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Advanced Professional Papers · The History of the English Language · First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop · Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing
Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) · Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) · Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology)
UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" · UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" · Introduction to Journalism · Feature Writing · Science Writing Papers
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Non-fiction Creative Essay 1 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 2 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 4 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 5 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 6
Non-fiction Creative Essay 7 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 8 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 9 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 10 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 11
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana, philosopher, "The Life of Reason," 1905.
It was not nine eleven for that's just a number and it was not nine one one for that's an emergency phone number. September 11, 2001, never, ever forget - it was not two building - it was three buildings, plus four planes. Two planes were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan, New York, one plane was deliberately crashed into The Pentagon Building in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth plane was on its way to The White House when a group of valiant, brave citizens decided right then and there - you're not going to destroy another building you stinking SOB's. You're going down!
"Let's Roll!"
I was traversing Hilltop Circle, the road that surrounds the University of Maryland Baltimore County, in the land of political enchantment, Maryland, when the news broke. It was 8:45am and I was tuned into WCBM AM talk radio as I always am, when the somber news broke. I just became uncomfortably numb as I did when I heard about the assassination of JFK. As I listened, my first thought was, "I hope this is just a type of Orson Wells report when he broadcast, 'The War of the Worlds.' This really isn't happening; this is all some kind of a hoax."
My second thought was, "Of course this is happening... It's happening because in our own deep rooted arrogance, we have simply forgotten the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center back in February 1993." Ramzi Yousef, with the assistance of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other Islamic extremists attempted collapsing the towers by igniting a truck bob in the underground parking facility. "We are just so bleeding ignorant and arrogant. When will we learn?"
My third thought was that I hadn't been back to New York for years. I was there in the last week of January in 2002, but that was more like a vacation trip with a friend, a fun trip, not the sort of trip that I would normally visit with family to sit down and have a good chin wag. No, I hadn't been there in years. What went through my mind was who did I know, no, more likely who did I used to know who worked at the World Trade Center. To this day, I still don't know if I knew anyone that may have died on that day. Come to think of it... it could have been me!
Years before, I had applied for a career position with the NY/NJ Port Authority. I was a top candidate for the position and I went through a series of interviews. All of my interviews were held in the very top floors of the twins, which was the place the Port Authority called home. It was impossible for me to walk near any of the windows in the building because I had a death fear of heights. The other thing that was unnerving about the World Trade Center was that if you stood very still, you could feel the building sway in the wind as though you were high in a tree on the less firm branches. Nevertheless, the outcome was that I never received a job offer. The thought that shot through my mind was that if I had gotten that job, it could have been me in that building.
Later, long after the tragedy, I had learned from my brother, Ronald, that he was working in a fifteen-story building near the Twin Towers and his only recollection of the experience was how everything went quite dark from the dust when the buildings collapsed. I'm sure similar thoughts of how it could have been him in there also went through his mind, but he's not the type of person to discuss things of that nature. Death, dying, or what lies behind the curtain of the great unknown are not one of his better subjects. Like a great deal of men, he'd rather not talk about his feelings and would rather talk about sporting events or the stock market.
The news continued. A third hijacked plane was crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed near Shankville, Western PA. The plane was very likely on its way to the White House until the forty-five passengers on board defied the abductors. I had just recently moved from Pennsylvania to get away from all the impending doom and gloom of Philadelphia. "God, a person just isn't safe anywhere anymore." All planes were grounded, but at the same time it was not known how many more planes had terrorists on them with similar devious intentions. George W. Bush was in Air Force One and his whereabouts were unknown, as is the contingency plan if we are under attack. This was an attack. This was an act of war and I was sitting in a perfect target. In the state of Maryland we have the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, the NSA in Fort Meade, we have the Washington, D.C. nearby, and the Navy Surface Warfare Facility down in Virginia. I live in a perfect political hot spot, but after all, that's why I moved here. I came here specifically for the government jobs or as in the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you... ask what you can do for your country."
My sense of alert was already at a heightened level before the catastrophe on September 11th. We just went through a highly contested presidential election, which already had me on my guard. It seems to me that this country goes through a major political, economic, and social upheaval every one hundred years. 1776 was our own revolution for freedom from England. 1862 was the Civil War. Having studied American History, Russian History and the American Civil War out of personal interest, I guess you could call me a bit of a history buff. As a child I lived through the third major upheaval of the 1960's. I saw the assassination of JFK, and his burial. I saw the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and their burials. I saw the assassination of Bob Kennedy. I saw the riots in Alabama, Mississippi, and Detroit with the police beating people to a pulp in the street. I saw the trial of the Black Panthers and the senseless killing of three college students at Kent State. I saw the daily body counts and the war footage on the nightly news. I was only a child and had no idea of what to make of any of this, but what I did understand was that there was something very wrong and there was violence in the streets everywhere.
