HMVNipper
Oct 02, 2001, 05:51 PM
I've been trying to figure out a way to talk about this all afternoon...I know I need to, but I also had to be able to tell you all about this the right way...so here's my attempt. I hope you guys will bear with me. I really do need to talk about this, and I know I can share it with my Beatlelinks friends, that you will understand.
I went to extreme downtown Manhattan today for the first time since September 11th. My brother-in-law, Matthew, is in the New York Army National Guard, and he has been mobilized and is on duty in Battery Park for at least the next week, if not longer. He's off duty during the day, and so today my sister-in-law Julie (his sister) and I went to see him when we could.
He was able to take us past the perimeter barriers and right into Ground Zero, where civilians are not allowed anymore unless they are volunteering. There aren't too many civilian volunteers at this point, it's mostly military or police and fire people. We were not allowed to go into the area now known as "The Pit" (the actual place of collapse where they are currently digging seven stories below Manhattan, trying to clear the rubble of several sub-basements and two levels of underground train stations), but we got within a block of the scene. Before Matthew took us over there, he went back into the park to his unit and got each of us a respirator mask to wear when we got close -- there is still choking dust in the immediate area, and there's a possibility that it is contaminated with asbestos, though simply breathing pulverized concrete can't be too good either...but those masks are pretty horrible. We wore them, though.
It's hard for me to describe to you what I saw today. The last time I was down at the World Trade Center was about a year or so ago on a beautiful sunny day, when my husband and I took our son out for the day and walked along the prominade near the World Financial Center, sat in the plaza between the towers and looked at the pretty fountain that was there, went into the Millennium Hilton Hotel and changed Jamie's diaper, and then went into the Borders Bookstore at Seven World Trade Center, where we browsed and purchased a few books. It was a lovely day, a family day.
Today, I was in that same area. A thick, gummy grey mud covers the streets, thanks to the rain we had this past weekend, fires still smolder, the smell is less than it was three weeks ago, but is still there. I don't know what a crematorium smells like, but I imagine that's rather what this does.
There are cranes and bulldozers and backhoes digging out the rubble, which piles seven, eight, nine stories high in some places. A few charred, twisted bits of the walls of the towers still stand, burned brown and crispy, but still distinctly looking like the towers did. The building where the bookstore was is still standing, but damaged beyond recognition, all the windows broken, the plate glass of the bookstore window shattered though the Borders sign can still be seen. Several other buildings on the perimeter will have to be torn down, since even though they still stand, huge chunks are torn from them, like some crazed giant came through and decided to take a bite and then spit it out into the street below. The damage makes them structurally unsound, and they cannot be repaired. Some of the buildings of the World Financial Center are damaged, mostly the glass. The beautiful Winter Garden where we walked that day with our son is shattered and part of it has fallen down. The Millennium Hilton is gone. The devastation is total.
It's one thing to see this on television. It's quite another to see it with one's own eyes. Living on the Upper West Side, I might as well be as far removed from what is going on down there as anyone living all the way across the country, that's how normal things seem around here. But today it was driven home to me that nothing in New York will ever be quite "normal" again, at least not the way it was before September 11th. I know this is a cliche by this time, but I swear to you, I saw today with my own eyes exactly what blind hatred can do, and it's devastating. Nearly 6000 people are still unaccounted for. In a city of eight million, that's not a lot -- but remember that 6000 people could be an entire small town someplace else...
I don't know what else to say except that seeing Ground Zero today has strengthened my resolve to hope that my child does not grow up in a world where this sort of thing becomes commonplace. It will NEVER be commonplace, it SHOULD never be. We must fight this scourge wherever it appears, and we must not let blind hatred guide us. It'd be very easy for me to say I hate because of this act against my city. Well, I can tell you that I am beyond angry the horrible, cowardly people who perpetrated the act itself. I am beyond angry at the people who funded them and backed them. I can be honest and say that I'd love to see Bin Laden and his minions die, and painfully. But I do NOT hate all Muslim people, I do NOT hate all Afghani people...believe me, those planes did not discriminate when they brought those towers crashing down...a cross-section of the population of New York, a cross-section of the population of the entire United States, died there that day...Christians, Jews, Muslims, white, black, brown, European, Asian, Hispanic...we cannot let the same kind of blind, all-encompassing hatred these people had for us become ingrained in ourselves.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest...I hope I haven't upset anyone with this post, but I thank all of you for listening to me, whatever your thoughts. This has been a tough day, but I hope and pray that we will all be able to go on from here.
