Big News From Downtown - 1 WTC Now NYC's Tallest Building Today

I just happened to take a bunch of pictures of the new tower downtown on Friday morning, during and after my visit to watch the shuttle flyby. I had no idea that we were very close to a signigicant day in the construction of 1 World Trade Center but it just so happens that yesterday afternoon, the building officially claimed the title of tallest building in Manhattan. Article here, and congratulations to the construction crew - must've been a proud moment when they set that beam in place.

Peace on 9/11

I will be offline most of the day on 9/11 - finally figured out something to do for myself that I can fit in before the Sebago annual meeting. Yes, it might involve a boat. Hope others who are having a hard time this year are also able to find something good to do. Peace to all.

WTC & Brooklyn Bridge, East River (and a thought about bravery)

WTC and Brooklyn Bridge, East River, a photo by bkfrogma on Flickr.

This is actually related to the prior posts in an odd way. Remember how I said it had been a long, long time since I'd been on a Circle Line? Well, I'd taken this photo on that very trip. I can't remember if this was when we were in town for my cousin's wedding (the fateful event during which I got my first job in NYC), or when my family first visited me after my dad retired & they were on their way back to Hawaii and having a nice leisurely trip across the country visiting everybody they could think of on the way. Whichever it was, we did the "half-circle", because that gets the highlights. This was one of those.

Got to do the full circle many times, under my own steam. Boy, I should look and see if there are any fall dates that I could run one for the club. Been ages.

Note a bit later: I just wanted to share something I posted on my Facebook wall - because I've just been so sad here in the leadup and it felt good to add a little "proud" to that. There's been this thing going around about the NYPD and NYFD not being invited to the ceremony this year. I'm feeling a little too overwhelmed by all the...stuff...this year to take sides, but I just had to address a phrase about them running in while "everybody else was running out". It wasn't quite that simple. We were actually better than that that day.

People were leaving, but one of the magnificent things about that terrible day was that there were THOUSANDS of individual acts of courage, small and large, performed by people from every walk of life. We will never know the true measure of the collective bravery that happened that day.

We were all leaving, yes. But we were slowing down, stopping, even sometimes going back to help others where we saw things that we could do.

That's truly worth remembering, too.

Purple Kitteh

Because he came out sort of cute, even though he's a lot simpler than most of my clay critters (I'd found a block of clay with googly eyes in the giveaway bin & was trying to decide what to make - made a couple of preliminary pinches & thought "Hey, that looks like a kitty!") and because the top post for the last day has been a pretty grumpy one & I wanted to lighten up. I have something real & very cool to post about later but I thought I'd just let the purple kitty be here for a little while.

BTW, I was so intent on getting out the message about not buying from the illegal vendors around the WTC, I forgot to say that that is going to be one impressive building - according to the pictures I've seen, it's going to continue to grow until the diagonals converge in a point. And it's already pretty tall - I was in fact amazed at how fast it's going up - I'm not down there that often but I feel like it can't have been more than a few months since I was last through the area!

The New 1 World Trade Center ("Freedom Tower") - and a request.

So here was something else I saw for the first time on Saturday evening. Funny that my two firsts were something as old as a classic Movie Palace and something as new as this.

I don't make it down to the World Trade Center site that often, but the PATH train to Jersey City is here, so here I was. I had no idea how much progress they'd made.

As usual, there were a couple of vendors illegally selling stuff right across the street from the site, and I'm going to post a request here that I posted earlier on Facebook - this is not so much for any of the regular visitors here as for anyone who might somehow stumble across this searching for "visit World Trade Center", "visit WTC", or even "visit Ground Zero NYC" (no one I know calls it that, though, we all call it the World Trade Center) -

If you ever visit NY, and you go to see the WTC site, and you are standing across the street from where the towers used to stand, and somebody walks up to you and tries to sell you a souvenir, please don't buy from that person. There is a rule against selling in the immediate area that was put in place after an absolute flock of vultures descended for the selling feast as soon as the area was reopened. after 9/11. Most vendors respect the rules - if you need a trinket or a book, please walk a couple of blocks away and patronize one of their stands or shops.

Don't know if this will do any good, but maybe I'm just venting. Every time I see somebody haggling for a souvenir book right there where it all happened, it just rankles, I always want to say something and I never do.

Last Night's News

Photo by Omer Levy

Just a few thoughts, pulled from my Facebook wall on my lunch hour:
***********
What I felt when I heard the news wasn't so much joy as a deep sense of satisfaction - maybe all the richer for having been delayed so long. I hope he died feeling the same kind of fear in his heart as he made me and so many other innocent people feel when his people attacked us on that beautiful September morning*.

