Posts Tagged ‘Claverack’

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Letter From New York September 3, 2014

September 3, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds; it is warm but not hot, only slightly humid. Sighing, I am noticing that more leaves outside my window where I write are turning yellow while the soft breeze blows through the branches.

Outside my living room and dining room windows, a tree is being taken down; struck last year by lightening; it has given up the fight. Dying, it needs to be removed lest it fall upon the cottage. I am sorry to see it go; it was a good, strong tree that provided shade to the deck. It was sturdy; it had its place in my life and then, literally, lightening struck and it now is going. It will change my view of the creek; its departure will change my life a little.

But that is what they say life is about: changes. So I have to embrace the change. I am doing a lot of that lately, with having moved on from Odyssey. Appointments in the city moved from this week to next and I find myself with a week at the cottage, an unexpected delight – and a challenge. Now that I do not need to go into town everyday, I am discovering how to discipline myself so I don’t go completely to seed here at the cottage.

The day begins, as it always does, with a perusal of the news from the NY Times, assimilating what has happened overnight. Today there may or may not be a ceasefire in the Ukraine but the possibility of one is a hopeful sign.  

The world is continuing to grapple with the death of American Steven Sotloff, gruesomely beheaded by ISIS [or IS or ISIL, depending on which source you’re reading or who is being quoted].

And, in another sign of change, the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade, will now allow gay groups to march in it. Come next March 17th you can be out and proud and Irish all in the same parade.

Not all change is bad; much of it, in fact, is good if we allow room for it in our lives. That old adage: nothing stays the same is true. Recently, I cleaned out a box of old pictures and nothing reminds you of the time going by then photos of yourself from a different time and life.

I consigned them to the dustbin of history and sent them to be recycled. I am more concerned about now than then. I have carved out a good life for myself here at the cottage and down in the city. I am embracing it. I smile to myself at times; it is a time to cherish, watching the light splatter on my drive, the little fountain in the center of the circular drive gurgling. I have good friends, good neighbors, and good things happening – all the while the world is changing about me.

Carpe diem, said the Romans. Seize the day! And so I am seizing the day and moving on with it, nurtured by the sight of leaves turning in one more cycle of life.

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Letter From New York September 02, 2014

September 2, 2014

Or, as it seems to me… 

I learned a hard lesson yesterday; I wrote a blog directly on WordPress and then there was a glitch and all my eloquent words disappeared into digital dust. So I have learned to draft in Word and copy and paste into WordPress. A small lesson.

I was writing about how beautiful it was but how the leaves had begun to change – fall is no longer far away. You can reach out and touch it.

My mind was focused on the dichotomy between the sylvan beauties of the cottage here in Claverack and the harsh realities when you get away from this little spot. Not so far away Hudson is transforming itself into a quaint town, full of gentrified housing and charming shops and galleries. In twenty-five years, I suspect the town will be rather like Provincetown without the Atlantic.

But that doesn’t change the fact there is poverty in Hudson now and that some of it seems intractable. It’s not the kind of poverty you witness in India but it is hardscrabble for America.

Go a little further afield and you find that Ferguson, MO is still restless and wounded after the shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown. A call for a traffic stoppage mostly didn’t materialize yesterday, at the request of Michael’s father. The death of young Michael Brown has caused America to pause and think about the state of race relations. Have we really come all that far?

African-Americans make up the majority of inmates in prisons. They have higher incidences of poverty. They are more likely to get harassed by the police.

I was at a conference in Washington, DC not so long ago, hosted by Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization. In one of the sessions, the founder of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, asked the audience to look into their hearts to see what private prejudices they maintained. And looking into my heart, I was not innocent. Underneath the surface, it took an extra beat to push back the societal prejudices, not to mention some familial prejudices, that I was raised with – while I might not act upon those thoughts, I still had those thoughts, enough that I sometimes consciously had to batten them down.

I don’t like that.

But it is real. And I suspect is realer than we would really like to admit.

It is nearing the end of the day and reports are filtering out that ISIS, the tightly organized group that is carving out a rogue state, an Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, has beheaded another American, Steven Sotloff, a freelance journalist captured in Syria. Another atrocity in a region filled with atrocities, lands now overflowing with refugees and where suicide bombings seem like a daily event. A world away from the quiet of Patroon Street in Claverack, NY but still in and of my world.

