tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post7489633579736259765..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: Remembering 9/11D. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-17687106337922704872010-09-21T22:03:26.187-04:002010-09-21T22:03:26.187-04:00I remember a lawyer in our office, a smug and arro...I remember a lawyer in our office, a smug and arrogant woman who claimed to be a liberal, suggest that we nuke everything between Algeria and Pakistan.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-12590842630073990822010-09-13T18:50:21.650-04:002010-09-13T18:50:21.650-04:00For me it took a while for the horror to set in. ...For me it took a while for the horror to set in. I had to "read" the accounts of people trapped in the airplanes and building (the few that were available) and the people driven by heat, smoke, and flames out into the air and to their deaths below.<br />Analyzing my lack of response as I watched it on TV, I was mindful of McCluen's axiom that the medium is the message. TV made my experience "immediate," but at the same time somehow "lite" and unreal--at least for me. I like Foer's novel of a young man trying to come to terms with the loss of his father, so different from Vonnegut's response to his own horror in Dresden (which is also in Foer's novel).PMHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01848296275862900483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-45876387005674314612010-09-12T12:07:13.541-04:002010-09-12T12:07:13.541-04:00Dr. Meyers,
A couple of points:
1. Here in Cana...Dr. Meyers, <br /><br />A couple of points:<br /><br />1. Here in Canada there is no similar blackout of the footage. Yesterday, it was hard to not find it.<br /><br />2. I remember a conversation with a professor who studied the history of disease where he pointed out, in some amazement, the near-complete vanishing of the Spanish Flu of 1918 from public memory and consciousness. Some authors of fiction, like now with September 11, addressed the topic, and within the last thirty years it has become a favored topic among historians - but for almost half a century, it was completely off the map. <br /><br />He suggested the flu was such a traumatic experience for the nation that society was eager to erase the entire experience from memory. This eagerness was neither conscious nor a sign of disrespect, but indicated how profound was the disease's impact.<br /><br />In a way unlike many other world and national events - in part because it was measured in hours, rather than minutes or instants, on live television - many in the country experienced the evil on September 11 in ways that were both personal and visceral. <br /><br />I wonder ,then, if the silence you notice demonstrates only the degree of those events' power and influence, rather than a willful disrespect or forgetting. Memory, after all, is separate from speech. <br /><br />"The memory of the just is blessed"<br /><br />Regards,Jonathannoreply@blogger.com