You are currently browsing stories tagged with “9/11 and its aftershocks.”
There is the sense that we are doing something wrong, Diana Wall and I, as we walk south from Franklin Street toward what is arguably Manhattan’s most compelling dig site, the hill of rubble that was, until recently, the World Trade Center. Wall is a New York-based archaeologist, whose book, "Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York," co-authored with Anne-Marie [...]
As the son of an Iranian father and a Jewish mother my sense of sorrow concerning the disaster of September 11 does not tend toward patriotism. In fact, I am repelled by it. I speak as a first-hand victim of American patriotism in 1979, the year 66 U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Iran. The underbelly of American patriotism is [...]
I came from Chicago to do a reading on Thursday. The guy I was staying with, Bryan, couldn't make it, so I arranged to meet him at the World Trade Center the next day--he worked for Morgan Stanley on the 70th floor of the 2nd tower. At about 5:00 I waited for him with my friend Jay. We ate Krispy [...]
In the silence, ash and smoke and dust snowing down, right before I felt and heard the second collapse, there was the teenage girl, with blond hair that should have been shining in the sun but for the pieces of the Towers in the air, and hiphuggers, and a boyfriend listening to her read from Revelations. I walked past them [...]
Since September 11, it's been especially surreal and sad to see our skyline. Though I was never particularly enamored of the Twin Towers - I prefer the Flat Iron and Chrysler Buildings - it's devastating to see that they're gone. Several times this summer, I hung out by Battery Park City, where they would loom over the landscape. My girlfriend, [...]
Several weeks have passed since I rushed around among cities on the West coast doing readings for the Salinger book, and still the event that stands out most vividly came from the end of the very first night, at the House of Nanking in San Francisco, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere and certainly one of the best Chinese food [...]
A friend of mine in Seattle recently sent me an email, asking me how I was doing in these weeks after September 11th. She wrote me the following: "I imagine you’ve been dealing with the horrific events in NYC since the 11th -- I’ve been thinking about you. Where is the Comedy Central bldg in relation to ground zero (do [...]
On the first day of October, the Windows on the World community held a memorial service for those lost in the WTC tragedy. Held at the breathtaking and enormous Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the simple and touching service managed to make everyone feel as one in love, loss and sorrow. The renowned restaurant also had many fans who [...]
Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula suffered through a heat-wave during the summer of 2000. In countries where July temperatures normally venture into the 100's, a heat-wave may seem like a redundancy, but nevertheless that summer even the hardiest residents were miserable. By the end of July, Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, was regularly recording temperatures upwards of 110 [...]
For years I’ve been answering the questions: “You live in New York City? Like, right in New York City?” I live in Brooklyn Heights, but this is a distinction meaningful only to those with 100- zip code prefixes, so I would say yes and try to explain. It wasn’t what they thought, I would say, it’s not a swirling mass [...]
She tells me that Mary has burned out. I look at the girl, at her tatooed cheek, and I'm a little confused. She nods at the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" prayer candle I'm holding. "Oh," I say. "Thanks." She leans forward and relights my wick with the flame from her own perfect, white taper. I'm suddenly embarrassed. "This was all [...]
I remember... the sound and the smoke... the terror of the crowds rushing past... a dark cloud billowing toward me in a wave of debris, determined, absolute... Searching for a meaning in this memory, I look at other stories born on September 11 and see a shared vocabulary that is at once horrifying and epiphanic: "It was the apocalypse." "Like [...]
I don't tell many people about the E-Bay thing. I usually just do the easy version. Like today -- four weeks later already -- I walked into the salon and when the Dominican beautician who does my hair asked where I'd been (you know that question: "So where were YOU when it happened?") I already knew my answer would sound [...]
Last week ABC and Ted Koppel had on a panel of authors to comment on what has happened to our city and our world - the always-awful Maya Angelou, the cliché-laden David Halberstam, and two better sorts, NPR-favorite Bebe Moore Campbell and Jonathan Franzen. Whether it was Koppel or the facts that proved too much for them no one can [...]
"I'm a sponge for everyone else's emotions," says Amy, a bartender in Cobble Hill, "but I feel like I can't release any of my own." It's a Saturday night after the World Trade Center disaster and though it's only six o'clock, the artsy hipster-ish Smith Street hangout is pulsing and loud. The Replacements' "Here Comes a Regular" is playing on [...]
I worked on the 54th Floor World Trade Center 2. On Tuesday 9/11, I was on the plaza of the World Trade Center when I saw the first plane hit WTC 1. It was 8:43 am. Since Labor Day we had been very busy and the entire office had been arriving very early for work. On Monday 9/10 I worked [...]
Some people around here watched the towers collapse from their rooftops. I didn't even think to go up to the roof. Like baseball, I preferred it on TV. Hell, I'm an American. When the second tower I fell I took a walk outside with my friend. We both live in Astoria and we both work at home (well, he's a [...]
It was not any ordinary day when I left home on September 11th. I was coming off a two-week vacation and feeling on top of my game and on top of the world. I had a new state of mind, a new attitude. I was refreshed and all aglow. I had used my vacation time to rejuvenate and replenish body, [...]
