“We Shouldn’t Be Coping, We Should Be Hoping”- Tenth 9/11 Approaches
PHOTO CREDIT: “Healing Cross”, Father Brian Jordan, Five Bells for 9/11
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Next month, we’ll turn that page of the calendar again. As with so many anniversaries that end in zero, personal and private, this one will have special significance. Ten years have passed since the events that day in 2001 that changed both the Skyline of Manhattan and thousands of lives forever. Terrorists turning hijacked airliners into weapons that ended 3,000 lives at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Along with so much personal tragedy to cope with, something once so simple as the process of getting on an airplane will never be the same again. For anyone. Anywhere in the World.
PHOTO CREDIT: © 2005 Tourist Of Death
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Which is why I find hoaxes like this one rather distasteful even now. This image, originally circulated wildly on the internet and suggested to be found in a camera from the remains of the Twin Towers, started popping up shortly after 9/11. Two months later, the man in the picture, Hungarian Peter Guzli, admitted he pasted the plane in a picture taken 4 years earlier as just “a joke for a few friends”. Peter said he didn’t want the fame. Or infamy.
PHOTO CREDIT:Wikipedia
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As is often the case with internet humor, one distasteful pic deserves another, and “Peter” began showing up again literally all over the internet, photoshopped into everything from the JFK assassination to the sinking of the Titanic.
PHOTO CREDIT:Wikipedia, Answers.com
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But- I’m hopeful now the things we’ll see on the interwebs over the coming month will be a little less mean-spirited.
“I Will Respond”, a song by Dom Crincoli, might just get us headed in the right direction. It’s a firefighter anthem originally produced for the play “Five Bells for 9/11” by Rich Swingle. The one-man show tells the stories of three people that were directly impacted: Bruce Van Hine, a firefighter for Squad 41; Lana Ho Shing, a mutual funds specialist for Morgan Stanley (“…We Should Be Hoping”), and Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan priest at the Church of St. Francis.
I don’t know if “I Will Respond” will become the “official” song of the anniversary, or even if there will be one.
I do know that we all deserve a little hope right now.
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Learn more about Sept. 11 as a day of service at www.911dayofservice.org.
