{"id":114,"date":"2016-09-11T18:22:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/?p=114"},"modified":"2016-09-11T18:24:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T23:24:21","slug":"on-the-importance-of-the-moment-and-the-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/2016\/09\/11\/on-the-importance-of-the-moment-and-the-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Importance of the Moment and the Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Where were you on September 11th, 2001?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AriFleischer\/status\/774934294674497536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 11, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>For the past four years, Ari Fleischer (former press secretary to George W. Bush) has tweeted\u00a0the events of 9\/11, as he witnessed them. It even looks like he\u00a0tweets them at about the same time as they happened in 2001, helping bring back the day as it unfolded.<\/p>\n<p>Important memories and historical moments have a tendency to calcify, to lose dimension or gain a sense of inevitability\u00a0as we forget how things went (or as we lean toward one interpretation of how those things went). Fleischer&#8217;s tweets bring back the chaos of the day and the emotion, the leaping to conclusions and second guessing we were doing even then. I don&#8217;t recall Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings criticizing Bush for not returning to Washington DC sooner, for instance.<\/p>\n<p>As 2001 recedes further and further into the past\u00a0it becomes more important to recall the specific moments of the day and to re-examine our memory. In three short years,\u00a0the freshman I teach in college won&#8217;t have been alive then. \u00a0It might be impossible to keep &#8220;9\/11&#8221; from becoming a rote (or even forgotten) phrase like December 7th, 1941, &#8220;Remember the Maine,&#8221; or &#8220;Remember the Alamo,&#8221; but it&#8217;s something we all have to push back against.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the importance of story and history&#8211;to give meaning to other people and other lives.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I wish today people, especially young people, could go back in time to feel the gravity of the day.  It was astounding.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AriFleischer\/status\/774982317555191809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 11, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where were you on September 11th, 2001? &mdash; Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 11, 2016 For the past four years, Ari Fleischer (former press secretary to George W. Bush) has tweeted\u00a0the events of 9\/11, as he witnessed them. It even looks like he\u00a0tweets them at about the same time as they happened in 2001, helping bring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,10],"tags":[67,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-history","7":"category-musings","8":"tag-67","9":"tag-memory","10":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}