nineties; fires, riots, earthquakes. And now, war.
I managed to get through to a cousin in San Francisco who told me all the bridges were shut down, that threats had been made against them. As he spoke I looked up into the sky and realised something even more eerie than an empty stretch of the 110 - the skies were empty. I was sitting a mere five minutes from wheels up out of one of the busiest airports in the world, and there wasn't a single plane anywhere on the horizon. But, if planes were smashing into bridges and buildings, I was glad not to see them queued up across the valley, waiting to land.
I decided to go home. That's what one does in time of crisis. As I drove through the streets of our busy little borough I was overcome by the silence. There were few cars in motion, and few people on the street. Occasionally a big, angry firetruck would zoom by, but all the rest was quiet. An entire nation stunned into silence.
Later we would cry and military jets would scream up and down our coast night and day, and people on the television would jump up and down uttering rally cries, but in that surreal morning, when the unthinkable happened, the sounds of life throughout the country were shut off.
Boss Bean -
Where I was really isn't remarkable. From the moment I woke to the sound of frantic pages and phone calls, I was in the same place as almost everyone else: in front of a TV, watching the same images over and over and each time hoping there would be a different outcome, hearing the same words and hoping they were mistakes. Ironically, I was supposed to be in Pennsylvania later in the week for a corporate wide conference. Everyone who contacted me felt I should thank God that I wasn't going there that morning.
Why? My being on a plane didn't change things for those thousands of people, and the hundreds of thousands friends, family members, co workers, responders, soldiers and civilians who were affected by what happened. Yes, it's true I didn't become part of a fireball over the city of New York, but in a way my country had. It was hard to be grateful for my personal safety when everything I knew changed in that fraction of a second.
In Rusty's comments he mentioned the statements of the Washington Post publisher who said social media made this event more horrific. How? It was horrific. The ability to talk about it couldn't make it worse. The ability to share information, to begin, almost immediately, the process of healing by sharing didn't make it worse. Was some misinformation dispursed? Yes, but no more than what was coming out of the mouths of the talking heads on our television screens. For the most part, social media was the way we learned what happened and let ourselves grieve, console and unite. Our primitive smartphones, our computers and pagers were this century's radio to gather around and learn.
Has this changed us? Not really, not in the most fundamental way. The United States of America has a collective identity unlike any other; when bad things happen here, regardless of why, we come together. For the time it takes to know, understand and overcome tragedy we come together regardless of politics, religion, skin color, gender or age. We hold one another, we rage against injustice together, we wipe one another's tears and then we roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess together. Next week we'll be back on opposite sides of the fence, but when we're needed, we'll be there.
So maybe everything I knew didn't change.
We welcome your comments.