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Letter From New York August 31, 2014

August 31, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

Yesterday was the postcard version of a Hudson River Valley day: the sky was a soft blue, the temperature and humidity was moderate. It was a perfect day for the things I did: Saturday chores, going to the Farmer’s Market and collecting fresh fruit and vegetables [ah, the cantaloupe and donut peaches were succulent], followed by a trip to Olde Hudson for cheeses and pate – all in preparation for two friends coming over for a dinner of nibbles and bits over Prosecco and white wine. I took a long walk around my circle, stopping to chat with one of my neighbors. It was a perfect country Saturday.

I slept in lazily today, hitting the snooze alarm more than once, stretching slowly into awake land, followed by a pot of French Press coffee and some time on the deck overlooking the creek, catching up on the world via the New York Times and BBC News, both of whose apps I have on my iPhone. Soft yellow sunlight danced across the deck while the creek flowed lazily down to the pond. 

But then the skies grew darker and the sunlight danced offstage, the blue sky was replaced by nickel grey; checking the forecast I see that thunderstorms are predicted for the afternoon.

It felt the sky grow darker as I read the news stories, each one a bit darker than the last. Yesterday evening, my friends and I didn’t confront the happenings in the world until long into the evening. The news of the day came up and we skittered away from it immediately, only returning to contemporary events when we were deep in the evening, comforted by a glass of Prosecco or two.

Out in the Mideast, ISIS is seemingly being more than somewhat successful in creating its Caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, cleverly using all kinds of media to further their cause and to recruit supporters from the West to come and devote their lives to Jihad. In the Middle East their message is harsh and brutal: see what we are doing, watch this beheading, see us massacre Syrian or Iraqis, watch us kill the apostate Shia.

In the West, their message is more tempered: come and be with us, you can give up your job and fat life in the West for Jihad because you know your heart is empty and depressed. Jihad is the cure for depression, according to Mohammed.

And to give oneself up to a cause bigger than you can give anyone a thrill of exhilaration, a sense of deadly purpose to the confusion of life and this is what ISIS is playing upon to disaffected Muslims in the West. Come join us; your wives and children will be safe and cared for while you fulfill the Prophet’s higher purpose for you. 

And it is working some; at least two Americans have died fighting for the cause in Syria, one who lived in my home state of Minnesota at least for awhile. It’s hard for me to imagine a Minnesotan fighting jihad in Syria but it has happened. Rather than stressing how good a Western passport is for importing terror to the West, new recruits are being encouraged to burn their passports as a sign they have turned their back on the decadent West and embraced the jihadi cause. We will secure the Caliphate first and then turn our attention to the Satan in the West.

All of this is frightening. Airstrikes have beaten back ISIS in several quarters but the war goes on, as it will go on, as impassioned young men and women, fighting for something they feel is greater than themselves, more important than themselves, seek to upturn the borders made a century ago by the western Allies after the Ottoman Empire fell.

It is amazing and distressing and almost incomprehensible to me that so many are so seduced by such a brutal interpretation of Mohammed. It is as Christians only were responding to the harsh and cruel in the Bible and leaving out the rest – or at least it seems to me. The Islam I studied in college was not so cruel, so harsh, so brutal. It embodied empathy and poetry and human virtues in ways Christianity was not doing in the medieval west.

But here we are. Bloodlust reigns as it often has in human history, always leaving behind a trail of tears.

 

 

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Letter From New York August 16, 2014

August 16, 2014

Sitting snuggled in the cottage, the weather reports inform us that we are about fifteen degrees cooler than normal this year, a situation not many are regretting.  It feels a bit like early fall, a feeling coming a bit too early for me.  I stopped today to buy some wine for the cottage and all of us at the wine store agreed it was too early to be thinking of fall.  I will be thinking summer until it is officially fall – only then will I surrender this glorious summer to the past.

This weekend I am babysitting Marcel, a fourteen year old miniature poodle, who has claimed the settee in the entry way as “Marcel Land” and from their reigns over my household while his real humans, Lionel and Pierre, are away in Atlantic City for a work related weekend of frivolity.  In their absence, I am watching over this very fussy animal, who refuses dog food and waits to be delighted by a variety of human foods.  Last night I won him over with honey ham, sprinkled with cheese.  I tried that again this morning; he was having none of it.  So I went to the local deli and got him chicken, which has pleased him today.

