Ok, here is a little commentary (ok, rather long commentary) I read this evening regarding some of the financial "crisis" and biblical prophesy... A bore for some of you I'm sure, but rather interesting for those who enjoyed "Apocalyptic Discourse." - This guy has written several books that are rather interesting as well.
THOUGHTS ON 2009: A GREAT DEPRESSION ???- Eddie Chumney
Dear Mishpochah (family):
Witnessing the current worldwide economic crisis, many are wondering ... what is the significance of it? Some people think it is just another downturn in the business cycle. For those who believe this way, they like to make estimates for us about when the 'recession' will end and what is the bottom in the stock market. To them, they believe that some of the usual business cycle remedies will allow the economy to recover again. Normally, this remedy consists of two things:
#1) Monetary stimulus (lowering interest rates and printing more money)
#2) Fiscal stimulus (congress borrowing money)
Regarding monetary stimulus, the Federal Reserve has dropped the 'Fed Funds' rate from around 5% to now nearly 0%. However, things aren't getting any better in the USA or around the world.
Regarding fiscal stimulus, the US government during 2008 decided to make $600 - $1200 available as a 'tax rebate'. The 'tax rebates' didn't make things any better.
The upcoming Obama adminstration is pledging to pass a massive fiscal stimulus package of at least $700 billion dollars. If the Obama administration does pass a fiscal stimulus package, it won't help to make things better in the USA or around the world either.
WHY MONETARY AND FISCAL STIMULUS WON'T WORK THIS TIME
The fiscal and monetary measures which are being tried won't work this time. They are just 'window dressing' to try and make it appear that 'they' (President, Congress and the Federal Reserve) care about the problem and are trying to do something about it. Even though our politicians and Federal Reserve policy makers fail us over and over, most Americans still want to believe and trust in them. However, since most Americans don't understand basic macro economics and the working of monetary policy, they will believe (for a while until the recession becomes a depression) that our 'powers to be' are trying to help solve the problem. They won't understand why the solutions attempted are not working.
The US and world economy will fail for one main reason. That reason is that banks have stopped making money available (lending) to those who need it to keep the economy going.
You see, it doesn't make any difference if interest rates are near zero if the banks aren't lending money. It doesn't make any difference if the Federal Reserve prints more and more money if the banks don't lend the money. Banks failure to lend money to individuals and businesses who need the money is what causes the economy to go into a depression.
Expanding the money supply and banks freely lending to individuals and businesses who are credit worthy is what causes the economy to grow and expand. Decreasing the money supply causes the economy to contract. At this moment, the Federal Reserve is MASSIVELY INCREASING the money supply. So, this is not the problem. The problem is that banks worldwide are failing to make money available to individuals and businesses who are credit worthy. If banks fail to make loans available to credit worthy individuals and businesses on a macro scale then this is what causes a depression.
Here are links to several articles indicating that banks aren't making credit available.
#1) Kuwait Investment House defaults for lack of available credit
#2) US House Builders can't get credit
#3) Worldwide shipping industry can't get credit
WHY DO CENTRAL BANKERS WANT THE WORLD ECONOMY TO FAIL?
Our present global economic system is based upon Bretton Woods model established after WW 2. Bretton Woods was a gold based monetary system. It established global institutions such as the (IMF: International Monetary Fund and IBRD - World Bank) to work with and help govern the monetary policies of nation states. A detailed explanation of the Bretton Woods financial model can be found here:
In 1971, President Nixon took the USA off the gold standard from which the Bretton Woods model was based. This caused the US dollar to become the 'reserve currency' of the world.
Eventually, the currencies of nation states were allowed to "float". This made it increasingly easier to manipulate the value of the currencies of nation states. Macro manipulation of the currencies of nation states (what is happening in this present economic crisis) creates instability in the world's financial system.
In 1973, the Trilateral commission was born.
In 1980, Holly Sklar wrote a book about the Trilateral Commision. It is entitled: "The Trilaterial Commission and Elite Planning for World Management".
