Well...i ws not in the field either..I was @ work. Hit us all in this area damn hard (I' m about an hour outside the city). People were freaking out. You couldn' t get through on a phone anywhere. We were expecting all kinds of attacks even as far away as we were.

My company @ the time had close to 400 people working in the TT and a building next to it. The vast majority of them are all gone. Many of my co-workers at my office had loved ones who working in the buildings. People were screaming and crying and breaking into hysterical fits . Hellfire..I' m crying as I type this. I remember just hugging one girl I had hardly knew previously for nearly an hour. Her husband worked at the Towers and they had a baby in a daycare center there at the time. Both are gone. She was in shock, and didn' t even try to get back into the city (not that she could...she took the trains..which were stopped)....

I cannot describe the absolute feeling of dread of being so close to so many people who were affected by this. It' s one thing to see it at home, to be disgusted and angry, and cry. But to be there with folks whose loved ones were there,as it' s happening and died(and although you gave words of encouragement, you knew that it was hopeless), and you and they are totally helpless to a damn thing about it.

Today, I work somewhere else. I work w/ a TT survivor. She handles any questions pretty well. But across the street a new office building is going up, and they have been blasting the lot for about a year now (granite). Despite all the blasting horns and siren warnings, she screams and jumps out of her chair every time one goes off (it shakes our building), which is usually 2 to 3 times a day.

Whenever I hear people getting complacent about or criticizing the USA' s War on Terrorism, I always give them a damn detailed description of that poor girl in shock huddled next to me, digging her nails into my back and arm mumbling and sobbing the names of her husband & child.

Never Forget.