Posted on 09/10/2026 4:53:08 AM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
The following is an excerpt from my memoir Keeping the Tryst. It appears just before the end of chapter 37.
September 10, 2001…
That night I was scheduled to work. And there were three things that I was eager to do when I got home…
The first was to call Lisa.
Secondly, I wanted to start work on writing the script for the movie. Even though I had no grasp whatsoever of crafting a screenplay.
Finally, it was a big night for TheForce.net staff. We would be up all evening getting a bunch of stories about the Episode I DVD release ready to publish at midnight Pacific Time.
Lisa and I talked for a bit, then I threw a pizza into the oven and while that was cooking I started writing the first lines of what I was calling “Sithery”. It seemed as good a working title as anything.
I wrote a page and a half of what passed for a script, then logged into TheForce.net’s staff portal. There were a couple of posts that I needed to have ready, and those were done. I hung out online until 3 a.m. and saw all our work get posted.
Satisfied, I went to the sofa and crashed hard. And before going to sleep I found myself feeling pretty good. I had my own place, a job, and an amazing girlfriend whom I cared for deeply. I was writing a script for a movie. And my words were being read by tens of thousands of people each day.
I thanked God for giving me so much. And then drowsiness took me.
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Jim
Speaking of Free Republic, I'm hoping someone posts the link to the thread from the morning of September 11, 2001. It was truly history as it happened in real time.
BUMP
You had me at the title.
You had me at the title.
9-12-2001. Mecca and Medina should have been smoking craters in the desert floor so radioactive no one can walk around for centuries.
And the Dome of the Rock should be Dome of the Ruins.
When he crashed, we were getting up in TX for an early flight to CA. My husband was a triathlete so we had the bike in a rolling case.
Our flight left and about an hour and a half later we were not allowed to leave our seats and landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The airport was stunning scene as pilots, flight attendants, ticketing agents and passengers cried openly while trying to work through whatever was going to happen. The bike case scared many so I took it to a sitting area and sat by it understanding the reactions.
Fortunately, my husband ‘understood the times’ and rented a car and we drove home the next morning. A quiet 15 hour drive home with flags lining the roads.
I will never forget. And, I will never forget when President Bush said that Islam was a religion of peace right after that. What planet are you from???!!! Did you skip history classes forever? Now the joke is on us across America.
A few years ago I started writing a short story, about an Elon Musk-type of billionaire who has his own space launch facilities. He launches a weapons platform into orbit, containing tungsten “rods from God”. Then he announces to the world that he’s going to drop one of them on Mecca, right into the Kaaba, unless Muslims start behaving right.
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