John Voelcker’s letters are his own observations about life in NY following the events of September 11th, 2001. Written without foreknowledge of the times ahead, they provide insight into events that many of us are destined to remember as mere TV images long after the raw emotions of the day have faded into the past. The …
Read more “2026-9-11: I’m struggling to put together a September 11 letter this year”
Dear All As anniversaries go, the 17th is not auspicious. For wedding anniversaries, the traditional gift on the 17th year is furniture—and I’d expect a married couple to have adequate furnishings by then. Being selective these days about the news I consume, I was able to ignore mentions and descriptions the 9/11 anniversary entirely. But life, …
I seem to have been out of New York a lot on September 11. Five years ago, in 2006, I was in San Francisco, as I had been the year before that. This morning, I’m in Frankfurt, drinking tea and staring out my 26th-floor hotel window into a gray afternoon. Right now, relatives of the …
This morning, five years to the minute after the airplanes hit the towers, I was asleep. Just as I was last year. As I write, I’m looking out on a classic foggy San Francisco morning. The radio’s off, and I’m not sure how to turn on my friend Rich’s television. And I don’t want to. …
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 …
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To: johnvoelcker@yahoo.com Subject: enough, Sep 11 September 11 is not going to be a clear, bright, crisp autumn morning, as it was a year ago. Perhaps that would be too much poetic symmetry. Early this morning, the humidity is 100% and it’ll be intermittently cloudy and windy today. More than 2,000 memorial services are scheduled for …
Eight months and counting … except we’re not counting any more. For me and most people I talk to, the events of 9/11 have passed out of daily discussion. They are now part of the context of New York. We all nod to them, allude to their effects. It was a tough winter (facial inflection …
From: JVoelcker The Jewish custom of sitting shiva after a death, similar in some ways to the Irish wake, provides for a designated 7-day period of mourning. There follow 30 days of lesser mourning, and 11 months during which a mourner says Kaddish twice daily. These rituals also specify the end of mourning, when life …
Subj: a farewell & a question, Jan 11, 2002 A new year has arrived in New York, with new realities, a new mayor and a new dose of an old lesson: What goes up must come down. New York has always been governed by economic cycles, and the onset of a prolonged downturn is a …
Even in a city of unusual sights, shorts and t-shirts in early December are startling. The weather here has finally turned toward winter, with colder temperatures and rain. But last week was sunny and pleasant, with temperatures in the low 70s. Only the low angle of the sun gave away the month. Some flowering trees …