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oldguardleatherdog · 1 year

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I am a survivor of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I lived four blocks due east of the Towers.

I lost my home that day, was homeless and destitute for years, and in 2018, after extensive vetting by the CDC, NIH, and NIOSH, was given a Zadroga Act diagnosis of 9/11-connected PTSD as a result of my experience and exposure to the aftermath in the World Trade Center Disaster Area from 9/11/01-1/20/02.

Monday will be the 22nd anniversary. As always, I will mark the day with my family and loved ones, and I may or may not be online that day and evening... every year is different.

I no longer dread it, and neither should you. Speaking as the only person most of you will ever likely know who was directly affected, literally a card-carrying Certified Survivor of 9/11, I hereby grant you freedom from all anxiety, guilt, despair, anger, resentment, discomfort, and anything and everything else that remains in your spirit and mind and heart that troubles you about that day, that has never quite resolved, that prevents you from sharing the joy in my own heart at having survived, at being alive.

If you must be angry, be angry at the way we were used in the years that followed, but do not aim that anger at us any longer. We who were injured in the attacks that day are not the ones to blame, nor did we have any say in or influence over anything that flowed from them. We who survived are not to blame for the bigotry you suffered or the wars that followed or the scorn of your view of this country and its leaders. We did not slaughter untold millions of innocents in faraway lands.

The random, free-floating anger, the wishes that we too had died in the attacks, the perverse cries to me and others of "you deserved it!", make those who attack us complicit in the attacks of that day - because we were targeted for 22 years in the same way that the terrorists targeted us for slaughter that morning.

The home I knew and the place I loved no longer exists. What's there now belongs to another generation, where new life has grown out of the charnel house of devastation, where memories have been made and children have played and careers have flourished and love has been found and lost and found again, and there is comfort there.

Don't worry about us; we take care of our own. You honor us best by living as we do: fully, freely, always going forward, always in the light.

I will keep you close in the days ahead. You are never far from my heart.

"I AM ALIVE"

Animal J. Smith

#my first selfie #information gladly given #i am alive #animal j. smith #the day between september 10th and september 12th #don't be scared #we are fine #understanding will come in time

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shodaw · 1 year

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Leg day in 2023

#my first selfie post this year and it’s august #so I figured I’d give you something good #pe #me #selfie #gym #workout #fitness #leg day

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izzystizzys · 3 months

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There is a scratch mark on the floor of the Council chambers that Mace has never noticed before. Not a deep one, mind, quite shallow. This matters because it’s making the white-hot pulse of agony stabbing through his eyeballs ebb momentarily. Then, he chances a glance upwards at the fidgeting Knight in front of them, and it returns in full force.

Huh, he’s never seen Oppo Rancisis’ face turn that colour before.

“Hmm”, Master Yoda hums, deep and scratchy. His expression is unreadable even to Mace beyond a baseline gremlinness, and the force with which he grips the edges of his seat is making his bones creak. Master of the Order you should become, they said. Follow the calling of the Force, you should. A fulfilling purpose, it will be. Mace is going to hunt the little goblin for sport when this is all over, and he’s going to laugh the whole time.

“Show us the livestream again, could you, Knight Parvo?” Yoda asks. Mace bursts a capillary, he’s pretty sure, and so does poor Knight Parvo, whose orange Mon Cala skin tips all the way into blood red with stress. “Most unusual, this is.”

“Absolutely not!”, Ki Adi intervenes before Mace has to, thank the Force for little mercies. Plo Koon’s tusks tremble slightly with either suppressed laughter or abject horror, maybe both, and Stass Allie has her head in her hands. “The holo stills should be enough”, Ki Adi proceeds to add, and Mace has to reconsider all feelings of grace he just felt towards his fellow Councillor.

He never wants to watch Yoda zoom in on someone’s abs again. Or Depa raise her eyebrows at the curve of thighs bent over the dripping front of a speeder.

“Speeder Wash For Our Troops”, his former padawan reads out loud from a still of what has to be hundreds of the things gathered in the public senate parking lot. “Fund Our Boys And Get A Wet Seeing-To!” The series of images features dozens of Coruscant Guard troopers in various stages of unkitted, gleaming and shining with soap suds and water. The fact that the whole thing is also massive shatterpoint after massive shatterpoint is, quite frankly, insulting.

“Well hello- oh dear”, Obi-Wan’s blue form crackles to life in his chair, followed by several sounds of choking that are definitely not him. Good, Mace thinks acidly. If he has to deal with this, then so does kriffing Skywalker. “I’m sorry, why am I looking at Commander Thorn using a washrag like a lasso on top of a speeder?”

“Oh, the Guard’s little fundraising project”, Bail Organa says, as he steps into the Council chambers. Normally, Mace likes the man well enough. Now, he just smiles and adds on, “I’ve already donated, in mine and Breha’s name. Remotely, of course.”

“The Guard’s fundraising speeder wash?”, Obi-Wan repeats, edges of his holo form flickering with what Mace suspects is Skywalker very unsubtly trying to edge in. Force, but the man really is horrible at any and all stealth, like kissing his secret wife in an open arena in front of his Master. “And they are fundraising for…?”

“GAR budget allocations have to come from somewhere”, Organa shrugs. “And with the tide of public opinion turning, they’ve been tending towards cuts. The Guard feels them more keenly than any other sector - they’ve been reduced from half to quarter rations, and medical supplies have not made more than a token appearance in the last draft. The Chancellor has cancelled three consecutive meetings on the matter, and thus it was agreed that a more hands-on approach was needed. Any surplus will go into the Army fund.”

“Surely it can’t be that dire”, Oppo protests, a slightly less concerning shade of purple now. Senator Organa shrugs again, jostling the smattering of cracks slowly building around his person in a way that makes Mace wince quietly. “It’s all publicly available data, Masters.”

It really can be that dire, as it turns out. And quarter rations is only scratching the surface of how dire, considering the Guard has apparently never had access to bacta in all their posting, and also includes requisitioning forms available to the Senate for reconditionings and decommissionings, two words Mace has only heard Ponds whispers amidst shuddering in the early days of the war before Shaak Ti went off and just about tore some throats out over it.

“Alright”, he concedes, rubbing at his temples. “Fair enough, we have failed to tackle a massive blind spot in the Guard’s well being. There is no Jedi assigned to Coruscant, and that’s an oversight on our behalf. But how in the everloving kriff did this get past the Chancellor and Commander Fox?!”

Who have both signed, black on white. Bail Organa smiles cryptically. “Well, if you scroll a bit past that one image, up to the industrial speeder in the back - Commander Fox is currently having credits stuffed into his codpiece in the back, I believe.”

“HE’S WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW”, Commander Cody screeches through the speaker of Obi-Wan’s holo image, and Mace has to summon every bit of Jedi-serenity he possesses in his body to keep from dropkicking a cackling Yoda through the chamber windows.