Remembering 9-11

On this day, I feel so much sadness and am flooded with memories.
I wanted to take some time to write about them.

I live just a few short blocks from Ground Zero.

7 Years ago today. I was living in another neighborhood called Soho which is north of Battery Park but still downtown. I had the most amazing view of the world trade center from my window. I use to love looking at it at night

One morning I was asleep in bed when suddenly I heard a loud BOOM. Then a woman screamed. It woke me up, and my heart was racing, pounding, which was unusual. You know how sometimes your body knows something before you know it?

My first thought was that a car on West Broadway had hit a person. I knew something was wrong. I grabbed some clothes and got dressed, and went out onto the street. When I looked up, a section of one of the towers was on fire. 

I ran back into the building and got my neighbor. She came over and we watched from my window. 

How did this happen? How many people were in there on those floors at this hour? We also kept questioning why it was taking so long for anything to be done about the fire. We even took a video of it for a few minutes. We did not know what was happening. Were helicopters even equipped to deal with putting out a fire like this? 

We thought it had been some freak accident. 

What we did not know until later was that Flight 11, an American airlines Boeing 67 plane traveling from Boston to LA. had been hijacked and crashed into the north tower.

It seemed like an hour went by, which is strange, because it was only 18 minutes later, 9:03AM when suddenly a huge jet crashed into tower 2. WHAT??????????

There was such a loud BANG. Flames went into the air.

Within 15 minutes, all NYC airports were shut down, and the bridges and tunnels were all closed. 

United Airlines Flight 175 had crashed into tower 2. A plane that was also headed to LA from Boston.

But at that time, we knew nothing of those details. It was just chaos.

I went back and forth between being outside on the street and being in the apartment. I still did not have a tv on and had no idea the whole nation and world was watching this. Which shows my state of mind at that time.

I wish I could remember the sequence of events in the right order. I don't. 

Did I get ahold of my husband in LA who was asleep and 3 hours behind EST? I don't think so. I don't remember. I did get through to my mom a few quick times I think. She was trying to calm me down. I got ahold of a friend of mine who is a reporter and was telling him what was happening, but I was so panicked that I don't think we talked long.

I remember standing looking at the burning towers, with huge clouds of yellow and grey stuff blanketing the sky. It was terrible. Then all of the sudden one part of the tower started to cave in and before we knew it, they had both collapsed and just imploded. 

There were so many people screaming on the street. I remember....

Blur.

Then, quiet. Pin drop quiet. Stunned silence. It was eerie. 
I start crying as I sit here typing this. 

I remember being on the roof with my neighbor Chris. I still had not turned on the tv. We were stunned. The smoke was everywhere. The towers were gone. The city felt like one big gaping wound.

I had a few friends who were able to get to me. When they came, we turned on the tv for the first time. There was so much adrenaline in the air. I can't even explain it. It was the same sort of adrenaline that had been in the air when I went through the 1994 earthquake in California. I thought I was going to die then. But that's another story.

It seemed strange watching the news on tv. I was there. It didn't look the same on the screen. We didn't have much food in the house, and anyone who is familiar with Soho knows that not much opens until noon. But there was a deli around the corner. My friends and I went over to try and get some basics. The lines were really long. There were a few people covered in grey soot who had been closer to the towers. The air was so highly charged. 

What I remember in the days to come is scattered and blurry. I remember walking around like a zombie. I remember how scary it felt to be alone. Nobody was able to get below Houston Street without an ID proving they lived there. The street was barricaded off and cops stayed there checking IDs. I remember that it felt and looked like a war zone. I remember all the tank trucks lined up on Houston street to head down to the world trade center. I remember the ambulances that had no bodies to bring back. The stores all being closed. It was a ghost town and I remember how unnerving the quiet was in a city that never sleeps. I remember feeling like I was living in a funeral 24 hours a day. I remember all the signs and photos posted everywhere, covering street posts and walls and gated fences and buildings, people looking for loved ones. I remember the smell in the air which lasted for so many months, the smell of toxic metals and debris and only God knows what, making you have to cover your face just to walk down the street. I remember the EPA saying the air was safe. I remember crying alot. I remember people walking barefoot trying to get home and get to the Brooklyn Bridge immediately after the attacks. 

I remember the first anniversary of the attacks when I hosted a concert through www.Septemberconcert.org. I gathered a group of other artists and we did a 6 hour show, each taking turns playing. We were so exhausted and spent, and none of us knew how we would get through it. In some ways, that day was even harder, as it reopened a wound that had not healed. But we found that by coming together we could share our stories and our pain and share our hope. I remember the ceremonies honoring those who lost their lives and the tears we all cried. I remember how fatigued I felt from the immune illness I had as well as the added emotional grief I was feeling. I remember someone who lived in another state not understanding why I was so traumatized on that first anniversary. Why I could not stop crying. I did not fully understand it either. I felt all the energy surrounding me in the city, the energy of loss and grief. He said, "Why are you so upset? Did you know someone who died?"