At fourteen, he feels he has earned the right to be picky and all of us around him attempt to indulge that pickiness.  He is, after all, fourteen which translates to something like 98 in dog years.  He’s pretty spry for 98.  We went for a half hour walk this morning, exploring my yard then walking across the street to his yard, where we spent some time.  Today he did not go to the front door and look at it longingly, as if to say:  why am I not going in to my own house?  He came quietly back with me today, tacitly acknowledging that my home was his home for right now.

Not really a dog person, I did understand this morning walking Marcel why a morning dog walk can be good for a human too.  It gave me some minutes to clear my head and to focus on something other than my own concerns.  I was attentive to Marcel, to another living being, while I gathered my morning wits about me, sipping my first cup of coffee as we walked our immediate neighborhood.

Work life is quieting down, time is being given me for reflection, a slowing down of everything, so that I can gather myself together to face the next flurry of activity which will eventually come.  This time is, I suspect, a bit like taking a long dog walk.

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Letter From New York August 15, 2014

August 15, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

It is the middle of August; you can almost touch the end of summer, a summer that has been delightful, warm but not hot, humidity low, an unusual Eastern summer. Because of a break in my schedule, I have retreated to the cottage for a few days. Waking this morning, the day had broken grey again, cool, almost chill, a day requiring a sweatshirt with the temptation of starting a fire in the wood stove to charm away the cool.

It is almost too chill for the shorts I’m wearing. And, after a little soul searching,I did decide to light a fire to charm away the cool.

This afternoon’s chore is to sort through a bunch of old papers, letters that I think date back to my college days that have somehow managed to follow me through all these years in an old wicker basket taken from the basement of my mother’s house in south Minneapolis.

It feels like a good time to cast off those memories. I have been getting my house in order; no one lives forever and I would like to not leave behind a mess. Not that I have any plans in going anywhere for awhile but we are all mortal and I’ve been feeling the winds of mortality at my back.

My good friend Tim Sparke, younger than me, is waging war with the cancers in his body, defying medical odds and doctor’s prognostications, continuing to live after a being given a six month horizon some two years ago. I received an email from him this weekend that chronicled his battles, the victories and defeats, the advances and the retreats of the long campaign since last we had communicated six months ago.

These are days of reflection, underscored and punctuated by the reality of Tim’s illness, a personal touching of mortality on my life while the whole world, it seems, ponders the seeming incomprehensibilty of Robin Williams’ death, a passing which has cast an unexpectedly large shadow over our lives.

It seemed he had always been there in the background of our lives, a manic, whirling dervish of a thousand characters that punctuated our lives. From Mork & Mindy to The Birdcage to Good Will Hunting to A Night at the Museum, he was part of the fabric of our cultural life. And he will be missed.

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Letter From New York July 27, 2014

July 27, 2014

Letter From New York

Or, as it seems to me…

It is a mercilessly grey day in Claverack. A medium hard rain falls outside the cottage and far away thunder rattles the skies. It is a drear day; so dark it is actually hard to see to the end of my property.

It is the flip side of yesterday, so lusciously beautiful that it caused a heart to ache – perfect skies, perfect temperature, a day lazed away in idle pursuits, antique shopping on Hudson’s Warren Street, a leisurely stroll through the little Farmer’s Market, then reading on the deck while the creek languidly slipped by on its way to the pond. It was a splendid afternoon. The wind caused the tall branches to brush against one another, their rustling the music of the afternoon. The reflections of light on the creek with the stirring of the water by the breeze resulted in thoughts of pointillism.

This austere day is made for contemplation. It cries for thought as I stare out the window by my desk, on the rain-drenched drive of the cottage, casting my mind out into the world.

