The Flight 93 Memorial

About twenty minutes north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike west of the Allegheny Tunnel, exit 110, is the rural field where United Flight 93 crashed at maximum speed on September 11, 2001 and disintegrated in a huge fireball of thousands of gallons of jet fuel, vaporizing all persons on board.  Up until that moment, a life and death struggle had been going on for many long minutes inside that plane as the heroic crew and passengers battled four murderous terrorists locked in the cockpit for control of the plane.

By forcing the plane to crash, the heroes aboard the plane lost their lives but won a bigger stake, causing the destruction of the flying missile before it could crash into the Capitol in DC, its intended target.  There was no air cover over Washington at the time, as the two jets scrambled, the only at-the-ready airiel defense for the entire east coast, were streaking east over the Atlantic looking for incoming Russians, their presumed enemies in the confusion of the moment.

The Flight 93 National Memorial at the tragic field is a somber and subdued place where the Visitor Center, set atop the last low ridge the screaming jet passed over before it burrowed into the field beyond, has an overlook that looks upon the field below where the impact crater was before it was filled in at the conclusion of the forensic investigation of the ground surrounding it.  A low retaining wall skirts the actual field, which still contains human remains too small to recover so it is considered to be a cemetery filled with heroes, and is off-limits for all visitors except for the family members of the victims of Flight 93, every September 11th.

The Visitor Center has displays explaining the day as it unfolded, tape recordings of doomed passengers calls from the plane to their loved ones, artifacts recovered from the field and gear worn by the heroic first responders who rushed in to try to salvage the unsalvageable.  The memorial is a sad but peaceful place, well worth a visit.

Remembrance

We have a lot to be thankful for which we hardly ever reflect upon.  As the half marathon race approached, I went to church and found myself praying that Lia, and I, would run well.  My prayers were answered, certainly, as we finished the race and were not injured and thus we were blessed and for that I am thankful.  (We both finished the race.)

My other friend had to drop out of the race and for that I am sorry.  But I had helped her train during the spring for a hilly half marathon (the course description talked about gently rolling hills and that always means hills!) where she PR'ed so I was happy for her for that and thankful that she ran well then.  (Training for their HM by going long on hills on the W&OD, with my friend and her husband in April.)

I was apprehensive of breaking two hours the wrong way at the half marathon because of the six HMs I have run, my slowest was my first one in 2004, 1:55:24, and three were sub-1:50.  But that was then and this is now, and now that I'm over sixty I have to get used to all kinds of things like being slower and sorer, being alone for good and never seeing my children again, and stopping work soon enough and leaving the region (it's too expensive to live here if you don't have ample income).  (The 9/11 Run.)

To break 2 hours in a half marathon, which Lia had never done and which was my goal, you have to run 9:09 miles.  Eight days before the race I timed myself in a practice run for the first time in years and ran two miles on the flat W&OD Trail in 18:11, a 9:06 pace, which was a depressing outcome but it was hot and humid that day.  However, at noon on September 11th, three days before the race, I ran hard and well around the Tidal Basin in remembrance of the souls lost at the Pentagon thirteen years earlier (you could see the smoke plume from the airstrike that day from the Tidal Basin), covering the 3K distance in 16:06, a time which was comparable to what I used to be able to do.  (On September 11th, this is what the Pentagon looked like from the Tidal Basin, across the Potomac.  There is a beautiful memorial there now where the plane hit.)

  

Twelve years ago

Twelve years ago I was on the subway when I heard the PA announce that the Pentagon Station was closed due to the terrorist attack there.  Huh?

I arrived at work shortly thereafter, to pandemonium.  Workers in my building were roaming the halls looking for a safe place to go, because there was a report that another plane was incoming with a DC building as its target.  Huh?

I fired up my computer and saw, to my horror, that the WTC towers had collapsed.  Huh?

We were at war.  With who, Afghanistan?

Federal workers were discharged into the DC streets with orders to go home.  Since it was thought (erroneously) that Metro was shut down, we all streamed towards our homes on foot.

I lived 10 miles away in Virginia, and walked home.  Going over the Key Bridge, looking southward looked like a scene out of Beirut, with a huge plume of smoke curling lazily into the sky over where the Pentagon was.

Booms were heard.  The street rumors were that they were car bombs going off in front of federal buildings (erroneous); I now believe they were sonic booms generated by fighter jets finally arriving over the nation's capital way too late.

America was never the same.  For instance, you can't just walk into a building anymore.

I knew people who were killed in the ensuing (and continuing) war(s).  The misnamed Patriot Act became law and stripped down our personal liberties, casualty rolls are horrific, torture became policy and our drones rain down death from the skies overseas (what goes around...).

At home, our departed liberties are not coming back anytime soon.  And I started paying attention to and learning about a large religion, although I struggle mightily to understand it and comprehend the secondary place it assigns to women.

