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I'll add my own comments.

I live about 35 miles from Ground Zero. Someone at this board had commented that, in concentric circles, the amount of anguish felt by folks due to this can be measured.

Please do not misconstrue this as a put-down of folks in "fly over country"; I'm the first to admit they're the most patriotic and caring "salt of the earth" folks in the nation - but just as I can never truly understand the grief of the escapees and eyewitnesses, others will never know what I feel.

The love and support that poured in from Middle America, both emotional and financial, was unprecedented. Please do not feel insulted or short-changed: feel lucky.

I do.

I could do nothing, NOTHING at all, for the people leaning out of windows. Pause and just think of what that feels like. To know HELPLESSNESS as a physical sensation and not a word you've read.

I am amazed at the difference between the east and the mid west. I am in Minnesota this weekend and I am shocked at the lack of flags and signs of patriotism.

I don't doubt the patriotism of the people here either, I do think the proximity has made a difference in how people look at these events. My father and I were talking about this today. He lives here in Minnesota and thinks that because most people here didn't personally know people that died in the massacre, it is harder to really grasp the scope of what happened in NY, DC, and PA. I think that the closer you are to the carnage, the more likely you know someone that died. The other factor is that life has basically just gone on. After the initial 24/7 coverage, people just have gone on with their normal lives. We didn't get the financial depression that could have happened, and we haven't been directly attacked on our own soil again.

That there hasn't been mass panic and financial mayhem is a great credit to the current administration, but I fear that most of the country has already gone back to sleep. (Excluding FReepers of course).

Yesterday, I'm in a bookstore and there sits a coffeetable book of photographs on 9/11. I started to look through it...I had to put it down as I started to get angry all over again and it was to nice of a day to be getting pissed off all over again. Put my rage back in its box and save it for another day.

I certainly feel badly for all the people who lost loved ones.

But I wish a few more people had said something along the lines of "I'm angry what these people did to us. And I'm going to help fight back!" If people are too old or can't join the military for some other reason, there are many ways they can still help the country fight back. They can encourage young people to join the military. They can write letters of support to members of the military fighting overseas.

September 11th wasn't a tragedy like an earthquake or a tornado. It was an act of war, and people need to remember that.