September 5, 2021
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
The September 5, 2001 edition of Sunday Morning was an emotional
roller coaster. There were stories that made me laugh and smile and
stories that made me cry. Alright, I'm not really much of a crier. But
things got a little dusty.
We'll start with the stories that made me cry.
If you want a way to memorialize the 20th anniversary of the 9/11, Martha Teichner's and John Dickerson's segments are reflective and somber as befits the occasion. It's hard reliving that day, rewatching the footage of a plane smashing into the World Trade Center, even from someone who experienced it from afar.
I'm not sure this is what the mean when they say, "Never forget," about 9/11, but here is my recollection of the day:
(For what it's worth, I remember all the names of everyone in this story, but I'm not going to use them despite it lending extra verisimilitude because I don't know how they'd feel about being randomly named on the internet or how they'd remember that day themselves.)
I could do the math or check a calendar, but I would have remembered if September 11 was a Monday or Friday, because I know it was the middle of the week. I also know it was not a Wednesday because school didn't start until 9 on Wednesdays so that there could be a faculty meeting before the beginning of classes. So it was a Tuesday or a Thursday. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was a Tuesday. I was one of the first group of people at my school to find out what was happening.
My first class of the day was a psychology course. It started at 8 or maybe 8:10. (I don't remember exactly when the first bell was.) Maybe with 15 minutes left in the class, the teacher realized that she had left some papers that needed to be handed out in the faculty room. She asked one of the students (not me) if they could go down and get them for her.
We had covered the day's lesson plan by that point so I remember there was chatter about the room as we waiting for the designated paper fetcher to return, aimlessly discussing the sorts of things that high school kids starting their final year might be prone to discussing.
A few minutes later the student returned, chatter still abundant. Perhaps he was out of breath, but there was definitely a look on his face.
"Someone flew a plane into the the World Trade Center," having not yet handed over the papers in his hand to the psychology teacher.
"That's not funny, (name)."
"I'm not kidding. They had the TV on in the faculty room," was the agitated reply.
At this point the psychology teacher (who actually mostly taught math courses) needed to verify, so she quickly found a remote for the classroom TV, turned it on and turned it to NBC. We all saw the black smoke billowing out of the first tower and there was no more chatter. School was a just a building for the rest of the day.
In trying to remember, I wasn't positive if I actually saw the second plane hit the other tower live on TV or what that was confabulated memory. But rechecking the historical timeline, the first tower was hit at about quarter to 9 and the second tower was hit at 9:06. The class would have ended at 9:10 on a normal day.
I saw the second plane fly into the other tower on live TV.
Prior to that, Matt Lauer (man, there's a part of the story that did not age well for entirely different reasons...) was stressing they had little information to go on - only a wide shot of the tower with a giant hole in it and smoke billowing out. A plane had hit one of the towers but it may have been a mistake, a malfunction, pilot error, etc. Take your pick of whatever story you found most comforting in a terrible situation. We just didn't know.
And then the second plane hit the tower.
I'm sure I remember this more from having watched it many more times after the fact and not from the instant it happened, but the thing that struck me about it is how clearly you can see that it was a plane before it hits the tower. Planes are fast. In baseball, you think of a 100 mph (or even 90 mph) fastball as being a blur. So a plane going four or five times that speed, must be four or five times blurrier. Keep in mind, to this point in my life, I had never flown on a plane. But the second plane seemed to be languidly drifting along the skyline, almost like an airplane shaped balloon or balsa wood glider until it disappeared into the second tower. The fireball that shot out of the other side of the building quickly disavowed any notion of the idea there was anything leisurely or gentle about a commercial airliner slamming into a New York skyscraper.
I want to say that this point there were gasps or shouts in the classroom, but that would just being adding unremembered details for dramatic flair. My recollection is hearing the teacher quietly say, "Oh my God." when the second plane hit.
Once the national news coverage narrating the events managed to recover enough composure to continue expounding on the situation the word "accident" was no longer part of the vocabulary being used.
"A second plane has hit the World Trade Center in what appears to be a coordinated attack."
The rest of the day is a bit more of a blur. We continued to shuffle from class to class, but no schoolwork was done. A TV was on in every classroom. I forget if the pentagon was hit in second or third period - probably second. By fourth, the news informed us of a plane crashing in Pennsylvania. All air travel in North America has stopped. All planes that had been in the sky had landed at the closest available airport. The only planes were in the sky over our country were military jets. The sky, in a more literal sense than any of us though possible, was falling. Everyone was scared.
One of the ways in which fear manifested came during study hall (fourth period). The irascible physics and math teacher that oversaw the cafeteria where study hall was held loudly laid out his thoughts on what what US foreign policy should going forward: Nuke them back to the stone age. (We'd give them warning to get out first. A Catholic school is, after all, a pro-life institution.)
I remember this only serving to make myself and a friend of mine (of Canadian extraction) more scared and angry. We vainly tried to argue with him for about 30 seconds before realizing the futility.
