i know there are some people that will be closing down their blogs as a sort of moment of silence, in honor of the tragedies, and i have great respect for this. i even thought of doing so myself, but then i realized that one of the things i’d like to honor, is blogging.
i woke up early that morning a year ago, out of one of my postapocalyptic dreams, to find chris had come home from work (he was in the taxi, got the news over the radio, and came immediately home). he didn’t wake me up (it was six-something, way early) just put on the tv, and that’s what woke me up. i remember sitting up in bed and watching the second plane hit in new york, dazed, going from the dream to the apocalyptic reality.
the news coverage at that time was still of the speechless, we-don’t-know-what-we’re-seeing-here variety, and all of a sudden it occurred to me, blogs! i ran to the kitchen, booted the puter, and headed for bad samaritan. i remember reading this comment from another new yorker, on that entry: “I touched the ashes, those of the fallen, those of the innocent. People were walking in droves, to the north of my position, 29th st and Park Ave. I do not feel well right now. I am glad that I got in touch with everyone I could think of to make sure they are alright. This city will never be the same.”
in those first few hours and even days, blogs were, in many cases, better online news sources than CNN.com. the major news outlets kept crashing, but bloggers kept on blogging. metafilter, snarky elitist bastards or no, was my best news source in those days, because a rumor would come up and either be substantiated or refuted by the crack(smoking) investigative bloggers there. oh wait, that was irreverent. anyway.
it was shortly after september 11 last year, that we began to see the mainstream press saying things like ‘blogging comes of age’. the way this medium stood up to the tragedy and the information overload, was a major source of connectedness and comfort. i don’t want to imagine what it would have been like facing that day without these connections.
* * *
a year ago right now, it was such a different world. today, mg muses about the post he made the ‘day before’, about his ameriBLOGs webring. i think i might just go join up, it’s about time.
oh, and two years ago today, i made my first ever entry on the blog that would become surreally.
Because of time zones I didn’t even know about it until 1215EDT (0615HST). The tragedy was doubly surreal because we weren’t awake at the time it occurred, so we saw the original atrocity tape-delayed. Obviously, the rest we saw live.
I went both ways, a splash page and a story on the blog…
I’m actually glad that some people are going to keep blogging — that way you don’t lose complete touch. I’m very happy to see people making the choice that’s best for them.
I do remember blogs having more current and personal information that day, while the TV news kept repeating what little they knew and showing the same unbelievable videos over and over. I found the Internet more comforting.
can’t imagine facing this without blogging. blogging is my lifeline, this connection to my friends.
Myself, I have to work this evening, and I’m sure the video store will be a ghost town, as everyone will be home watching television. I remember driving around nine p.m. last year and wondering at the empty streets, so different from any other Tuesday. I came home and got on the net. I, too, felt it more comforting than anything else.
I’ll be blogging.
TripleB is still going, I’ve spent 2 weeks writing the entry for it and it’s already online. I remember sitting at the computer all that afternoon (It was afternoon in the UK when the planes hit, around 1:43pm if the news is correct, which is just before 9am in New York). You’ve just reminded me to write about where I was when it happened, and what happened after, because last year I never did write about that. I remember a lot of blogs and services going down, partly because some of the companies that routed internet services apparently had equipment in the twin towers, and partly because so many people were trying to find out what was happening. I also remember a lot of worries about mg and bobthecorgi (IIRC) who hadn’t updated their blogs.
thanks, Mike, for your perspecive on what happened, and also the coming war. i know that my country is doing things the rest of the world finds highly objectionable, and i don’t know what to say.
The entry about what I was doing at the time is up now.
It’s not just what your country is doing that we find objectionable, it’s what our Prime Minister is doing. George Michael’s video got it spot on, Blair seems far too interested in following on Bush’s coat-tails than in actually being diplomatic. I mean it’s taken him this long to recall Parliament, something which should have been done at the start of the week.
Both leaders are too intent on leading us into war, but Bush is the biggest problem of them all, as he has shown very little signs of wanting diplomacy. After Clinton, who had his flaws and made a very big mistake, but who I liked for his approach to his Presidency, Bush comes as a very big slap in the face. Half the time I wonder if he’s the one in charge or not, the other half I spend wondering if he only has one solution to everything. The fact that what he does affects the UK so greatly scares me more than the threats following 9/11
Happy Anniversary, KD.
yes. comfort. it was a lifeline for me. a connection to something less ugly and sensationalized as the video clips on repeat, over and over.
Good point. I might keep blogging through the day – it depends on what words need to come out. Like you and many others, the internet is my comfort. We’ll see what the day brings.