Kevin Costner and Modern West are coming to Caesars Windsor Friday night. We all know Kevin Costner as an actor, producer, director and writer….but he’s also a musician, and a pretty good one too. And he’s a little bit of a trail-blazer when it comes to some seriously innovative ways to protect our environment. He and I had a bit of a conversation about his music and about his involvement with new technology which will both protect the environment and clean up oil spills. It’s pretty interesting, I hope you enjoy it. KEVIN COSTNER FULL UNEDITED
Bob Carpenter of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band called! They’re coming to Caesar’s January 28 (a Saturday).
I’m sure you’d recognize the band name, and certainly a bunch of their hits…but, did you know The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played a small part in the demise of the Soviet Union? Click below to hear the full conversation and Bob talking about the NGDB’s role in bringing down the USSR.
Time: Of all the things we talk about women wanting, time with their spouse is it. The vast majority of women in happy relationships get 30 minutes of uninterrupted time with their husbands each day. Twenty-four percent of women who claim to be in unhappy relationships spend fewer than five minutes a day with their spouses.
Appreciation: These days, women take care of the children and make salaries, and they tend to be very underappreciated. Women should be expressive of what makes them feel appreciated, saying “these are the kinds of things I like: x, y and z.” Men should listen, and women should tune in when their husbands are appreciative.
Understanding: It’s important for women to have men who understand them. It’s also important for women to help men understand how to listen. Men often don’t have a clue they’re being bad listeners. Women have to sense a time limit to conversation. More often than not, men are sitting there thinking, “When is this going to end?” I would say keep it to 15 to 20 minutes, max.
Fun: This is one of those things that often goes out the window, especially after the first child is born. All the factors like jobs, rents, mortgages can add to relationship strain. Couples should set up a date night – once every week, even if they are tired, during which they spend a minimum of two hours alone. During this time, the couple should talk about everything BUT work, money and children.
Kind Gestures: Hugs, kisses, unexpected telephone calls to say ‘I love you’ or a quick little “hey, I was just thinking about you” text. Simple things. Try this, set a goal of FIVE touch points a day for one week – any kind gesture that takes 30 seconds or less. If a man can do this for his partner for one week, both will be amazed at how much better they feel in the relationship.
Watch out Dr’s Phil & Oz…as soon as Oprah hears about me you’re history!
-g
It’s a little unreal that it’s been a full decade since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The images of those towers in flames and the knowledge of not only how many people died…but the unimaginable fear many of them must have felt in their final moments – and for some it was much, much longer than that.
I’ve gathered some information, facts, opinions, images and recollections for you. I have two goals in mind. First, I believe it’s vital we keep memories of such events crystal clear, and second, and this may sound a little cold, even a glimpse inside the private world of pain and anguish of others may cause us to be a bit more appreciative of every single moment we have with the one’s we love.
8:45 a.m. A hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center, tearing a gaping hole in the building and setting it afire.
9:03 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashes into the south tower of the World Trade Center and explodes. Both buildings are burning.
9:17 a.m.: The Federal Aviation Administration shuts down all New York City area airports.
9:21 a.m.: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey orders all bridges and tunnels in the New York area closed.
9:30 a.m.: President Bush, speaking in Sarasota, Florida, says the country has suffered an “apparent terrorist attack.”
9:40 a.m.: The FAA halts all flight operations at U.S. airports, the first time in U.S. history that air traffic nationwide has been halted.
9:43 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, sending up a huge plume of smoke. Evacuation begins immediately.
9:45 a.m.: The White House evacuates.
9:57 a.m.: Bush departs from Florida.
10:05 a.m.: The south tower of the World Trade Center collapses, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris forms and slowly drifts away from the building.
10:08 a.m.: Secret Service agents armed with automatic rifles are deployed into Lafayette Park across from the White House.
10:10 a.m.: A portion of the Pentagon collapses.
10:10 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93, also hijacked, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh.
