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a whole freakin' archive of jabber Thursday, March 14, 2002... 4:40 PM oh wow, i just saw the funniest thing at work... i just caught our 60-year-old german receptionist singing "Live and Let Die" (with gusto, no less) all by herself up at the front reception area.
Tuesday, March 12, 2002... 7:52 AM Tonight was the first night of the Towers of Light, marking the six-month anniversary of the September 11th attacks.For those who don't know, eighty-eight high-powered searchlights have been constructed in an empty lot next to Ground Zero, shooting two tubes blueish-white light straight up into the air as a memorial to the fallen World Trade Center. The lights will be on every night from sunset till 11:00pm until April 13th. When I first heard about the memorial, I felt an odd sense of welcome for it. It was the first "tribute" to the attacks that I've welcomed thus far, outside of the spontaneous memorials that covered the city in the weeks and months following the attacks. I've seen a number of television programs promising to pay tribute to the fallen, and I've only been left angered or saddened by them. Many people already know how I feel about the "tribute" CBS paid to the attacks with last night's airing of "9/11." I left work a little early to go home and bundle up. I was going out to the Brooklyn Bridge, and even on a hot summer day, you can get a little chill from the harbor’s winds. I wrapped myself up in a thick sweater, my 1945 Army-issue wool coat, hat, gloves, boots, and made a cup of coffee to take with me. On the bus ride down, I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. What would this bring me? As I walked out onto the bridge, sunset slowly engaged the sky with hues of purple and red and orange, and I started remembering the day of September 11th. There were so many parts of that day that I am still unable to forget six months later. How when I was getting dressed that morning, I thought that my necklace didn’t look right with my outfit, but I didn’t have time to fiddle with it. How the donuts didn’t look fresh in the case, and that had just set me off in a mood. How walking to my apartment from my office after we’d all decided to split up, the only sounds that could be heard in my neighborhood were fighter jets and sirens. There are so many things that I want desperately to lay to rest, to maneuver their way out of the front of my mind, to rest in peace in a further corner of my brain than they have been these past six months. It still seems unbelievable that six months have past already. Most of the time it doesn’t quite feel like yesterday, but more like a week or two ago. For many people in New York and elsewhere, the memory of September 11th is still as fresh as a ripe blister on the ball of their feet. I found a place for myself and my coffee at the first pillar on the bridge. I snapped a few pictures of the various stages of the cityscape at sunset as more and more people arrived. There were tourists, New Yorkers, Jerseyites and many others out there with me, all waiting to see what this memorial would bring us. The wind picked up a few notches, and then a few notches more, and I felt my fingers going a little numb and my face starting to burn as we waited. Mother Nature had the auto-dimmer on “slow,” and the city began to sparkle with its usual, easy luxury. I saddened at the memory of one of the last times I was on this bridge—showing some family members the glory of the New York City skyline over the summer. “There’s no other city like this in the world,” I told them with all of my transplant-New-Yorker pride. “There’s no other view that can compare.” Those sentiments are still true, but there is an unfathomable tear in the view that now exists, one that no one seems to know how to fill. After about an hour of waiting, I believe the left side of my face fell off into the East River and I wasn’t sure I had hands at all anymore. For my tastes, it was plenty dark, and had been plenty dark for quite some time (funny how much slower time passes in the freezing cold), but I reminded myself that feeling cold, or feeling anything at all, meant that I was still alive. Though the thought provided little physical warmth, my emotions were warmed. At around 7:00pm, we saw a flicker come through the gaping hole where the Trade Center Towers once stood. The crowd fell silent at first, but as the light grew taller and brighter, there were reverential oooo’s and ahhh’s that crept out of all of us. The lights erected themselves in full glory, and I felt a wave of an indescribable emotion flow over me. It was sadness and peace, anger and deference all rolled up into one giant flood, and I began to cry. I watched as the light climbed past the former heights of heights of the towers and banged up against a few passing clouds, as if to say, “Excuse me, we’re passing through here on a mission.” Their mission was to reach up into heaven tonight. Whatever you define heaven to be, the Towers of Light found that place tonight and brought the grace of infinity down to us and showered the city with a beacon of hope. I crouched down and stared as they washed me clean of the more painful parts of the last six months, as they brought peace and closure to me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. They stand there tonight as a symbol of strength and courage, and of humility and serenity. They stand there ready to release, to reach further, to bring to the citizens of the city whatever it is we need them to do. I see them still, as I write this, right outside my apartment window. The end of the light can’t be seen, because the light shines on forever, and I have found a sense of peace that I haven’t known for six months. I can only hope that those who suffered, and those who continue to suffer far worse than I have, can find the strange sense of relief that I feel tonight. No television special, no photograph, no inside look, no tribute concert, no anything can provide the subtle wisdom of light that glows within me and within this city again tonight.