I remember soon after the attacks when all the subways downtown were shut down and how hard that was. How isolating. I remember walking all the way to 14th St to get a subway and heading up to Central Park and feeling like I had entered another country as I sat there watching people walk dogs, rollerblade and sit outside. I remember how loud it was uptown where the cabs were running, the subways were running. And how eerie and traumatic everything felt downtown. I remember my husband yelling at me from Los Angeles to get the hell out of there and go to his sister's in CT. I remember saying I can't leave, I can't leave.....and feeling unable to move.

Then I did end up getting myself to Grand Central and taking a train. I felt like other people couldn't understand it. They were in shock and yet were far enough away that they also had some normalcy in their lives. Seeing the whole thing go down on tv versus being there in person was the difference between mars and earth. And then as hard as it was for me going through all of it and living in the middle of it geographically, I did not lose anyone I loved in those towers. How HARD WOULD THAT BE?

I remember someone emailing me from Kansas, concerned about my soul and that I was saved, saying how events like this put things into perspective. 

You want to know perspective?

Perspective is that our President George Bush sat in an elementary school and read books to kids while our country was being attacked. Perspective is that the same people who voted for him because they liked him rather than because he was qualifed, are now going to vote for McCain/ Palin because they like Palin's personality rather than that she is qualified. And don't get me started on McCain. 

Seriously. Let's look at these timelines. 

It was at 8:19: that Betty Ong, a flight attendant on Flight 11 alerted American Airlines via an airphone, ""The cockpit is not answering, somebody's stabbed in business class—and I think there's Mace—that we can't breathe—I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked." She then tells of the stabbings of two flight attendants.

8:34: A third transmission from Flight 11: "Nobody move please. We are going back to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves." Boston Center contacts Otis Air National Guard Base at Cape Cod through the FAA's Cape Cod facility, on the hijacking of Flight 11.

8:37: Flight 175 confirmed sighting of hijacked Flight 11 to flight controllers.

(You would think by now the President of the United States would be on alert)...

Then at 8:44: Flight attendant Amy Sweeney, aboard Flight 11, reports by telephone to American Airlines Flight Services Office in Boston, "Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent... we are all over the place." A minute later, she is asked to describe what she sees out the window. She responds, "I see the water. I see the buildings. I see buildings..." After a short pause, she reports, "We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low." Seconds later she says slowly, "Oh my God...OH MY GOD!" The call ends with a burst of very loud, sustained static.

8:52: A flight attendant aboard Flight 175 calls a United Airlines office in San Francisco, reporting that the flight had been hijacked, both pilots had been killed, a flight attendant had been stabbed, and the hijackers were probably flying the plane.

One plane has crashed into the world trade center, and another has been hijacked.

You would think that President Bush might have considered that maybe this wasn't a good time to be reading books?

Well the rest is history. We all know what happened. For a very detailed timeline that is quite interesting, go to:
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911&startpos=0

The months went by, we all breathed some pretty toxic stuff for a long time. The grief was palpable and there was no relief from it day or night. My husband came home, we missed our cat, (who had died Sept 8 in our home under that very window that looked out over the world trade center), we cried for the thousands of people who had lost their lives or lost loved ones in this horrible tragedy. We tried to go on with life. The dust cleared from my building's entry way and settled somewhere in its 100 year old walls, only to be dug up again in improper construction tear downs. I got REALLY sick. The EPA said the air was safe, we couldn't breathe without choking on it, our President got us into a war with a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11, and 4 months later my aunt died from ALS.

So here we are. And here I am.

If there is ever a time in our country when we need true change, it is now. I want a leader who inspires me. I want a leader who is about changing some of the policies we have had these 8 years, rather than agreeing with what he have had. I want someone who does not run on creating fear and terror to justify poor choices. I think of that quote by the poet RUMI, "don't move the way fear makes you move..."

Many people voted for Bush because of the brilliant strategies of Karl Rove, spin expert to the dumbed down masses.

Rove praises Palin's experience in being the mayor of small town Wasilla, yet he is also on record as having previously trashed Virginia Governor and former Richmond Mayor, Tim Kaine saying,

"He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town. "

Let's see here-

Richmond, Virginia population 1.1 million

Wasilla, Alaska, approximately 7025.. 

Welcome to the world of Karl Rove!

Well I am not stupid enough to think anyone one president can fix everything. The world is so complicated today. It really is.

But do we really want to support a right wing extremist as vice president who has no foreign policy experience or insights, a woman who believes global warming is not caused by human behavior, whose church believes that the state of Alaska will be a shelter in the end times for Christians?

Does this sound like someone with the experience, intelligence and education to be the vice president and help direct our country in times like these?

Lastly, as I reflect upon the past 8 years, I know many people who voted for Bush but now say he was a disappointment. Thankfully many of those people are voting for Barack Obama. But others to my amazement, say that they disagree with Bush yet are voting for McCain.

According to the Congressional Quarterly's assessment of McCain's voting record, in 2007 McCain voted in line with the President Bush's position 95 percent of the time – the highest percentage rate for McCain since Bush took office.

Listen. 

Think.