10:13 a.m.: The United Nations building evacuates, including 4,700 people from the headquarters building and 7,000 total from UNICEF and U.N. development programs.
10:22 a.m.: In Washington, the State and Justice departments are evacuated, along with the World Bank.
10:24 a.m.: The FAA reports that all inbound transatlantic aircraft flying into the United States are being diverted to Canada. Close to 100 aircraft land in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Gander, Newfoundland.
10:28 a.m.: The World Trade Center’s north tower collapses from the top down as if it were being peeled apart, releasing a tremendous cloud of debris and smoke.
10:45 a.m.: All federal office buildings in Washington are evacuated.
10.46 a.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cuts short his trip to Latin America to return to the United States.
10.48 a.m.: Police confirm the plane crash in Pennsylvania.
10:53 a.m.: New York’s primary elections, scheduled for Tuesday, are postponed.
10:54 a.m.: Israel evacuates all diplomatic missions.
10:57 a.m.: New York Gov. George Pataki says all state government offices are closed.
11:02 a.m.: New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay at home and orders an evacuation of the area south of Canal Street.
11:16 a.m.: CNN reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing emergency-response teams in a precautionary move.
11:18 a.m.: American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
11:26 a.m.: United Airlines reports that United Flight 93, en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California, has crashed in Pennsylvania. The airline also says that it is “deeply concerned” about United Flight 175.
11:59 a.m.: United Airlines confirms that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, has crashed with 56 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It hit the World Trade Center’s south tower.
12:04 p.m.: Los Angeles International Airport, the destination of three of the crashed airplanes, is evacuated.
12:15 p.m: San Francisco International Airport is evacuated and shut down. The airport was the destination of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
12:15 p.m.: The Immigration and Naturalization Service says U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico are on the highest state of alert, but no decision has been made about closing borders. Commuters from Windsor – accustomed to quick transit across the border are faced with a new reality as US Border Services closely inspect every vehicle crossing to Detroit.
12:30 p.m.: The FAA says 50 flights are in U.S. airspace, but none are reporting any problems.
1:04 p.m.: Bush, speaking from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, says that all appropriate security measures are being taken, including putting the U.S. military on high alert worldwide. He asks for prayers for those killed or wounded in the attacks and says, “Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”
1:27 p.m.: A state of emergency is declared by the city of Washington.
1:44 p.m.: The Pentagon says five warships and two aircraft carriers will leave the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, to protect the East Coast from further attack and to reduce the number of ships in port. The two carriers, the USS George Washington and the USS John F. Kennedy, are headed for the New York coast. The other ships headed to sea are frigates and guided missile destroyers capable of shooting down aircraft.
1:48 p.m.: Bush leaves Barksdale Air Force Base aboard Air Force One and flies to an Air Force base in Nebraska.
2 p.m.: Senior FBI sources tell CNN they are working on the assumption that the four airplanes that crashed were hijacked as part of a terrorist attack.
2:30 p.m.: The FAA announces there will be no U.S. commercial air traffic until noon EDT Wednesday at the earliest.
2:49 p.m.: At a news conference, Giuliani says that subway and bus service are partially restored in New York City. Asked about the number of people killed, Giuliani says, “I don’t think we want to speculate about that — more than any of us can bear.”
3:55 p.m.: Karen Hughes, a White House counselor, says the president is at an undisclosed location, later revealed to be Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and is conducting a National Security Council meeting by phone. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are in a secure facility at the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is at the Pentagon.
3:55 p.m.: Giuliani now says the number of critically injured in New York City is up to 200 with 2,100 total injuries reported.
4 p.m: CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor reports that U.S. officials say there are “good indications” that Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, suspected of coordinating the bombings of two U.S. embassies in 1998, is involved in the attacks, based on “new and specific” information developed since the attacks.
4:06 p.m.: California Gov. Gray Davis dispatches urban search-and-rescue teams to New York.
4:10 p.m.: Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex is reported on fire.