Hard to find the words to describe the feeling. I was too tired to stay up for our President's speech but I knew what had happened before I turned in and I felt so grateful to our President and all of the people who have been silently and doggedly working towards this resolution for so long. Gratitude to the Navy SEALS was added this morning**.

Pia hit it when she said something about this ending it. I don't for a second think that Osama's death is going to end terrorism, but Hearing about it gave me the feeling that the terrible circle of 9/11 has finally been closed, and I am thankful.
**************
*For anyone who's relatively new to this blog, or anyone who just hasn't happened to read any of the relatively small number of posts on the topic of 9/11 - I was at the World Trade Center that morning. Here was the account I wrote the following day. I'm ordinarily not an eye-for-an-eye person, but if you're at all surprised at my response, that post should explain why I am in this case. Although I rather doubt that anyone would be surprised anyhow - so far most of the responses I've seen have been in the same vein as mine.

**At the time I went to sleep, there were very few details. I didn't know the identity of the team that got the job done until this morning. I am PROUD to be a Navy brat today!

This Is Not Ground Zero

From Park51 Community Center Site & Vicinity, NYC

So.

I live in NYC. I have a blog. Hasn't almost every blogger around here had something to say about the whole "Ground Zero Mosque"/Islamophobia thing? Have I said one thing beyond "right on Mayor Mike"?

I'm occasionally opinionated, what's wrong with me?

Well, quite simply, I've just been too blown away by the bizarreness of people suddenly apparently thinking that it would be right and just for the government to throw the whole separation of church & state thing out the window & take up zoning by religious discrimination. It's so totally against one of the things I was brought up being told makes this country great, I just can't manage a coherent argument against it. Have spouted off a couple times on Facebook but that doesn't really require thinking in the same way. Every time I do try to think of something to say, all I can think of is one of the first TV interviews I saw with one of the people who are trying to create the Park51 community center - the poor guy was still clearly unrecovered from the total blindsiding their project has gotten at that point, and he just kept saying "It's a community center! With a mosque component!" with this horrified look on his face. Somehow I found his ineloquence terribly moving.

And last night I found myself echoing his words over on Facebook - and then carrying on with a little of what I had been thinking myself all along -

"It's a community center with a mosque component, and as far as I can tell it's only causing rifts with the people who are somehow holding an entire religion responsible for the nightmare actions of the lunatic fringe. That's completely & utterly unfair. Muslims were among the victims that day. Muslims were among those who ran to help that day, and Muslims are a part of the beautifully & blessedly recovered fabric of the downtown area. It's a blow to that healing to deny that the Park51 developers shouldt have just as much of a right to weave in this new thread because of their religion. They will have a million beauraucratic hoops to go through if they are to attain their goal anyways - I think they have just as much business trying to make it happen as anyone.

And then Carol Anne followed that up with -

The cultural center must go where it is planned specifically BECAUSE it is close to Ground Zero. It will be a symbol of reconciliation and freedom of religion, and an acknowledgement that the terrorists are NOT the true face of Islam.:

One obscure fact that makes it even more appropriate, in my mind: The building that will be replaced by the cultural center was hit by the landing gear of one of the 9/11 aircraft, and that is why it is vacant and uninhabitable.

God, she's amazing.

Anyways - at that point I decided that I was going to come home tonight & finally put up the photos I'd taken on Friday, on a special trip I had made downtown, just for the purpose. My thinking was - I don't know what to say. But here's what I CAN do -

I can go down there and I can take pictures, and maybe that way I can show people the difference between Ground Zero, and Not Ground Zero. Maybe they would like to have a better look at the neighborhood that they've been hearing so much about.

I came home that night & promptly lost all headway on the project. Chickened out a bit maybe. Felt like it was too big a topic for me...well, whatever. FWIW, though, here we go - allow me to share with you Ground Zero, and the very well-healed, lively neighborhood just to the north

TImes article with Fiduciary Trust people

There was an article in the Times this morning with some people I used to work with. I liked it because it showed the sort of quiet heroism that went on then. I did a couple of little good things that day. I had heard from other Fiduciary Trust employees that Ed and Alayne had not made it out because they were making sure others left. My picture looking back on that day is this odd one of buildings swarming like anthills, but alongside all the fear & despair (as the terrorists wanted) only God knows how many little and big acts of bravery & caring.