------------------
Rooftop Sessions - The Finest In Beatles-Related Fiction. October 2001 Issue up now! About.com BEST OF THE NET, April 2001! www.rooftopsessions.com (http://www.rooftopsessions.com)
I went to extreme downtown Manhattan today for the first time since September 11th. My brother-in-law, Matthew, is in the New York Army National Guard, and he has been mobilized and is on duty in Battery Park for at least the next week, if not longer. He's off duty during the day, and so today my sister-in-law Julie (his sister) and I went to see him when we could.
He was able to take us past the perimeter barriers and right into Ground Zero, where civilians are not allowed anymore unless they are volunteering. There aren't too many civilian volunteers at this point, it's mostly military or police and fire people. We were not allowed to go into the area now known as "The Pit" (the actual place of collapse where they are currently digging seven stories below Manhattan, trying to clear the rubble of several sub-basements and two levels of underground train stations), but we got within a block of the scene. Before Matthew took us over there, he went back into the park to his unit and got each of us a respirator mask to wear when we got close -- there is still choking dust in the immediate area, and there's a possibility that it is contaminated with asbestos, though simply breathing pulverized concrete can't be too good either...but those masks are pretty horrible. We wore them, though.
It's hard for me to describe to you what I saw today. The last time I was down at the World Trade Center was about a year or so ago on a beautiful sunny day, when my husband and I took our son out for the day and walked along the prominade near the World Financial Center, sat in the plaza between the towers and looked at the pretty fountain that was there, went into the Millennium Hilton Hotel and changed Jamie's diaper, and then went into the Borders Bookstore at Seven World Trade Center, where we browsed and purchased a few books. It was a lovely day, a family day.
Today, I was in that same area. A thick, gummy grey mud covers the streets, thanks to the rain we had this past weekend, fires still smolder, the smell is less than it was three weeks ago, but is still there. I don't know what a crematorium smells like, but I imagine that's rather what this does.
There are cranes and bulldozers and backhoes digging out the rubble, which piles seven, eight, nine stories high in some places. A few charred, twisted bits of the walls of the towers still stand, burned brown and crispy, but still distinctly looking like the towers did. The building where the bookstore was is still standing, but damaged beyond recognition, all the windows broken, the plate glass of the bookstore window shattered though the Borders sign can still be seen. Several other buildings on the perimeter will have to be torn down, since even though they still stand, huge chunks are torn from them, like some crazed giant came through and decided to take a bite and then spit it out into the street below. The damage makes them structurally unsound, and they cannot be repaired. Some of the buildings of the World Financial Center are damaged, mostly the glass. The beautiful Winter Garden where we walked that day with our son is shattered and part of it has fallen down. The Millennium Hilton is gone. The devastation is total.
It's one thing to see this on television. It's quite another to see it with one's own eyes. Living on the Upper West Side, I might as well be as far removed from what is going on down there as anyone living all the way across the country, that's how normal things seem around here. But today it was driven home to me that nothing in New York will ever be quite "normal" again, at least not the way it was before September 11th. I know this is a cliche by this time, but I swear to you, I saw today with my own eyes exactly what blind hatred can do, and it's devastating. Nearly 6000 people are still unaccounted for. In a city of eight million, that's not a lot -- but remember that 6000 people could be an entire small town someplace else...
I don't know what else to say except that seeing Ground Zero today has strengthened my resolve to hope that my child does not grow up in a world where this sort of thing becomes commonplace. It will NEVER be commonplace, it SHOULD never be. We must fight this scourge wherever it appears, and we must not let blind hatred guide us. It'd be very easy for me to say I hate because of this act against my city. Well, I can tell you that I am beyond angry the horrible, cowardly people who perpetrated the act itself. I am beyond angry at the people who funded them and backed them. I can be honest and say that I'd love to see Bin Laden and his minions die, and painfully. But I do NOT hate all Muslim people, I do NOT hate all Afghani people...believe me, those planes did not discriminate when they brought those towers crashing down...a cross-section of the population of New York, a cross-section of the population of the entire United States, died there that day...Christians, Jews, Muslims, white, black, brown, European, Asian, Hispanic...we cannot let the same kind of blind, all-encompassing hatred these people had for us become ingrained in ourselves.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest...I hope I haven't upset anyone with this post, but I thank all of you for listening to me, whatever your thoughts. This has been a tough day, but I hope and pray that we will all be able to go on from here.
------------------
Rooftop Sessions - The Finest In Beatles-Related Fiction. October 2001 Issue up now! About.com BEST OF THE NET, April 2001! www.rooftopsessions.com (http://www.rooftopsessions.com)