Dealey Plaza

Today I visited Dealey Plaza and The Sixth Floor Museum...the memorial area dedicated to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was amazed to see how many people were lined up to take pictures. Maybe they were like me, and they were curious about a historical moment that they had heard about all their lives. Maybe they wanted to experience the scene for themselves. But unlike me, they were smiling, giddy, and genuinely entertained by someone's death. What is wrong with our culture? Why do we build monuments, preserve buildings, and sell tickets to be entertained by death? Think about how many places like this we have...Ford's Theatre, the Vietnam Memorial, the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, the 9/11 Memorial, Gettysburg. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Why don't we just build memorials to celebrate someone's life or acts of heroism and bravery? Why are we also so fascinated with death? Why do we want to remember the tragedies?

9/11 To Me

Everyone always asks, "Where were you when such and such happened?" They want to know what you were doing when you heard about the tragedy; how you reacted, what you did. So I wanted to write about where I was when 9/11 happened. I was a student at Texas A&M, just beginning my second senior year. There was some whispering in class about some big event on the news, but I didn't pay attention, because I usually didn't care about world affairs. I lived by the philosophy that if it didn't affect me personally, then I didn't care. It wasn't until I was walking through the Student Center during a break in classes that the exact nature and enormity of the situation hit me. They had erected large TVs all over the big room in the Student Center, broadcasting the news. Images of the smoking Twin Towers were being flashed across the screen. Ominous news reports were echoing through the halls of terrorists taking over planes and crashing them into buildings, killing everyone on board. Updates and new pictures and footage were streaming in live as people tried to get their minds around what had just happened. We thought we were untouchable. We thought we were safe. Nobody attacked us on US soil! Nobody brought war and unfeeling violence to our very doorstep! This had to be a dream. People around me were openly weeping as they watched the screens. Strangers huddled together in crowds, needing the companionship, the support, and the safety of numbers. Nobody talked. Nobody had words for what they were seeing. The shock, the disbelief, the horror. Nobody looked away. We stood there, rooted in place for hours. Classes and appointments were forgotten. I vaguely remember hearing an announcement about classes being cancelled. But it wasn't like I was going anyway. Who could focus at a time like this?! At some point, I did make it back to my apartment. My roommate had the news on, sitting on the edge of the couch staring at the same images being flashed over and over again. I sat down next to him to watch them again with the same shock and awe as if I was seeing them for the first time. We sat like that for hours, changing stations to see if someone else had something new...something that explained how this could happen. Pictures of the planes moments before impact, of the smoke from the crashes, of the debris and dust caking people, roads, everything for miles around...all permanently etched in my mind forever. A heart full of sadness at the unnecessary loss of life. A feeling of helplessness that there was nothing I could do but pray as I sat watching from my couch. That is what I remember of that day. That was 9/11 to me.