9/11/09

     Just a brief blog today.  According to Wikipedia, the 9/11 death toll was either 2993 or 3017 people, kind of unsure which isn't strange for a Wikipedia entry.  Either number is horrible, but when I think back to that day, when newspeople were suggesting fifteen or twenty thousand deaths, I wonder if it is logical to say it could have been a lot worse.  I don't think so.  The casualties of 9/11 continue today in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that doesn't even include the social casualties in the death of so much public trust.

     I'm sure I've blogged about this before, for which I apologize, but this is about my 90th blog, so I'm afraid there will be some overlap.  Plus it is 9/11 today.  When I think back 8 years ago, I recall the moment when I heard about the towers for the first time.  It was in my 10th grade honors class.  I'm pretty sure Ali Stankavage first said to me that terrorists had flown a jet into the towers.  I know it was Jill Tirabassi who confirmed it, because she had been out of school for an appointment and had heard about it on the radio.  That moment is as indelibly imprinted on my psyche as the moment in Mrs. Hassett's 11th grade English class in R.L. Thomas High School when I heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot.  I've said before, what a wonderful class Ali and Jill were in. They are special because it was my final year of teaching.  But I think another reason that I so appreciate the memories and the people in that class was the terrible news I first heard in their presence.