Hi everyone...don't know if you'll find this interesting or not, but ya might. I have my clock radio set to a sports talk station. Yesterday, I awoke as usual to Rangers chat and jokes, and sort of drifted in bed for a while, half asleep. Then one of the hosts said, "It was about 40 minutes ago that the World Trade Center was hit by a plane." I rolled out of bed and hit the floor, and changed the radio to an all-news station. The anchor (actually, the guy who interviewed me for my first post-college job) was somberly saying, "The only word to describe this is 'sickening'." "WHAT'S SICKENING?!" I screamed at the radio. Ten minutes of listening later, I figured out the whole story. I actually heard on the radio as each tower collapsed. I heard when the Pentagon was hit. I started to get very scared, afraid we were in for a whole day of attacks, unsure when of it would end, wondering who was doing this. I called my mom. That's all I had an urge to do. Touch my family. The world was falling apart and I needed them. My mom hadn't heard. I told her, then said I needed to go, that I had just wanted to hear her voice. My mom and I, we aren't affectionate people. But that morning I needed her. Then I remembered I have a job. A job I was suddenly scared to go to. I work for one of the top five newspapers in the country. It's well known, and could conceivably be a target. But I got in my car and went anyway, reasoning that I had a responsibility. On the way, I turned the sports talk station back on. There was no more Rangers chat, no more jokes. They were subdued, giving updates on the situation and offering commentary. From them I learned downtown Dallas skyscrapers were being evacuated. Shit, I thought, as I drove into downtown. The newspaper/TV station campus was crawling with cops. I had to stop my car and give identification to the guard, when every other day I've whizzed by with a wave. I parked, then walked to the building, almost running now, anxious to get to work and scroll the wires and be productive. I had to produce more ID at the door for a guard I'm on a first-name basis with. Upstairs, all the bigwigs were in a meeting. I was the only one in the newsroom. I quietly got set up to work on my regular Tuesday stuff, checking Web sites for updates. We got an e-mail. "Stay OFF the Internet for non-essential purposes." We were slowing down the whole system to unusable levels. Curious journalists, don't you know. People started drifting into work. The meeting broke up. The business editor walked briskly out then called all his editors and reporters into a huddle. Assignments were given, deadlines were issued. We were producing an extra. Writers were given an 11:30 deadline. That's one hour and thirty minutes to report, write, and file stories on the most chaotic morning I can remember. The line editors tried to get the stories to the desk (that's me) by 12:30. Copy editors had to give the stories to the news editors by 1:20. Papers would hit the streets at four. Our company's CEO issued a memo sending all non-news personnel home. We worked on. I foisted my regular Tuesday work off on someone else and went to work on the extra. They needed me, I thought -- or maybe I needed them, to feel useful, to think in some tiny way I was helping the hurting country. I picked up a story about the scene in Washington, D.C. It ran with a photo of the flaming shell of one of the Pentagon buildings. "Anxiety pervades DC after Pentagon hit," I wrote. "Buildings evacuated, residents flee, troops deployed in aftermath." We all worked like maniacs. I read page proofs and initialed them as quickly as I could. I came to a story about Palestinian youth cheering in the streets. There was a photo. They looked positively joyous. "Jesus Christ," I said, clapping my hand to my mouth. "What?" another editor demanded, afraid I had found a huge error in a story. I pointed, and she shook her head. We shoved the extra, then settled in to work on other things. We stayed crazy busy. Right around four, we got the papers. They still flelt damp and hot from the press. Eventually, my shift finished up. I offered to stay, but every available night-side employee had already been called in. "Go home," they told us. We'd earned it, they said, and the next day was likely to be just as hard. I invited a co-worker to go to the arena with me to donate blood. I've never done it before. I'm dead scared of needles. We walked over, and the line wound around and around. "How long is the wait?" I asked an arena events coordinator. "Six and a half hours," he said, "But we've closed the line." He gave us a list of other donation locations, and advised us to call ahead. Still full of all our blood, we went to get a beer. We drove downtown, and it was eerily empty. No tourists, hardly any cars. In the midst of happy hour, the bar was essentially deserted. We ordered large Shiners, and the bartender gave them to us in souvenier glasses. "I'm not going to charge you for them," he said. "It's a sad day." Jill and I talked about a lot of things, but it was always the one thing. Racism, brainwashing, crazy devotion to ideals, what's next, whether people are basically good, or basically evil. The sky was completely still and quiet. I'd never noticed before how much background noise planes produce. I went home and watched the President's address, listened to some commentary. Suddenly, I wanted to get away from it. I went outside and sat on the ground. I could still hear the TV, coming from my neighbors' houses. Everyone had it on. I couldn't get away.
