September/2001:

Why share your 9/11experience?

Because 1) writing about these events will help others (and perhaps you), and 2) we have a chance to create a web document of great importance for the future.

Listening to other people's stories about September 11th I noticed details about people helping one another, and courage, and love of family and friends, and that while these stories do awaken fear and horror they also gave me some indescribable sense of closeness to the events that made it all real - unlike the news coverage of the World Trade Center attack which has left me with horrific and sensational images that distance me and leave me empty and much more fearful. I hope that this collection of first-hand accounts about 9/11 and the days following will be a courageous monument, testifying to the best parts of us that arise in times of crisis.

And while gathering opinions about what sort of memorial should be erected at the WTC (World Trade Center) site may not effect the final outcome, I think it should be done.

I live here in NYC, and was incredibly moved and inspired to see thousands of people all rushing down to the disaster area to volunteer to help, bringing water, food, cell phone batteries and anything else they could think of that might help. And not because they were requested to: they did it spontaneously.

And who knows, if thousands who witnessed the event all contribute, maybe others will be encouraged to create similar searchable listings on different subjects, and we as fellow Americans will come to know each other for the truly good and decent human beings we are and not the labels given us by focus groups, polls and media coverage.

Finally, it is not practical, nor desirable, for the news media to report all the 9/11 stories. Now for the first time, it is possible to assemble on the world wide web a comprehensive archive of all this "original source material". Each of us have an opportunity to help create a very important historical document that conveys the spirit of the times by describing what we saw and how we and others around us responded.

A century ago, the personal letter was most people's medium of communication. Writing to one another has been reborn on the internet in the form of email. Everyday millions of people write back and forth to one other. This is a great and amazing thing. Because writing helps us to find and become more of ourselves (and in this regard, it's irrelevant whether one is a "good" writer or a "bad" writer ). So there is the cathartic aspect to writing about that fateful day. For the person writing and for others who read their words.

The moments of kindness and self-sacrifice are as important to this World Trade Center / 9/11 historical document as your narratives of fear and destruction. We hope that everyone who witnessed this event will contribute, whether you were on a roof in Brooklyn, in the thick of the rescue effort at ground zero, or a survivor who managed to escape from one of the doomed towers, or a nearby building. Each voice will immortalize a day in time that changed America and the world.

Thank you for taking the time to add your words. They will add a human gesture to the disturbing images of that terrible day.

Terry Halsey
New York, NY
terry@sharedexperience.org