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Mercnbeth -> Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 10:24:32 AM)

I trust that its possible to bring another subject to this section; some may even welcome it.

Tomorrow marks the passing of another year from the day that was the demarcation point in my life. Those that know me personally know of what I speak. But this isn't about me. It's about my anger and frustration of what is occurring at the site I formally called my home office. After seven years all that's there is a hole. It is a national embarrassment. Go ahead, pick a political party, or agenda based advocates - ALL are responsible. Blame is for children and rear view mirror viewers. The bottom line is seven years later, there is still a hole where my office used to be.

After the attack I remember the advocacy and determination that existed among us to rebuild taller, higher, more elaborate. There was a desire to use the event not as a point of failure but as a rallying point for a lower Manhattan Renaissance. There was worry today about the Hadron Collider producing a 'black hole'. There's been one in NYC for seven years. A black hole of mismanagement, ego, guilt, political correctness; basically a black hole of many of the same things wrong with the USA in general right there to be seen by everyone in the world. Building have gone up in half the time taller, bigger, more expansive than anything planned for the 'Freedom Tower' in the time since 9/11. However here in the USA, fear keeps us from making any progress. Fear produced by guilt, fear produced by political correctness, fear produced wondering what others in the world will think if we dare to once again try to have the tallest, the biggest, and be the best; which used to be our country's mission statement while I was growing up. However that is now not the case. I'm not even sure it's an acceptable sentiment to aspire. As a result in lower Manhattan there is still a hole where my office used to be.

Tomorrow there will be much gnashing of teeth and wailing. I didn't want to commemorate that day. I prefer to commemorate the day before when I was planning on being at the office at 8:30 until later that night when my partner decided to take the early meeting and recommended I meet him instead at 11:00. Two and a half hours made for a big difference in my life. Meanwhile some rationalization for the hole where my office used to be...
quote:

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mayor Bloomberg Wednesday called for a city takeover of Ground Zero construction.
"Progress on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center has been frustratingly slow, owing in large part to a multi-layered governance structure that has undermined accountability from the get-go," Bloomberg wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/10/2008-09-10_mayor_bloomberg_asks_for_lmdc_to_be_dism.html 


Seven years later here's the view of my office today: http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/groundzero/ 

I don't go back to New York if I can help it.



GreedyTop -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 10:31:58 AM)

*hugs Merc*



Bethnai -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 10:40:27 AM)

I am ready for something else to discuss. The best that I can do is echo the *hugs*.
I'm not even huggy.



LaTigresse -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 10:44:30 AM)

Merc, I was thinking about you just the other day when I realized what the date was. Trying to imagine what it is like to experience September 11th, now, from your perspective. I just couldn't imagine.



bipolarber -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 11:05:49 AM)

Hard to believe it's been seven years... seems like yesterday.
I lost a friend in that attack, and was frantically calling two others I knew in the area, to make sure they were okay. (Appaerntly, they were on their roof, several miles away, watching the towers collapse.)

I'm taking tomorrow off from my work. I'm staying home most of the day, and that evening,  I will probably join in a candlelight service for those who died that day.



hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 11:10:19 AM)

Merc, even though I'm an Oklahoma native and have never been to NYC (before Or after) - I know where you're coming from on a strange level.
 
April 19, 1995.  Downtown Oklahoma City, 5 minutes from my home - both then and now.  While I didn't work in the Murrah building, I had friends who did.  The Murrah building and OKC are considerably smaller than the Twin Towers and NYC, and ceased to draw headlines or be remembered by anyone other than those of us who lived here a long time ago.  It took them 4 years to finish cleaning up the mess, plan, and build the memorial that ended up on the spot.  Now, 13 years later, traffic patterns are forever changed and disrupted and even the memorial is damn near forgotten except by a handful.
 
Things change, and eventually wounds heal.  The wound in Manhattan will eventually heal as well - or at least it'll scab over better and quit being a gaping hole where Life used to be.  It can't be soon enough, and the steaming pile of political horseshit that surrounds closing the wound is something that won't quickly be resolved.  You have my hope and prayers, however, that you personally can look beyond the eyesore that it currently is - forward to a time when that eyesore is gone, and only memory stands in the way of moving past the event.