It is hardly prettier out there this week; the Ukrainian crisis still unfolds. Body parts still apparently lie in the debris field of MH17, most certainly brought down by a missile. Putin seems to be doubling down on supporting the pro-Russian rebels. Two doctors leading the fight against Ebola have contracted the disease. I cannot tell from this morning’s headlines if there is or is not a temporary ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The ill-fated Costa Concordia reached its final resting spot. The United States has evacuated the embassy in Libya because of escalating violence. The Taliban reclaim tracts of Afghanistan. The Boko Haram have kidnapped the wife of the Vice Prime Minister of Cameroon. Forest fires plague the drought stricken state of California with no rain in the forecast. An Air Algerie flight fell from the sky over Mali.

The litany of the world’s trials and travails could go on and on. They are enough to cause us to climb into our bunkers and hunker down for the duration. And that may be a bit of what I do when I retreat to the cottage and indulge in the beauty that surrounds me. If I focus too much on the world an existential ennui falls upon me and I feel I cannot breathe.

For all the dark things happening in the world, there was still laughter on the street yesterday. Hot dogs were purchased from Rick’s stand at 6th and Warren. Ice cream cones were being consumed from Lick, farther down Warren. Little children careened down the street, chased after by parents. Newborns rode in carriages. People find jobs and sit down for meals. The world keeps going on and, in that, I find solace.

It is like this moment, when suddenly the rain stopped and the sun burst through the clouds to dapple the land with its light. The earth abides, hope survives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Letter From New York

September 16, 2013

September 16, 2013

Or, as it seems to me…

It is early Monday morning as I begin to write this, riding the train back down into the city, a grey day, rain falling softly, chill with the first leaves turning.  I am wearing both a sweater and a jacket; last night I had the first fire in the old Franklin stove.  Tonight there may be frost in the Hudson Valley; the seasons are changing.

The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone again, with its reading of names and somber remembrances.  It felt less raw this year to me, less time spent catapulted back to that day, to the raw emotions of shock, surprise, hurt and confusion.  Though I say that, I know I will never be free from that day nor, I think, will any New Yorker who lived through that experience.  Sudden loud noises still cause me to jump.  I have learned to be watchful traveling about the city.  I ride the ends of subway trains, not the middle because for I deem them safer from any terrorist bombers.  Wouldn’t they want to ride the middle of the train where they might do the worst damage?

So I am changed by that day, forever and always, as, I suspect, is everyone who lived through it, in some way carrying a bit of post-traumatic stress with us as we continue to plow forward into the future.

We have seen in a week the stunning turn around in Syria from imminent bombing to a tortured diplomacy that hopefully will succeed in depriving Assad of his chemical weapons without a missile being fired.  It’s a stretch to hope this but a stretch we have committed to taking and one that resonates with a country that is weary, weary as we were, perhaps, when Viet Nam was winding down, exhausted by the expenditure in lives and fortune for muddy goals not completely achieved.

When asked this week how I was by an old friend with whom I had not talked in awhile, I responded that my life, compared with 99% of the world was pretty miraculous, which it is.  I don’t live in the suburbs of Damascus.  I am riding a train down to New York through some of the most beautiful countryside America has to offer, the grey light glinting off the magnificent Hudson.  I have health and am successfully navigating my recuperation from arthroscopic surgery on my knee, not too bad but not quite the walk in the park the doctor made it sound.

Yet, like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I have a sense of ennui.  As we felt as Viet Nam wore down, we are tired and there is a sense of travail.  We have endured ten years now of war in far off places.  We are still weathering the Great Recession, an economic downturn that narrowly avoided being another Great Depression.  We have been dodging bullets, literally and figuratively, and we are weary from it.

Yet we rebounded from the ennui that came at the end of Viet Nam, the oil crisis, the roiling inflation of the 1970’s, the shock upon the body politic of Watergate, a President resigning and the horrible fashion choices of the era.  We survived that, we survived the Yuppie 1980’s and we will survive all this and return to a sense of forward movement.

It is easy when we are in such moods to chat about the decline of America and we are in such a mood.  We have survived ten very difficult years, leaving us questioning much, just as we did at the end of Viet Nam.  We will question for a while yet and we will come up with answers.

I believe the national spirit will revive and prosper.  We have some very challenging and exciting times coming toward us.  There is some economic revival, we have a pause in Syria, the country is barreling toward the moment when whites will be the minority and that will reshape the country in ways we have yet to discover.

On this grey, chill day, I feel the warmth of optimism, wondering what the future will hold, for the country and for me.