One thing that always bothered me was that "Heroes of 9/11" became such a catchphrase for the fire department and the NYPD. Yes, they were heroes too - but there were so many more, people you'll never hear of. I was glad to see the Times remembering that.

I actually checked on the rights thing - it would cost $1,000 for me to share it with you here. So, here's a link, sorry, it's Times Select so you won't be able to read it unless you have that service.

Think this will be the last 9/11 post this year. We now return to our regular salt-water programming.

The full story

The version I posted this afternoon was of course an in-a-nutshell synopsis for the paddling.net forum. But I did write up the story of the day on the evening of September 11th, 2001. I wrote it so that I could let everyone who wanted to know what had happened to me read the full day's events - I knew I wouldn't be able to write it again and again and again.

If you are interested in reading that I have posted it here, backdated into the archives. Six years later I don't feel like I need to force it on anyone.

Six years. Feels so long ago. As I mentioned this afternoon, my company had some level of observance of the day for a couple of years afterwards, but that eventually went by the wayside. The odd thing now about September 11th is how basically normal everything feels - naturally there's the annual media blitz, the memorial service at the site (an NPR announcer slipped up this morning and referred to the annual "celebration" - he began to correct himself but then he paused and said that that's almost what the atmosphere felt like), but beyond the official observations, the day just felt normal. Of course it may just be that everyone's mostly said everything they felt needed to be said -- I was riding on the subway this morning looking around at the other commuters, wondering who else was thinking about what they were doing that morning six years ago.

Mostly people were just poking away at their electronic distractors, as usual.

Lady in a dress scratching her head - looking more tired than anything -

Blonde woman in a light blue sweater top standing near me - she looked pensive. She may have been thinking about it.

Guy whistling "The Mexican Hat Dance"...probably not.

But you just can't always tell what people are thinking by looking at them. There was probably more awareness of the day out there than you would know from conversations. I myself have come to a point where it feels odd talking about it - I have so many thoughts on the matter but for whatever reason - it was mostly in the semi-anonymity of the online world that I chose to share those.

I bet I'm not alone in that.

Photos from downtown

Sunset, 9/11/06


Walking towards the Winter Garden.


Tribute in Light from a distance.


Tribute in Light - standing just below. It's fascinating - creatures from gnats to seagulls pass through the lights, and they glow. I went one year when it was drizzling & from a certain angle, there was a rainbow in it.


Here's the Deutschebank building.


I had to work quite late on Monday (the sunset is from the roof of my office). I did still took my usual walk downtown - that's become something of a ritual. I didn't even go up to the perimeter this year - too many people, didn't feel like being in with the crowd. Took a few pictures but mostly walked & thought.

sorry if it seems like I'm dwelling. Seems like I just have to give it a certain piece of time each year, then it's past. This year that time has been hard to shake loose.

I said I was going to write some more - I did intend to, had a lot of thoughts, but haven't had time - pier politics and work left very little free time this week.

boy, do I want to go paddling...

September 11, 2001 - that evening

I'd written this to send to all my friends and family the evening of September 11th. I'd sent my father the briefest of emails, just basically "Please tell everyone I am fine", in the morning; in the evening, I went to a friend's home on the Upper West Side & took the time to write this account. I thought I would post it here today.

Hi all. Glad to still be here & writing. As all of you probably know, I was laid off from my job at Fiduciary, where my office was on the 97th floor of WTC 2 (the second to get hit and the first to collapse) in July. However, I was signed up for a 2-day, Fiduciary-sponsored employment outplacement workshop on the 11th and 12th, from 9 am to 5 pm, on the 93rd floor of WTC. So I was actually there yesterday.

First - a bit of layout. The World Trade Center complex actually covered a space of several blocks under the Towers themselves. The north tower was called WTC 1; the south (where I used to work) WTC 2. There was a public plaza between them with benches, a big fountain, restaurants, and stages for performances in the summertime. Under the plaza there was a large shopping mall. The Chambers Street subway station extends several blocks north from there. There was an entrance to the mall at the south end of the station which you got to by walking through a passageway that ran the length of the station (which was twice as long as a subway train as the A&C platform was north of the platform for the E, which terminated there). Along this passageway were staircase exits that led up to the street, one exit every couple of blocks. There were street level entrances to the mall.

I overslept my alarm a bit, having been up late the night before updating my resume. I'd left myself some extra time - the security checkin was going require standing in line to get a temporary ID. The subway connections went well, though, and I got there about 8:40 am. I decided to go upstairs and walk outside since it was a beautiful, warm day, I was several blocks away from the Center, and the subway station was hot.