4:20 p.m.: U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he was “not surprised there was an attack (but) was surprised at the specificity.” He says he was “shocked at what actually happened — the extent of it.”
4:25 p.m.: The American Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange say they will remain closed Wednesday.
4:30 p.m.: The president leaves Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska aboard Air Force One to return to Washington.
5:15 p.m.: CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre reports fires are still burning in part of the Pentagon. No death figures have been released yet.
5:20 p.m.: The 47-story Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex collapses. The evacuated building is damaged when the twin towers across the street collapse earlier in the day. Other nearby buildings in the area remain ablaze.
5:30 p.m.: CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King reports that U.S. officials say the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania could have been headed for one of three possible targets: Camp David, the White House or the U.S. Capitol building.
6 p.m.: Explosions are heard in Kabul, Afghanistan, hours after terrorist attacks targeted financial and military centers in the United States. The attacks occurred at 2:30 a.m. local time. Afghanistan is believed to be where bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is possibly behind Tuesday’s deadly attacks, is located. U.S. officials say later that the United States had no involvement in the incident whatsoever. The attack is credited to the Northern Alliance, a group fighting the Taliban in the country’s ongoing civil war.
6:10 p.m.: Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay home Wednesday if they can.
6:40 p.m.: Rumsfeld, the U.S. defense secretary, holds a news conference in the Pentagon, noting the building is operational. “It will be in business tomorrow,” he says.
6:54 p.m.: Bush arrives back at the White House aboard Marine One and is scheduled to address the nation at 8:30 p.m. The president earlier landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with a three-fighter jet escort. CNN’s John King reports Laura Bush arrived earlier by motorcade from a “secure location.”
7:17 p.m.: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says the FBI is setting up a Web site for tips on the attacks: www.ifccfbi.gov. He also says family and friends of possible victims can leave contact information at a toll-free number.
7:02 p.m.: CNN’s Paula Zahn reports the Marriott Hotel near the World Trade Center is on the verge of collapse and says some New York bridges are now open to outbound traffic.
7:45 p.m.: The New York Police Department says that at least 78 officers are missing. The city also says that as many as half of the first 400 firefighters on the scene were killed.
8:30 p.m.: President Bush addresses the nation, saying “thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil” and asks for prayers for the families and friends of Tuesday’s victims. “These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve,” he says. The president says the U.S. government will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed the acts and those who harbor them. He adds that government offices in Washington are reopening for essential personnel Tuesday night and for all workers Wednesday.
9:22 p.m.: CNN’s McIntyre reports the fire at the Pentagon is still burning and is considered contained but not under control.
9:57 p.m.: Giuliani says New York City schools will be closed Wednesday and no more volunteers are needed for Tuesday evening’s rescue efforts. He says there is hope that there are still people alive in rubble. He also says that power is out on the westside of Manhattan and that health department tests show there are no airborne chemical agents about which to worry.
10:49 p.m.: CNN Congressional Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports that Attorney General Ashcroft told members of Congress that there were three to five hijackers on each plane armed only with knives.
10:56 p.m: CNN’s Zahn reports that New York City police believe there are people alive in buildings near the World Trade Center.
11:54 p.m.: CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno reports that a government official told him there was an open microphone on one of the hijacked planes and that sounds of discussion and “duress” were heard. Sesno also reports a source says law enforcement has “credible” information and leads and is confident about the investigation.
Whether you lived or died in the World Trade Center depended on what floor you were on.
Death “By The Numbers”
2,749 death certificates were filed relating to the WTC attacks, as of February 2005.
Of these, 976 were identified by a single means, which included DNA analysis in 852 of the victims.
13 people died after the disaster, from injuries received on September 11; three of these people died in Massachusetts, Missouri, and New Jersey, and the rest died in New York.
Of the 2,749 people who died, 2,117 (77%) were males and 632 (23%) were females.
1,588 (58%) were forensically identified from recovered physical remains.
The median age for the victims was 39 years (range: 2-85 years); the median age was 38 years for females (range: 2-81 years) and 39 years for males (range: 3-85 years).
