To: johnvoelcker@yahoo.com
Subject: a pause, and no more than a pause, Sep 11
This morning in Manhattan is very similar to that of two years ago. Perhaps the cloudless sky is not quite so bright a blue. Or perhaps our memory is so sharply etched that the day two years ago was the brighest, the bluest morning of any September day ever.
The weather is fine, warming up, a fine fall day. Kids are back in school. Traffic is picking up after the summer lull and the Labor Day week. Horns honk. Construction workers curse. Newly walking toddlers stagger down the sidewalk under the watchful eyes of caregivers from other countries.
But many things are different. On September 11 last year and in 2001, I was at work. This year I’m not. First, Eziba moved its offices to smaller, cheaper space. Then it restructured, eliminating my job. Like many in this “jobless recovery,” my former employer is a fraction of its former size, tightly focused and working hard on surviving.
Thankfully, the media have approached this anniversary quietly. Meditative stories on how the relatives are coping are carefully interwoven into business-as-usual news. Both the coverage and the commemorations feel locally focused. I sense the rest of the nation may nod to the tragedy and keep moving. Of AOL members surveyed in August, 73% planned nothing to mark 9/11 this year.
Most New Yorkers will pause for a few moments to remember, reflect, acknowledge. Surveys say we are still affected, we feel unprepared for future attacks, we are worried and distracted. One-third of us do not feel we have returned to normal. We are all part of the grieving family. But we will pause only for a few moments. No one wants to wallow. It’s bad form. Even numb, the world goes on.
A lowkey ceremony this morning focused on the families, with the names of the dead read by children related to them. The Vice President is visiting New York, but will not appear at Ground Zero — to avoid the need for frisking and scanning the thousands of relatives there.
For my own part, at the very moments of impact (8:46 am and 9:13 am), I was having breakfast in midtown. My friend Luke, the quintessential organizer, brought together five of us, four unemployed, to discuss current projects, swap contacts and generally keep ourselves in the game. No one mentioned 9/11. We were all aware of it, I think. But it didn’t need to be said.
In the last year, much has been accomplished. Selection of Daniel Liebeskind’s remarkable plan for redevelopment at Ground Zero was the end of one particular journey. Expectations are high, perhaps too high: Can any design meet the varied and primal needs of such a diverse and contentious audience as all those affected by 9/11? Normally architecture starts with a “program,” a set of needs and specifications for the uses of a site or structure. In this case, the program includes the visceral, the emotional, the memorial, the national, the unthinkable.
To me, the plan’s rightness is emphasized by Liebeskind the man: An immigrant to the USA and a Jew, whose previously best-known building is the unsettling and undeniably affecting Holocaust Museum in Berlin.
In the coming years, the clash-of-titans process that is New York City real estate development will play out. Structures will be planned, debated, built, and then debated some more. It remains to be seen how well the designs will meet their twin programs of use and meaning. Our governor is pushing hard for the cornerstone of the 1,776-foot-high Freedom Tower to be laid next summer — around the time the Republican National Convention takes place in this city. I am eager to see the building rise higher than any other. But I’m not holding my breath.
Most surprising, the Port Authority chose Santiago Calatrava to design the transit station on the site. Little known in this country except to architecture buffs, Calatrava was called perhaps the “greatest living poet of transportation architecture” by The New York Times. His lyrical bridges, train depots and communications towers add an almost spiritual dimension to structures often known for plodding functionalism. His selection offers the possibility of a building so striking, so remarkable, that it could represent the redeveloped site as the Opera House does Sydney.
Meanwhile, the new building on the site of 7 WTC rises quickly. Its footprint is different, allowing the reconnection of Greenwich Street — severed 30 years ago by the WTC development itself. The tower will rise 750′ sheer from the street, and the offices sit on top of a Con Ed substation 100′ high. As the first new Ground Zero building, its structure is hardened, its fire exits surrounded by solid concrete (rather than steel supporting wallboard). Its stairwells are more than 100′ apart, and pressurized. The fuel tanks for emergency generators will be below ground level, and outside the building’s footprint. Will these features be built into all future high-rises, including those outside Ground Zero, those in other cities? Let us hope.
This latest structure sits atop 55 caissons (or columns) from the previous tower and substation. In New York, a surprising amount is recycled in places you wouldn’t expect and may never see. A further 92 caissons were added, threaded carefully among reinforcements for the WTC “bathtub,” the adjacent 1/9 subway line, and the sprawling web of Lower Manhattan utilities.
Smaller signs of change are everywhere if you look. Street signs around Ground Zero carry an American flag and “9/11/01” on one end. Barricades made of concrete “Jersey barriers” have given way to rows of new bollards and planters. Fifty million dollars of park improvements in Lower Manhattan have produced charming spaces small and large. Major office buildings routinely demand photo ID and an appointment before visitors can reach the elevators. And a soaring new street-level entrance to the “temporary” open-air PATH station at the bottom of the WTC bathtub means it will reopen before the end of the year, repairing Lower Manhattan’s last severed transportation link.
Four days ago, hundreds gathered to pay their respects to Michael Ragusa, the last of 343 firefighters killed to receive a memorial service. No remains were recovered, so his family buried a vial of blood he had donated to a bone marrow center. With that service, a chapter closes for the FDNY.
My favorite recent news story has been the saga of Reza Baluchi. He jogged across the George Washington Bridge this morning at the end of a cross-country run from Los Angeles, having left his native Iran in 1996 on a 46,000-mile bike tour that took him to 54 countries on six continents. He was jailed for four months last November by U.S. immigration officials before being granted political asylum. He decided to run to NYC and donate his bike to the FDNY. Denied access to Ground Zero, today he is simply hanging out in Battery Park talking to people. I hope somehow he gets to meet Daniel Liebeskind.
In a different vein, this morning’s news brought the surreal story that dozens of insurance companies filed suit yesterday against terrorist groups, companies and countries that support terrorism. They seek $300 billion in damages paid out or set aside as a result of the 9/11 attack. I suppose I wish them good luck in collecting.
As commentators pointed out soon after the attacks, major disasters — natural or manmade — rarely destroy major cities. The 2,792 who died at the WTC were more than perished at any other single event in New York City. They join the 1,021 victims of the 1904 General Slocum ferry fire … the 146 seamstresses burnt to death in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire … the 105 lynched or shot in the bloody 1863 draft riots … the handful killed on Wall Street by an early 1900s anarchist’s bomb outside the headquarters of J.P. Morgan … to mention just a few notorious tragedies of their day. Lessons and changes from those events are woven into the fabric of the city, fading now as memory fades, and the city still stands.
“Now is the time to focus on renewal,” said Christy Ferer. She is the mayor’s liaison to the families of victims of the WTC attacks. She is also the widow of Neil Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority, who died there. “… there are new ways to serve.”
So, like last year I played Sarah McLaughlin’s “Angel” in memorial to the dead, and then Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” in defiance to those who perpetrated the attack. And now I’m moving on to other things. 9/11 will never leave me, but it no longer overwhelms me. My personal renewal is to write a book, a thriller. It’s set in New York City (and other places) but has nothing — directly — to do with 9/11. Wish me luck.
Thanks for sharing this odd journey with me. Life is never perfect, and this has been a very interesting last two years.
But, hey, life … it’s a whole lot better than the alternative, isn’t it?
love, jv.
P.S. A friend of a friend, Chris Barrett of Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada, has posted my complete series of 9/11 letters on his weblog. I’m honored, and it’s kind of nice to see them evolve. If you want to revisit, they’re at http://www.gnusworld.com/911/jv-911.html . As always, feel free to circulate this if you know people who might be interested.
===== John Voelcker