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Five years ago
Sep. 11th, 2006 06:39 amOn September 9, 2001, we did a day trip from our home in Western CT to lower Manhattan. We met my mother and her husband and my Brooklynite brother, and took the ferry to Ellis Island. After they left for their various homes we visited the Native American museum and then walked all the way up the island to Grand Central, stopping for dinner in Little Italy. I'd never been to lower Manhattan before, and didn't particularly notice the World Trade Center. Afterwards, of course, there the towers are, so high above the rest of the skyscrapers in the photos from Ellis Island.
On 9/11 mr. flea stayed home from work, suffering from chronic bad attitude. (He hated his job; I was in the throes of leaving my dissertation and I think stll not medicated for depression - it was a tough couple of years there in CT). He was being such a pill that I turned on the TV - we never watched TV during the day - to get away from him. Right in time to see (I think) Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer grappling with the first reports from the WTC, and then to see the second plane hit - I am pretty sure they had (bad) live video from a chopper.
The day got long and a mixture of incredibly sharp and blurry from there on out:
I called my brother in Williamsburg. It was his 23rd birthday, and he was still asleep in bed, as he worked for a software company and rarely went to work before 11am. I said, "First of all, Happy Birthday. Second of all, turn on the television. Please don't go to work today." (He worked below 34th Street, I'm not sure exactly where; I think he ended up not going in for a week or so). We didn't talk long, and I think all he said was "Wow. Oh my god," several times.
I emailed my mother and my sister to let them know I'd talked to him; I think the phones were already clogged to NYC at that point.
In CT we had the same weather as NYC - that blue blue sky that nobody will ever forget. That day they kept mentioning that airline pilots called it "severe clear;" I recently found out that now people call it a "9/11 sky."
B.org became a news relay for people without TV. Radio had bad unreliable coverage - NPR was useless - and the likes of CNN.com and MSNBC were completely jammed. We counted up the NYCistas, and later DCistas, and reckoned where they lived and worked and waited for them to check in. They all did, pretty fast, either first or second-hand.
Peter Jennings. His terrorism expert John Wossname.
Peter Jennings with live video behind him, as the first tower collapsed, and he is told in his earbud what is happening (since he can't see the video of the broadcast from his chair) and his very quickly controlled reaction. I think he said, "What?" in a shocked almost-whisper, and then got it together.
Rudy Giuliani, providing the only governmental leadership that day.
My friend from Cincinnati called, to say that they were all watching TV in the library together. I could barely talk, and then the second tower fell as we were talking, and I said, "All those people," and hung up.
I got an email from M., that she and S. had met on a street corner and just stood there, looking downtown.
mr. flea went to work the next day; I walked down to the grocery store and bought a NYT and read it obsessively. Our friend B. came to stay the night one day that week - maybe as late as Friday - because she didn't want to be home alone. We tried to watch Monty Python to be distracted, but there happened to be a skit where people were falling out of office building windows.
On 9/11 mr. flea stayed home from work, suffering from chronic bad attitude. (He hated his job; I was in the throes of leaving my dissertation and I think stll not medicated for depression - it was a tough couple of years there in CT). He was being such a pill that I turned on the TV - we never watched TV during the day - to get away from him. Right in time to see (I think) Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer grappling with the first reports from the WTC, and then to see the second plane hit - I am pretty sure they had (bad) live video from a chopper.
The day got long and a mixture of incredibly sharp and blurry from there on out:
I called my brother in Williamsburg. It was his 23rd birthday, and he was still asleep in bed, as he worked for a software company and rarely went to work before 11am. I said, "First of all, Happy Birthday. Second of all, turn on the television. Please don't go to work today." (He worked below 34th Street, I'm not sure exactly where; I think he ended up not going in for a week or so). We didn't talk long, and I think all he said was "Wow. Oh my god," several times.
I emailed my mother and my sister to let them know I'd talked to him; I think the phones were already clogged to NYC at that point.
In CT we had the same weather as NYC - that blue blue sky that nobody will ever forget. That day they kept mentioning that airline pilots called it "severe clear;" I recently found out that now people call it a "9/11 sky."
B.org became a news relay for people without TV. Radio had bad unreliable coverage - NPR was useless - and the likes of CNN.com and MSNBC were completely jammed. We counted up the NYCistas, and later DCistas, and reckoned where they lived and worked and waited for them to check in. They all did, pretty fast, either first or second-hand.
Peter Jennings. His terrorism expert John Wossname.
Peter Jennings with live video behind him, as the first tower collapsed, and he is told in his earbud what is happening (since he can't see the video of the broadcast from his chair) and his very quickly controlled reaction. I think he said, "What?" in a shocked almost-whisper, and then got it together.
Rudy Giuliani, providing the only governmental leadership that day.
My friend from Cincinnati called, to say that they were all watching TV in the library together. I could barely talk, and then the second tower fell as we were talking, and I said, "All those people," and hung up.
I got an email from M., that she and S. had met on a street corner and just stood there, looking downtown.
mr. flea went to work the next day; I walked down to the grocery store and bought a NYT and read it obsessively. Our friend B. came to stay the night one day that week - maybe as late as Friday - because she didn't want to be home alone. We tried to watch Monty Python to be distracted, but there happened to be a skit where people were falling out of office building windows.