 

 

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Letter From New York

April 29, 2013

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun is setting but you can only tell because the light is fading.  The glorious weekend of sun and warmth in the Hudson Valley is ending in a curtain of grey that descended a couple of hours ago.  Below me the creek flows clear and clean, having glistened all weekend with sun sparkles dancing on its waters.  A magnificent bald eagle perched for a half hour or so on one of the embankment’s trees.  I watched him peruse the land before he spread giant wings and flew to the north, low along the creek, seeking prey I suppose.

Prey.  I wonder if that is how the Boston Bombers thought of the people that were killed and wounded?  Prey:  a person or thing that is hunted.  Prey is what people around the world have become, hunted by individuals who wish to do indiscriminate harm to a general population with whom they disagree for some reason.

Back in Iraq [remember Iraq?] the Sunnis are being preyed upon with lots of car bombs.  In Afghanistan, something is blowing up on what seems like a daily basis.  Syria.  Well, Syria is the whole caboodle – bombs, rockets, IUD’s.  Nerve gas?  May be.  The Israelis and the French say so and the Obama administration is carefully considering its opinion and its options as it once said: nerve gas use is one step too far, the red line, the Rubicon. 

Shootings go on unabated in this country – and elsewhere.  Italy had two policemen shot as the new government was sworn in. 

We have a cornucopia of violence in the world. 

After my last letter, a good friend asked me if all this made me angry as well as sad.  OF COURSE it makes me angry.  And what is frustrating is to whom do I direct my anger?  At Congress, for failing to pass background checks even though 90% of the country seemed to want them, according to polls.  Yes, I am angry at Congress and background checks are only part of the reason I am angry at Congress.  This bunch seems to be a particularly inept set of boobs but then Washington somehow has always seemed to attract an inept set of boobs.  Another friend of mine, in her brief time in Washington, sat next to a Senator only to realize he was one of the stupidest men she had ever encountered.  How do we elect stupid people?  And we do, not always, but we do.  How else do you explain Michelle Bachman?

And it is not just the U.S. that has this problem.  Every democracy seems to have this problem.  It seems one of the issues with democracy.  Go back to the Greeks.  I’m sure they had their fair share of elected boobs. 

Last night I was at a dinner and found myself silent while listening to people talk about gun control.  I said nothing because there was no room in what was being said for a dissenting opinion.  Minds were made up and I wasn’t ready to spoil a pleasant social gathering with a dissenting opinion in a room that had no space for it.  And that made me sad.  We’re polarized and unable to discuss opposing opinions.

Yet, interestingly, I found myself in all of this, a greater admirer of America than I usually am – and I have been aware of how fortunate we are since I was a kid, returning from Honduras.  There I was confronted with how lucky I was as a middle class American kid.  I had hot water every day.  I had my own bedroom, my own bathroom.  I had…so much, in comparison.

And despite all our faults, our boobs in Congress, our rapacious corporations and their lobbyists, we are still an amazing experiment in the history of the world.  Flawed and faulted, I admit, but still an amazing experiment still being worked on in the laboratory. 

As the night turns from grey to black, here at Claverack Cottage, I am hoping we continue to experiment and that we find success in the laboratory of history.

 

 

 

 

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Letter From New York October 25, 2011

October 26, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

There is a autumnal nip in the air; frost has held off but it is supposed to come this week with rumors of snow by the weekend. I’m at the cottage, enjoying a rare evening at home, floodlights lighting the creek so I can enjoy it from where I sit writing, a blaze cracking in the Franklin stove after I had stoked the coals back to life and added wood.

The leaves are turning but their color is muted; too much rain, not enough sun, something? But the vivid, vibrant hues expected of the Hudson Valley have failed to appear so far. Driving down from Albany Airport after dropping a friend there, I thought about how muted the colors were and how muted I have been the last few weeks.

It’s the first time in several weeks I’ve sat down to work on a letter. After I finished the last one, I paused. It was, after all, ten years since I had begun to write these missives, asked by Hal Eisner to describe what it was like to be in New York in those weeks and months post 9/11. Perhaps, I thought, it was time to let the Letters go – perhaps they have outlived their time and their usefulness. Some friends have encouraged me to continue writing them. Some have admonished me to do what felt “right” to me.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about: what felt “right” to me? Don’t know yet. Do know that tonight, I wanted to sit down and work on a letter, I wanted to tap away on my laptop and see if I could organize my thoughts. And I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.