Three people were aged under 5 years, and three were aged over 80 years.
23 New York City Police Officers died on September 11th, 2001.
People from 83 different countries died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
The youngest passenger on the hijacked jets was Christine Hanson on United Airlines Flight 175. She was 2 and on her first trip to Disneyland.
The oldest passenger on the hijacked jets was Robert Norton on American Airlines Flight 11. He was 82.
The New York City Fire Department lost 343 firefighters, almost half the number of on-duty deaths in the department’s 100-year history.
The south tower collapsed at a magnitude of 2.1 on a seismograph; the north tower collapsed with a magnitude of 2.3, according to Columbia University in New York.
Sirius, one of the first bomb-sniffing K-9 dogs stationed near the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing, died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Fifteen million square feet of office space was lost at the WTC, more than three Times the amount of space at the Sears Tower in Chicago. 1,430 people with 50,000 employees from 26 countries called the WTC “the office.”
1,337 vehicles were crushed when the towers collapsed, including 91 FDNY vehicles.
1.5 million working hours during 261 days were spent removing the debris at the WTC site.
Seven in 10 Americans say they have experienced depression since the attacks.
New York State Office of Mental Health estimates more than 33,000 showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
America’s Blood Centers, a network of community banks, collected 251,370 units, nearly three times the normal intake, in the four days after Sept. 11. The Red Cross collected more than 200,000 units and saw its on-hand supply nearly double, from 80,000 units to 156,000 units in two days.
The fires at Ground Zero burned for 99 days, until Dec. 19.
Donations of $1.88 billion related to the 9/11 attacks accounted for nearly 1% of all charitable giving in 2001. The average individual donation to 9/11 charities was less than $100.
189 people died at the Pentagon and on American Flight 77. 168 died in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
More civilians (70) than people in the military (55) were killed at the Pentagon.
It cost $1.1 billion (in 1970 dollars) to build the WTC. A box cutter, which terrorists used as weapons to hijack the planes, costs about $4.
44 passengers and crew members died on United Flight 93. That is one-fifth of the population of Shanksville, Pa., where the jet crashed.
United Flight 93. Much has been written about the passengers aboard United Flight 93, some, but certainly not all of the principals are pictured below. I found an article originally published by the Chicago Tribune, an article so very well written that rather than quote bits and pieces from it, I felt it best to include it in it’s entirety for you.
The heroes of Flight 93: Interviews with family and friends detail the courage of everyday people.
By Kim Barker, Louise Kiernan, and Steve Mills © Chicago Tribune
They waited, the way people wait on a plane.
You can picture them spreading out inside this mostly empty flight to San Francisco, the smokestacks and cranes of the Newark skyline looming outside their windows.
You can hear them working their cell phones, calling their friends, their offices.
For 41 minutes they waited on the tarmac to take off. Two pilots, five flight attendants and 37 passengers. Among them, four men knew they were all waiting to die.
When United Flight 93 finally took off, it began a journey that would end not in San Francisco, as planned, or smashing into some Washington target, but in an aching glory.
Since Sept. 11, the story of the passengers who fought their hijackers on Flight 93 has become an icon of good thwarting evil, a story of sacrifice and courage that a nation has embraced in a time of fear and uncertainty.
No one will ever know exactly what happened on that plane. But new interviews with the family, friends and co-workers of passengers who made last-minute calls give a more complete account of their desperate struggle.
At the same time, questions emerge about the role of the fourth hijacker and raise the possibility that instead of a single plot to overcome the terrorists, passengers and flight attendants in different parts of the plane may have hatched separate plans. While most attention has focused on a group of tall, athletic men who apparently planned to rush the hijackers, at least one flight attendant told her husband she was boiling water to use as a weapon.
The clues from the wreckage are small: a knife concealed inside a cigarette lighter, a manual of prayers and instructions written in Arabic, a cockpit-voice recorder, still under analysis, that reportedly holds a garble of American and Arabic voices.
