Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
1.13.2010
9.11.2009
9.11.2008
102 Minutes
I've just given up watching this documentary on The History Channel. It's not that it's poorly made or uninvolving. What it is, is entirely emotionally draining. Devastating, really, if you want to get right down to it.
Still, 102 Minutes is a document for history. With real-time eyewitness video capturing the panic and despair that gripped a city, and a nation, the film relays what it was like to be on the streets of Manhattan that fateful day.
I couldn't even make it to the first collapse. I just had to stop. I've seen it before, and the perspectives offered in the film are riveting, but it's disturbing nonetheless.
--A young couple sets up their video camera while the first tower burns, and they [and we] witness the second tower get hit. The sheer terror in that room was palpable, even 7-years and 3000-miles removed from the tragedy on my couch in San Luis Obispo, CA.
--People gathered in Times Square watching the jumbo-tron on the Times building see the second tower get hit and pandemonium breaks out.
--One guy is overheard on the street telling a friend, "I was late for work 'cause I watched Monday Night Football last night. Monday Night Football saved my life. I was 15 minutes away from being in that building."
--A little girl of about 4 or 5 points out her apartment window and says, simply: "It's not there anymore. The World Trade Center. Right Dada? It's not there anymore."
--There's unvarnished fear in the eyes of emergency personnel waiting to enter the burning buildings to help any victims. And when their commander warns them to watch out for "jumpers," one young fireman looks directly at the video camera and you see him take a noticeable gulp.
There were a lot of heroes on that day, and a lot of regular folks who did what they could to survive.
And there are a lot of Americans who still, today, will never be the same.
Still, 102 Minutes is a document for history. With real-time eyewitness video capturing the panic and despair that gripped a city, and a nation, the film relays what it was like to be on the streets of Manhattan that fateful day.
I couldn't even make it to the first collapse. I just had to stop. I've seen it before, and the perspectives offered in the film are riveting, but it's disturbing nonetheless.
--A young couple sets up their video camera while the first tower burns, and they [and we] witness the second tower get hit. The sheer terror in that room was palpable, even 7-years and 3000-miles removed from the tragedy on my couch in San Luis Obispo, CA.
--People gathered in Times Square watching the jumbo-tron on the Times building see the second tower get hit and pandemonium breaks out.
--One guy is overheard on the street telling a friend, "I was late for work 'cause I watched Monday Night Football last night. Monday Night Football saved my life. I was 15 minutes away from being in that building."
--A little girl of about 4 or 5 points out her apartment window and says, simply: "It's not there anymore. The World Trade Center. Right Dada? It's not there anymore."
--There's unvarnished fear in the eyes of emergency personnel waiting to enter the burning buildings to help any victims. And when their commander warns them to watch out for "jumpers," one young fireman looks directly at the video camera and you see him take a noticeable gulp.
There were a lot of heroes on that day, and a lot of regular folks who did what they could to survive.
And there are a lot of Americans who still, today, will never be the same.
In Memorium
Portraits of Grief, The New York Times.
Here is the profile of just one of the 2996 victims who died on 9/11. Each had a story to tell, loved ones left behind, a life cut short....
When John P. Lozowsky was told to mow the lawn when he was a child, the results were troubling, if creative, his sister Diane remembers. Using a big nail, he tethered a self-propelling mower to a cinder block, "so he could lie back and sunbathe so the mower could do its job," she said.
At 45, he still had his own way of doing things. His Hawaiian shirts raised eyebrows where he worked as a contractor for Marsh & McLennan. Faced with a pay cut, he said, "You know, we make too much money anyway; the money we make should be given to nurses and firemen and police," recalled Lynda Blake, an office friend. He biked to work from Queens and had a $450 car, which his son, niece and nephew helped paint, to travel between New York City and Skaneateles, where he spent long weekends.
He moved around a lot, having lived in New Zealand for 12 years, long enough to become a citizen. He called people "mate" and was laid-back in a Kiwi kind of way, said a co-worker, Michael Notabartolo.
Ms. Lozowsky said: "You never knew when he would pop in or pop out, so his death is really distant. I've gone a year without seeing him, I've gone four years without seeing him, and it's like he's not even gone yet. For us he could be in New Zealand, or New York City, or Belfast. Some of us haven't yet started the process of missing and grieving."
CNN lists them all...
The Big Lies
HONG KONG - Dear, sweet Laura Bush told the biggest, baldest lie at last week's Republican National Convention. "Let's not forget," the first lady said, "President [George W] Bush has kept the American people safe."
Mrs Bush, your husband and his administration did not keep the American people safe. On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people died, and more than 6,000 were injured as al-Qaeda hijackers crashed commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. The Bush people act as if someone else was in charge when it happened.
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