Up Early On The 10th Anniversary Of The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Looking through the bars of my patio prison bars at a very somber September 11 morning.

In a little over an hour, 10 years ago, I felt myself compelled to call people on the west coast to tell them to get out of bed and turn on their TVs.

I'd gotten a call from Big Ed, in Dallas, telling me he'd seen a plane crash into the World Trade Center.

Big Ed was in the Dallas Fashion District, near the Dallas World Trade Center. I assumed he was talking about a plane crashing into that World Trade Center.

I turned on my TV totally confused about what I was looking at. And then, live, I saw the 2nd plane strike the 2nd tower.

I don't remember at what point I started calling the west coast. I know it was well before the first tower collapsed.

My little sister at that point in time worked in law offices high up in a downtown Seattle skyscraper. I remember when I called her I told her I did not think she should go into downtown Seattle that day. I don't remember if she heeded her big brother's advice or not.

It is sort of unsettling that that vivid day happened a decade ago.

I'd returned to Texas only a few days before 9/11, after spending a month up in Washington, driving myself up there for my mom and dad's 50th Anniversary. This was to be the last time I drove from Texas to Washington and back.

A lot of things changed, post 9/11, like driving back to Washington. I think there'd been 5 trips back, pre 9/11, since the move to Texas in late 1998. Or was it 1999?

This morning, as I was looking at my various news sources, online, with all the focus on 9/11 remembrances, it crossed my mind to wonder what sort of fuss was made on December 7, 1951, ten years after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II. A war which ended less than 4 years later, after America dropped a pair of atom bombs on Japan.

In 1951 America did not have quite the highly developed electronic news media industry it has today. I suspect not as much attention was paid to December 7, 1951 than is being paid to September 11, 2011.

An awful lot of people have died as a result of the barbaric acts of 9/11. And continue to die. An awful lot of people died as a result of the barbaric acts of 12/7. With people, for the most part, ceasing dying in September of 1945.

I imagine the memory of December 7, 1941 would be etched much more vividly into the American consciousness if that awful day was covered live on TV, like the events of 9/11.

Anyway, this should be an interesting day. I think I will start 9/11 off with a long swim in semi-cold water.

D-Day Anniversary & Google Earth

Yesterday, if my math is correct, and I admit my math is often faulty, was the 64th Anniversary of D-Day.

I knew a computer whiz once, named Dale, who had no idea what things like D-Day or Pearl Harbor Day were. I found that appalling.

So, for you Dale's out there, here is the short version of what D-Day is.

Way back in the last century there was this massive war caused by Germany and Japan going nuts and violently taking over other countries. This became known as World War II.

A couple years after starting the war, Germany tried to take over Russia, which was then known as the Soviet Union.

But that invasion didn't go so well for Germany. The Soviets began pushing the Germans back to Germany where they belonged. The dictator of the Soviets was an evil man named Stalin. Stalin wanted his Allies, those being, mainly, America and England, to open a second front in the west.

The Allies took awhile to agree on the idea of how to open a western front. Roosevelt, who was the American President, was gung-ho on the idea of taking on the Krauts in France, but the English leader, Churchill, feared a bloodbath.

By 1944 the Soviets were rapidly advancing on Germany. The Americans and Brits knew they had to move fast so as to prevent the Soviets from taking over all of Germany. And so on June 4, 1944 the largest amphibious invasion in history began with landings on the beaches of Normandy. Normandy is a province of France. France is a country that Germany invaded in 1940. By the end of D-Day the Allies had control of the beaches and were moving inland.

The Germans were soon in full retreat on all fronts.

In a coincidence, regarding yesterday, and D-Day. I am currently reading a very good book by Joseph E. Persico called Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage. On the anniversary of D-Day I was at the point in the book were Roosevelt had changed his mind on who was to be the General in charge of Operation Overlord, that being the code name for D-Day. Roosevelt decided to have Eisenhower run the show instead of General George Marshall.

And, on another D-Day note. Yesterday I went to the beaches of Normandy. I visited via Google Earth. If you've not installed Google Earth on your computer, you really should. It's free. Go here and get it. Yesterday I also went to Baghdad. That was very interesting. You can check out the Green zone and go all over Baghdad. I had no idea there we so many cool looking buildings in Baghdad.

Google Earth has a lot of features packed into it. Like if you go to Mount Rushmore an audio tour starts up. Some areas are done in extremely high resolution. Like I can almost read the license plate on my vehicle. If you've not been to Mt. St. Helens, go via Google Earth. Las Vegas is another locale that is in extremely high resolution. You can get down to street level and see exactly what it is like to vist Vegas. I'd not been to Disneyland since Disney California opened, so that was interesting to see how that has all changed.