As a child, I was being groomed to follow in my parent's footsteps and be an artist. In sixth grade, my art teacher, Miss Guggenheim, selected three of us from the entire school to participate in a special art class. All the work we created was to be exhibited in the yearly Spring Open House in May 1969. One of our assignments was to do some artwork expressing what we felt inside about the current events of the time. Our theme was civil unrest, or rioting. As children, this is what we saw on television every night, rioting in the streets. We drew pictures of policemen in riot gear, going into crowds with nightsticks and beating the hell out of civilians. Most of the civilians we drew were on the ground in submissive positions.
When the evening arrived to display our art, the impact was really heartfelt. Parents crowed around the images. They were silent. They were spellbound. Their empty expressions said it all. This was the impact that civil unrest was having on their children and we were the only ones who could express our thoughts through art. We were the spokespeople for an entire elementary school. Parents could not believe that we were only twelve years old. We had made a political statement with our art and had an impact on a small portion of the world. We were peace doves in our infancy.
I had seen my fair share of terrorism and plane hijackings all through the seventies and eighties. President Reagan in the eighties as a joke said, "I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We commence bombing in five minutes." It echoed in our heads in the underground dance clubs in New York City as a sound bite riddled through the music, experiments in minor cords, sweeping the floor, dressed in the finest of willowy black. Songs such as "Two Minute Warning" by Depeshe Mode and "Two Tribes Go To War" by Frankie goes to Hollywood filled the halls with remorseful reminders of the times. Graveyard music for tombstone minds. It was always there. The impending doom and gloom. The Bomb. "Duck and Cover." But why should we fear the bomb? After all, hadn't Stanley Kubrick taught us to love the bomb? Heel Bomb! Heel! HEEL! Good boy. Only the realists had a plan. I would pull out of my closet my very finest of black, from head to toe like a funeral director. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls..." There's nowhere to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I would step outside with my white pet cockatiel, Tammie, on my shoulder and my Bible underneath my arm and sit quietly in the shade of a tree. I would read to Tammie and wait. When the countdown came down to the last five minutes, I would dance. It would be my last dance. I once asked an Indian Chief, "Why do you dance?" As he looked thoughtfully at me, there was a strange silence in the room. After a few moments, he looked me straight in the eyes with his dark piercing eyes and with a dead pan face conveying the seriousness in his thoughtful answer. He said, "Because the dead can't."
My thoughts raced as I continued walking to class. During the Vietnam War it was easy to take the political position of a peace dove. The objectives of wars previous to Nam were clear-cut. Despite my distaste for war, their objectives made sense. Vietnam was different. What was the objective? The containment of Communism? That seemed to be the only objective. The Vietnamese had not attacked us and it was unclear to most U.S. citizens how the Vietnamese were a threat to this country's national security. The act of hijacking our planes and crashing them into our buildings, this was loud and clear message. This was no different than Pearl Harbor. This is an act of war. If someone punched you in the nose on the street, I can't think of a single person, no matter how strong a peace activist, that wouldn't strike back in self-defense. One would rise up to the occasion and fight back. A peace dove would become a war hawk.
I went into the school bookstore in the old University Center before going to class. In the bookstore, a television was on and a few other students were standing around it. I don't recall what the broadcaster was saying; all I heard were the obscure sounds emanating from the students around me as we watched the television screen with the planes crashing into the twins. It was like watching a naked woman writhing on a waterbed bathed in black light and strobe lighting. Morally, you know you should look away, but human nature compels one to look on. Your primordial senses freeze one in the moment, taking it all in, in disbelief. Now, it became real. This was real. It was almost surreal, as though Hollywood was showing a promo for an up and coming disaster flick that was so popular while I was growing up in the seventies.
The word on the lips of most of the students was that classes had been cancelled. I thought to myself, "Okay, now what? Is the UMBC campus to be a likely target for terrorists? No, probably not. It doesn't make for much of a political statement. In Maryland there are so many other lovely places to level to rubble to make a political statement."
As I began to exit thinking of how I should now utilize my time, I was handed a flyer. A community meeting was going to be held at 3 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom. Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the university, and some other members of the faculty were going to speak about the events as they were unfolding. I knew exactly what this meant. The administrators of UMBC were scared stiff that there could be a major upheaval and rioting on the campus against the Muslim student body. As any good administrator would do during times like these, Dr. Hrabowski was going to come out and speak to the community to put us all at ease. Isn't it amazing? In times of crisis that we can all pull together and weather the storm or we can turn against ourselves, blaming each other as being the enemy? The enemy from within.