CallaFirestormBW -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 11:30:35 AM)

It seems ironic, to me, that last night I was completely frustrated with the options for entertainment, and pulled out some old "Penn and Teller Bullshit" episodes -- one of the ones that I watched was their episode on "Ground Zero" and their blunt expose on the political "waste"land surrounding Ground Zero.

I am disgusted, and there is a very cynical part of me that wonders whether that hole in the ground is being left there to keep people from moving forward... to keep them afraid, controllable, and ignorant for as long as possible.

It angers me in ways that I can't even really explain well that, six years after this attempt to bring us crawling on our knees, we are -still- kneeling... this time at the feet of incompetent politicians who are incapable of envisioning and bringing forth a symbol of our own Phoenix-nature... leaving the implication that we are incapable of rising from the ashes of our own political posturing.

Calla Firestorm



Cuffkinks -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 11:54:29 AM)

My brother was going to school in the area, and My oldest friend in the world (know each other for 32 years now.) was a NYPD officer. He's since retired. I was on the phone all day on 9/11 trying to get through to them from Florida. I finally got through about one o'clock in the morning. There was no way I could've slept until I knew they were both ok. That was a bad day.
   When I was a kid growing up in NY, we used to go into Brooklyn to have dinner with My grandparents every Sunday. As the towers were going up, I remember asking My father, "What's that?" He told Me "That what makes NY the greatest city in the world. That will be the World Trade Center." Each week he'd tell Me about the progress made as I saw the towers getting taller and taller. (My father was just about the proudest NY'er there ever was. He loved the city.) He had passed on before 9/11. (Thankfully. He wouldn't have been able to handle it.) As I sat there watching the events unfold on TV...Like everyone else, it seemed surreal to Me. I can't help but think about him anytime I think about 9/11, so I try not to. 
  I've been to ground zero. I stood there in the middle of the hole. My friend (NYPD) brought Me in. I remember him telling Me..."Mike, I love my job...but the day after 9/11...it was the first time I didn't want to go to work." He worked ground zero in the makeshift morgue they set up.
  I'm with you Merc. I don't want to commemorate that day either. I'm still full of anger and sadness from the attacks. And I want to see rebuilding finished so we can look and see bigger, taller, and better in physical form, and give a big F-U! to those responsible. Until the site is complete, the terrorists are still winning. They can laugh at us to this day due to our own incompetence.
  Sorry if I got a little self-centered and/or off topic. Apparently, I'm not done venting yet. 
 



Vendaval -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 12:12:08 PM)

Please do so Merc, this forum is called Off-Topic and open to a wide variety of subjects.
 
I cannot imagine how you are feeling or the many other people who were directly effected by the events of that day.  The same applies to the people of OKC.
 
A big hole in the ground after all this time?  What bullshit!
 
You and beth are in my thoughts and prayers.
 
Blessed Be,
 
Vendaval


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
I trust that its possible to bring another subject to this section; some may even welcome it.



pahunkboy -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 12:21:04 PM)

alright.  My view- and it wont be popular.

per 9-11 ... my inner thoughts are   [to myself, who cares.]

we have surrendered the bill of rights over an insurance fraud.   Silverstein is trying to collect 2x the amount. He claims it was 2 incidents.  

But now in day to day. I have to worry about my papers. How I conduct business. If I say the wrong thing- if I will get into trouble.

I no longer mourn for that day.

We are now a very different country. Thanks  not to any terrorts, but to our reaction to the attack.

At minumal the govt was negligent. There you have the most valuable land in the country tied to capitalism and fighter planes were not around......   Add to that the 600% increase in puts/calls that secret inventors made a ton of money.

So a pair of buildings destroyed for the insurance.... is nothing to mourn.

In the process of slaying the boogieman, we have become the boogieman.


So to me- 9-11 is a non-event.

It simply destroyed the bill of rights......    [ducks for cover..]



Aileen1968 -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 12:53:55 PM)

I've been into the city countless times since 9-11 and have yet to have the desire to go see that hole.  I remember how completely mentally fucked up my cousin was from seeing people jump.  I think it would be things like that that I would be thinking of instead of good things....my aunt worked in the towers for years.  She loved that area.  My parents were married in Trinity.  They all grew up in the Lower East Side.  They were devastated when 9-11 happened. My father cried.  You should go to the beach tomorrow Merc and then do some fun things to Beth.  Peace.



heartcream -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 1:20:48 PM)

I sure remember that day. I dont feel any rush to re-build, so many lives were lost, so much devastation, let the dead and damaged have time to, I dont know, but it doesnt feel like building a bigger building is going to change much of anything.