Where were you when...

Shortly after lunch on Friday, November 22, 1963, I was a seventh grader sitting in study hall when Miss Annapole, Principal of JHS 51, New York City, came on the intercom and announced in an angry, accusatory tone that President Kennedy had been shot, killed, and we would be having auditorium in 15 minutes. After a further harangue about the murder in the auditorium from Miss Annapole (I remember she was shrieking into the mike so much it went on permanent shrill buzz) we were discharged out the doors and sent home, shocked and bewildered.

On Tuesday morning, January 28, 1986, I had awakened from a fitful four hour slumber after returning home from a graveyard shift as a Colorado State Patrolman and I was wondering through the Target store shopping aimlessly in Boulder when my attention was drawn to the active TV sets in the electronics department. They all showed continuous re-runs of the 73-second ill-fated Challenger space shuttle flight which culminated in its fiery destruction in sub orbit with its devestating loss of everyone aboard (I'll always remember the Houston Control announcer saying dryly as the pieces of rocket scattered to smithereens in a huge trail of smoke, "Obviously a major malfunction.").

On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was on a Metro platform going to work when the PA system came on and the announcer informed us that the Pentagon station was closed due to the "terrorist attack" there. My imagination conjured up an image of some zealots boiling out of the station there and assaulting the Pentagon building with some AK-47s. When I arrived at work in downtown DC a few minutes later pandemonium was reigning in the hallways of my workplace as people were running around looking for "shelter" within the building and reports were coming in that more planes were on their way to bomb us and car bombs were going off in the street. Welcome to the world that Osama bin Laden introduced us unsuspecting Americans to on that day.

Late on Sunday evening, May 2, 2011, I was checking my email account on the netbook which was open on my chest as I lay in bed. Automatic news alerts in the account informed me that Osama bin Laden had been "killed" and that President Obama was addressing the nation in a few minutes. I went downstairs to watch his speech wherein he announced the death of this mass-murderer, the result of a completely successful American special operations raid in Pakistan, ordered by the president. When President Obama stated that following a firefight, Osama bin Laden had been shot in the head and killed, I knew right away that this was a euphemism for the fact that the bloodstained polygamous zealot had been summarily executed.

The FBI?!

I never thought I would ever defend the FBI. As a cop in the field from 1980-1987, I hated it when FBI Agents showed up on my scene. Excuse me, Special Agents. They were so arrogant. Hey, copper, just wave me on through and let me take over, if I feel like it (it it could garner beneficial publicity for the Agency) and you can relax, son. Naturally, there was always some resistance to this approach by the coppers on the ground.

Besides, I was one of the few Troopers who had a college degree (CU, History, 1978). I had been through the crucible of student protests against the [Vietnam] war in Boulder, and we feared the FBI. I was on the highway bridge in Boulder the night Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor, blocking the bridge in protest and snarling rush hour traffic the next morning. We all knew the FBI were building dossiers on us. I fancied I might have one. The CIA, you see, were forbidden to conduct domestic surveillance.

Fast forward to 2002. After the attack upon western values that radical Islam launched against Americans on September 11, 2001, some of the usual suspects were rounded up. Abu Zubaydah, the logistics chief for anti-western terror training camps in Afghanistan, was captured after a gun battle. (I hope he rots in hell.)

Long story short, an expert FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan, who was extraordinarily effective at extracting information from international suspects using traditional interrogation methods (think--gain their trust through simple kindness), interrogated Abu and using time-honored American police methods, gained much valuable intel quickly, including who this guy named Mohammed was (see my last post).

Then the CIA showed up, armed with the torture memos the syncophant charlatan lawyers in the Justice Department had concotted to please their oily masters, the originally asleep-at-the-switch Decider and Great Bird Hunter, justifying torture of American detainees in the War on Terror.

Harsh techniques followed, including waterboarding Abu over eighty times and building a mock coffin in which his handlers were going to bury him alive, reportedly. The flow of information from Abu stopped.

Soufan threatened to "arrest" the rogue torturers and complained to his superiors at the FBI. The FBI was being bested at the time by the goons at the CIA, who had the complete attention of the American Executive branch. Soufan was ordered home. The FBI would have no part in this game.

I understand this. As a lawyer, as in many endeavors, when you are losing badly on a particular day, you don't flail around uselessly, you suspend your efforts in order to come back stronger on a better day. Often you win then. If the American people are as I think they are, the FBI will come out of this a lot better than the CIA.

Read the Newsweek issue dated May 4, 2009.

More on the 184

After dark on September 11th, I went over to the Pentagon with a friend to see the brand new Pentagon 9/11 Memorial Park they have completed over there. It is a must-see. Even now I'm tearing up at the memory. Pentagon Stop, Blue or Yellow Line.

