Another September 11th

AU's 9/11 Memorial 

A couple of weeks ago I visited my alma mater, Wesley College in Dover, Delaware, for the first time since the year I graduated. 

I was a senior on September 11th, 2001, on my way to class when I walked through the commuter lobby and saw a burning tower on the TV's. It had been a hard morning for me already: on the drive in from my rural neighborhood, a bird smashed into my windshield. Blood was everywhere. 

I hadn't slept the night before, anxiety, restlessness, and back pain kept me up. None of that is too memorable, but the emotions that followed made a permanent imprint. 

Few showed up for our early class, and we were there for several confused minutes before school was canceled and campus closed. 

Classes streamed out into the street, and we whipped out our early model cell phones (pre-text messaging) to call loved ones in the New York area, or anywhere at all. 

Before all the circuits jammed, I was able to speak with a friend working in the Diamond District. Though he was far enough away, he's Arab-American, so I worried more. (We had watched The Siege together in South Jersey just a few years earlier.)

For the next three days, I sat in my pajamas, inconsolable, and watched CNN. I lost my job waiting tables at a country club. Finally, my roommate turned the TV off and peeled me off the couch. 

That led to my news blackout for the next several years. Despite being a student of media, I was not immune to the profit-driven media overtaking my emotions in lieu of providing actual information. Bad media is more than just mindlessness: it creates fear, misinformation, and wars. 

Eventually, I found my way into news so that I could be a part of the solution. As I sit here now just outside of Washington, D.C., I continue to work towards that goal. 

A Little Law & Order

This is completely off topic, but I wanted to salute Law & Order with one of the few New York stories I've got in my bag (isn't that the reason we write our own blogs?!)

In the Fall of 2002 I was barely out of college, aimlessly hanging out in Brevard County where most of my maternal relatives reside. Not much was going on there besides the beach, which I was overly willing to exchange for Seattle, a city that had beckon

ed me since I had visited one summer in high school.

But first this Jersey girl needed one last trip back to the great northeast, to Dover, DE (the college town I had recently abandoned) on up to NYC for the first anniversary of 9/11.

My cousin Sara was almost done at UF and I invited her along for the road trip. She had never been to New York, and I was on a mission to be the best tour guide I could be (despite the fact that on a previous tour I had mistaken the Staten Island ferry for the one that goes to the Statue of Liberty).

Our mothers and aunts were terrified for us, two 20-something, flip-flop footed Florida girls on the streets of New York. I didn't tell them that the only hotel we could afford was a hostel just

south of Harlem...which not only ended up being clean and decent, but happened to be swarming with the crew of L&O as we checked in. It was almost more than a recent graduate of media arts could handle. (And of course later relaying the story of seeing the back of Sam Waterston's head went a long way towards my family forgiving me for taking my innocent (ha!) cousin on a 1,000 mile journey from home).

The rest of the trip played out brilliantly for us tourists: we walked a lot, ate great food, did yoga in Central Park after passing Dustin Hoffman. We got lost in the crowd of the 9/11 parade and were offered love by a lady sitting on a stool holding a sign for free hugs. It was the first time I had ever been to New York when pedestrians eagerly looked one another in the eyes.

Is it nutty that I think of this point in time when I think of Law & Order? Eh, who cares? Sometimes American culture, as interwoved as it is with TV, ain't so bad. (Although I'll probably not agree with that statement tomorrow.)

Photo credits: places in New York I can no longer name, a blonde me on a rock in Central Park, my brother Ed and cousin Sara visiting in Willingboro, NJ