The basic idea of the Trilaterial commission is to begin the process to 'regionalize' the world as a stepping stone to world government.
The "Tri" in Trilaterial Commission is: Europe, the USA and Asia. The goal would be to regionalize the world into trading blocs with its own currency and regional government. Europe became the first to establish this model. Europe now has a common currency, a European Parliament and Constitution.
The regional trading blocs following the European model is now being developed all around the world. There has been much debate about the "North American Union". This proposed new "North American Union" (consisting of Canada, USA and Mexico) is now being called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership". There is a website for the SPP:
There is now a "Mediterranean Union".
Most likely, a future peace agreement between Israel and the PLO will seek to merge the European Union and Mediterrean Union.
This effort was originally called the "Euro- Mediterranean Partnership".
It seeks to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.
This is why there is such an intensified effort for Israel and the PLO to reach a peace settlement. The ultimate goal is economic integration of the European Union and the Mediterranean Union.
In order to help to ensure this peace agreement, the United Nations passed UN Resolution 1850 on December 16, 2008.
There are discussions about creating an African Union.
There are plans to create an Asian Union.
In order to follow the European model, newly formed regional trading blocs need to have their own common currency. In order to help the people of the world to accept the European model in their own region of the world, they have to see a 'need' for it. That 'need' comes from the planned collapse of the Bretton Woods system and of the national currencies of countries in various designated regional trading blocs.
The "collapse" of currencies around the world becomes inevitable when the 'reserve currency' of the world - the US dollar - collapses and cannot maintain its status and confidence of the world trading system for it to be the 'reserve currency' of the world.
The collapse of a nations currency comes about when the debt of a nation state (in this case the USA) becomes so large that others lose confidence in the currency of that nation state (in this case the US dollar) who has that debt. The USA is now the world's largest debtor nation. So, what does our government try to tell us is the solution to our economic problems? You got it: more debt.
How do other nations show that they have lost confidence in our currency (the US dollar) and our debt which is tied to the value of our currency? It is simple. They no longer desire to finance the debt. Right now, the debt of the USA is being unattractive to foreign investors. What makes it unattractive? The answer is a low rate of return (a 10 year government bond is now yielding less than 3%) and a lack of confidence in the US economy and its financial system (because of rising job losses, business and banking failures) caused by banks not willing to lend money to credit worthy individuals and businesses.
IS 2009 THE YEAR OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE US DOLLAR ?
There are many well respected people who are forecasting the collapse of the US dollar in 2009 (for those who truly understand the relationship between macro economics, monetary and fiscal policy -- it really doesn't take a genious to realize the US dollar will eventually collapse -- it is only a matter of time).
Among them are 'Trend Forecaster' (Gerald Celente).
There is an organization based in Europe (a think-tank) that releases information about Global economic trends who predicts that the US dollar will collapse and the US government will not be able to pay its debt in 2009.
The collapse of the US dollar is mentioned in the October 2008 edition.
Pravda (the Russian news agency) reports that the 'Amero' will replace the US dollar when it collapses in 2009.
Russian Foreign Ministry sources are reporting that the USA "Council on Foreign Relations" (which some believe is the 'Shadow Government' of the USA) has stated that the US dollar will collapse by the summer of 2009.
A recent United Nations reports suggests that the US dollar will have a 'hard landing' in 2009.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Henry Kissinger suggests that the current economic crisis would be an excellent opportunity to bring about a new "political and economic international order".
The book of Revelation mentions several times about the fall of economic / commercial Babylon. Since WW2, the USA has been the "head" of the effort to globalize the world. So, the USA is the HEAD of the "beast". In Revelation 13, the "head" of the beast gets wounded. I believe that the economic collapse of the USA through the collapse of the US dollar and the US government unable to pay its bills, will result in the formation of world government with a world currency (the wound being healed).
World government is one of the two signs of Revelation 12 which indicates the start of the 'Great Tribulation' and the final 3 1/2 years before Yeshua sets His feet down on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4).
