I know that this is Buffista History Canon by now, but I've never really felt that way. The reason I thought to check in (from my honeymoon) in the first place was that we already were a community.

Yeah, I think we were well into that place by 9-11, and thank goodness for that.

Five years ago I called in sick to work and was thinking about not turning on the tv or getting online when I decided just to flip on the tv. The tv was on USA and I saw a partially fallen tower and another burning and thought "What kind of crappy disaster movie are they showing?" And flipped the channels and saw it was real and everywhere.

Grandma E called me at one point and asked if I would go over there with her and I did. We sat there and talked and watched the news.

I remember hearing that a car bomb had gone off at the Pentagon as well as other rumors.

I know that this is Buffista History Canon by now, but I've never really felt that way. The reason I thought to check in (from my honeymoon) in the first place was that we already were a community. I think in my mind we became a community after TT went pay and we were all alone (relatively) in the wilds of WX.

I don't know -- I do recall a sense of collective when we transferred to WX (there were huge BCC email lists, as we worked out how to track everybody down), but there were other former TT groups on WX, that I kept up with even up till September of that year, that I lost touch with afterwards. I used to hang around in TTTV, for example, and I lurked a lot more places. During that summer, I'd felt like B.org was a special subset of the TT diaspora; after September I felt like we were a community distinct from TT.

Maybe that's a natural function of diasporas, as the cross-connections lose touch; but it seemed to happen so quickly (especially as the board-building got underway in earnest).

It was a transformative event, yes, but not one transforming from not!community to community.

Thanks, ita. That was what I was trying to say in my former post, but couldn't phrase it quite well.

It's like the Escher painting, of the hands drawing themselves - we were a community before, and the fact that we already felt cose enough and comfortable enough made us turn to each other in a difficult time, which in turn changed the sort of connection we've had into something different, and so forth, in a circle that keeps changing and growing.

I know that this is Buffista History Canon by now, but I've never really felt that way. The reason I thought to check in (from my honeymoon) in the first place was that we already were a community. I think in my mind we became a community after TT went pay and we were all alone (relatively) in the wilds of WX.

What Jessica said. And ita. My first thought wouldn't have been of the NY Buffistas, if we weren't there already.

I agree with what you guys are saying about the community already existing.

I rememeber the State Department bomb story the most. I was cleaning my living room...it was a stunningly bright, warm day, so I had all the windows thrown open.

I heard an impact and stopped dead in my tracks...straining to hear what woiuld come next...sirens, alarms? But nothing came. I must have stood there for 3 minutes, frozen...but then assumed it was a really big backfire or summat.

About 15 minutes later, my landlord called. Him:Turn on your tv! Me: I don't have a tv. What the... Him: Fuck! Go find one Someone just flew a plane into the Pentagon.

I knew then what I had heard. I went down the street to a friend's house. We held hands and cried for 5 hours. I never watched another moment of coverage. I'd seen enough.

For the next week I raged about the Red Cross not returning my call about volunteering to help...but spent endless hours on the street, just calming strangers...letting them talk it out. One older lady followed me around a store for a half hour before I finally caught on that she needed help. Everything was so 'strained-okay', it didn't seem possible.

Next day, I ran a grief group. First person in was on one of the trains that got caught under the second tower. Her whole company was gone, but she was late to work. I had no idea what to say. A group of older ladies came in...women who have seen some evil in their lives. They were perfect for her...I felt completely useless.

ita, I got the cutest picture of Em this morning in her Krav t-shirt, holding her little fists up by her temples. I tried to get her feet into fighting stance, but she was not cooperating. I'll post pictures later on.

I'll post pictures later on.

Oh, cuteness!

I was home that day because we had some handymen coming in, so I got up a little on the late side, and switched on NPR when I came down to the kitchen. It was just a little after 9, and the BBC news was on, and I would have let it go in one ear and out the other, except they were talking excitedly about a plane hitting the WTC, and then they had someone on with an American accent who described seeing it hit.

I turned on CNN... who had NOTHING about it, and didn't for another 20 minutes at least. I'm pretty sure it was ABC who actually had some live coverage, which was just smoke billowing up and confirmation that it had been a jet plane.