But the key to whatever took place on Flight 93 may be the 41 minutes it sat on the ground.
It gave the passengers enough time to hear about the three other hijacked planes that smashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon that morning.
The delay took the plane off the precise schedule the terrorists had likely relied upon and put it on one that gave the passengers and crew knowledge, knowledge that incited them to fight back and to say goodbye to loved ones before the jet plunged into a reclaimed strip mine in Pennsylvania, taking with it everyone aboard.
It was 5 a.m. Tuesday and still dark when Deborah Welsh’s husband carried her bag down the stairs of their second-floor walkup in Hell’s Kitchen in New York.
Welsh, who had been a flight attendant for more than 25 years, usually avoided early-morning flights, but she had agreed to trade shifts with another worker.
Her husband, Patrick, wasn’t even sure where she was going when she set off for the bus, wearing her uniform and the navy cap that he jokingly said made her look like the sailor on the Cracker Jack box.
At a friend’s home in New Jersey, public-relations executive Mark Bingham, scrambling to pack his old college rugby duffel bag after oversleeping the 6 a.m. alarm, forgot his belt.
Nicole Miller, carrying a purple backpack stuffed with her textbooks, set off with her boyfriend, Ryan Brown, hoping to switch their separate flights back to California, so they could fly together.
And so it began, people making their way to Newark International Airport, Terminal A, Gate 17.
There was the Japanese college student and the German wine expert. The refuge manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service, flying home from his grandmother’s 100th-birthday party. The Good Housekeeping magazine marketer, on her way back from her grandmother’s funeral.
There was the advocate for the disabled, who stood less than 4 feet tall and carried herself like a giant. The retired restaurant worker, flying to San Francisco to claim the body of his son, killed in a car crash on his honeymoon. The toy-company executive who sported a Superman tattoo on his shoulder.
Almost one-third of the people on Flight 93 were there by the slimmest of chances: cancellations, bad weather and simple changes of plan. The pilot, Jason Dahl, who had learned to fly before he could drive, rescheduled to get home to Colorado early so he and his wife could fly to London for their anniversary.
Among the passengers and crew, authorities say, were four young men who had trained for months and perhaps years for this moment, learning how to fight in small spaces and fly jets, lifting weights and reciting prayers.
They all sat on the plane, delayed by the airport’s heavy morning traffic, as American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 left Boston. They sat there as American Airlines flight 77 left Washington.
At 8:42 a.m., Flight 93 took off, light with passengers, heavy with 11,000 gallons of jet fuel for its cross-country flight. Nicole Miller’s boyfriend watched it leave from his own plane, as it sat on the tarmac.
Six minutes later, the north tower of the World Trade Center erupted in flames.
For the next 30 minutes, it appears, Flight 93 soared west across Pennsylvania as havoc erupted behind it. Flight attendants, passenger accounts suggest, poured coffee and served breakfast.
One of the attendants, CeeCee Ross Lyles, was at the beginning of her career. She had dreamed of being a flight attendant since she took her first plane trip at age 6 but had just realized her dream a year ago, leaving after six years of work as a police officer. Another, Sandra Bradshaw, was thinking about leaving her job so she could stay home with her children.
At some point, before the plane reached Cleveland, the hijackers took over the plane, armed with knives and the threat of a bomb.
Around 9:30 a.m., air traffic controllers in Cleveland heard someone in the cockpit say, “Hey, get out of here!” a source said. Then a voice, in what was described as a thick Arabic accent, was heard that appeared to be addressing passengers, even though it was radioed to air traffic control.
“This is your captain,” the man said. “There is a bomb on board. Remain in your seats. We are returning to the airport.”
How the hijackers overpowered the pilots remains unclear. One passenger would report in a telephone call that two people lay on the floor in the first-class cabin, either injured or dead. They appeared to be the pilot and co-pilot, he said, relating information from a flight attendant. Another told a friend that two people’s throats were slit but didn’t identify them. A third saw only one injured.
