That particular day
September 11-it has become a date that Americans all ask "Where were you when…?" I was in my apartment in Riverside, Calif., getting ready to brave the traffic to my job at the Inland Valley section of the LA Times. My pager started beeping at just after 7 a.m. There was no way I was going to answer my pager that early in the morning. Then my phone started ringing. It was a coworker and fellow photographer. "You have to get to the Ontario airport right away to cover grounded planes," he said. "What's up?" I asked. "The twin towers have been bombed." "Well, that's in New York and we're in LA, so what is the urgency?" "You haven't turned on the TV yet, have you?" he asked. With that I flipped on my television and replied "I'll be there in 15 minutes."
That day I photographed a wave of human emotion, and I was on the opposite side of the country from those terrible acts. It struck me as a journalist, and it moved me as an American. The following is an e-mail I sent out at the end of my 16-hour shift:
Hello, my friends-
Sorry I have been out of touch, but work has been demanding due to the crisis. I have a few things to say about what happened, mostly from a journalist's perspective. Times like these are incredibly hard for everyone, and those of us in the media have a difficult job to try and be sensitive yet informative.
I have seen some direct results from the attacks, being that the planes hijacked were bound for LA. Families ripped apart, loved ones lost amongst rubble and steel. I have seen all the photographs from Ground Zero, as we watch the AP Wire every hour to see if anyone has been found alive. But no one is found alive. Making sense out of this madness has been a hard task, and coverage, though extensive, leaves the burning question Why? unanswered. I, for one, would like to know why?
Nearly 10,000 are dead, and for what reason? It is easy to blame bin Laden. It is easy to point fingers at the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists. It is easy to say, look at how many people died during the Crusades, and this, in its way, is yet another holy war.
But haven't we become more civilized since the Crusades? Haven't we progressed at all in so many years? I hear a lot about retaliation. Being a red-blooded liberal democrat, I would like to think I could feel above retaliation. But I don't. We need to stop these people before they strike again. And believe me, they will. We need to snuff out the insanity of terrorism in a global aspect. (it is funny, the US didn't seem to recognize how much terrorism thrives in the world until it hit us in our own great cities) We in LA and the surrounding areas are very scared, for we feel we're next.
But I say let them come. Let them do their worst, for they will never break our spirit. I am a journalist, and it is my job to report the news. But I am also an American, and normally, this doesn't mean much to me. It does now.
Goddess Bless and keep you all safe. I love you-Katherine
Katherine Head is the editor of the Bigfork Eagle.