Laid out on a small quiet field bound in by walls of various heights, 184 low rising long benches arise from the ground. Each platform emerges over a small, lighted body of water and has the name of a victim of the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon inscribed upon it. The 24-hour memorial abounds with symbolism.

The park is nestled in a plot of ground between a busy highway and the side of the Pentagon which was struck when the attacking commandeered commercial jet roared over it at more than 500 MPH, mere feet off the ground. The plane was laden with highly flammable jet fuel which would create a huge fireball when it crashed, the better to mindlessly kill and destroy in satisfaction of the mad cravings of the attack's planners and their Godless supporters.

The benches, which are meant to be sat upon in silent rest or quiet reflection, face either the sky to the west or the Pentagon to the east to indicate the last location of each victim just before the terrible moment. They are arranged along linear time lines corresponding to years carved upon the low, rising wall to the east, representing birth years. Standing alone to the south, apart from the others in haunting isolation, is the bench memorializing three-year old Dana Falkenberg, a plane occupant whose short life was snuffed out here. Further to the north are lonely benches for her sister and some other youths whose potential will never be realized. Then there starts a thick cluster of benches as the visitor gets into the realm of persons in the prime of their lives. Twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, forty-somethings, spending their last moments unsuspecting at the Pentagon or in abject terror aboard the airliner. The benches thin out again as they march northward towards older victims until there stands, alone again, one representing seventy-one year John D. Yamnicky, Sr.

People wandered around the park in the dark, attempting to read the names inscribed on the benches in the low-level light emanating from the lighted pools of water under each bench. Roses adorned many of the benches. Undoubtedly that first night, kinsfolk of the departed were there in that field, quietly grief-stricken again like so many times before.

A somber but lovely little place to go anytime. I'm sure it will look completely different when I next return, soon, in the daylight.

Thinking of the 184

On the most recent anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy here in DC, I went on a reflective run. I led the noontime workplace running group, comprised of two other runners that day, down to the Tidal Basin. From there seven years earlier, you could have seen a huge towering plume of smoke emanating from the Pentagon following the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into its west side at 9:37 a.m. on that beautiful clear morning.

As I do every year on September 11, I ran around the Tidal Basin in tribute to the innocent victims of that dastardly attack. It is the very least I could do.

At the same time, opening dedication ceremonies were underway at the Pentagon for the beautiful new Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, the first 9/11 tribute complex to be built. The compact park is in the flight path of the attack plane, and has 184 benches, one for each of the innocent victims of the tragedy, aged 3 to 71. Their names are inscribed on the benches to ensure that these brethren of ours shall not be forgotten. There are no benches for the five craven and hypocritical murdering religious extremists who also perished there.

We ran at a moderate pace, covering the 1.8 mile circuit around the glimmering body of water on the narrow blacktop footpath along the water’s edge in 18:53 (10:08). There were no winners or losers in this virtual 3K memorial race, just three Americans running and finishing together. Then we ran back to our office, two miles away.

I been hashing

It's been awhile. And I been runnin', finally. And bikin' (SmartBiking). My girlfriend says I've changed since I got back from the Grand Canyon. "People die," she assures me. "Life goes on. What's the matter with you?"

I dunno. She never liked my running anyway. It's always been between us. How could that be?

I raced a 5K on Saturday, the 7th annual Arlington 9/11 Memorial 5K at the Pentagon. It was my fifth running of it, and I brought it home in 24:15 (7:48). My right hammie seized up at MP 2 and I wondered if I could bring it in without walking. Since a former running student of mine was also running, I ran the whole way and dragged myself in a few seconds ahead of her. But now both hammies are on fire all the time. I dunno what's going on. I had even assiduously stretched beforehand.

I did a track W.O. yesterday (9X600, at 3:00 time). My hammies didn't get "warm" till about the fifth sequence.

This Palin thing has bothered me, a lot. I can see that she as governor (in my opinion) got into somebody else's custodial dispute in a big way, bringing that august office down hard upon the father of her nieces and nephews. Being a father who hasn't spoken meaningfully to any of my children in over five years, and whose three self-absorbed children haven't talked to a single relative of mine in over five years, thanks to American Domestic Law (which screws fathers), I am distraught that this vengeance seeking, anti woman's choice, celibacy espousing, gun toting, God-invoking former beauty queen lightweight has gained credence in America as a model for anything. Oh that's right, she wears lipstick and that's what differentiates her from a pit bull. But you could put lipstick on a pig and it'd still be a pig. Hey wait, suddenly you can't utter that venerable good ol' boy saying?

I been hashing, too.

The 399th Tidal Basin 3K

I ran the free monthly noontime 3K race around the Tidal Basin yesterday. After we had a moment of reflection for the 32 victims of that cowardly loser at Virgina Tech, we ran the race and I finished in 12:59 (6:58), in 27th place out of 57 runners.

