Saturday, September 11, 2010

A Blog of Silence

Past

Present

Future

4 comments:

Sharon S. said...

I remember....

Helen Lowe said...

Having just been through a major earthquake here in Christchurch, 9/11 has been very much in my mind as well. We've been very lucky, in that no one has died or even been seriously injured, and I think there is a very different feel to an act of nature, however devastating, as opposed to an act of war. But the quake and the huge effort by emergency services and contractors and volunteers, and the way our community has really been pulling together, did make me remember 9/11 all over again.

We have a reserve here in Christchurch, outside the central fire station, which commemorates the firefighters and other emergency service workers who died on 11 September 2001, and one day a young woman walking past demanded to know why we should have a memorial, what it had to do with us, 10,000 miles away? I tried to answer, possibly not very eloquently, because of course I forgot the words that had already been written and spoken to address exactly this sort of question--and the reason why we have automatically been working together as a community after the earthquake here as well:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee."
John Donne, 1572-1631

Katie Dalton said...

when its done it will be a beautiful place for families to come. :)

Claire Dawn said...

I was on a plane.

I was supposed to have a connecting flight, but the pilot told us that wouldn't happen before we landed. No one tell us what happened.

Then we got into the airport and saw it on the big screen.

Then it all made sense.