Remembering

There wasn't a cloud in the sky on that crisp September morning.  It was a picture perfect day on the Chesapeake Bay.

2001 thus far had already been a difficult year.  My father passed away in the Spring and I found the familiarity and calm of the Bay to be the perfect place to mourn his loss.  It was also an ideal setting to concentrate on the development of an internet startup that I along with several others were pouring our days and nights into. 

During the early morning of September 11, I walked down to the Bay to try and catch a few crabs for lunch.  Unsuccessful after about an hour, I packed it in and went back to the house a little after 9am, completely oblivious to the fact that the world had changed in the past 30 minutes.  With my 28.8K modem, I logged onto the internet and soon saw a headline about a plane that had flown into the World Trade Center.  Like many, my immediate thought was that some amateur pilot had accidentally flown a small aircraft into one of the twin towers.  After the market opened and the Dow dropped by a couple hundred points, I finally decided to turn on the TV to see what was happening.  

In that split second when the first image appeared on the TV the magnitude of the situation was clear. In those early hours so many questions swirled around unanswered. Who? Why? Is more to come? What about nuclear weapons? How far from DC is safe?

I phoned my family (some calls went through others didn't) and then dialed my best friend (and business partner at the time) in California and told him wake up and turn on the TV.  The remainder of the day was spent anxiously waiting for my sister, niece, and mother to navigate the mass exodus out of DC and glued to the television trying to make sense out of the senseless.

The following week was surreal.  With air traffic grounded and no flights overhead, the sky over the Bay was the quietest I'd ever experienced.  Later that week, I spoke with a friend in Sweden and [mistakenly] mentioned that having Bush rather than Gore as President might not be such a bad thing.

Slowly the immediate fears receded and life got back to "normal" but after 10 years and an estimated $3.3 trillion spent, two wars, countless lives lost, warrantless wire taps, full body scans, increasing religious intolerance, U.S. government sponsored torture, and a society that treats fear and paranoia as part of the everyday experience it's difficult to call this normal.