I worked in a restaurant just below St Vincent's Hospital and we stayed open. There were barricades everywhere. We served so many folks dealing with all the devastation, folks who didnt go to work that day. One guy was high up in rank in that top floor company, forget the name, he was engaged to be married like the next week. Him and his fiancee went ahead and got married. They frequented our restaurant and celebrated her 40th birthday there and at that time she was pregnant, some time after they were married. So many goose bumps flying around from the stories being told of narrow misses, and lost love, lives. I remember the smell, it stood out intensely. I lived up by the Empire State Building and you could smell it up there too. I didnt go visit the hole until like a year later, so freaky and creepy.

Gee the stories around that time, how people and animals reacted.

Aileen1968 has a great idea to go to the beach...



NuevaVida -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 1:33:12 PM)

I went to ground zero three years ago on my first trip to New York.  I wanted to see the placard listing all those who died, to somehow, in my own way, honor the wife of one of my bosses, who was on one of those planes.  I've been to NY several times since but have not returned there.  I can't believe all this time later it looks no different.  It's not only a shame but a complete disrespect.

I had no idea you were that close to being inside.  I am glad the world didnt' lose you on that day.  I agree that you should do something wonderful tomorrow, and celebrate life.  We really do have much to be grateful for.



cloudboy -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 2:15:33 PM)


Are you saying you used to work in the WTC?



StrictnSaucy -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 3:02:12 PM)

Visited NY earlier this year.  Did not go visit the site.  Will do when it is re-developed. I think the best way forward to honour the lost lives is to rebuild and be even bigger and better than before.

New York is the most cool, friendly and vibrant city I ever visited.



DomKen -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 3:37:56 PM)

Merc,

I was just talking about this with a close friend who was working for one of the big bond companies there on 9/11. I simply don't understand what is going on with this. It always seemed to me that the thing to do was replace the buildings and honor the dead in a memorial at ground level. that way there is a tangible thing for the families and the skyline returns to the exact way it was before showing that such an act cannot change even one city forever.

The frankly bizarre plans for structures on the sight and the insistence on an elaborate memorial seems contrary to how we best remember such tragedies. I think the goal should be for something with the simple beauty and impact of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial or the Wall in D.C..

Have as good a day tomorrow as you can.



hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 3:45:56 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen
I think the goal should be for something with the simple beauty and impact of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial or the Wall in D.C.


It seems almost strange hearing an outta towner call the Murrah memorial things like "simple" or "beautiful" Ken.  There's...... to much of the building left on the site (the concrete base of walls that were part of the structure, etc) .. to be "beautiful" to some of us.  Then again, I was part of the group that petitioned not to have a memorial built at All on the site.  Rebuilding - just... putting a new building up where the old one had stood - seems like a more fitting Memorial to me than any sort of ... I dun know.... glitz & glamor plaque studded light show.  Proof, if you will, that Life Goes On.  Proof that we haven't been overwhelmed.  Proof that we haven't been Substantially CHANGED or Damaged by the action that caused us to rebuild.
 
In the spirit of that same attitude, I would much prefer Not to see a "memorial" of some sort go up at the WTC site.  Just rebuild.  Erect new buildings, let companies move back into that piece of prime real estate for their offices, and get on with living life.



SilverMark -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 4:15:58 PM)

RE-BUILD....finish the healing....memorialize, never forget, Build it bigger, and better!



philosophy -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 6:12:57 PM)

.....i sincerely hope that the sun is shining tomorrow for you Merc......look up at the sky and remember that not everything that comes from it is bad.....hugs.

philo



SummerWind -> RE: Lower Manhattan (9/10/2008 6:38:41 PM)

I was in the city that day.  About a mile North of the towers.  It was the one and only day in my life that I a felt the emotion of intense real fear. The anger in me has not subsided.....It has actually grown.....for both what those cocksuckers did to us and how we have responded.   I was also there on the next day walking past military people with machine guns on corners where Sabrett trucks used to be.  The surreal thing about day two in addition to the pile of rubble was the deafening silence throughout the whole city.....I knew three people that were oblierated...two were never found.......I was never in harms way and am not writing this to elicit a shred of sympathy for me.....I am writing it to sustain my own anger and maintain the anger in anyone who reads it......



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