The Twin Towers
Simply Said: "Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please." Mark Twain
"Why can't we all just get along!?" from SNL kind of stays in your head until the next stupid move by Mankind. Today is 9/11. WHY do we remember some things clearly and forget others? Because our magnificent BRAIN is constantly (mostly during sleep) scanning, sorting and filing information we receive. If it is important in some way....we KEEP It! (Pre-Frontal cortex-long term memory) If it is daily trivia not so important to our survival it stays a short time in the Hypothalamus; is forgotten or released in what I like to call the "Silly Dreams" that seem to make no sense to us upon awakening.
Events that are life changing, traumatic & shocking, world-changing by-pass the
the Hypothalamus and go straight to long-term memory that is later triggered by
something and recalled clearly. Memory is cool that way...when we recall something like this it is also accompanied by similar feelings and even scents of that event.
When I was teaching I had a special topic that day...I felt compelled to.I brought the big MENU I got from the 108 floor where my Son took us in New York and I had my first Caviar (yuck)I brought the musical glass globe my Son bought me at the Gift Shop but I also brought with me the very slight "swaying" of that incredible building that I actually felt in a very beautiful tiled Restroom. I brought with me the remembrance of my ears actually "popping" as the huge elevator carried us up over a hundred floors t our destination. I remember looking down from the big window by our table and seeing tiny yellow taxicabs and even lower clouds BELOW us! I will NEVER forget actually saying,"wow, we are higher than a plane could fly!" This was the summer BEFORE TWO planes aimed at
and slammed into the place I had been eating the summer before. The huge
Elevator we had ridden up in and marvelled at came crushingly down..the very one the three of us had been in. Many of the same people that might have served us at that fancy restaurant came down,too.
Even writing about this brings it back; birds flying LOWER than us...red,black & green Caviar and weird "grassy" salad David and I joked about because there were no prices on that menu for it! Yawning on the way down that elevator so our ears wouldn't pop........
Oh,yes, I remember exactly where I was when I "saw" it happening on the news!
I was teaching World History Honors in room 126 at Cooper City High School.
Bright teenagers and many from the New York area that grew up with the "Towers" as a familiar landmark. A colleague of mine came to the door that NEVER would interrupt a class and told me to turn the set on....we watched what appeared to us to be a MOVIE because our senses could not wrap around what we were viewing at first....we were stunned as we watched an airplane filled with terrified passengers aim for and connect...it was almost like we saw it in a surreal slow-motion with no ability to stop it!! (I also saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on live t.v. after killing Kennedy)...I was at the bank when the news of the Challenger
blowing up; I had been an applicant to be on that launch.
We remember events such as these because our brains store it for us.
With Technology, we also have the visuals of each event to relive. See, our brains
automatically KNOW the important from the trivial and then it is up to us what we do with it.
R.I.P. "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
"Why can't we all just get along!?" from SNL kind of stays in your head until the next stupid move by Mankind. Today is 9/11. WHY do we remember some things clearly and forget others? Because our magnificent BRAIN is constantly (mostly during sleep) scanning, sorting and filing information we receive. If it is important in some way....we KEEP It! (Pre-Frontal cortex-long term memory) If it is daily trivia not so important to our survival it stays a short time in the Hypothalamus; is forgotten or released in what I like to call the "Silly Dreams" that seem to make no sense to us upon awakening.
Events that are life changing, traumatic & shocking, world-changing by-pass the
the Hypothalamus and go straight to long-term memory that is later triggered by
something and recalled clearly. Memory is cool that way...when we recall something like this it is also accompanied by similar feelings and even scents of that event.
When I was teaching I had a special topic that day...I felt compelled to.I brought the big MENU I got from the 108 floor where my Son took us in New York and I had my first Caviar (yuck)I brought the musical glass globe my Son bought me at the Gift Shop but I also brought with me the very slight "swaying" of that incredible building that I actually felt in a very beautiful tiled Restroom. I brought with me the remembrance of my ears actually "popping" as the huge elevator carried us up over a hundred floors t our destination. I remember looking down from the big window by our table and seeing tiny yellow taxicabs and even lower clouds BELOW us! I will NEVER forget actually saying,"wow, we are higher than a plane could fly!" This was the summer BEFORE TWO planes aimed at
and slammed into the place I had been eating the summer before. The huge
Elevator we had ridden up in and marvelled at came crushingly down..the very one the three of us had been in. Many of the same people that might have served us at that fancy restaurant came down,too.
Even writing about this brings it back; birds flying LOWER than us...red,black & green Caviar and weird "grassy" salad David and I joked about because there were no prices on that menu for it! Yawning on the way down that elevator so our ears wouldn't pop........
Oh,yes, I remember exactly where I was when I "saw" it happening on the news!
I was teaching World History Honors in room 126 at Cooper City High School.
Bright teenagers and many from the New York area that grew up with the "Towers" as a familiar landmark. A colleague of mine came to the door that NEVER would interrupt a class and told me to turn the set on....we watched what appeared to us to be a MOVIE because our senses could not wrap around what we were viewing at first....we were stunned as we watched an airplane filled with terrified passengers aim for and connect...it was almost like we saw it in a surreal slow-motion with no ability to stop it!! (I also saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on live t.v. after killing Kennedy)...I was at the bank when the news of the Challenger
blowing up; I had been an applicant to be on that launch.
We remember events such as these because our brains store it for us.
With Technology, we also have the visuals of each event to relive. See, our brains
automatically KNOW the important from the trivial and then it is up to us what we do with it.
R.I.P. "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
