I couldn't get home that day - it took several more days for the skys to open back up, but it was a different country I came home to. Everything changed in just 3 days.

So true, Nolo. I moved from Philadelphia (where the guy who cleaned my windows of my just sold home was awaiting word on the fate of a sister lost in the Twin Towers) to Portland in a cross-country drive in the last two weeks of September 2011. To this day, I kick myself for not collecting photos and conversations across the country. No matter where I was, 9/11 was on everyone's lips at every rest stop where I walked my dog; on every local radio station I dialed into and reflected in the makeshift signs in business windows and in the newly painted flags on barns in the middle of nowhere.

"I kick myself for not collecting photos and conversations across the country. No matter where I was, 9/11 was on everyone's lips at every rest stop..."

Back before Bush politicized 9/11, and Obama depoliticized it.

Back before 'blood for oil', since we now only need wind and sun.

Back before Obama racked up more than twice the dead soldiers in Afghanistan than Bush did.

Back before all the war protesters against the current administration.

Back when this country knew who the enemy was.

Yeah, so how's that flag worship and plastic Jesus in every car working out for you? For years I haven't seen any that weren't faded, frayed, or half-peeled on windows and bumpers. When I look at car flags epidemic today, I could swear I am in a nation divided politically, and with lives-and-deaths allegiant, between Beavers and Ducks.

The question I'd like traumatized fear-filled minds to answer, bent by N.E.O. Bush/Cheney's (Nine-Eleven Op), is this: Why are 'they' ('you'?) so stone-dead resistant (fearful?) against watching one of the many N.E.O. documentary movies? (Blue Oregon bumpkins who banned my free speech there because I spoke of Nine-Eleven Op: I'm talking about and talking to and asking you'all.)
There are many good ones. Here is an especially good movie, free. Millions of viewers, like myself, give it two thumbs up.

THREE skyscrapers exploded in Manhattan.

Someone's off its medical maryjane!

Everything changed for sure.
We are not any "safer" than we were on 9/10/2001. However, our rights to privacy, and freedom of expression have been severely curtailed or eliminated entirely. Billions of dollars have been wasted in foreign wars that only solidified and intensified the hatred that others have for the United States. Our economy has been plunged into a depression not seen since 1929, in part to pay for these useless military exercises.
Tens of thousands of US military have died, and tens of thousands more Unite States citizens who went to these wars have been physically and mentally scared for life. Hundreds of thousands of people in the countries we invaded for no reason have been killed, maimed and have been permanently displaced from their homes.
Perhaps on future September 11s we should not only remember those who were killed and injured on this day, but all the others who have suffered since, because some used this tragedy to advance a failed agenda of "blood for oil", and "preemptive war", and "you're with us or against us".
And saddest of all is that had President George Bush and his advisors been alert this event might never have happened.

Nice poem. Author?

That was Bruce Springsteen, although for me, the definitive 9/11 song was Mark Knopler and Emmylou Harris: "If this is goodbye" - based on the phone calls made from people in the Towers to their loved ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWfKfM10g6g

And of course, there's Ryan Adams song "New York, New York" with the video of the Towers that was shot just before 9/11 and came to symbolize it for millions of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHgY_J63Ik

"And love won't play any games with me
Anymore if you don't want it to
The world won't wait and I watched you shake
But honey, I don't blame you
Hell, I still love you, New York
Hell, I still love you, New York
New York"

Bush was right, the people that did this hate our freedoms and life-style. That is why our freedom and life-style is being taken down and replaced with a corporate socialist state.

I curse the Islamofascists every time I take my shoes off or throw away a bottle of water in a "Homeland Security" maze.

The last time I flew, I found a 50 year old Boy Scout knife (folding multi-blade) laying on the carpet next to the conveyor belt leading to the x-ray machine. I picked it up and an elderly man (75+) said "that's mine" so I handed it to him. He threw it into his carry-on bag and winked at me ("don't tell"): I watched it pass undetected thru the x-ray machine and he picked up his bag and sauntered off.

For the billions of dollars we're spending on HSA at airports, I don't think we've accomplished very much if it's that easy to sneak a knife onto an airplane. And I don't really think it matters.

Our generals are fighting the last war (September 11th) which only worked because it had never been done before and represented a paradigm shift (hijacking a plane and converting it to a suicide missile). Previous hijack protocols dictated compliance with the hijackers demands and an attempt to land the plane.

The flying public won't let 9/11 happen again, even if there are a dozen knife wielding hijackers on a plane. Flight 93 learned from the previous three hijackings, and that lesson wasn't lost on the terrorists.

And the TSA is determined not to let passengers have knives.

Will Kimbrough's "Pride". Speaks to the day and its unfortunate aftermath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKMfSn-U5HU