THE TESTIMONY OF PASTOR LINDSEY WILLIAMS
Before October 2008, I never heard of Pastor Lindsey Williams. One day, I discovered him on 'You Tube'. Pastor Williams has an interesting testimony. Briefly, his testimony is as follows:
Pastor Lindsey Williams is an older person. He wrote a book entiled,"The Energy Non-Crisis". In the book, he made the claim that there is plenty of oil in the world and that the 'shortage' is 'sold to the public' to help to achieve the ultimate goal of the global elite whose goal is world government.
In June, 2008, he reported that he got a call from a global elitist executive. Lindsey reported that he was told by this executive that he had 'crossed the line' and was saying things that he wasn't supposed to say about the plans and purposes of the global elite. As a result, Lindsey 'obeyed' the 'concerns' of the global elite that they had against him and removed those objectionable things from his book and publications and closed down his website.
After this, Pastor Williams decided to have a 'friendly' conversation with this global elitist executive and asked him what could be expected of the next 12 - 18 months.
One of the first things that he was told was that oil would drop from nearly $150 a barrel to $50 a barrel. Oil is now around $35 a barrel.
Pastor Williams shared this testimony initially on July 9, 2008 when oil was still around $140 a barrel. It can be seen here:
Furthermore, Pastor Williams has a presentation where he lets people know what he was told and thus expects to happen in the next 12 months.
After being told that oil would go to $50 a barrel by this globalist executive, the global executive told Pastor Williams that sometime in 2009 that the USA would experience an economic collapse that would take YEARS to recover from.
At the website, they've indicated that when the economy of the USA collapses from the collapse of the US dollar and that it will take 10 years for the US economy to recover.
HOW DO WE PREPARE?
In the past, I sent "Watchman Reports" to this e-mail newsgroup to help you follow events associated with the Middle East Peace Process, war between nations and a conflict with Iran and the economic collapse of the USA.
This was meant to help you to understand events which were happening in our world that made these mentioned items possible.
From present events, it would seem that:
#1) A Middle East Peace Agreement
#2) War Between Nations and a conflict with Iran
#3) The Economic Collapse of the USA
is closer than ever.
In the past year, I sent out several articles indicating that I believe that we were approaching the days of the "foolish virgins".
In Matthew 25, the "foolish virgins" weren't prepared for the "wedding" with Yeshua the Messiah.
At that time, I mentioned that in Jeremiah 31:10, 13 and Jeremiah 33:11 that the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Judah: Ezekiel 37:15-28) is likened to the joy of a wedding.
In the parable of the 'Prodigal Son' (Luke 15:11-32), the 'younger son' is Ephraim who was given the birthright blessing in Genesis 48:16-19. The 'older son' is Judah. When the 'younger son' returned 'home' to be with his father (which means that he returned to following the Torah), the father celebrated with a wedding (Luke 15:22-24).
We are to prepare SPIRITUALLY for the WEDDING of the Messiah.
The 'Wedding' is the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel.
The 'Wise Virgins' were ready for a MARRIAGE.
The 'Foolish Virgins' were NOT ready for a MARRIAGE.
When did the 'Foolish Virgins' realize that they needed to prepare? It was at MIDNIGHT (Matthew 25:6).
MIDNIGHT is a time of GREAT TRIBULATION.
GREAT TRIBULATION is a RESULT from the collapse of the world's economic system when it tries to reorganize into one world government with a one world currency.
The TRIGGER EVENT to this process to eventually establish a one world government and one world currency is the economic collapse of the US dollar and the US economy.
Revelation 12 and 13 tells us that the duration of time for the establishment of one world government and one world currency until Yeshua sets His feet down on the Mount of Olives is 3 1/2 years.
The TRIGGER EVENT (the collapse of the US dollar and the collapse of the US government to be able to pay its debt) is expected by credible sources to possibly happen sometime in 2009.
Are you SPIRITUALLY READY for the consequence of the collapse of the US dollar?
