9/11... 25 years later!

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Update: see here a follow-on post contextualizing 9/11 today.

My second post written by me not AI (they're all prefaced as such), and nostalgia too: that was around being paid to hike in the Rockies 41 years go; this is more topical as an anniversary and as social commentary - more here on religious regimes causing same, & here on the Middle-East vs. the West - 9/11 was during my tenure in So.Cal. as an international marketing manager for a premier GIS firm.

That bright September morning started so normally... I was at a trade show in San Antonio TX, early to set up my both. A Saudi client touring the show floor before attending talks, invited me for coffee - a habit he proudly reminded me was Saudi not Italian - New York was one time zone ahead of us, so the attack happened early morning for us. This was early in the internet era, so our mobiles were for calling and texting, but neither for news nor for streaming - this was before iPhone mobiles and, say, Google apps - and as computer mapping and GIS were on the ascendant at that show, industry players had then-new big screen digital TVs only they could afford then. 

The show floor came to a standstill when one of the major vendors turned all its big screens to BBC News streaming the the awful news and sights non-stop. My Saudi customer and I looked at each other, too polite to start talking first, but I nodded and he broke the thick silence in a quiet hushed tone, leaning over so I could hear without him raising his voice. "Want to bet it's the Zionists trying to  provoke us all?" said he. "Oh! I thought of the Palestinians after their PLO etc. history..." said I. It's a measure of each other's respect and global culture - I had yet to spend over a year in Kuwait - that we dared to say it at all, and then to break into spontaneous laughter at our cross-cultural gaffes... 

After the whirl and buzz at the conference about this event, I found peace walking in a nearby shopping strip by the river in San Antonio TX. The silence was deafening as streets were deserted, a mix of communal shock and of folks probably glued to their TV sets at home. I bought this watch from a kind Iranian couple in a pop-up booth, who hardly dared look at me or to expect my attention: they were on the wrong side of the cultural divide, so I smiled at him; one doesn't address Middle-Eastern likely Muslim ladies unless acquainted or family - my clue was that they wore traditional garb, him a thobe and her a hijab - so he broke into this biggest grin, and she could hardly suppress hers before quickly casting her eyes down, when I asked "how much was this watch?"... 

(surreptitiously stopped on 11)

Next came the logistics. Flights were cancelled, thank God I had a rental car with a full tank I just didn't drive - San Antonio has definitely a walking downtown esp. in balmy mid-Sept. -  and I then simply drove to Houston my next destination. 

But wait! I was headed to the Galleria, home of the Williams Tower... what if it was next?

While I drove down the 10 (as Interstates were called in Texas) it took me a while to realize what was wrong with the picture... I even stopped at a layby to look around: no contrails, no flight over one of the busy flight corridors, and the silence in the clear fall day in south central Texas... 

Then I had another show in Galveston, and that took me past the ten days after which flights were restored... Since I had a day to kill before then, I simply took the leftover gas in my tank to drive down by the Gulf of Mexico Inland Waterway. I managed to take in some iconic views just being in the countryside dead quiet immediately post-9/11...

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