And for the second time in my life, music was the salve that helped me begin to heal.
I also remember how 10 days after 9/11, when our hearts ached for our lost innocence as a nation, there was a primetime benefit concert called “America: A Tribute to Heroes” and musical legends from all genres came together to sing our sorrow, from Bruce Springsteen to Stevie Wonder. I remember the posters of the missing, the people who were never found. I remember the silence of the skies from planes being grounded.
#Woman looking out the window collage how to
I don’t know how to erase those images of the towers crashing down, the jumpers choosing certain death, the stunned onlookers covered in ash. We were asked to fathom the unfathomable. It’s been said that the world has never been the same since that attack. Collectively, we’ve had to accept our vulnerability and the fragility of our lives - which goes way beyond the inconvenience of taking our shoes off in the airport TSA line. At the time, I was an opinion editor at the Los Angeles Times and for the next few days, I pretty much lived at the newspaper, trying to help readers – and myself – understand what had just transpired. I was still frozen in place 17 minutes later when the second plane flew into the South Tower. I was getting dressed for work on the West Coast when the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
#Woman looking out the window collage professional
My professional role in the universe was defined and cemented by those two reporters. My job was to right the wrongs, correct the injustices, and give power to the voiceless. I then spent the bulk of my career at The Los Angeles Times, where I was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. And I wrapped things up as an editor and columnist at the Huffington Post, where I took inspiration from my much-younger colleagues about the many new ways to tell a news story.īut behind every story I ever wrote was this foundation: Just like Woodward and Bernstein, I understood and accepted the tremendous responsibility of being the public’s watchdog. In 1973, I abandoned my brief teaching career and took a reporting job for exactly half the pay at a now-defunct newspaper in Long Branch, New Jersey. Those reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, became journalism’s superheroes, worshipped by communication and English majors everywhere who wanted to make a difference. It also fueled a generation of journalists who wanted to be just like the two badass The Washington Post reporters who broke the story that led to Nixon’s downfall.
The unfolding of the Watergate scandal did more than force President Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Nixon resigns over Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein’s journalism Though I left filled with hope of reconciliation with those who saw the world differently - which was pretty much everybody my elder. I won’t sugarcoat the discomfort or physical hardships of the massive festival - enough to send me packing up and going home early. I stood among peers who were kind to one another, encouraged to help not harm, and we demonstrated how differences could be resolved peaceably. Woodstock was where I first felt a true sense of community. We helped end an unpopular war and showed the world how we could all get along. Mere attendance at Woodstock defines you as a member of the Counterculture Club, the people who were committed to changing the America of the 1960s. To say that you “were there” is to say plenty about who you were, if not who you still are. 1969, I was one of the 400,000 who listened to incredible music and danced with abandon in an Upstate New York field of mud. The Woodstock Festival of Music and Art and Aquarian Expositionįor a weekend in the drenching rain and muggy heat of Aug. Here are the five top events - in no particular order - that made me who I am today. But it got me thinking about which historical events have shaped my own life. While I would have preferred that he had said “Great!” I understand that for Gen Z, this just may have been another day in witnessing the challenges that have defined our political and cultural landscape for the past several years. His response: "Actually, mom, I was planning on going out with my friends.” As we sat down as a family to watch the first January 6th House Select Committee hearing, I told my young adult son, “We are watching history being made.” I added, “You will always remember where you were when this was going on.”
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