At least five passengers and flight attendants described the hijackers in their calls in similar terms: three men, wearing red bandannas, one with some sort of box strapped around his waist that he claimed was a bomb. One passenger reported that two of the hijackers were in the cockpit and a third guarded passengers in first class from behind a curtain.
None of the callers mentioned a fourth hijacker, although the FBI has identified four men in connection with the hijacking.
Those men are Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami and Ziad Jarrah.
It may be that the people who made calls were unable to see the fourth hijacker. Some news reports have suggested one may have already gained access to the cockpit, as an uniformed guest pilot sitting in the spare jump-seat. Or, some terrorism experts suggest, he may have played a role as a backup, perhaps remaining unidentified among the other passengers or hiding in the bathroom until he was needed.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said Friday that their “best information” shows that four were involved.
By 9:36 a.m., United Flight 93 had suddenly changed course, according to flight-path information provided by Flight Explorer, a firm that supplies real-time radar tracking data. The plane had made a U-turn and headed back toward Washington.
In the cabin, passengers frantically began making calls, 23 from the seat-back phones alone from 9:31 to 9:53 a.m. Others passed cell phones to people who had been strangers just minutes before.
Why so many people were able to make calls while apparently under guard by hijackers could be that, as one passenger reported, there was no hijacker among the passengers in coach.
Some of the telephone calls were short — no more than a few rushed words of fear or love.
Lauren Grandcolas, flying home to San Rafael, Calif., from her grandmother’s funeral, left a message for her husband saying her flight had been hijacked but she was “comfortable, for now.”
Linda Gronlund and Joe Deluca, on their way to San Francisco for a vacation together, took turns. She called her sister to say she would miss her. He called his father.
“The plane’s been hijacked,” he said. “I love you.”
Andrew Garcia, an Air National Guard air traffic controller and plane buff, only managed to get out his wife’s name, “Dorothy,” before his phone went dead.
Other passengers, though, managed to conduct fairly lengthy, even repeated conversations during the plane’s final minutes, constructing a jumbled puzzle of what was happening inside the Boeing 757.
Deena Burnett was feeding her three daughters breakfast and watching the news in horror when the telephone rang in her home in San Ramon, Calif.
“Are you OK?” she asked her husband, Tom, 38.
“No,” he said. “I’m on the airplane and it’s been hijacked.”
He told his wife the hijackers had stabbed someone. He told her to call the authorities, and he hung up.
When he called back, she was on the line to the FBI. She told him about the World Trade Center, the first he knew of the attack. He paused. “Were they commercial airplanes?” he asked.
Deena Burnett didn’t think so. Cargo or private planes, she said.
“Do you know anything else about the planes?” No, she said.
“Do you know who was involved?” Again, she said no.
He told her the man who was stabbed had died.
The hijackers are talking about running the plane into the ground, he said. Then he said he had to go.
His third call came about 9:41 a.m., shortly after a plane had hit the Pentagon. “OK,” he said. “We’re going to do something.”
In his fourth and final call, just before 10 a.m., Burnett said he was sure the hijackers didn’t have a bomb, that he thought they had only knives.
“There’s a group of us who are going to do something,” he repeated.
Deena Burnett thought about her years of training as a flight attendant. She was taught to appease hijackers, to meet their demands, to stay in the background. She told her husband to sit down. “Don’t draw attention to yourself,” she said.
She told him she loved him. She felt he thought he was coming home that night. This was simply a problem that he was going to solve, as he had solved many others.
As Burnett talked with his wife, three other men who may have joined him in whatever plans were being hatched made calls of their own.
Across the aisle in Seat 4D, Mark Bingham, 31, called his mother. He was so rattled that when Alice Hoglan got on the line, her son told her, “This is Mark Bingham.”
His message was brief: The plane had been hijacked by three men and he loved her.
