September 11th

This is another Van Gogh that I really love. It's a painting of his room. Today is September 11th. Where were you when the towers went down? I was riding my motorcycle to work that day. I used to ride along side the Columbia river from Vancouver to Washougal every morning. I always drove by the PDX airport. I did notice that the airport wasn't busy. One of the things I loved about living in that particular place was that I could watch the big planes come in while I sat on my balcony. I was riding the big bike that day. The big bike is the Yamaha 1200 Venture with the side car. That bike has a radio and I had it on that day. I could only hear it when I slowed down so I got bits and pieces of the news on the way into work. It was the first day of school when I was a school based counselor. The kids in the behavior classroom were not going to school on the first day. So the teacher, the two aides and I sat around a small radio all day while we worked on paperwork and got the classroom ready. One of the aides used to be a flight attendant so she had a lot of information on procedures of the airlines to share. It was the first year at Washougal High School after a big renovation so all the classrooms were new and none of the tvs in the rooms were working so we only had the small cd/radio that I just happened to have in my office. I remember that I was afraid that at 9 AM on the west coast another attack would happen. I also remember that someone went home for lunch and watched some of it on the news. When they came back to tell us what was on the news, I remember feeling very sick to my stomach to hear that children in the streets in Iraq were holding American burning flags and signs that said they were happy for what had happened. Of all the stories after the event, the one I was touched by the most was the work of a yellow lab who led people to safety in one of the towers.