Journeys of the Questress - WTC
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Home
The Way it Was - 1
The Way it Was - 2
Sept 19 - When Tomorrow Never Comes
Sept 27 - Oral Interpretation
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 1
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 2
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 3
Oct 11 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Oct 28 - Each Day I Search the Rubble
Nov 12 - When Spires Fall
Nov 19 - 911 The Rape of America
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Dec 18 - A Sense of Place
Feb 2 - Final Pass to the End Zone
March 3 - Sitting on the Edge
March 14- Do You Still Remember
March 20 - Virtual Walk-Through
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 2
April 1 - Towers of Light
May 14 - View From Above
May 30 - Tunnel At the End of the Light
May 31 - Seventeen Hundred
Aug 9 - From the Margins Erased
Aug 30 - The Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore
Sept 9 - Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Sept 10 - Just An Anniversary
Sept 12 - September Holds Great Promise
Literary Reflections
Rebirth and Resurrection
The Winter Garden Springs To Life
The Winter Garden Springs To Life - con't
Underpass to the Past
Rebuilding Ground Zero
Under Hallowed Ground
Borders
Yahrzeit
What Will Fill the Void?
I Submit a Design
Footprints in the Dust
My Memorial Design Submission
My Memorial Design - Drawings
New Path Train Station
Path Station Tour
May We Never Forget
That Which Surives
War Without End
4th Anniversary
Footprints in the Dust
Void
I Miss 9/11
Time Comes Between Us
A Thousand Cranes
Fear Factor
Love Letters On The Wall
Empty Chairs
Sitting on the Edge of Forever
Walking the Perimeter of Emptiness
A Counting of Days
For Friends Absent But Not Forgotten
Stigmata
The Memory Keeper's Promise
Unbreak My Heart
Standing On The Edge Of Forever
Both Sides Now
A Memory In Time
The Gravity of Loss
The Survivors Rise Up
Flowers Will Bloom
The Fire Within Us
The Sentinel
Stronger Than The Storm
Between the Candle and the Stars
Ghosts
A Journey Through Remembrance
Canticle of Remembrance
Beyond the Crucible of Chaos
Journey Through Remembrance project
What See We Now
Forever In Our Hearts
Keeping the Flame Alive
The Rebuilding of Ground Zero continues
Does Anyone Care Anymore?
Where Is Our Story Teller of Pain
At Memory's Edge
Dust Thou Art and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
7x7x70
Heroes Never Die
The Flame Inside Our Hearts
The Year of the Heroes of 9/11
Déjà Vu
Remembering 9/11 in the year of COVID-19
Coronavirus Decimates Ailing Sept. 11 Responders
Touching From a Distance
That Which Survives 20 years later
2021 - 20 years later
Memories of Terror Return
Putin's Name Covered Over On Teardrop Memorial
The 9/11 Tribute Museum Closes
When Memories Fade Away
St. Nicholas at Ground Z is rebuilt
The Blue Wall of the Unidentified Victims
When Time Calls Your Name
When Art Gets It All Wrong

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Just A Thought

It's become a strange year for Holiday parties. The first one I attended had the usual cheer and banal conversation...until the evening wore on. Then everyone started interspersing their conversations with bits and pieces of WTC tragedy comments. A few of the attendees came from Brooklyn (the party was in NJ) so the WTC collapse had been a traumatic event for them. I spent the last hour discussing the disaster with a number of these individuals.
 
Yesterday's party revealed how even weirder this holiday season had become. It was the annual Holiday get together with all people in our division where I work, held at the usual watering hole. This restaurant has huge televisions hung not only in the bar area but all throughout the place. We had started our festivities talking about the usual company topics until one individual spotted the television set. On it was playing the newly released tape of Osama Bin Laden's reaction to the WTC collapse. The conversation immediately turned to that topic. Slowly as this small cluster of individuals were joined by others, everyone made comments about the tape. Some had seen it during the day, others had accessed information on it through the internet. Now Bin Laden had become the topic celeb of the evening!

From tape topic, things moved to a darker vein. There were comments made about how we should deal with Bin Laden if he's captured. One individual put him up on the level of child molesters and graphically described what he thought should be done to them and to our terrorist. It was quite disgusting. Another individual suggested Bin Laden should be put on a stake at the center of the area that had been the WTC plaza. Each family member or loved one of the thousands who perished, should be given a piece of the rubble and stone him. Some one said he should just be left out in that hole and then let the weather and the birds deal with him. I even got into the act by suggesting, that since he loved caves so much, he should be jailed in what is left of under Ground Zero with just bread and water. Section off one area where he would remain for the rest of his days.

As I drove home, it all hit me that what we had been discussing was torture. All of the scenarios took a human being, albeit an evil one, and considered justice as inflicting pain upon him. All these suggestions came not so much from hatred but from anger. Our anger that we just can't do anything to rectify the situation he caused. If he is killed in the Afghan war, many feel that he will have in one way 'escaped'. If he is caught, most people feel that none of our forms of  'justice' will suffice for the pain and sorrow he inflicted upon us. But torture? Perhaps this is one way to vent our anger without hurting one another: to phantasize about an unreachable individual who was at the center of all of this pain.

But shouldn't this be the season of light? The season of forgiveness? The season of loving one another? Should that include Bin Laden? Have we regressed to a former, less civilized state of mind? Will we be able to sit down to our Hanukkah, Christmas, Quanza dinners with thanks in our hearts for all the good things we have been given? Or will those days be overcast with the darkness, spread like the WTC dust, that Bin Laden has unleashed? Just a thought.
 
c 2001 Leona Seufert