In the rear of the plane, Jeremy Glick, also 31, a sales manager for a Web site firm and former judo champion, called his wife from a seat-back phone. He described three Middle Eastern men brandishing knives and a red box.
His wife told him about the attacks at the World Trade Center. He tried to grasp the hijackers’ plans — to blow up the plane or fly it into a target?
The passengers had taken a vote among themselves, he said. They had decided to try to take back the plane.
“I told him to go ahead and do it,” Lyzbeth Glick said on “Good Morning America. “I trusted his instincts, and I said, ‘Do what you have to do.’ I knew that I thought he could do it.”
Beamer, 32, an account manager for Oracle, called a stranger. He picked up a seat-back phone and hit “0,” and at 9:45 a.m., he was connected first to a dispatcher for GTE Airfone, and then to Lisa Jefferson, the operator’s supervisor.
For 13 minutes, Beamer told Jefferson everything he could, passing along information he gleaned himself and from a flight attendant. The passengers remained in their seats, she said he told her, and the flight attendants were forced to sit in the back of the plane.
He told her how much he loved his pregnant wife and two sons, and he asked her to call them. He asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer and 23rd Psalm with him.
Moments later, Beamer told Jefferson about the plan, that the passengers were going to run up the long, narrow aisle to the first-class cabin and attack the hijacker there.
“I’m going to have to go out on faith,” Beamer said.
He turned to someone else, and he said, “Are you ready?” Then, in the last words Jefferson would hear from him, “OK. Let’s roll.”
Sandra Bradshaw, the flight attendant, also identified three hijackers when she called her husband in Greensboro, N.C. She had been moved to the back of the plane, she said, but she and other passengers had a plan. They were going to rush their captors; she was boiling water to throw on them.
Another passenger, Elizabeth Wainio, also apparently talked of a plan to rush the hijackers. In a call she made to her stepmother in Baltimore, using the cell phone lent to her by Lauren Grandcolas, she said, “I’ve got to go now, Mom, they’re breaking into the cockpit,” according to the mother of another passenger, who said she spoke with family members about the call. Wainio’s parents declined comment.
The accounts of these calls — if accurate — would indicate that at least four people were somehow plotting to attack the hijackers. If Beamer’s report is accurate, they were seated in different sections of the plane, with Bingham and Burnett up front, while the others were in the back.
It may be there were separate plans to take the plane or that somehow, amid all the telephone calls, chaos and fear, the passengers were able to communicate with each other.
If they did, they may have known they had another pilot among them, Donald Greene, chief executive officer of Safe Flight Instrument in New York. Greene, according to his family, knew anything and everything about airplanes.
At about 9:54 a.m., the plane started flying erratically. In Oak Brook, Ill., Jefferson heard screams in the background.
Two minutes later, the plane’s flight plan changed. The destination airport was changed from San Francisco International to Ronald Reagan National Airport. Estimated time of arrival: 10:28 a.m.
At nearly the same moment, from the plane’s bathroom, someone called 911, repeating that Flight 93 had been hijacked, that this was not a hoax.
Then, Marion Britton called a longtime friend, Fred Fiumano, at his New York City auto shop.
Britton, crying, told him the plane was turning around. It was going to go down.
“Don’t worry about it,” Fiumano said, trying desperately to reassure her. “They’re only taking you for a ride.”
He heard yelling and screaming in the background, and then the phone went dead. He tried to call the cellular-phone number back, but no one answered.
A few of the passengers expected they would win the battle. Before Lyzbeth Glick turned over the phone to her father because she couldn’t bear to listen anymore, her husband told her, “Hang on the line. I’ll be back.”
At 10:03 a.m., a black crater bloomed in the soft earth of a field 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
The wife in California, the father-in-law in New York, the operator in suburban Chicago still held onto their phones.
They held on, waiting and hoping in the silence.
