My grandmother died on September 7th, 2001. She had been living in a suburb of Pittsburgh ever since her third husband, a retired steel worker, had died decades earlier.
Being next of kin it fell on my brother and me to get down there and take care of things. My mother, who happened to be in NY that weekend drove the very large family van with us in it. The funny thing is that this was my father's mother who had died. But my mother, never one to pass up a road trip with her sons. Besides, she had a big van and we were going to need it. It's a long drive from New York City to McKeesport, PA.
To say that my grandmother was not well would be an understatement. Always somewhat emotionally immature as well as an alcoholic, she had left behind a small apartment piled wall to wall and knee high in Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes mailings and chintzy "consolation prizes". So when we arrived at her place on the morning of September 9th. We had a lot of work ahead of us.
It took us two days to get all the garbage out. On the morning of the 11th, we turned on the news as we got ready to leave the hotel and head to the apartment. There was a small campus fire at UP Pittsburgh. A dorm kitchen apparently. We watched the coverage of that, grabbed our free hotel coffee and headed over. One there, we packed up all the "consolation prizes" to take to the Goodwill in the next town. Deciding we needed to stop by the hotel on the way to the Goodwill to use the bathroom, we headed into the lobby, van loaded with stuff.
In the lobby, guests and staff were all gathered, watching the television. All I saw on screen was smoke. I thought to myself "Wow, that campus fire is out of control". I turned to a guy standing next to me and asked him what was going on. He told me that planes had just crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I stared at him in disbelief, my face probably for an instant communicating "fuck you, what's really going on?" But I saw he meant it.
We had to keep moving though. There was just too much that had to be done at grandma's to pause. So, after our bathroom break, we got back into the van to head to the Goodwill. The "Kill All Towelheads" signs were already up on pick up trucks that we drove, listening to the Today Show on the radio. As we commented to eachother on how we were already blowing it, the first tower fell. How my mother managed to stay on the road at that point, I'll never know.
It's a very odd experience listening to someone narrate a terrible event as it is happening. Matt Lauer's voice will forever have that echo for me. In a way, I'm grateful that I wasn't among the millions watching. Weird as it was, I think it was easier to process emotionally for me than seeing it would have been.
We unpacked at the Goodwill which was for all intents and purposes abandoned, and went back to town. We had to stop at the town funeral home to arrange grandma's cremation. On the way, we listened to the second tower falling.
When my brother and I returned to the van from the funeral home, our mother who had stayed in it to listen to the radio told us that another plane had just crashed in Shanksville, about 70 miles from us.
It seemed like the end of the world in that moment. The Twin Towers were one thing, the Pentagon part of the same thing...but a field in rural Pennsylvania? "What the fuck?" just doesn't even cover it.
We took a few moments to pull our heads back together and get back to grandma's apartment. We were finally going to be able to deal with her actual possessions. And start to figure out what to do with everything.
Much of it, oddly, was still in boxes though she'd lived in that apartment for 20 years. (I guess she needed the room for all the used PCH mailings). Taking the box nearest where I sat, I opened it carefully. It felt like it would be mostly paperwork and that seemed like the best place to start anyway.
When I opened the box right there at the top, was a plastic framed 3D photograph taken of the World Trade Center to commemorate the opening of the Twin Towers. My grandmother had kept it from her visit that summer of 1970.
I gasped. All the time it took to get through the detritus she had left behind...the events of the day and the first actual possession of my grandmother's I uncover was this.
Life is weird.
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
We Are Not Our Prejudices
In 1966 and 67 when they were filming the original Planet of the Apes the cast and crew stumbled upon an interesting sociological phenomenon. For those of you who have never seen the movie or haven’t seen it in a long time, there are three species of ape featured; chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas.
The makeup worn was extensive and delicate. Once on, it really could not be taken off for the entire day of shooting. Actors had to eat smoothies for lunch through straws…and delicately. So, meals were generally eaten with full on ape make up. Here’s what would happen.
No matter who was underneath the make up, black, white, Asian or otherwise, each of the three species tended to sit at the same tables with each other, never mixing until someone realized what was going on. The chimps would sit with the chimps, orangutans with orangutans and gorillas with gorillas.
This, to me, tells us a lot about how we as the animals known as human beings operate. We are naturally gravitated toward that which is like us, and suspicious of that which is unlike us. Old point, I know. But an important one because I think this goes to the heart of what America strives to be, as opposed to what it is.
