News September 11, 2001 ...certainly reached you as well. We just want to let you know we're OK

There's probably no sense in showing picture of what happened, or to develop any speculations. Those I shall leave to professionals. Yet, perhaps you could be interested, how everything happened on our side:

From Monday to Tuesday, we had been arranged to "babysitg" with Madlenka. In her age and considering her independence, it meant picking her up from school, staying in the same house with her overnight, and get her out to school in time in the morning.

It all worked well to that point; I woke her up, and while Madlenka was getting ready for school, I brewed myself some coffee and read newspapers. At seven ten, her schoolmate parents were supposed to pick her up. No one came by seven fifteen, Madlenka called them, but only found out that they were in a car, but she was not sure if they were coming for her. After another five minutes, I pulled my farmer's pants over my nightgown and jumped into my car.

There was some terrorism debate going on the radio, but since they always talk about something in the radio here (whether black have lower wages, whether UFOs are real, whether cloning should be allowed), I did not pay much attention. I dropped Madlenka in front of her school and turned the radio up. Unfortunately, I could not decipher from the messages, what actually happened, since everybody was just refering to something well known and established -- our clocks show three hours less than in New Yor, and only one of the hijacked planes was left in the air at that time.

I drove back to Kren's, turned the TV on and ran to wake up Sid. At that monment I discovered, that I missed a card with phone numbers I usually carry in my wallet, and that I can contact Martina in Monterey only from home, after I find her number there. I left Sid alone, telling him to pack whatever was left, and drove home (fortunately it's just a few blocks).

I yanked Martina out of her sleep, within ten minutes she managed to reach the school, and tell me that Madlenka may stay at the school, which was open and children were taken care of. Meanwhile George called Martina from Europe that he would not likely come home on Thursday as planned. Sid arrived at our home, still kind of sleepy, carrying all the stuff I left at Kren's. Since then our TV was simply on and I must admit that I watched more of it on that one day than during whole previous year.

What did surprise us? Perhaps the fact that everything so much resembled an action movie. I kept waiting for the final credits to start rolling...
The destruction of WTC and the damage of the Pentagon (for your amusement: MSNBC had an article posted on the net, with a subtitle - airplane crashed onto Pentagon, damaging one part of this six-sided building), the president reading to children, interrupted in this peaceful act, hears about an atack, gets into Air Force One and accompanied by fighter planes disappears to undisclosed locations, later giving a speach from the Oval Office... all that I had seen in a movie. I had never believed that it would materialize in such a horror.
Another suprise are Americans - they appear much less terrified than, let's say, people in Bohemia, although this happened in THEIR back yard. Or maybe just because -- they can do something -- give blood, help with removing the rubble, send money.
Last (very nice) surprise is television. No hyena shots, despite certainly much opportunity for something like that. Newcast keeps running without a break, on September 11 most stations (including MTV) cancelled normal programming and broadcast news all day. For twenty four hours, there were no commercials.

What can I add? In some states, gas stations began raising fuel prices (according to some news, up to five dollars per gallon), and some supermarkets claim to have experienced crowds hoarding food and bottled water. Here in California, everything looks as usual. Just to be sure, we pumped our wagon and Cecilia full (gas prices stood at their usual little under two dollars per gallon). We already have some stash of canned food, bottled water, and eight gallons of gas in the closet, for the case of earthquakes. Nothing else remains but to hope that it all would find some acceptable conclusion.

Copyright © 2001-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.