Pretty much everybody in the US, Canada and around the world could see, in real time, what was happening on September 11, 2001. But for many, what they saw cut straight to the heart because they had loved one’s in the city. Loved one’s they could not get in contact with. For some it was simply because phone services were simply overwhealmed. For others, it was because these acts of terror had touched them in the most personal way. It’s not likely you’ve heard any of the following audio and I honestly don’t know if you’ll want to hear it more than once.
The word “EVIL” to describe what happened September 11, 2001 has not been overused. Take a look at these images – verified as unretouched, one a photo, the other a screen-grab from CNN’s live broadcast.
This song is titled “Heaven 9-11″
To even begin to understand and appreciate the impact of these and subsequent attacks I think everything above this line can be crystalized by the words of a little girl who lost her Father that day.
A little 4-year old girl was among the thousands who lost a loved one on September 11, 2001. Her father was killed. Her mother, to keep the memory of her father alive and “real” had this little girl record messages to him on special occasions. Some of those have been mixed in this song, DJ Yanni’s version of Bryan Adams’ hit “Heaven”. The clips you will hear in the song range from when the little girl turned 5 – 1 year after her father died, to just this week, the 10th anniversary of his death. Have some kleenex handy, this will rip your heart out. Heaven 9-11
Labor Day Weekend…one last summer weekend to take off on a road trip! WooHoo!!!
BUT…..ease up on the gas pedal. Police will be out, as usual, looking for idiots speeders…but, when it comes to speeding…know where you’re more likely to get caught than ANY OTHER PLACE IN NORTH AMERICA???
LIVONIA!!! They’ve got speed traps left, right and center in Livonia! 28 for every 100-thousand residents…more than ANY other place! Yahoo Livonia!! You’re #1!!! In second place??? WooHoo Windsor!!! The SECOND heaviest concentration of speed traps in North America!!! Here’s the list:
1. Livonia, Michigan — 27.9 speed traps per 100,000 residents
2. Windsor, Ontario — 17.6
3. Orlando, Florida — 17.2
4. Las Vegas, Nevada — 11.1
5. Denver, Colorado — 10.9
6. Reno, Nevada — 10.4
7. Tampa, Florida — 8.9
8. Colorado Springs, Colorado — 7.2
9. Austin, Texas — 6.1
10. Sarasota, Florida — 6.1
11. Portland, Oregon — 5.8
12. Jacksonville, Florida — 5.4
13. San Antonio, Texas (Bexar County) — 5.3
14. Fresno, California — 5.0
15. Hamilton, Ontario — 5.0
16. New Orleans, Louisiana — 4.7
17. Toronto, Ontario (Greater Toronto Area) — 4.7
18. Houston, Texas (Harris County) — 4.0
19. Edmonton, Alberta — 3.3
20. San Diego, California (San Diego County) — 3.2
21. Indianapolis, Indiana — 3.2
22. San Jose, California — 3.1
23. Chicago, Illinois (Cook County) — 1.9
24. Los Angeles, California (Los Angeles County) — 1.6
25. New York, New York (5 boroughs) — 0.9
There’s a TON of things to do this weekend in Windsor/Essex & Detroit…here’s 4 random one’s I thought you might be interested in.
- TECUMSEH CORNFEST. $5 FRIDAY & SATURDAY, INCLUDES CONCERTS – OUR LADY PEACE TONIGHT. SUNDAY IS FREE. FREE FOR KIDS 12 AND YOUNGER AND 65 AND OVER.
- DRAGON ON THE LAKE FESTIVAL ON LAKE ORION. DRAGON BOAT RACES, LIGHTED BOAT PARADE TONIGHT. ART, MUSIC & FOOD. 11-6 SATURDAY & SUNDAY. FREE
- FREE COMEDY 9 TONIGHT AT CASA’S ON DOUGALL IN WINDSOR. NO COVER!
- 199 YEAR OLD TALL SHIP ‘PRIDE OF BALTIMORE’ DOCKS AT DUFFY’S IN AMHERSTBURGH AT NOON SATURDAY. FREE TOURS 2 – 7 SATURDAY AND 11 – 7 SUNDAY.
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