We have initial reactions in our guts about what’s different, who’s different. These reactions are not rational, they are based on nothing more than fear. Sometimes there is a level of experience behind that fear. Sometimes not. But the instinctive needpreference to be with the familiar is paramount.
For some of us, this is a given and we develop, over time, a strategy to overcome our prejudice. We ask ourselves questions, such as; What am I really afraid of? What am I basing this reaction on? Can I get past this sensation to see what’s really there? With a little effort we tend to be able to move past it.
That’s why I have held to my belief that we are all racist in some way shape or form. It’s inherent. What makes us better, what moves us past that is our other innate behavior. The ability to question ourselves.
Some of us are better at it than others. I don’t have much patience for people who refuse to do it. People like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, or for that matter Christopher Hitchens.
Some of us simply sink further into our prejudices. We remain comfortable with them. We look for statements and events that make that security blanket of the familiar thicker and warmer. We don’t notice that when we take that blanket and pull it over our heads, it gets too dark to see that there’s a world outside that blanket, and it’s not exactly a world that fits our warm comfort.
Hence, Arizona. Now look, I don’t actually have an issue with maintaining some enforcement of expecting people to have proof of citizenship on them. The fact is, if you have ID, you should have it on you. That’s true no matter where or what you are. But when the law suddenly states that law enforcement can act on its own hunches (because there’s no real way to define ‘reasonable suspicion’ any other way. ) and when you threaten that the state can sue said law enforcement for NOT acting on those hunches..well..you’re just saying that you’re making sure you look out for the unfamiliar.
Governor Brewer can state over and over again that racial profiling is illegal. But until she actually says WHY it’s illegal and listens to the Sheriff’s of the border counties on why the law makes it harder not easier on their efforts, then she’s acting on that prejudice. She proves my point even further when she signs legislation banning ethnic studies in her state for middle and high schools.
(It’s worth noting too, that those Mexicans they hate so much were there first.)
It’s no better here in New York City where two mosques are being planned for the area right across the street from Ground Zero.
Reprehensible Representative Peter King is offended and some 9/11 families are too as well as the same idiots who are afraid to try terrorists on American soil. Well, I’m sorry these people can’t see past their prejudices on this one either.
Honestly, when I first read about it, I too had a moment of twinge. I’m ashamed to say that my initial reaction was one of distaste. But then I remembered something. I’m an American and an intelligent human being and I stand for better than that.
Islam did not smash down the Twin Towers. A bunch of sick idiots following a power hungry schmuck hiding behind religion did that. And frankly every religion is guilty of that sin.
Let me explain something about the financial district of Manhattan. It is one of the most excellent examples of bad planning that you can imagine. Most of the tallest buildings in the city are concentrated in this area. An area where 60% of the streets are the same width they were 400 years ago when New York (then New Amsterdam) was first settled. To say this area is crowded during the day would be as if to say boiling water hurts when you touch it.
Those small streets themselves are lined with shops and food carts. The vast vast majority of those carts and many of those shops are owned and/or run by Muslim Americans. I’m talking about donut and coffee carts, falafel stands, hot dog stands, kebob stands, (is it bad that I keep thinking about Homer Simpson buying Kluv Kolahsh in front of the World Trade Center?) halal hamburger stands, pretzel and chestnut carts, jewelry shops, restaurants, delis......
So again…IT’S FUCKING CROWDED.
Now, you have a vast population of Muslim Americans working in this area. They have been here for a long time. Some of them were killed on 9/11. Are we actually going to suggest that they can’t have a place to worship, because they happen to share a claim to a faith that was had by the dickbrains that crashed the Twin Towers?
The fact is, we need a 13 story mosque in that area, because people of all faiths and professions literally spill onto the streets in that part of town.
When I worked in midtown it took me door to door 40 to 50 minutes to get to work. In the time I was working in the Financial District last year, 3 miles closer to me, it took over an hour. That’s because of crowd navigation. I’m not exaggerating.
So there is not only a spiritual need, but a PRACTICAL need.
Are we really going to not get past our own prejudices caused by associations that are more emotional than rational?
I say no. I say we are Americans and we stand for freedom.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Gretchen Carlson has the audacity to suggest that a Muslim woman won Miss USA out of political correctness. Other right wing idiots seem to be falling over themselves to join the chorus on that one. It couldn’t possibly be because she’s hot.
Actually, the real problem is that Carlson, a beauty pageant queen herself should be careful. All beauty pageants are bullshit and if she starts trying to peel away at that issue, she’s just going to skin herself alive.
