Shocking 9/11 photos recently declassified

[LONDONER]

Just a little late to post this but bgetter late than never. Just so we don't forget.

http://www.slideshare.net/charlesstuartr...classified

[Emiliano]

I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked that link. Those pictures are jarring, horrifying, and tragic. Obviously the worst are the ones with people. But that debris cloud is just terrifying to me. I understand that it's not what actually happens, but I see it like a solid turned to gas. And how it just spread and covered everything... It's like it's an entity in my mind.

As troubling as those pictures are, I'm drawn to how documented the destruction and loss is. It's surreal. But I have to really put up a psychological barrier, like to distance the destruction from the loss of life. When I think about the human loss, I can't handle it. I've been to the 9/11 museum and I found it to be very well done and interesting until I got to the area with the voice recordings. I lost it, it was too overwhelming. As a museum educator, I was curious to see how they did the guided tour. I think they did it very well, but I could never work in that setting personally.

I question too how anyone who was alive and past a certain age could forget about that. You hear that never forget line very often.. I find myself guilty of it too, but I think there's a fine line between respectfully "remembering" it, and just like being sucked into the morbid curiosity of the horror and destruction.

[Jettalove]

Looking at these pics, of course, I am reminded of that fateful day and all of the horrifying aftermath. I also can’t think of 9/11 without remembering the summer of 1997, though.

My friends and I were in NYC on weekend fun trip. Waiting in line for the Statue of Liberty tour, I met a man much older than myself (I was 24 and he was 57 (?) I think) and we had an amazing conversation. He was from NYC but was now living in Florida, and came back to visit NYC often, to do all the touristy stuff he never did while he lived there. It was so strange because in a city of (12?) million people, we kept running into him several times throughout the weekend- in Times Square, randomly on the street, etc. We ended up going with him and his friend to a jazz club then a dance club. It was a ton of fun. But, I digress…

He gave us a ton of advice on what to do during our weekend, and one of those things was that he INSISTED we HAD to have a drink at the top of the World Trade Center. So, we did. I remember it so clearly, taking the elevator up, seeing the incredible view….but one thing stuck out in my mind and it will never leave me. I was walking through the bar, and passed a man, in business attire, but kind of disheveled. We caught each others’ eye…and that look was one I will never, ever forget. He had dark, kind of beady eyes…I’m sure he had been drinking at the bar. But the way he looked at me…I don’t even know if I can describe it. It was a look of complete and utter despair, desperation, loneliness, and sadness. We never said a word to each other, but I felt like I just understood what he was feeling, just from that look. Of course I often tried to imagine what he was going through (maybe he had just lost a ton of money in a business deal? Maybe he was an alcoholic? Maybe he was just lonely?) I’ll never know. But it haunts me that that was my one experience in the World Trade Center- that’s what I experienced there. And to later know what would transpire there, I think of his eyes and feel that it was somehow a premonition of what was to come.