I will never forget where I was on 9-11. My work day had just started in Portland, Oregon and was driving my Cushman electric cart through the 14 acre manufacturing plant where I worked as a Maintenance Mechanic. One of my co-worker stop me and asked if I had heard about a plane crashing into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, my first thoughts were much like Jack’s.  My next stop was the Machine Shop because had a TV in their break room. What I saw next changed my life, less than a year later I enlisted in the US Army and I am still serving today.  That being said, my life has made a full circle, two years ago my family and I purchase our first home on 5 acres. Now my wife and I are slowly returning to our roots and teaching our kids along the way as we build our homestead.

A great episode to listen to while I cooked butternut squash and sliced baby-head sized tomatoes grown in our tiny garden for dinner. We live in a small apartment in urban Portland (the politics suck, but the people are friendly) and we still try to do everything we can towards self sufficiency with what space we have. I see homesteading as a mindset. Regardless of where you live, you can still adopt those principles for your life.

I was in 7th grade when I heard the news about the towers. Our teacher turned on the news and we all watched in awe as the second tower was hit. I had a classmate who’s father worked in the pentagon, who fortunately was ok. We didn’t know what the hell was going on and the weight of the attack didn’t really dawn on our adolescent minds, but most of us kids at the time came to the same conclusion you did. War. It was obvious.

On 9/11/01 I was just starting the first year of my return to college to get my engineering degree.  My first class of the day was on the early side, and some of the other students were talking about the first plane hitting the WTC… the tone at that early time was mostly of confusion.  After class was over I got to see the rest unfold on the TV in my dorm room, and from there it was the only thing that people around me were talking about. Being in Arizona there weren’t a huge number of kids from the East Coast attending there, but it still had quite the impact on campus. Though I don’t remember any classes being cancelled.

At the time I recognized it as a huge event and was certainly thinking “oh crap” as it was unfolding, but it didn’t really hit me on the same visceral level like it seemed to do with others.  After seeing it I was thinking more of what it would mean for the future of the country than being personally distraught.  I’ve been accused before of being too “Spock-like” in this and other things… and there is some truth to that. But I think it was just as much that the event was so far away from my world and experiences…. I grew up in Alaska with no friends and family in the eastern US and I’d never been to the East Coast, so it all seemed distant to me.

I do remember being dismayed at the hyper-emotional tone of the media and many of the people around me, worried that we were going to make bad decisions because of it (particularly when they started talking about the Patriot Act).  More people seemed interested in payback and/or fear than in examining the situation, and aside from a few friends I found it hard to talk about such things without being subjected to emotional outbursts or judgement. I understood on a logical level that some people were going through pain, anger, and/or fear, but I admit to being baffled and frustrated at how much some were being dominated by their emotions. It wasn’t until some years later that I fully realized to what degree the media, especially TV & cable news, influences and amplifies peoples’ emotional states.

So yeah, that was my perspective… feeling like the world was going crazy around me and trying not to get drawn into the frenzy.  I don’t say that as a criticism of anyone… emotions are a normal response especially for events like 9/11, and if anything ‘I’ am the one that has more difficulty operating in society. But that’s simply how I felt at that time.  I can say that today I have a bit more of an emotional attachment to the event, more as a general sense of sorrow at all the lives lost as a result of both the actual event and the actions taken after.