Last night I watched “102 Minutes That Changed America,” on the History Channel. It featured rarely-seen footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center, filmed by various people in different parts of the city who felt moved to tape what they were seeing. It was troubling, disturbing, moving. I was glad I watched it, and yet also wished I hadn’t, or maybe more appropriately, wish it hadn’t happened and thus had never been taped.

Several things stood out to me, such as how one man was asking people he passed on the street if they knew what was going on—rumors were spreading quickly and no one seemed to really know for sure what was happening. It reminded me of the initial confusion of 9/11/01, when it seemed as if our whole country was being attacked.

They interviewed some of the videographers to find out why they filmed, what their reactions were to the events, and what their video had meant to them. One clean cut, professional-looking guy, David Vogler, shared that for some reason, he felt emboldened as he taped, and instead of moving away from the Towers like everyone else, he went toward them to try to find out more about what was happening. “I felt detached from this horrible event because I was seeing it through a viewfinder,” he said.

A quote from another videographer stood out to me too. Cheryl Dunn taped from her apartment building and then out on the street. She always has a camera with her, she said; on that day, it was probably how she dealt with the trauma: she had a mission—to document this horrible tragedy. Her boyfriend didn’t have such a mission that day, and he was affected emotionally by what he saw. For Cheryl, she didn’t feel the brunt of her emotions till later, because, as she said, “I had an objective, and I had a mission, and I had … maybe I had this thing between me and this, um, situation.”

The “thing” she was referring to was her video camera. David felt distanced from the events surrounding him because he was looking at them through a lens. I find that fascinating, that this little piece of glass that would fit in the palm of a hand could make someone feel so bold, so separate, so impenetrable. The lens didn’t form a protective shield around their whole body, blocking any debris that might fall on them; nor did it distort the scenes and images they were seeing, but it did give them a different way of seeing it.

Now, tonight, I’m watching hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel (again). This is our ninth storm of the year, I believe, and I’ve watched coverage of most every one. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been inundated by storm after storm, and watching the reports squint and brace in the driving rain and wind has made me wonder, Why do they do this? Are they just that passionate about weather and storms? Are they gluttons for punishment? Is there a big adrenaline rush when they stand out there, so raw and exposed and vulnerable?

The Weather Channel folks were saying earlier that people are getting used to the hurricane rating system (1 through 5, with 5 being the most devastating), and that many people blow off a 2 or 3 because it won’t be as bad as “fill in the blank,” whatever the most recent devastating storm was in their area. We get complacent and think the worst can’t happen to us. But it does. And the TV acts as my lens, shielding me from the emotional impact of a killer hurricane. I’m all for the news and for being informed, but it still strikes me as odd and sometimes almost cruel that as I watch peoples’ lives and homes get blown away, and watch these meteoroligsts flap in the wind, adrenaline pumping, as they tell us how fierce and devastating it is, I watch it in the comfort of my recliner, peaceful and dry.