radio broadcasting

its one of those things you can't help but reminisce about... a few days late, but nonetheless...

i ignore alarms in my sleep... i've slept through a fire alarm once... so i wake up to the radio, i have for years, and i probably always will... during high school i had this amazing talent of going to sleep around 2 and waking up before 7 and not being tired... but my alarm would go off around 6:15 or so, i'd hit the snooze once or twice, and then venture out of my bed and out the door, more or less... that morning, i remember hearing something about a tower, on fire, plane crash, vague words that didn't seem like they were news at the moment, more like words from an insurance company commercial... and then i hit the snooze button... i woke up with the next blurb of radio, and walked up the stairs... my brother, 11 years old at the time, had this thing about waking up at 5 to watch ESPN... i suppose its so he can join in the sports chat all day long at school... but it wasn't NFL highlights... it was new york city, one tower of the world trade center, burning, pieces of glass and plane and walls flaking off of it... a few moments later, another plane intercepted the screen and the second tower was hit, live on national television... i don't think either my brother or i really realized what was going on...

that day at school, like most places across the nation, we watched cnn all day long, hearing updates about more plane crashes, pilots, victims, cell phone calls... it's all kind of a blur... but the next morning, as i was walking through the park to school, one of the many usual pickup trucks drove by, windows rolled down, stereo blasting... it wasn't the usual rap / r&b / country mix that everyone listened to at the time... it was the patriotic anthem "God bless the USA"... i don't know if i've ever experienced a more patriotic moment...

that was the day i thought the nation could change... the world could change... we could all be united for a cause, the ageless cause of being disturbed by evil and fighting against it... but evil has corrupted the antagonist of evil (sorry this is getting vaguely preachy and political) but no longer is our reason for remembering 9/11 a memorial to those who were sacrificed, to those who altered the path of the plane meant for the white house, to the everyday people who became heroes, to those who lost loved ones, to those who stepped up in uniform and dedicated themselves to the freedom and liberty america was founded upon... not that i'm a politician or understand much of what's going on, but i just view everything that has emerged from all of this as a struggle for power... power over money, resources, people, a fight to gain something for ourselves... yes we lost something that day, 6 years ago, but we are losing more and more as the days go on, and i can't see us gaining anything worthy enough to replace all that we've lost...