Friday, March 08, 2002... 11:31 AM so, my mom sent me and my brother one of those emails where they have you do a whole bunch of math questions, and then at the end, they ask you something completely random, and everyone is supposed to guess the same thing.in this case, the random part was "think of a color and a tool," the answer that 98% of the people give is "red hammer." i guess mom was a red-hammer-answerer and it really freaked her out, so she wanted me and my brother (being computer gee-nee-us-z) to try it. my answer: "orange hammer" my brother's answer: "red cable-cutters" so, looks like he and i are only slightly off-center... as usual. i think it's funny that my variation was the color and his variation was the tool. i think that means something... when my dad saw my brother's answer, he shot out one of his typical dad-isms: "eh, he's a cut above the rest." (*groan giggle groan*)
Thursday, March 07, 2002... 9:47 AM I DON'T KNOW IF THIS HAS COME UP AT ALL, BUT...I'M GOING TO GERMANY! WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Wednesday, March 06, 2002... 3:53 PM I'M GOING TO GERMANY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN EIGHT YEARS!WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! just booked my flight for 14. May, until 26. May. lufthansa is running a promotion for their new flight, JFK to Munich direct for $480 including taxes. called my host mom and told her i'm coming to the festival this year (Bergkirchweih), do i have a place to stay? why yes, yes i do, she squealed! i am BOUNCING OFF THE FREAKIN' WALLS, Y'ALL! gonna call dad's family tomorrow morning and let them know that the Bodensee is calling me and i'll be there around the 21. May. I CAN'T WAIT!
Saturday, March 02, 2002... 5:16 PM The following is a copy of an email campaign that I started this week. Please help pass the word... thank you! -- On March 10th, 2002, CBS will be broadcasting a special presentation about September 11th, hosted by Robert De Niro. I first saw the advertisement for this special during the Grammy Awards, sandwiched in between tasty beverage and pretty car advertisements. A voiceover during the ad rang out: “See footage you haven’t seen before--inside the towers!” I am outraged and floored at the notion that this event has been turned into a TV special not unlike a special episode of “Cops” or “When Wild Animals Attack.” The media insist that we have not have enough of this, that there is still something for us to see, that this is not unlike the car accident on the highway that we all just can’t take our eyes off of. Sponsoring this event, I’m sure in the name of fundraising and not in the name of spreading their own name, is Nextel. As a citizen of New York, I had plenty of with-my-own-eyes coverage and plenty of on-the-TV-coverage during the weeks and months following 9-11. I do realize that it may be difficult for people in other parts of the country to fathom what we in New York went through during that time, and what we still struggle with on a daily basis. The rest of the nation may still be trying to find ways to understand an experience that for them was reduced to a 21” box. However, presenting tragedy--in words from CBS’s own website, “the material also encompasses dramatic scenes of escaping the North Tower in the minutes before the building collapsed”--in this same format with the hopes of providing viewers with a new thrill is not the way to provide the healing we all so desperately seek, no matter where we live or where we were that day. I don’t know what the loved ones of those that died in New York think of this special presentation, but if I were them, I would be infuriated to see that the tragic death of a special person in my life had been turned into such a sideshow circus act. Viewers will not tune in to analyze and process the events of 9-11; no, instead, they will tune in to see one more slice of gore and horror that they hadn’t gotten before. It’s the never-ending quest of our culture, in my opinion, to seek out a higher high, a cheaper thrill, or The Next Big Thing. We are a culture obsessed with what we *could* have, and if there’s anything we should have learned from 9-11, it’s to be eternally grateful for what we have now and who we are now. The media are telling me that we, as a culture, have not learned this lesson. So, I ask you to please join with me and abstain from watching this special and to contact the sponsors and producers of this broadcast with your resounding disapproval, if not disgust, for their perpetuation of a culture of excess using the incomprehensible disaster of September 11th. At the end of this email, you’ll find various means of contacting those people. If you feel the need to see images and footage to help you deal with the events of 9-11, come to New York City and visit the New York Historical Society (http://www.nyhistory.org/) and the Here Is New York project (http://hereisnewyork.org/). And then visit all the other things people have been coming to New York to experience since this great city began, because we’d love to have you. Please pass this letter on to anyone you think might be interested in joining us. Thank you for taking the time to read. deanna z. deannaz@earthlink.net Contact CBS Television Network: http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.shtml 51 West 52nd Street New York, NY 10019 Main Number: (212) 975-4321 Contact Nextel: http://www.nextel.com/contact/ Corporate Headquarters Nextel Communications 2001 Edmund Halley Dr. Reston, Virginia 20191 Phone: 703-433-4000
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