I schooled a couple old enough to be my parents

[Crai]

There are many people that are not hard wired into the WWW. They do not need 24/7 entertainment and justification for their existence. My Grandparents could go weeks with out turning on a radio or TV. Drove me nuts as a kid lol. Rural people do not need tech, they do not live for the next status update, blog post, tweet, or Instagram photo. I am sure when I finish working for DoD I will end up on a rural farm and be about the same. I think computers have destroyed more then they have helped. But to comment more would be considered fracking soooo.... ya.

[Food Lady]

Jack T. Chance's post could be true of a person who consumes a lot of media or very little of it. It's not about electrons but rather one's outlook.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Wisconsinites.

The drawing needs to be people sitting around a table at the All-Nite All You Can Gum special at a supper club. Then it truly would be an accurate representation of my people.

[Food Lady]

The drawing needs to be people sitting around a table at the All-Nite All You Can Gum special at a supper club. Then it truly would be an accurate representation of my people.

YES. My grandparents were big fans of supper clubs.

[Aria]

Yes, she does. She didn't have it on those 2 days. I'm telling y'all, there are a lot of small-town people here who see no need to be concerned what's going on in the outside world. She's since changed, but I still know of other people who are like that.

To be fair, I don't have a TV - because I can't have cable AT ALL, it's annoying - and I'm actively avoiding world news because it causes stress for no reason. (ie, I can't do anything about it)

However, I still don't understand how someone could miss 9/11 for 2 days. I'm in Canada and if you were walking down the street someone would be all, 'did you hear what happened?' And if you said 'no, what?' you would find out.

[Minflick]

I can understand being out of contact because you're on a vacation or some such, but living normally that out of contact isn't something I personally could do. I know exactly where I was when I heard the news on NPR.

[wolfie]

I heard that there were some people who didn't hear about 9/11 because they were "out in the bush", and only found out about it when they loaded up the ol' float plane to go back to civilization. Of course, since civilian flights were grounded, they soon attracted the attention of fighter jets.

[Food Lady]

I can understand being out of contact because you're on a vacation or some such, but living normally that out of contact isn't something I personally could do. I know exactly where I was when I heard the news on NPR.

I heard it on NPR early in the morning (in CA at the time). I had on my walkman while riding the bus. Listening to anything that early wasn't usual for me, but for some reason I did that day.

[Crossbow]

To be fair, if I hadn't been on my way to work at the time, I wouldn't have heard about it right away, either. Back then, my TV got turned on so rarely that I didn't know if it worked. 9/11 was the first time it had been turned on in 4 YEARS. Sure, I would have found out when I got up and logged on to what passed for Internet access at the time (for me, anyway), or when I turned on the radio.

Now? Between texts, instant messaging, twitter, facebook, etc, I'm pretty sure I'd know within seconds.


I'm not really sure that's all that much of an improvement, actually.

[notalwaysright]

It's interesting to read how many of us heard about 9/11 on the radio. I always listened to it in the bathroom while I got ready for school, and it was normally some dumb talk show. It was just for white noise, basically. The bus driver always had smooooooth jaaaaaaz on the radio on the way to school, but on that day he played a news station. Technology wasn't required to hear about this event. Just speaking to another human would have done the trick.

I also try to stay away from some news. Some things don't bother me. Politics don't bother me. It's the smaller stories that get to me. For example, that drama at Yellowstone with the bison calf? That sort of thing upsets me a lot. I can't even go to weather.com, because all of their stupid related content has pictures, and often it's dead animals.

[Nunavut Pants]

I used to have my alarm wake me up with the radio. Local "morning zoo" type show on a rock station. I woke up to hear the DJs talking about the first hit, which they thought was an accident.

I went out to the living room and turned on the news. When I got the call from my boss that the base was closed and nobody was to come to work, I was not surprised.

[MadMike]

They say that everyone remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy had been shot. For those of us who weren't around back then, I think that it's the same with 9/11.

I had returned from my honeymoon/cruise with my wife only three days prior. It was my second day back at work. I had no idea anything had happened, since I listen to CDs at work, since none of the local radio stations are really to my liking.

At some point, I got up to use the bathroom, and something just wasn't right. Every time I walked past someone, they seemed to be in conversation about something heavy, but all I got was bits and pieces. By the time I made it back to my desk, I knew something was terribly wrong, and I was about to look on one of the news sites. Before I had a chance to do that, my supervisor came to my desk and told me he was sending everyone home.

The drive home was quite eerie. The city was like a ghost town. When I got home, I got online and brought up one of the news sites, like I intended to do at work. Even with the slow dialup I had at the time, it was slow going. When I finally got the site up, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Of course I know now that all I would have had to do was turn on the TV to any station.

My mom called later that day freaking out. She knew we had been on a cruise, but wasn't sure what day we were supposed to return, so she didn't know if she made it home safe or not. Our neighbors have adult children living out in the Midwest, and they were in town visiting and staying with them. They were supposed to go home that morning. They took them to the airport, where they got on the plane. They plane was on the runway, ready to take off, when all of a sudden all the planes got called back. I think they ended up being stuck here another week.

[wheeitsmee]

I was woken up by a phone call. I groggily picked up the phone and my SO (now husband), who was traveling at the time, is on the other end saying "I'm okay, don't worry about me." Huh? Okay? "You don't know, do you?" Know what? "Turn on the TV." What channel? "Any channel."

I turned on the TV in time to see the second plane hit.




...and I'm an Air Force brat. We were stationed at Bergstrom AFB in Texas and my Mom was pregnant with me. The whole base had been spending the last month getting ready for a visit and review by President Kennedy. The day before he was going to visit the base, my Mom was in the BX (Base Exchange Store). An announcement came over the the intercom that the President had been shot. My Mom remembered her first reaction was to think that it was a joke in incredibly poor taste.

[An Haddock]

I was working in a shitty little computer store... I didn't have to be in until 10am so I got up around 9am and sat down at my computer and the front page of Yahoo said a plane hit the WTC. I figured it was one of those little Buddy Holly planes.

I was listening to the Howard Stern show and they were basically describing everything going on in real time while listeners from across the different boroughs called to describe what they were seeing. I ended up going into work but didn't do much... just kept listening to the radio.

Oddly enough, Howard was a voice of reason in the chaos, plus he was able to gather information from different news sources and listeners to more fully describe what was happening. He kept broadcasting until something like 1 or 2 pm because we all needed a little sanity to keep going.


Ever since then, I check the news first thing when I wake up.

[wolfie]

Back in 1986, I was at University studying Engineering. On a certain day in January, I didn't find out about the big news event until my mother picked me up (staying late because I was the pressman for the weekly publication).

How can the space shuttle exploding NOT be talked about in an Engineering department?