I'm not sure if at this point Afghanistan or Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden were being discussed on the news yet. I wouldn't be surprised they were. Despite the intelligence failures that led up to and followed 9/11, bin Laden had previously bombed the World Trade Center and we were possibly vaguely aware. I would have been maybe nine years old when that terrorist bombing occurred, but some things seep in through osmosis and I know it didn't take long for the obvious link to be made despite Al Qaeda not claiming responsibility for a few days more. The point is that I'm not sure if we knew exactly what country we were bombing back into the stone age yet.
We went to fifth period, lunch, and sixth period. We had to keep following the routine. What else was there to do except watch? Also, practically speaking, if something were to happen the school needed to know where we were. And the easiest way to do that was for us to be where we always were.
Instead of seventh period, there was a school assembly to process the days events, say a prayer, and send us home.
I remember three things about the remainder of the day.
First, I had the Fatboy Slim album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars in my CD player and I remember putting music on to try to focus my mind on something, anything else. When the song "Drop the Hate" I remember being affected by it. In retrospect, the album does not hold up over time and song attempts to turn a civil rights era call for equality into a dance rave, but at the time, even a trite message calling for peace and understanding felt comforting.
The second requires some explanation. I had spent a summer participating in the Governor's Scholars Program in Kentucky, which, depending on who you ask, is:
- A program designed to prepare high performing students for college
- A program designed to funnel high performing students in Kentucky colleges
- A eugenics experiment that throws together a bunch of high performing students/hormonal teenagers on a college campus for six weeks, largely unsupervised, before their senior year of high school
I checked my e-mail when I got home from school on 9/11 and a girl that I may or may not have had a crush on at GSP (we called it GSP because we were cool) had sent an e-mail to me. To be more accurate, she had sent an e-mail to group of people that had loosely hung out together a bit the past summer back when e-mail was sort of a new fangled thing still. I think it was just some joke and she had obviously sent it the day before. I remember replying to say something like, "I was happy to get your e-mail. It made me smile on an otherwise terrible day. Hope to hear from you again." I did not hear from her again. She lived a hundred miles away anyway and honestly, who would have cared that day. At least I already knew enough back then to know not to "Reply All".
Finally, I remember watching the news with Dad that night and the shot of the plane hitting the second tower from the ground directly below. This was before cell phones had cameras (though luckily, not before cell phones themselves as we know from the brave story of the passengers on United 93) so it must have been shot by a news crew that rushed to scene. (I shudder to image the image the images and video that would available today if everyone had an iPhone 20 years ago.) I'm not going to link to the footage or post a picture. I'm sure you can find it if you want, just like the picture of the falling man. Anyway, my dad muttered something and I felt a little bit sick. It stood in distinct contrast to the wide shot of the plane hitting the tower which felt strange and detached. From directly below the impact, you understood the hugeness and violence of it, even without any audio.
In the aftermath, I turned 18, which means that I had to fill out and send in that card to register for the selective service. I'm not sure the exact date we invaded Afghanistan, but I knew we were going to war at some point and filling that card out made me nervous. I naively thought the draft was something that could actually happen. In the twenty years since, I've all come to understand that since Vietnam our military is probably always going to be an all volunteer force for political and technological reasons.
That is my remembrance of 9/11/2001. It is not a special or unique remembrance. All Americans and many beyond went through something traumatic that day. Some much more so than others, especially in New York and Washington D.C. It is a singular day that stands alone in my memory. Most memories are like sand, shifting and mutable by time and supervening events. The memories of that day are like granite. The wear of time may round the edges, but the form will always stay the same.
In the twenty years since we've been told to "Never Forget" and "Remember 9/11". If you were alive that day, I'm not sure it's a choice. If the point is to not forget the lessons of 9/11, well, 20 years later we're still debating what those lessons are as we finally get around to leaving Afghanistan. Soldiers died while we were leaving that were not even a year old when the attacks occurred. I'm unsure if there is a lesson anymore. If there is one, it is certainly not easily packaged without nuance and qualification. If it is to never forget those that died, some in an instant that day, some choosing to jump off a building instead of burning alive, some heroically trying to save others, some years later from the toxins they were exposed to in responding that day in the weeks to come, some in wars over the next 20 years that started to have an increasingly tenuous connection to what actually happened that day, then yes. Please give them all the love and support, whether it be medical, spiritual, emotional, financial, or all of the above, they need.
That took a long time to get through, so we'll keep the rest short and highlight one or two things I appreciated about each. Most of them made me laugh and/or smile.
Many segments on Sunday Morning live and die by the characters that inhabit them. Moriarty's segment about the persisting worker shortage, despite COVID relief benefits running out in most places, wants to live life to the fullest damnit! (Exclamation point required.)
I present to you Dan Nicolaescu, the Romanian Joel McHale:
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Joel, er, Dan is a tall man. He is a power bald who used quarantine to take his facial hair grooming to the next level. Moving on from pandemic life, he hopes to change careers from mixology to mycology (mushroom farming).