We need to poke our heads out of our security blankets and see the world and recognize the world outside doesn’t have room for us to not question our fears.
I’m sorry for the grief of the 9/11 families. I am friends with a 9/11 widow who in fact thinks this is all nonsense. But they need to move beyond the blanket over their grief and remember who the real enemy is.
Roddy McDowell and his counterpart, Cornelius.
The makeup worn was extensive and delicate. Once on, it really could not be taken off for the entire day of shooting. Actors had to eat smoothies for lunch through straws…and delicately. So, meals were generally eaten with full on ape make up. Here’s what would happen.
No matter who was underneath the make up, black, white, Asian or otherwise, each of the three species tended to sit at the same tables with each other, never mixing until someone realized what was going on. The chimps would sit with the chimps, orangutans with orangutans and gorillas with gorillas.
This, to me, tells us a lot about how we as the animals known as human beings operate. We are naturally gravitated toward that which is like us, and suspicious of that which is unlike us. Old point, I know. But an important one because I think this goes to the heart of what America strives to be, as opposed to what it is.
We have initial reactions in our guts about what’s different, who’s different. These reactions are not rational, they are based on nothing more than fear. Sometimes there is a level of experience behind that fear. Sometimes not. But the instinctive needpreference to be with the familiar is paramount.
For some of us, this is a given and we develop, over time, a strategy to overcome our prejudice. We ask ourselves questions, such as; What am I really afraid of? What am I basing this reaction on? Can I get past this sensation to see what’s really there? With a little effort we tend to be able to move past it.
That’s why I have held to my belief that we are all racist in some way shape or form. It’s inherent. What makes us better, what moves us past that is our other innate behavior. The ability to question ourselves.
Some of us are better at it than others. I don’t have much patience for people who refuse to do it. People like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, or for that matter Christopher Hitchens.
Some of us simply sink further into our prejudices. We remain comfortable with them. We look for statements and events that make that security blanket of the familiar thicker and warmer. We don’t notice that when we take that blanket and pull it over our heads, it gets too dark to see that there’s a world outside that blanket, and it’s not exactly a world that fits our warm comfort.
Hence, Arizona. Now look, I don’t actually have an issue with maintaining some enforcement of expecting people to have proof of citizenship on them. The fact is, if you have ID, you should have it on you. That’s true no matter where or what you are. But when the law suddenly states that law enforcement can act on its own hunches (because there’s no real way to define ‘reasonable suspicion’ any other way. ) and when you threaten that the state can sue said law enforcement for NOT acting on those hunches..well..you’re just saying that you’re making sure you look out for the unfamiliar.
My beautiful homestate filled with flawed sheeple.
Governor Brewer can state over and over again that racial profiling is illegal. But until she actually says WHY it’s illegal and listens to the Sheriff’s of the border counties on why the law makes it harder not easier on their efforts, then she’s acting on that prejudice. She proves my point even further when she signs legislation banning ethnic studies in her state for middle and high schools.
(It’s worth noting too, that those Mexicans they hate so much were there first.)
It’s no better here in New York City where two mosques are being planned for the area right across the street from Ground Zero.
Reprehensible Representative Peter King is offended and some 9/11 families are too as well as the same idiots who are afraid to try terrorists on American soil. Well, I’m sorry these people can’t see past their prejudices on this one either.
Honestly, when I first read about it, I too had a moment of twinge. I’m ashamed to say that my initial reaction was one of distaste. But then I remembered something. I’m an American and an intelligent human being and I stand for better than that.
Islam did not smash down the Twin Towers. A bunch of sick idiots following a power hungry schmuck hiding behind religion did that. And frankly every religion is guilty of that sin.
Let me explain something about the financial district of Manhattan. It is one of the most excellent examples of bad planning that you can imagine. Most of the tallest buildings in the city are concentrated in this area. An area where 60% of the streets are the same width they were 400 years ago when New York (then New Amsterdam) was first settled. To say this area is crowded during the day would be as if to say boiling water hurts when you touch it.
Those small streets themselves are lined with shops and food carts. The vast vast majority of those carts and many of those shops are owned and/or run by Muslim Americans. I’m talking about donut and coffee carts, falafel stands, hot dog stands, kebob stands, (is it bad that I keep thinking about Homer Simpson buying Kluv Kolahsh in front of the World Trade Center?) halal hamburger stands, pretzel and chestnut carts, jewelry shops, restaurants, delis......
