“You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on December 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.” – Warren Buffet
I want to think of September as the beginning of my favorite time of year — but now I know it has to be shared with 9/11. — Photo by Pat Bean
I Let the Month Pass Purposely
Nine/Eleven: A word that once was only the numbers one called in an emergency. Now, 9/11 has become a synonym for pain, anger, tragedy, loss, and images of two toppling towers, a violated Pentagon, and a plane crash in which both villains and heroes died.
The first sign of autumn from my balcony window. — Photo by Pat Bean
Perhaps that is why I’m suddenly realizing I lost what has always been my best month of the year, the one that ushers in my favorite season of the year, autumn. I realized my loss when I wrote down the date in my journal this morning and the unthinking passage of time was hammered into my brain.
It’s not unusual for me to let time slip by too fast without thought, but this feels different. I saw people blogging about the terrorist attack earlier this month, and decided both not to read those blogs, not to think about their content, and certain not to write a similar one of my own .
I was a newspaper city editor on that fateful day back in 2001, and the job had immersed me in giving local meaning of the tragedy event to the paper’s 65,000 readers. I had followed up the next year in overseeing and writing a memorial series on 9/11.
Enough was enough, I had thought this year when I thought to ignore the day. I want my cup to be half full not half empty. I want to remember happier days. And so I let September slip me by.
But now I’m remembering, and as I write this my eyes are becoming moist. I guess I wasn’t meant to forget.
The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.
Bean’s Pat: At least this blogger kept his eyes open to the joys of September http://tinyurl.com/ma4mmeq
Pat Bean's blog 
In my lifetime there have been 3 dates you could ask anyone about what they were doing on that date and you’ll get a detailed response. The day JFK was shot, the day the shuttle exploded, and 9/11.
I was a newspaper reporter, with Thiokol (which provided the shuttle boosters and infamous O-ring) on my beat, when Challenger exploded. I had personally interviewed Judith Resnick. That was a story that played over and over again in my life for many years. But the date of the explosion was never embedded in my mind like 9-11. But I do remember what I was doing that day, and also the day JFK was killed, and Martin Luther King as well.
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I have chosen to refuse to ‘celebrate’ disasters and wars. They are and always have been a part of human history. I chose to look beyond that and see what a glorious universe we live in. And for once I’m glad my memory seems to be getting worse. 🙂
We do live in a glorious universe, but sometimes reality takes away the color. But I’ll keep looking for autumn.
Wow. That was pungent. Reclaim Sept. You still have a few days.
I’m attending a grandson’s football game tonight, and I’ll look for the color wherever life takes me. Thanks for commenting about my stinky thoughts.
Wow. That was pungent. Reclaim Sept. You still have a few days.
I can’t forget 9/11 for the usual reasons but I have one that’s never gonna let me go: it’s my next-to-me sister’s birthday. And at some point I realized her birthday was the same numbers as mine, only reversed – 11/9. And I realized they’re just numbers, maybe numbers with meaning, but still, just numbers. But I, too, remember JFK’s assassination, the shuttle explosion, 9/11 – and the day my friends won on a game show on TV. *G*