Visit to Flight 93 Memorial

Recently we were on a Scenic Byway adventure in Pennsylvania, driving east on historic Route 30 from the Pittsburgh area to my home town of Chambersburg. There are faster routes, but if you have the time, driving Route 30 is so much more interesting. Look for a separate blog entry just about Route 30 coming soon. However, this one here is about something we saw on that drive.

Driving near Shanksville we spotted a sign for the Flight 93 Memorial. We knew that it was somewhere out in central PA, but did not know it was just off of Route 30. We had to stop and see it.

The memorial was built at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 that was hijacked on September 11, 2001 to honor the victims of that crash. The passengers and crew attacked the hijackers and crashed the plane at 10:03 am in this remote area to prevent the plane from crashing into its target, the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

The memorial was dedicated and opened on September 10th, 2011, for the 10th anniversary of the September 11th tragedy. You may have seen coverage from the dedication ceremony on television. What is there now is only the first phase of the full memorial plans. More construction is planned for the coming years.

Impressions from the visit?

You drive far off the main road to reach this site - through beautiful rolling grassy hills. I thought this was unused farm land, and some of it probably was, but the park ranger on site told us that the crash area had been an area of hills that had once been mined, which is why it was empty unused land. Whatever it was it is a beautiful, natural, peaceful place. I hope they minimize the development there to maintain that peace and beauty.

It is intense. Somber. To be standing there at this place where these people had the guts and the togetherness to take that plane down. This is the part of the 9/11 tragedy that has always haunted and intrigued me the most. I just can't imagine what went down on that plane. They had 20 minutes before the plane would reach DC. The ranger told me the passengers intentionally wanted to take the plane down in an area that would harm the least amount of people on the ground, meaning they realized they couldn't wait because as the plane traveled further eastward, it would get more and more populated. Is that true? I had never heard that before - that they had the wherewith all to consider that? Heck a few more minutes and that plane might have gone down near my hometown further east. It is intense to look at the photographs of these people and to think about what happened on that plane. And to realize that this is their cemetery - their final place of rest.

The monument is very simple. It reminds me of the Vietnam war memorial. There was a competition for the memorial design and what you see now is apparently a modified version of the Crescent of Embrace entry by Paul and Milena Murdoch. You can read more about the background here.

There is currently no information up to explain this monument design and what the designers intended it to signify. Its a confusing structure until someone explains to you the vision behind its design. Fortunately we asked the park ranger and he gave us a really great overview that helped us understand the vision of the monument design. They need to put that information up there, otherwise I think people will be confused and not appreciate what is there. I believe that as the memorial is finalized, this information will be there. It was interesting to visit a memorial that is so new and not yet complete. There is a temporary visitors structure. There are young trees standing by to be planted.

You walk along a wall and to the left of that wall is all open grassy area. That is the entire crash site area to the left of that wall. The wall almost mirrors where the area was taped off during the crash site investigation. Off in the middle you can see a little area with flowers and things. That is the exact impact site of the crash. No one is allowed back there except family members.

You walk further along the wall and it turns to the right and then the names of the passengers and crew are etched into marble. There is an entry way to a path that winds back to the crash site, open for family members to go and visit the impact site.

I've read that there was a lot of criticism over the design of the memorial. I say get over it, it isn't your memorial to criticize and just appreciate it for what it is - a site to remember a group of people who did a very brave and heroic thing. It belongs to the families of those people who died there and they were very involved in the development of this memorial, so just respect them and the loved ones they lost. 

If you are in the area, you shouldn't pass the opportunity to visit.

Dreams

I am not a person obsessed by dreams and dream interpretation, but I do find it interesting to think about dreams - why we have them, when we have them, what they might reflect. I am lucky because most of my life I have slept hard and well. This meant that I rarely remembered my dreams.  On the rare occasion I would remember a dream when I awakened, they were always good and happy, or with no emotions, and almost never scary. 


However, something changed over the past year or so and now I wake up remembering dreams quite a lot. And these dreams are so vivid. They are intense, elaborate, and very detailed. So much happens that it blows my mind a little when I wake up hanging on to the last fading threads of that world. These dreams are epic. 

Of course I can't recall them now. I don't write them down and even though I remember them during those first waking moments, or sometimes even later into the day or week, they do eventually fade away completely. As I write this now, trying to communicate the epic intensity of these dreams, I do wish I had been writing them down. It just seems like too much work...but perhaps I will try.


I am writing about this right now because its morning and I am still remembering the vivid dream I had last night and some of the dream from the night before. I don't recall remembering dreams like this for many weeks, but now suddenly this week has been intense. Last night I had a very long, complex dream with many things happening around a house, with a lot of people and activities - I can only recall faint jumbled threads now - not enough to write about it...but I do recall the end of the dream right before I woke up. I was outside in back of the house looking into an area with a number of large rocks and I was rushed (yes, it rushed out and attacked me) by a copperhead snake that bit me on the hand. I stared in disbelief and my hand started to swell up. I went inside to wake up my sleeping husband to take me to the emergency room. It wasn't really scary - it was more shocking. It was unexpected and I was staring at my hand thinking "I've just been bit by a very poisonous snake and I must get help." I knew the snake was a copperhead, yet it had the coloring of a coral snake.


Curious about this I just looked up dream interpretations and read that if you dream of a snake biting you it can represent hidden fears and worries that are threatening you. If you want to look at it from a more positive angle, it is said to represent self-renewal, healing, transformation, knowledge and wisdom. I am pondering where that dream came from.

More interesting to me is the dream I had the night before. I really can't recall much of anything any more except that at the end of the dream I was crying very intensely out of sorrow and I woke up with tears crying. I have never had that happen in my life! Have you? In the dream I was with someone and we were being chased. There was a lot of intense drama. It was not scary, but it was very, very sad. From what I can recall it was like I was in the past, during the civil rights era. We were being pursued and threatened. I was with a black man - an old friend from high school who I haven't seen since graduation, but who I recently reconnected with. He and I were hiding from people and I was crying a lot - again not because we were afraid of being captured, but because the whole world was such a sad, sorrowful place. Waking up crying was so intense. What was that all about?


Back to the dream interpretations. What I read is: "To dream that you are crying, signifies a release of negative emotions that is more likely caused by some waking situation rather than the events of the dream itself. Your dream is a way to regain some emotional balance and to safely let out your fears and frustrations...To wake up crying, represents some suppressed hurt or previous trauma that is coming up to the surface. You can no longer suppress these emotions. They need to be dealt with head on."


Sounds like someone has some issues to work out...

Utah Undie Run

Yet another reason why I like Salt Lake City. On September 24 this little place broke the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people wearing only underwear. They did this with the Utah Undie Run where 2,270 people gathered downtown in their underwear and ran 5 miles. The idea was to have fun, break a record, and in part protest against Utah being so conservative. 

They broke the previous record from June 2010 that had a measly 547 people in Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire, UK. For some photos from the run, check out this link.

Don't despair if you missed it. There will be an opportunity to break the record again next year with the Utah Undie Run 2012 to be held on August 25. That's plenty of time to get into "underwear in public" shape...