The race is put on by my local running club and is held on the the third Wednesday of every month. It was the 399th consecutive running. That makes it over 33 years old, maybe. I say maybe because some "lost" races were discovered awhile ago, which added to the total, and occasionally a special running is held, like the race on September 11th, 2002, run in memory of the 184 victims who perished when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon the year before. (Wearing a shirt honoring the fallen heroes of FDNY, I finish the 2002 9/11 Memorial Tidal Basin 3K run in front of the Jefferson Memorial in 14:14 (7:38).)

I myself have run 66 of the last 75 races since I ran my first one on 5/16/01 in 13:05 (7:01). I hate to miss them. Of the nine I have missed in the last six years, I missed two because I was on vacation, five because I was on work travel, one because I was at my own Equitable Division Trial (equitable-yeah, sure), and two because I was in the middle of important conferences at work. If the work conference isn't important, I just leave.

I view the race as a monthly speed workout. I jog the 2.5 miles there, sprint 1.8 miles around the Tidal Basin, and then run back to work. Fortunately, my building has shower facilities and my agency believes in fitness.

I keep trying to talk my friend Bex into running one of these races. You know, go mano a mano in an all-out sprint to see who's faster. She always gives me the old yeah yeah, sure sure, but she has never shown.

I try to make it a rule not to tell people I don't think I can beat about the race, but I'm not very successful at this. I told G, a co-worker, about the race and he liked it so much that he is now a regular. He just ran 3:14 at Boston. Do you think I made a good choice by telling him about it?

I also told my running buddy A about it and she has shown up three or four times. She also beats me every time. She even won it once. But she always pulls me along to a better time whenever she comes. She's tall, over six feet, and I remember one race where she was going hammer and tongs with some guy who was running beside her on the narrow footpath the whole way. I was trailing along behind them thirty yards back and I was keeping up but I couldn't catch up. The old route had a lot of low-hanging cherry blossom tree limbs across the path and you had to bob your head to go under a branch about thirty times every race. Whenever they ran by a tree, this guy crowded A to the outside where the trees were and the overhanging branches were the lowest. She would have to fall back to avoid braining herself, then catch back up to him. This went on the entire race until the last 500 meters where the course crossed the broad plaza in front of the Jefferson Memorial. I guess they duelled to the finish line in a sprint across the plaza and she took him because she logged a 12:40 and he placed one second behind her. I finished in 12:52 (6:54), in time to see her stroll by the guy in the recovery area and stick her tongue out. At him. That's A for you, unabashed. (Caught on tape: A and her wagging tongue ran a 12:40. And that's my friend G behind her, he of the 3:14 Boston on Monday, who ran an 11:53 in this race last summer.)

This isn't a race for the thin-skinned because you're probably not going to do well. The same good, motivated runners show up every month to bury you. I regularly run a 6:54 to 7:40 pace and I just as regularly finish in the lowest quartile. Fortunately there are some octogenarian men and sexagenarian women who regularly run whom I can usually beat, and sometimes a tourist comes to run it that I can beat as well.

It was at this race that I learned that with kids, if they start out fast and purposeful, they're not likely to come back to you. You won't reel them in, they'll just beat you badly. For awhile a mother was bringing some home-schooled kids to every race. It was their PE, I guess. These nine to twelve year old kids just added to the swell of runners who beat me every month.

But this short fast race makes me better and I love it. Did I mention it's free?

After the Fifth Anniversary 9/11 Special Run last year, with forty-seven runners participating and the press in attendance, the cops moved in. I guess they were tired of the small heap of water bottles and sweatshirts being left unattended for ten minutes beside the Jefferson Memorial once a month. With the publicity generated by the presence of the press, the race was becoming impossible for the authorities to ignore.

The National Park Service Police summoned the race director in and told him that any gathering of over twenty persons on National Park Service land, which encompasses the Tidal Basin and it's footpath, required a permit. Oh, and did he know that a permit had never been issued for the Tidal Basin? They didn't care, post 9/11, about the hallowed tradition of the race or the venerable nature of the course. Security, you know. The two factions worked it out amicably though. Maybe Republicans and Democrats can get along post November elections after all.

The race used to run around the Tidal Basin on the footpath alongside the water. Now it runs around the outside perimeter of the Tidal Basin on the sidewalks next to the streets. (The narrow footpath around the Tidal Basin is adorned with beautiful cherry blossom trees which present low-hanging obstacles to unwary runners.)

I liked the old course better, running right next to the water and watching tourists scatter as they saw a body of sprinting men bear down upon them on the narrow footpath. The new course actually has a hill on it, over by the Tulip Library. But it's the same distance and the same good noontime running once a month. (The new course now has a hill.)