One of them is “Occupy Wall Street” which has spread into a bit of a global movement though almost everyone is casting about in the runes to figure out exactly what “Occupy (you fill in the blank)” is all about. What we do know is that it has become a political force seen by some as a counterpoint to the Tea Party. Though it doesn’t seem as quite clear-cut as that. While I haven’t studied it deeply, it seems there are some things they have in common.

But then the question to me is this: why haven’t I studied them that carefully? Partly it’s because I have been sunk deep into the new media world, prepping several speeches on new technologies and tweeting like mad on the digital world.

But tweeting and the letters serve different purposes and satisfy different things in my soul. The letter gives me a chance to sort the world out a bit while the tweets are a sequential sharing of things I note about the digital world I think should be shared with those who are interested. Both are subjective but one is more emotionally satisfying – and the one that is more emotionally satisfying is the letter I once wrote on a weekly basis but have been a bit of slacker about lately while I have been figuring out its place in my life.

And while I have been figuring out the role “tweeting” is playing in my life. It’s been surprising to me that every week five or more strangers seem to begin following my tweets because they are interested in what I am passing on about the digital world – which has been fascinating to me ever since I had the epiphany that the world was moving digitally into this to be defined universe that will, in the end, change everything.

So, in the end, I guess I will keep on tweeting and writing my “Letter From New York” because they both feed some part of my soul and, hopefully, resonate with some part of your soul also.

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Letter From New York September 8, 2011

September 8, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

I am sitting on Labor Day afternoon at the bar of Café du Soleil, my favorite Bistro on the Upper West Side, a place I know because of my friend Lionel, who is sitting next to me, who is chatting with other regulars here while I work on my letter.

I have been doing my best this weekend to avoid writing my letter. The reason? It is the week leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the city is prepping for it and I am not prepared for it. I have been having harbingers of the anniversary all this year. In Norfolk, VA I heard jets that took me back to that night and I have been running from the memories since then. They are burned in my soul and I feel that day intensely when I think about it. That’s why Norfolk was hard.

Monday was hard too. My brother was in town and before we went to breakfast we wandered through the Time-Warner Center at Columbus Circle where there is an exhibit on the heroes of 9/11, photos of those who lived. The policemen, the firemen, the pilots who flew the sorties over the city that are now so indelibly in my mind that the sound of those jets, the F-14’s, will take me back to that night, all their pictures are in the public areas of the Time-Warner Center and, today, reading them, I was about to start crying when my phone rang and I was dragged back into reality.

I was changed by that day; everyone was changed by that day and to think that ten years have gone by is hard, almost impossible. Could that much time have gone by? Or was it not in another lifetime that all this happened, another world that isn’t really real? But it is real. It happened. I was there. I felt the earth shake when the first plane hit the first building. My partner called me, asked me: do you know what’s going on? No. Turn on the TV. I did. The world was changing in front of my eyes. Our eyes. We all saw it, thanks to live television.

So I have had a hard time facing the fact it’s the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I am having a hard time having that day come back so immediately into my life. I am permanently changed by that day. I am, somehow, a little, scarred by that day. I didn’t lose anyone but I lost the world in which I lived. We’re not the same. The world is not the same. And I am sorry we are not the same.

It will be interesting to see how this week plays out as we move toward the anniversary. We cannot “celebrate” this anniversary. We can acknowledge it; we will – everyone will.
It was the seminal moment of this part of American history and I was there. I walked those streets with old man death. There was the smell of death and burnt plastic and my street was full of papers that were blown down from the Twin Towers. And I will, next week, walk those streets, will remember, will sort my feelings from those days and see what sense I make of it all.

I will let you all know. I don’t know how many tears are between this moment and next week – I just know that I know that I was here, that I, in the first person, experienced 9/11, have a set of memories from that day, was at the Pearl Harbor of my time, and that I am still experiencing that day because that kind of experience never dies in one who lives through it.

My brother told me in the days following that he was sorry that I was in New York when it happened. There was no other place I would have been. I was here. I was at the point of history. It was hard but it doesn’t get more real than that.

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