![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
(slightly edited version of what I first posted here on 9/13/2006)
----------------------------------------
The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.
I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.
But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.
I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if some of the details are smudged. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.
A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.
My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.
As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.
I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.
I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.
I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for some of my favorite Ground Zero photos.
(Ed. note/2008: OK, so it's not a *yellow* ribbon, and it's too dark to really see. The second photo shows the tree at dusk, against the Ground Zero skyline.)
That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.
Additional NYC photos:
from my first visit, Oct. '01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
from the April '02 visit with the beams of light
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
----------------------------------------
The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.
I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.
But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.
I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if some of the details are smudged. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.
A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.
My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.
As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.
I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.
I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.
I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for some of my favorite Ground Zero photos.
(Ed. note/2008: OK, so it's not a *yellow* ribbon, and it's too dark to really see. The second photo shows the tree at dusk, against the Ground Zero skyline.)
That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.
Additional NYC photos:
from my first visit, Oct. '01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
from the April '02 visit with the beams of light
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
- Location:Gonic NH
- Mood:pensive
- Music:New York State of Mind
(slightly edited version of what I first posted here on 9/13/2006)
----------------------------------------
The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.
I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.
But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.
I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if some of the details are smudged. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.
A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.
My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.
As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.
I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.
I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.
I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for some of my favorite Ground Zero photos.
(Ed. note/2008: OK, so it's not a *yellow* ribbon, and it's too dark to really see. The second photo shows the tree at dusk, against the Ground Zero skyline.)
That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.
Additional NYC photos:
from my first visit, Oct. '01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
from the April '02 visit with the beams of light
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
----------------------------------------
The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.
I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.
But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.
I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if some of the details are smudged. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.
A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.
My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.
As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.
I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.
I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.
I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for some of my favorite Ground Zero photos.
(Ed. note/2008: OK, so it's not a *yellow* ribbon, and it's too dark to really see. The second photo shows the tree at dusk, against the Ground Zero skyline.)
That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.
Additional NYC photos:
from my first visit, Oct. '01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
from the April '02 visit with the beams of light
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N0
- Location:seabrook
- Mood:pensive
- Music:New York State of Mind