THE NEW TESTAMENT FOR DUMMIES
Most Christians don't understand the central theme of the New Testament. This central theme is the role of Yeshua to unite the 12 tribes of Israel.
Yeshua died on the tree to united the 12 tribes of Israel (John 10:16-17, 11:49-52).
In Acts 1:6, Yeshua was asked WHEN this would happen.
In Acts 1:8, Yeshua replied that it would come through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) wherein His disciples would be sent into the world to proclaim the good news of Messiah to the exiles of Israel.
Paul testified that he was proclaiming in his ministry the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel through Yeshua (Acts 26:6-7).
Many epistles were written to the exiles of Israel. For example, I Peter 1:1 was written to the exiles of the Northern Kingdom.
Here they are referred to as being 'strangers scattered'. The word 'scattered' is the Greek word, 'diaspora' which means according to the Strong's number 1290 which means 'Israelites scattered in the nations'.
The book of Revelation gives us the details of how and when this will be literally fulfilled.
In Revelation 7:13-14, the question is asked, 'Who are these who came out of the great tribulation'?
The answer in Revelation 7:16-17 is a quote from Isaiah 49:10 which mentions the exiles of Israel which specifically in Isaiah 49:10 refers to the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom or Ephraim.
In summary:
#1) Yeshua died to gather the exiles of Israel
#2) The Holy Spirit was outpoured to gather the exiles of Israel
#3) Paul's ministry was to the exiles of Israel
#4) Various letters in the NT was written to the exiles of Israel
#5) Revelation tells us the events which will be happening in the earth when the exiles of Israel are physically gathered to the land of Israel during the 'Great Tribulation.
In Colossians 2:16-17, Paul tells us that:
#1) The New Moon teaches about Yeshua's second coming
#2) The Sabbath teaches about Yeshua's second coming
#3) The Dietary Laws teaches about Yeshua's second coming
#4) The annual Festivals teaches about Yeshua's second coming
WHAT MAKES THE FOOLISH VIRGINS FOOLISH?
Most Christians don't know how the New Moon, Sabbath, Dietary Laws and annual Festivals teach about the second coming of the Messiah.
Most Christians don't know that the central theme of the New Testament is the role of the Messiah to gather the 12 tribes of Israel.
Most Christians don't know that Yeshua died on the tree to gather the 12 tribes of Israel.
Most Christians don't know that the book of Revelation tells us that the Messiah will be revealed to the world when He gathers the 12 tribes of Israel during a time of great tribulation upon the earth.
By not knowing these things, the 'foolish virgins' miss the 'wedding' (Messiah's second coming to gather the exiles of Israel).
The 'foolish virgins' don't even realize that they are missing a wedding until the 'midnight' hour. When they go to "buy" (try to understand what they don't' know), they aren't able to "buy".
I believe that because the collapse of the US dollar and the economic collapse of the USA is so near that we are SOON nearing the days when the 'foolish virgins' won't be able to buy.
HOW CAN YOU BE A WISE VIRGIN?
How can you be a wise virgin? By knowing how the Sabbath and Festivals teach about the second coming of the Messiah and by understanding how your faith in Yeshua as Messiah is related to His role to gather the 12 tribes of Israel.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Mark that off my List!
I've kinda had an ongoing list of Colorado things I want to do while here for 7 months - and have been marking them off during my days off. I marked off visiting the Air Force Academy back in May (conveniently had a retirement there shortly after my arrival), but I really wanted to go to an AF Academy game! So, I finally went to a game a couple of weeks ago with one of my old troops who was in town visiting her family (she's from Loveland, CO).
The drum and bugle corps starting off the game
The necessary pic of the game - USAFA vs New Mexico
And now for the most entertaining pictures of the night - I was absolutely fascinated by the fact that the USAFA had cheerleaders (coed at that) and a drill team! Let me just say, I have never met an Air Force officer who was (or at least told people) they went to the Academy as was a cheerleader/drill team member.... I mean, it makes since - kinda - but I just never envisioned cadets being cheerleaders or drill team members...
