Nows and Forevers

It’s been 31 years since the bombing of the World Trade Center on a late February afternoon in 1993. Like 9/11 eight years later, from this vantage point I find it so difficult to believe so much time has passed.

I was working about 40 miles away at a newspaper outside New York City, and heard about it on WCBS Newsradio 88 as I drove from assignment to assignment. These were the days before the cell phone, so I knew my first duty was to rush back to the newsroom to see what we needed to do. For reasons I don’t really understand, our newspaper decided to cover it mostly from wire reports and one reporter.

That didn’t make sense, given the surety there were people from our coverage area who were either working at the World Trade Center or the Financial District every day. Dozens of commuter trains piled into Grand Central station from our area every weekday, not to mention the people who drove. I was only a reporter, I didn’t drive the coverage. I just went where they told me to go.

And they didn’t want us to go.

It would be a few months later, on a big story in our city, that I would decide to follow my own instincts. But that’s another story.

The ’93 WTC attacks get lost in history, I’m afraid, because of the sheer scope of 9/11 and how many people it killed and how the aftereffects still reverberate today. I know it does for me, as I lived closer and worked closer and actually covered 9/11 and its aftermath in 2001 and in the years afterward for several papers. Sept. 11 wasn’t just the biggest story I would ever cover, it was also personal. Like most everyone in the New York area, we had a personal connection.

It’s still personal. It’s not performative saying #neverforget. Because we never will.

Remember what happened 31 years ago today, that’s important too. It was one of the first times I remember thinking that terrorism was more than just something that happened overseas. I knew that for years, for a girl my age from my hometown was killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988. But I guess I was too naive to think it couldn’t happen here. Then the ’93 bombings, which killed six people. Two years later, the domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City.

And then Sept. 11.

I moved to another state about a decade after 9/11, but it’s remained in my heart and my head. I listen to the reading of the names every year until one in particular, and I never miss it, no matter what. It’s crucial we remember them. And it’s crucial we remember those we lost, 31 years ago today.

We must never forget.

Depending on who you listen to, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar landing is either a success or a partial failure.

They got to the Moon, but the lander ended up tipped over. It may or may not be able to do all the things that it expected. But it’s doing a lot.

“We have quite a bit of operational capability even though we’re tipped over,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said Friday at the mission update.

Guess what? That’s a lot more than there was before landing. And the fact that it’s running, well, that’s a huge accomplishment, for Odysseus, for Intuitive Machines, and for NASA.

I watched with interest the promo for “Masters of the Air,” the new miniseries from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg on Apple TV+. What it depicts is part of my family history.

My grandfather was a B-24 and B-29 aircraft commander and instructor pilot. He didn’t fly in Europe, but still “Masters of the Air” tells a familiar story. I also read the book on the subway and nearly missed my stop a couple times, it was that engrossing. I also gave him a copy before he died.

I have to say that I doubt this miniseries will come close to the power of two of the best WWII movies, “Twelve O’Clock High,” and “The Best Years of Our Lives.” The former is all about the air war over Europe, and comes closer than anything about the psychological as well as full bodily cost of the bomber war. It’s a hard watch even 65 years later, because it’s unsentimental and unsparing and it wasn’t too long after the war. It isn’t telling a feel-good story. Many of those men died in the early days.

“The Best Years” also takes on PTSD and you cannot help but be crushed by Fred’s memories of bombing runs and what it meant to him. Again, this was just after the war and it wasn’t just a movie but real life. I

Imagine all of the world’s knowledge on one computer disc, just in case.

Well, you don’t have to imagine it. A nonprofit, the Arch Mission Foundation, has actually done it multiple times.

“Our modern civilization, the most technically advanced in human history, has no backup,” the Arch Mission Foundation says on its website. “If a global catastrophe occurred today, most of our collective knowledge would be gone within a decade, and it would take centuries to rebuild.”

It’s actually a good point. There wouldn’t have to be a global catastrophe. Just a big solar flare or EMP could play havoc with our modern world, which is so dependent on computers and AI. Since no one seems to really care about writing stuff done or having books these days, what would happen if all of the computers and the Internet just stopped working?

The Internet of Nothing, as it were.

The foundation dropped the first disc aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy mission in 2018, followed by a lunar landing in 2019 and there was supposed to be another lunar landing sometime this year. And then there’s what they call the Global Knowledge Vault, where the disc of human knowledge and books will end up underground in Switzerland.

Sixty million pages worth, apparently.

“And it’s designed to survive a nuclear holocaust,” according to The Sun newspaper.

Not a bad idea, really. There are plans to put one on each continent, just in case. But travel arrangements to each backup location could end up being a pretty big problem if we were all transported back to a time of horses and buggies. Not to mention that if there was a global catastrophe, where are the computers and other devices to read all that information?

This isn’t the first time humans have worried about losing knowledge. There was the burning of the great library at Alexandria. Or the naming of the Dark Ages, from 500 to 1000 AD, which based on what I believe, wasn’t the Dark Ages at all.

My mother, Harriet (Davies) Shelton, died 30 years ago today. She was 48 years old.

Today, I drove six hours to her hometown of West Pittston, Pennsylvania, to visit her resting place and to put flowers in her memory at the First United Methodist Church. Here she was baptized, confirmed and, after many years of living around the world, it’s where we had her memorial service. She’s buried, with her parents and grandparents, a few blocks away.

Thirty years gone but never far from my heart.

Vacationer on Japan Airlines plane in Tokyo airport collision recalls a ‘big boom’ and a dash for survival
— Read on www.wsj.com/business/airlines/inside-a-flaming-jet-367-passengers-had-minutes-to-flee-heres-how-they-did-it-f0e3c2dc

If this isn’t one of the most amazing stories of survival on an airplane, then I don’t know what is. Kudos to the crew who kept their heads and did what they were trained to do, a fatally wounded jumbo jet that kept itself intact for just enough time, and passengers who heeded advice and escaped the burning jet.