I had just put my hand on one of the northern street doors to the mall when I heard a terribly loud zooming noise, punctuated by a tremendous bang, just over my head - like standing right next to one of the Macy's 4th-of-July fireworks. I was wearing a cap as it was sunny, so I had no upper peripheral vision - but what I could see was that everyone in the street looked up, screamed, and started to run towards the doors I was by. I jumped to the conclusion that a small plane had just crashed into one of the buildings and that debris was falling towards the street, and I didn't take the time to look up to verify that, just bolted into the mall as fast as I could go, past a newsstand, down a set of stairs, and then around the corner to be out of the path of any wreckage that might make it through the doors. At that point I became more concerned about being caught up in a panicked stampede (well, i already was) so I ducked into a restaurant where I joined all the patrons as far from the entrance as we could get. I told everyone that I thought a small plane had crashed. They gave me some water, and when the panic outside died down I went out again.

By this time, the police were evacuating the mall. The doors I'd come into weren't
an option, and the exit leading to the subway station was just a little ways away, so I went that way, stopping to tell arriving commuters not to go into the mall because there had been a plane crash & the mall was being evacuating & that they should go the other way.

I decided to walk north in the underground passageway until I was well clear of the crash zone, then go upstairs to reconnoiter. This being New York, a small plane crashing low on WTC 1 would not necessarily preclude attending a workshop on the 93rd floor of WTC 2 - there would probably be a delay while emergency personnel did their jobs, but life would go on.

Then came the second blast. It wasn't loud, but it sounded big. People began to stampede again. I ran with them until I could get into an exit turnstile (one-way revolving gates the height of a person) out of traffic to take a minute to figure out where exactly I wanted to run. I had heard someone say "the plane that crashed just blew up" and that was one possible explanation but the blast just sounded too big for that and there was also the possibility that we were being bombed & that there might be more - so I was trying to decide whether upstairs or downstairs was the better option, when I saw an even BETTER option in the form of a train pulling in downstairs. I didn't care which way it was going, just that it was going somewhere else - which was EXACTLY where I wanted to be as soon as possible, wherever it was - a lot faster than I could possibly go on foot. I ran for the nearby entry turnstile as fast as I could, pulled out (HONEST!) my Metrocard, paid my fare, dashed down the stairs & got into the train. I think I said something to a couple of people who were getting off and I know that I turned around to see a woman standing on the platform looking confused and said "Just get on the train!", which she did. Everybody was staring at me.

I rode to 23rd street and went to the diner where I sometimes eat breakfast before tours - they always have a TV on and I figured I'd ask them to change to the New York One all-local-news station if something wasn't already on.

Obviously it was and that was when I first understood what had actually happened.

I had a big glass of orange juice then decided to head on over to the pier.

Once I got there there was plenty to do - at first I just opened the MKC office to people who were passing by looking for working phones or water or whatever, then in the early afternoon we (all the barge regulars) started helping to run a free ferry service to New Jersey which got a lot of people to New Jersey using three party boats that volunteered, the Horizon (capacity 600), the Royal Princess(225) and the Amberjack (200). The Royal Princess is berthed at North Cove downtown and was covered with debris so she looked rather ghostly but everyone was happy to see her. I helped out with crowd control until about 6 - by then the edge people had had earlier had turned into tiredness, so with the possibility of stampedes looking pretty low (it takes energy to stampede & that was just plain gone) so I headed uptown to a friend's apartment.

That was pretty much it.

The good part of the story is that out of my 600 former coworkers at Fiduciary, only 130* are unnaccounted for. I'd spent yesterday assuming they were just all dead (the work was good in part because it kept my mind off things) but they started to leave after the first crash so most of them got out. Also I had a wonderful message from one of my early "refugees" at MKC who'd spent an hour trying unsuccesfully to reach her husband, who worked in WTC1, that she was OK & her kids were OK and best of all, her husband was fine.

Anyways - glad to be here & writing this. Love all of you!


Bonnie


*Very strange, in hindsight, that this was good - but the plane had hit far below the offices and I actually spent the morning thinking that most of the 600+ people I'd worked with there had to be gone. As it turned out, there had been announcements made in the building that people should remain in place, and if they'd listened, many more would have died - however, as many of my former co-workers had been there for the first WTC bombing, they chose to evacuate. In the end, less than one hundred did not make it out. That sounds terrible - and it is - but you have to remember that there were over five hundred sighs of relief.