Editor’s note: In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, we are republishing these two opinion columns that appeared in the Local’s first issue after that day.

It is an honor to be a journalist, and a greater honor to be a journalist in the United States. From E.B. White to Erma Bombeck, journalists have been called to inspire, educate, admonish, absolve, prod and awaken in an attempt to shed light on the human condition.

An hour before deadline, this journalist is still struggling to formulate the words strung like stutters on a clothesline of the mind. So I will write what I know and what I have seen.

Know that you and I are alive.

I know not one of us has escaped loss since Tuesday’s bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. We have lost friends, family security, funds, innocence and a sense of tomorrow; but we have not lost today. We are more than ever before a collective conscience whose inherent instinct to love has been released by virtue of chaos.

I am beginning to realize that the World Trade Center was the world.

On that morning, I did not know the fate of my daughter, an NYU student, until I got a phone call from a young female who called me “Mom.” It was the voice of a child so distorted and in pain I couldn’t bring myself to recognize my own daughter’s voice. She was safe. She said she was calling from a pay phone in Central Park; desperate, perhaps to think herself elsewhere, as she was actually in Washington Square Park. She had just witnessed the second tower collapse. Her breath was drenched in fumes. For three days, contact with my daughter was close to impossible. But she was safe. When I finally saw her Thursday night, I was greeted by a version of my daughter whose spirit had been taken hostage, forever altered. There was a vacancy sign in the window of her eyes. “The tragedy of life,” said Einstein, “is what dies inside a man while he still lives.” But she was safe.

Many people are experiencing a sense of rage at this point. Some are articulate in their expression of anger; others rant. I respect this emotion and yet believe I’ll skip the rage phase. I am of the generation that witnessed the assassination of three young men: heroes of hope, champions of human kindness. I saw the space shuttle Challenger go down, taking the spirit of adventure and courage with her. And then there were more assassinations … across the water … Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the targets. I cannot find an excuse, at this old age, to return rage for rage.

“Personally, I’m not good at praying for all the victims and all the families in the masses,” wrote my son in an e-mail from school in Washington, D.C. “I don’t feel as though I’m accomplishing anything. I have picked one person to pray for. It’s the father of a young woman who was killed on one of those planes. I don’t know who he is, or who she was, exactly. But I know he’s out there and my prayers are making a difference.”

As a journalist, I am compelled to say something you haven’t heard yet — something new, write something different, offer revelation — at the least, food for thought. However, I believe the revelation isn’t going to be born of words. The revelation is born of a grant, a grace, a license we have always had but feared to use until we passed our own test of judgment and forgiveness. It’s as though we were waiting for permission, clearance to love. This is the one true gift, the greatest testament to freedom, the ultimate alliance against the dogs of darkness. And that is what I know. And that is what I have seen.

Another opinion

by TD2

I am frightened.

My father had an unbridled temper. Unbridled anger frightens me. So does unbridled power.

As the strongest nation in the world, we tend to exercise our power in an unbridled fashion. We get what we want, ecologically, economically and politically. We have forgotten what it means to sacrifice.

In kindergarten, I learned that violence breeds violence and the only way to stop it is not to participate in it. Anger is a normal human feeling. We must be very careful what we do with it.

Do we want to be the kind of people who speak out against hate when we are safe but give into it when we are threatened? Principles are not something we hold onto in good times and throw out in bad. Principles are the rules that keep us safe from our human feelings. One can feel anger, rage, jealousy, bitterness, even spite; however, one should not act on those feelings in a way that hurts others.

Hate is a natural product of grief. In the midst of these feelings, let us not descend to the level of terrorists. This is their goal, to bring us down to their level, for then they can engage us. Let us not be people who become the enemy in order to fight or punish him. Might does not make right and however much we like our culture, it does not make it right. It only makes it ours.

The foundation of our country is a respect for the point of view of others. As the leaders of the world, it is our collective responsibility to show respect for other cultures and nations so that they can, in turn, learn to respect us.

Let us be educated about our enemy’s point of view. We cannot have a conversation with our enemy until we listen and attempt to understand him. Only then can we live in peace with him and defend against him when he would harm us.

My son was an eyewitness to the terror in New York. He works for a company in lower Manhattan that designs structures to resist explosions. A friend was in the towers and is missing. He was one of the many who evacuated the area, walking across a bridge to Brooklyn.

He and other employees from his company spent Thursday and Friday in the area examining buildings for their structural integrity. A policeman pulled an M-16 on him and his team as they were leaving a building.

He did what he could do yet, when he left New York to come home for the weekend, his golf bag slung over his shoulder, people in the street were critical.

He brought with him a copy of a special edition of Time magazine. Instead of bright red, its borders are black. In it are pictures, stills, of the images that are forever burned into our minds because we saw them in motion. There are other pictures we did not see, of wounded and dead.

At the back is an article by Lance Morrow. In it, he proclaims hate as a natural defense mechanism and says that now is the time to hate and to act on our hatred.

If nothing else, we must admit that this attack was clever; it was smart; it was simple and the pain it inflicted is exquisite. However, when we give in to these impulses, then, in spite of all our grandiose postulating about our great civilization, we are no further away from our caveman ancestors than an inhale of breath.

Seven years ago, I experienced such tragedy that I did not think anything would or could ever frighten me again. Life threw its worst at me and I survived. For a long time, I lost my mind. I was crazy with grief. That is natural. It is what happens. Now I see my country in the same state. We are a nation crazy with grief.