If that doesn't work out for you, Dan, I've been looking for an Eastern European spiritual guru.
I'm willing to pay. Please tell me what to do to be more like you.
4) Ben Tracy
I love so much about this segment. I love that it counts as their weekly art segment. I love the abundant Minnesota nice. I've only ever been to one state fair, and I was definitely a third wheel, but I love state fair's (in theory). I have also been to one county fair. The smells are amazing if you enjoy fried food and or farm animals. I love the American ingenuity of deep fried (fill in the blank).
I also just kind of love butter, which got a bad rap over the years. Growing up, unfortunately my mother was team stick margarine. If only she had known what we know now. I admit that I probably consume more butter than a healthy person should, but I also probably do way more cardiovascular exercise than most people. I'm not sure that balances out, but I'm mostly healthy. My cholesterol is down around 100 points from a high of 240.
Look at this picture:
You have to watch Ben's segment.
5) Lake O' the Pines, East Texas
I was recently in Marshall, Texas for work. Lake O' the Pines is about a half hour to the northwest apparently.
It was hot. Texas is not for me.
I've been to Houston enough to know it might be my least favorite place on Earth. I spent a summer doing physics research in Austin which was kind of fun, but not for me in the long run. I think I already told the story of the weekend I got food poisoning, was witness to a man almost dying in a motorcycle accident and then almost got into a catastrophic car accident myself. The point is that the friend visiting me that weekend was grateful to retreat back to Shreveport, LA of all places. Lets not go into politics, gerrymandering, and lawmakers that claim to stand for all people, while in reality are only pandering to an increasingly vocal minority that are sufficient for reelection in our electoral system.
Texas is not for me. But I might consider going back if I can hang out at Lake O' the Pines for a day.
(Who am I kidding? I'll be heading back for work at some point or another unless I can figure out a way to pursue something else.)
6) Jane Pauley
Willard Scott and Izzy Bleckman get an extended Sunday Passage obit from Jane Pauley. Izzy Bleckman (whose name sounds like Michael Schur came up with for one of his TV shows) was a long time cameraman for CBS and Sunday Morning. So there a bunch of wonderful old clips from the show. Willard Scott worked with Jane as the weatherman for the Today Show. As a former avid watcher of network morning shows, to me Willard was just the affable guy who offered birthday wished to all of our great country's great centenarians. He was also possibly borderline senile the last few years he made these appearances and was an occasional target of Joel McHale on The Soup. I wanted to find a video of one of these segments, but none seems to be easily available. So I present the following segment of Joel appearing on the infamous "fourth hour" from, I don't know, lets say about a decade ago?
If I send Jane Pauley an obit for myself and promise that I'll become noteworthy enough that my passing should be mentioned on national TV, do you think she'd record the obit for me? I'd really like for that to get played at my funeral.
7) Tracy Smith
Fighting the urge to deep dive into Jeff Daniel's filmography, I'll just say that I'm a sucker for a preach Aaron Sorkin Monologue, so I loved Jeff Daniel's in The Newsroom even though I fought the urge to watch it. I think I was susceptible to some kind of Sorkin backlash that was going around at the time. Of course, there's always Sorkin backlash.
I think it's cool that he lives in Michigan. I'm touched by how much his dad means to him, which makes me think I should be more expressive for the love I have for my own dad. I wish I could see him as Atticus Finch. And I laughed out loud when the showed the clip from Dumb and Dumber. Such a funny movie (savaged by critics, unfairly in my opinion) and Daniels knocks it out of the park. Interesting that the studio didn't think he could pull it off. I have the urge to post a clip from the movie here, but I can't choose. Just go watch it and relive the halcyon days of youth fellow millenials/X-enials/Gen X-ers. For other generations, I still recommend it, but worry you probably won't "get it".
I remember occasionally getting an assignment to write a letter to someone I did not know. I don't know if it was ever a soldier/policeman/fireman/etc. The one I remember best was writing letters to folks in a nursing. I remember because we were supposed to deliver them in person to people we did not know. I was a little scared because not everyone in a nursing home has complete control of their faculties and some are not up for visitors, little kids or not.
I'm sure sometimes we had an assignment to write a letter where we did not deliver them in person. I'd hate to think I was so cynical at 8 years old, but I kind of remember thinking that the recipient wouldn't care if they knew I was only writing the letter for a school assignment.
Steve is here is dispel the cynicism that my I carried around since the third grade. The letters are meaningful regardless of whether they were compulsory.
We should all write more letters young or old. Maybe I should start sending them to strangers.
Anyone want to be my pen pal?
9) Mo Rocca
Mo tries out to be a ball person at the U.S. Open. He's not particularly athletic or coordinated so we all chuckle a little bit. Stay tuned for future posts about tennis.
10) Charles M. Blow
A commentary on the irony of our age: legitimate news coverage to expose the hacks and frauds and sometimes virulent racists actually amplifies their platform. Talk about a Catch 22.
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