Weather wise, Sept. 11, 2001 was a beautiful day. Even the reports of death and destruction coming out of New York City that morning mentioned the crystal clear skies over Manhattan, intentionally or otherwise contrasting nature’s majestic beauty with the manmade horror on the ground.
Sept. 11 was a Tuesday and we were busy putting this paper to bed when the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center came in shortly after 9 a.m. The incongruity of our news, covering our little corner of the world, juxtaposed with the epic events occurring on the world stage that day is a lasting impression.
Eight years ago this week, our front page featured a story on the local response to the terror attacks, but our other news involved the Great Salt Bay Sanitary District, Maine Yankee, the then Newcastle teen center, and an Eagle Scout project.
In a very real way, putting that paper together was like stumbling half asleep through a bad dream, wanting desperately to wake up; hearing terrible news and wanting it desperately not to be true; wanting to drop everything and rush to the hospital to comfort a loved one after a tragedy but still having to take the time to do the little things that need doing before you go, because you know you’ll be gone for a while.
In the years since, we have seen the best and worst of ourselves, from the tragedy and immediate pain uniting Americans like nothing else in living memory, to the nadir of the development and application of state sanctioned torture.
Even as the Twin Towers still stood, smoldering beneath that beautiful blue sky on that lovely Tuesday morning, we had to know we were watching a watershed event, something that would forever serve as a divider of our history.
There was life before 9-11 and life afterward, and the two are not the same.