So again…IT’S FUCKING CROWDED.
Now, you have a vast population of Muslim Americans working in this area. They have been here for a long time. Some of them were killed on 9/11. Are we actually going to suggest that they can’t have a place to worship, because they happen to share a claim to a faith that was had by the dickbrains that crashed the Twin Towers?
The fact is, we need a 13 story mosque in that area, because people of all faiths and professions literally spill onto the streets in that part of town.
When I worked in midtown it took me door to door 40 to 50 minutes to get to work. In the time I was working in the Financial District last year, 3 miles closer to me, it took over an hour. That’s because of crowd navigation. I’m not exaggerating.
So there is not only a spiritual need, but a PRACTICAL need.
Are we really going to not get past our own prejudices caused by associations that are more emotional than rational?
I say no. I say we are Americans and we stand for freedom.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Gretchen Carlson has the audacity to suggest that a Muslim woman won Miss USA out of political correctness. Other right wing idiots seem to be falling over themselves to join the chorus on that one. It couldn’t possibly be because she’s hot.
Actually, the real problem is that Carlson, a beauty pageant queen herself should be careful. All beauty pageants are bullshit and if she starts trying to peel away at that issue, she’s just going to skin herself alive.
We need to poke our heads out of our security blankets and see the world and recognize the world outside doesn’t have room for us to not question our fears.
I’m sorry for the grief of the 9/11 families. I am friends with a 9/11 widow who in fact thinks this is all nonsense. But they need to move beyond the blanket over their grief and remember who the real enemy is.
Otherwise the terrorists have already won.
They like us in our dark warm blankets, because then we can only see what’s in our dark little fearful minds instead of what is actually happening.
Let’s remember who and what we stand for. Let’s remember that for the past 150 years we have built this nation on the sweat and backs of the different. Let’s.Be.Better.
Let’s remember who and what we stand for. Let’s remember that for the past 150 years we have built this nation on the sweat and backs of the different. Let’s.Be.Better.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Rhymes with Beer (Yuengling, please)
Perhaps its a cliche, and I've made my feelings clear about the way we wear this day on our sleeves, which I don't care for. But it doesn't seem right to let the day go by without commentary of some kind.
I've been thinking a bit about how we've behaved since that day 8 years ago. The craziness recently; Glenn Batshit Beck's 9/12 Initiative that links to TeaBaggers and other hypocritical nonsense with what I think are the wrong lessons.
All of it, I think, stems from Fear. Whenever I watch Dick Cheney, I not only see a man who is fear mongering, but who is also mongered by fear.
Right or Left we are all Americans, all scarred and all fearful. But what happened to us is not what makes us. Its how we hold to what we stand for afterwards that shows us for ourselves.
Fear is what makes us open the old wounds every year. Fear is what makes us small and keeps us from taking action. Fear is what causes the invasion of the wrong country and missing the ball entirely. Fear is what makes us go on and on about future attacks instead of remembering what we stand for and how we can make this world safer, truly safer. Fear makes us vengeful.
But we can't overcome national fears if we don't overcome our own. And so, geek that I am, I offer two thoughts on fear. One from my favorite book, Dune by Frank Herbert, the other from one of my favorite shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
From Dune; the Litany of Fear, spoken by warriors of all kinds.
"I must not fear
Fear is the mind-killer
Fear is the little death
That brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will allow it to pass over me
And through me.
When it is past I will turn the inner eye
To see its path.
Where the fear was, there will be nothing.
Only I will remain"
From an episode of Buffy. Halloween when Gaknar the fear demon is revealed. He is 4 inches tall.
Xander: (playfully)Who's the little fear demon. Who's the little fear demon?"
Giles: Xander, don't do that.
Xander: (suddenly worried) Why, will it anger him?
Giles: No, because it's tacky.
In pace requiescat.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Ground Zero
So...I'm re arranging my thoughts and am going to stop tipping in advance of what I'm going to write about because, well. I'd rather be able to change my mind. But I'm keeping the context of New York.
For the last few days and the next week I have been and will be working across the street from Ground Zero here.
I don't come down there much. I never really did before except when I had visitors or a temp job necessitated it. I've never really liked the area very much except for by the water where, if you have a view of the harbor it is quite beautiful. But since the attack I've been there twice. It's just too hard. Make that 4 times. I was down here a couple of times during the immediate aftermath. The stench of smoking steel, wood, asbestos and, well...human was intense, humbling and there are no words more for it.
