9/14-9/21: San Francisco
9/21-9/23: Seattle
9/23-9/25: Houston
9/25-9/28: DC
9/30-10/3: Los Angeles
10/3-10/6: Houston
10/6-10/8: Atlanta
10/8-10/9: San Francisco
10/9-10/12: Houston
10/12-10/25: London
10/25-11/1: ITALY
11/1-11/2: London
11/2-11/6: Houston
11/6-11/14 (est): China
I have to confess that while I did remember the significance of September 11 on Friday, I didn't do much beyond taking a minute to remember where I was when I heard the news and what I did in the surreal aftermath. After that minute, I updated Facebook, did my calls, got my work done, returned e-mails, and breathed a sigh of relief when 4:30pm rolled around (5:30pm on the east coast, so a full day was worked). But that evening when I parked myself on the couch, the History Channel was running a show that consisted of interviews with people who took photographs of that day, both professional and amateur photographers. Something made me not turn the channel, and I'm glad. Interspersed among the interviews were both still and moving footage of one tower smoking and burning, then the plane hitting the second tower, and then the towers going down. There were photographs of people going single-file down the narrow emergency staircases and firemen walking up. There were photographs of every watercraft in the area heading to the port to carry as many people as possible to New Jersey. There were photographs of people in all different shapes and sizes and colors all looking up with identical looks of horror and disbelief. There were pictures of people covered in ash, wounded, and sobbing. Running for cover, holding hands with strangers, holding stripped off pieces of clothing to their noses and mouths, trying to breathe. And maybe now enough time has passed, but they actually showed video of the people who jumped out of the towers. I don't want to get into a religious argument with anyone, but I have to believe that God had mercy on people who chose what they thought was a better death. I know that the jumpers are controversial, and as the Esquire article noted, they're something that everyone seems implicitly to have decided that it's best to forget and gloss over. Here's why I think it's important that the jumpers be included in the record. Untold thousands of people died that day. You can read many of their names at History.com. Every single one of those people mattered to someone, was loved by someone. But because of the sheer number of people lost that day, it's somehow easier to forget or at least not remember in bright colors and sharp details, especially for someone like me who was so fortunate not to have lost someone I knew. The jumpers were individual humans who died one at a time, and the shock of seeing even one of them heading for death makes the loss of thousands comprehensible and concrete and impossible to compartmentalize and put away. I'm ashamed to say how easy it was just 8 years later to think, "Thousands of people died that day," make a sad face, and then go on to figure out where to have dinner later. I promise I'll be a better witness from now on.
