Tomorrow

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of 9/11. There's been a Peggy Noonan piece circulating the internet titled "I Just Called to Say I Love You". I've seen it linked on Drudge, Michelle Malkin, Lucianne, and many others. Most sites have called it a must-read, and for good reason: it's some of Peggy's best stuff I've seen in a while.

It also sets the tone for a solemn remembrance:

"Everyone remembers the pictures, but I think more and more about the sounds. I always ask people what they heard that day in New York. We've all seen the film and videotape, but the sound equipment of television crews didn't always catch what people have described as the deep metallic roar...

I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes--the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.

Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, 'I never liked you,' or, 'You hurt my feelings.' No one negotiated past grievances or said, 'Vote for Smith.' Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying 'I hate them'...

When [Elizabeth Rivas'] husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn't reach him by cell and rushed home. He'd called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, 'He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you.' He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, 'He tried to call me. He called me'...

These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love...

This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar."

Read the entire article if you haven't already.

Comments

[Paul]

I haven't been reading her as of late, but I just happened to check her column out the day she posted it. It brings the emotions of that day back to the surface. I've forgotten how emotional that day was. I strongly recommend reading the entire piece. Peggy still has it.

[hank kaczmarek]

Quite Refreshing after reading other blogs about how Bush and Cheney personally placed Themite Charges in both towers on 9/10, then hurried back to do the same at the Pentagon.

Yes there are Americans with sub-human intelligence that actually believe this.
One of them was teaching at Brigham Young U. until he was suspended on Friday.

Marty I have no idea how you survive working in Academia. So many of our College and Univ. Faculties are only to the Right of Satan.

[Marty]

Hank: I have all the (dwindling) advantages of academia and fewer of the downsides. I have to walk through students, both the brain dead fratboys and the sh*t-for-brains lefties. Some of the girls aren't too hard on the eyes, but most of the kids dress like slobs. But I don't teach (that's good and bad: I like teaching; I hate teaching people who don't want to learn), I don't deal with faculty much, nor much of the bureaucracy. I work for an on campus lab that does most of its work for the government, so I do applied research (cool), but have to deal with a different kind of bureaucracy there (*). All in all, it's not a bad gig. The University attracts a wide variety of people. The town itself is fairly Democratic and there are plenty of left wing idiots, but they're always surprised that they are surrounded by Red Staters (PA is a Blue State, but central PA is Red-neck) and can't understand how they lose many of the local elections.

All that was off topic. So here's the obligatory: Noonan is great.