This assignment has me here for the first time since 2002. I pass the construction site every day, twice a day. There are small monuments to our victimhood here which is just more incentive for me to never be down here.
There's been a lot of talk lately about the renaming of One WTC, from Freedom Tower to the current iteration. But as far as I'm concerned, what we call the building is totally fucking meaningless. That we are building again at all is the important part. The building is not something I'm crazy about, but I'm very pleased that the actual site of the old towers will be a park and waterfall markings of the tower footprints. I think its fitting and beautiful and frankly if any area needed some green space, its the Financial District.
Here's what gets me though. I do not need to see continual pictures of what happened. I don't need to see photographs on onlookers crying, holding eachother and otherwise appearing devastated and I suspect that those who traverse the streets and overpasses here, who have done for years before I have and for years afterwards don't have to either. We/They were there. We lived it, ate it and literally breathed it for a long time. We all here lost someone either 1st or 2nd person.
September 11, 2001 lives in us every day, ever hour and every minute we walk any street in this city, especially the streets below West 4th.
We do not need continual pick up truck reminders to 'never forget'. Fuck you asshole, I lived it, don't tell me what to remember and what not to remember. And we don't need to be scraping the wound open every morning we get off the Subway or PATH train to come to work here to see our faces plastered before us, tear-filled and horrified.
Some of us wake up in the middle of the night screaming still. Some of us still roll over in bed to the spot once occupied by a lover or spouse who was working that day, (be it in an office, a police car or a fire-suit) and try to caress them in the empty spot. Some of us see the flying bodies when we close our eyes for an afternoon nap.
Now admittedly that's not precisely my experience. My September 11th story is a somewhat twisted tale of a grandmother's death and being near one of the other sites and coming home to an immediate bomb scare. That's for another blog entry.
But the aftermath for me was clear. Though I lived on the opposite end of Manhattan then, the sky was still dark and the fear and anger and grief was still palpable. And I still live with friends whose losses were far deeper and more painful than my own.
We remember. For God's sake, We Remember.
For the last few days and the next week I have been and will be working across the street from Ground Zero here.
I don't come down there much. I never really did before except when I had visitors or a temp job necessitated it. I've never really liked the area very much except for by the water where, if you have a view of the harbor it is quite beautiful. But since the attack I've been there twice. It's just too hard. Make that 4 times. I was down here a couple of times during the immediate aftermath. The stench of smoking steel, wood, asbestos and, well...human was intense, humbling and there are no words more for it.
This assignment has me here for the first time since 2002. I pass the construction site every day, twice a day. There are small monuments to our victimhood here which is just more incentive for me to never be down here.
There's been a lot of talk lately about the renaming of One WTC, from Freedom Tower to the current iteration. But as far as I'm concerned, what we call the building is totally fucking meaningless. That we are building again at all is the important part. The building is not something I'm crazy about, but I'm very pleased that the actual site of the old towers will be a park and waterfall markings of the tower footprints. I think its fitting and beautiful and frankly if any area needed some green space, its the Financial District.
Here's what gets me though. I do not need to see continual pictures of what happened. I don't need to see photographs on onlookers crying, holding eachother and otherwise appearing devastated and I suspect that those who traverse the streets and overpasses here, who have done for years before I have and for years afterwards don't have to either. We/They were there. We lived it, ate it and literally breathed it for a long time. We all here lost someone either 1st or 2nd person.
September 11, 2001 lives in us every day, ever hour and every minute we walk any street in this city, especially the streets below West 4th.
We do not need continual pick up truck reminders to 'never forget'. Fuck you asshole, I lived it, don't tell me what to remember and what not to remember. And we don't need to be scraping the wound open every morning we get off the Subway or PATH train to come to work here to see our faces plastered before us, tear-filled and horrified.
Some of us wake up in the middle of the night screaming still. Some of us still roll over in bed to the spot once occupied by a lover or spouse who was working that day, (be it in an office, a police car or a fire-suit) and try to caress them in the empty spot. Some of us see the flying bodies when we close our eyes for an afternoon nap.
Now admittedly that's not precisely my experience. My September 11th story is a somewhat twisted tale of a grandmother's death and being near one of the other sites and coming home to an immediate bomb scare. That's for another blog entry.
But the aftermath for me was clear. Though I lived on the opposite end of Manhattan then, the sky was still dark and the fear and anger and grief was still palpable. And I still live with friends whose losses were far deeper and more painful than my own.
We remember. For God's sake, We Remember.
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