When the time came, I found that the ballroom was a full house. I was fortunate enough to get one of the few vacant seats left. For the first time on campus I saw who truly represented the entire community of UMBC. There were students of every age, shape, color, race, religion and ethnicity. Faculty, office administrators, food service employees, custodial employees and even maintenance personnel were there. Amidst all our differences, we had three things in common. We were all part of the UMBC community, we were all human beings, and we were all quite scared. None of us knew what to expect next. Where can you go? Where do you hide? President Bush is covering his butt, but what happens to us? Are we simply chopped liver without the onions? What's being done to keep us safe?
The tension in the room was quite high. If anyone dared to scream we would have all shattered like glass all over the floor. There was a communal sense; people were more understanding and extra kind to each other because of the events that were still unfolding. I remember that Dr. Hrabowski spoke first, then Warren I. Cohen, UMBC's Professor of History and one of the world’s leading experts on the history of American-East Asian relations, and then a third person who really had nothing of importance to say. Most of what these people said was of no importance. UMBC faculty didn't know any more than we did. Once they were done speaking, a microphone was passed around the audience to allow the community to voice their opinions about what had been said or anything else they wished to add. Most of what was said was just a bunch of hot air. We were all being given the opportunity to vent our emotions in a productive way.
Judging from the responses of the audience, it was the Muslim community who were on the highest alert. Most were international students who had come a great distance to a place that was nothing like home only to find what they had left behind had come to roost in America: Terrorism. I had no idea if they knew that Japanese-American citizens suffered a similar plight after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Did these students know up to 120,00 Japanese-Americans were quickly scurried off into internment or confinement camps here in the states? Were they worried that the same thing might happen to them? I understood that the international students were human beings and they were not responsible for the actions of a few extremists, but very quickly the Muslim community could become the target of displaced rage for something they had nothing to do with. It was as if the Muslim religion had been hijacked with the airplanes that day. It was a feeling I could empathize with. The position of being in a strange land for the sole purpose of bettering themselves by receiving an education and now the tide had turned in such a way that they were isolated in a strange land, a few doves a midst a vast county full of hawks. Prey in the land of predators. I was afraid, we were all afraid, and the ones who had the most to fear were the poor young women who believed in their religion so devoutly that they were still wearing their burkas. In my mind this was a very strong symbol of devotion to their faith and that Allah would protect them in their time of innocence. You had to have admiration for them. If it had been me, the burka would have been gone the moment I heard the news.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, written in the 10th century B.C., the weary round of life is described:
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven...
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up...
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace."
I'm not a religious man, but I am a secular man. Since September 11, we went to war with Afghanistan to oust Osama bin Laden who since then no one has heard neither hide nor hair from. We went to war with Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. In my mind we were justified in both of these military actions. Sometimes, unfortunately, in order to maintain peace in the world there is no solution other than war. Label it if you like as reluctant hawkishness. We had our time to kill and now we must spend our time in Afghanistan and Iraq building these countries back up. We liberated these people from tyrannical governments. Unfortunately, the final solution was war. And now, the U.S. will have to maintain peace as these countries attempt to rebuild governments that care for its citizens.
Jesus, it is said, told his followers that we should turn the other cheek when struck and violence would only beget more violence, but remember the account of his reaction to the money-changers in the temple on the Sabbath? Did Jesus turn the other cheek that day? No, he let them have his wrath full force. If he was the Son of God, maybe his human side got the best of him that day. Or maybe, there are times that we must all choose whether we believe in a cause strongly enough to say, "This is the hill I choose to die on in belief of my cause."
When we look to the Koran, turn to the chapter entitled "The Chambers," verse [49.9]. We read,
"And if two parties of the believers quarrel, make peace between them; but if one of them acts wrongfully towards the other, fight that which acts wrongfully until it returns to Allah's command; then if it returns, make peace between them with justice and act equitably; surely Allah loves those who act equitably."
My interpretation of this passage is Muhammad is telling his followers to make peace when peace can be made, which bears similarity to what Jesus said.
When it comes to war, in the chapter entitled, "The Women," verse [4.91], of the Koran it states,
"You will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and (do not) offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these We have given you clear authority."
In my younger, post-hippie wannabe days I was a "Peace Dove." Since those old folky days I have matured, having experienced more of the world, and have evolved into a "Hawk," for it is better to be a pigeon than it is to be a statue. In the not so famous words of Colonel Gordon R. Lewis, U.S. Air Force, circa 1985, "A bullet in the ass can be used as an effective teaching tool."
And so I wonder, exactly who was it that got the bullet in the ass?
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