I was working at my job in the World Financial Center, just across the street from the two seemingly constant World Trade Towers when the first plane hit. Feeling and hearing the force of the impact, my co-workers and I initially thought the first plane was a freakish accident as we ran to and from the huge conference room [...]
On a cold and rainy and wintry Sunday in New York, I went to a memorial service for a fireman in Manhattan. (Schedules of funerals have begun appearing in the DAILY NEWS, with urgent appeals for people to attend. There will be over 300 of them. ) Today's memorial service is the only one I have seen scheduled for Manhattan. [...]
The World Trade Center had this fascinating opacity: two steel-grey slabs stopping thought. The more you looked at it, the less it gave you back. The Twin Towers came out of the minimalist aesthetic of the late 1960s, Donald Judd sculptures: their only decorative adornments were those aluminum Y's, provoking you by their tight-lipped abstraction, like the curved curlicues in [...]
Late this afternoon I stood amongst a tightly packed crowd of onlookers at Broadway and John Street, watching from behind a barricade as engineers prepared to remove from the World Trade Center rubble the 500 foot wall that -- for many of us -- had somehow, over the past two weeks, come to symbolize our city's struggle to pull through [...]
It is 8:30 p.m. on September 10th, the day before the World Trade Center attack. I am at therapy like I am every Monday night. "New York is killing me," I complain to my therapist. "At every turn, I am filled with a new contempt for New York. A garbage truck passes me and spews out thick exhaust in my [...]
I've disliked living on Long Island for about as long as I can remember. Now I hate it. It started as child, thrust into a culture that coddled me. My friends never understood why I, as a music student, craved visits to the city. To them, Long Island offered everything Manhattan did with added bonuses: sprawling houses, trees, yacht clubs, [...]
9:30 AM It’s a slow morning like so many, in that I am running slow. I get into the bathtub, and turn on WCBS Newsradio. Downstairs I can hear my wife assuring our fifteenth month old that breakfast is fast approaching. And then I hear the unfamiliar sound of a plane about to fly into my house on Sullivan Street [...]
The weekend after the World Trade Center collapsed, I went down toward the Promenade to see what was left of the skyline. The Promenade is a walkway at the edge of the Brooklyn Heights bluffs where you can see all the landmarks of the city at once, from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building. When I got [...]
My neighbors don't have window shades. They are a man and woman in middle age, childless, quiet, and coping. At night, they shudder in the light of the TV which is always on in their bedroom, reruns of Kojak or The Lucy Show or Dick Van Dyke. Often, he's sprawled in bed, surfing the channels, while she's staring at some [...]
"You have star quality. " My aunt once wrote this to me in a get-well letter. It had been our joke; years before, she had been the nanny in the house of a well-known film director, and these were the only words his parrot knew. And now my aunt had actually said them to me. Star quality evoked images of [...]
I need to walk. I walk and walk and end up at Silver Lake Park and when I turn around to take in my favorite view of the skyline, up high on the hill looking straight down Victory Boulevard, I half expect the towers to be there. I swear I can still see a faint outline of where they used [...]
September 11, 9:30AM I was still nursing a baseball hangover from the previous night, a game that never started. Just as warm-ups were finishing, a 43 minute downpour erased all hopes of watching Roger Clemens add one minor record to his ego, winningest percentage among 20 game winners. Goers huddled near the concessions, splitting peanuts and sipping Budweiser, cops warned [...]
I was in the shower when our building shook! My wife yelled out and I ran out of the shower and saw that the second tower had been hit. It was then we knew that it was a terrorist hit. It was so difficult to fathom. I decided I wasn't going to let a terrorist change my life and my [...]
Outside a Fresh Fields market in Manhasset, there is a parking lot large enough to hold one hundred cars. Now, there are only to be found seven Mercedes Benz SUVs, four Range Rovers, two of the BMW convertibles that the new James Bond drives, one Hummer, three Audio A8s, a smattering of Inifitis, Acuras, and Lexuses, five different kinds of [...]
My Sister was silent on the Saturday following the WTC collapse. We were in the country trying to degauss our heads from the city's pain. She was an OB on call in the emergency room when the planes hit. I cooked and the rest of the family drank caffeine on the deck, in the sun. Dinner finally finished cooking and [...]
On the day it happened we walked briskly to the hospital almost before our emotions had time to respond. Our eyes stung from the sun and our heads pounded from the hangovers which prompted us to remark that the blood we were about to donate might still have a good deal of alcohol in it. We were numb and we [...]
TWO MONTHS AGO I DECIDED TO VISIT NY WITH MY SON ROMAIN. NY HAS A SO BIG VITALITY AND A SO BEAUTIFUL COSMOPOLITAIN PEOPLE THAT I THINK IT IS A VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF LIFE FOR MY SON. AND IT IS !!!! WE VISITED MANY PLACES OF NY AND OF COURSE THE TWINS. AT THE TOP A PHOTOGRAPHER IN A [...]
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