Half of the cheerleaders - the other half where on the other side
The drum and bugle corps starting off the game
The necessary pic of the game - USAFA vs New Mexico
And now for the most entertaining pictures of the night - I was absolutely fascinated by the fact that the USAFA had cheerleaders (coed at that) and a drill team! Let me just say, I have never met an Air Force officer who was (or at least told people) they went to the Academy as was a cheerleader/drill team member.... I mean, it makes since - kinda - but I just never envisioned cadets being cheerleaders or drill team members...
Half of the cheerleaders - the other half where on the other side
The drill team
Let me be brutally honest for a moment - If I meet any of them (especially if they work with/under me), I will make fun of them for going to a serve academy and then being a cheerleader/drill team member... Not that I have anything against cheerleaders/drill team members; I don't, but you're at a service academy! Come on!
I've got one thing left on my list - snowboarding! And I've got one month left here... I think I'll be heading up next weekend/Veteran's Day with an old buddy coming to visit! I'll post pictures when we do.
Let me be brutally honest for a moment - If I meet any of them (especially if they work with/under me), I will make fun of them for going to a serve academy and then being a cheerleader/drill team member... Not that I have anything against cheerleaders/drill team members; I don't, but you're at a service academy! Come on!
I've got one thing left on my list - snowboarding! And I've got one month left here... I think I'll be heading up next weekend/Veteran's Day with an old buddy coming to visit! I'll post pictures when we do.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Jars of Clay / Switchfoot / Third Day Concert!!!!
So, Kris came up in October and we went to an awesome concert! Here's some pics - you can click on them for bigger/closer views.
Jars of Clay:
I've been a big fan since about '95-'96...old school
They wore all white - which was not flattering...
Switchfoot:
By far the best performance of the 4 bands
Fan of Switchfoot since about '97-'98 - he was awesome! Robert Randolph played with them on this song and had a sign on the front of his steel guitar that said, "Switchfoot [hearts] New Kids on the Block."
Third Day:
Mac Powell laying down the worship - also a fan since about '95-'96
Third Day with Jars of Clay and Robert Randolph - note the JoC member in the angel outfit on the right (They sang a duet of "I'll Fly Away" - we think he must have lost a bet...)
Final Tour Concert - All 3 bands together w/ Robert Randolph:
This was awesome b/c none of the bands wanted to end the tour, so we got a huge finale of all 3 jamming out together with Robert Randolph, whose band also played with the big 3.
Jars of Clay:
I've been a big fan since about '95-'96...old school
They wore all white - which was not flattering...
Switchfoot:
By far the best performance of the 4 bands
Fan of Switchfoot since about '97-'98 - he was awesome! Robert Randolph played with them on this song and had a sign on the front of his steel guitar that said, "Switchfoot [hearts] New Kids on the Block."
Third Day:
Mac Powell laying down the worship - also a fan since about '95-'96
Third Day with Jars of Clay and Robert Randolph - note the JoC member in the angel outfit on the right (They sang a duet of "I'll Fly Away" - we think he must have lost a bet...)
Final Tour Concert - All 3 bands together w/ Robert Randolph:
This was awesome b/c none of the bands wanted to end the tour, so we got a huge finale of all 3 jamming out together with Robert Randolph, whose band also played with the big 3.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Another Random Posting...
No one chose me either, but I'm bored and have been told I don't post often enough! So here's some random crap about me...
1. Clothes Shop
I put this off as long as possible - and only do it when I have to or am really, really bored. I'm one of those who go shopping knowing exactly what they need, find it, and then leave. Please don't make me walk around aimlessly at the mall... And when I do find what I am looking for, I will grab a small and a medium (I'm between sizes on everything) and then if there are multiple color choices in it, there's a small and medium of each color... I will not waste the time to go back to try different colors after I find the right size. So, I may be getting one thing, but I may be taking in 6 of them to try on...and then I hate all 6 of them.
2. Furniture Shop
I am very picky with furniture, but then I did work at a quality furniture store for awhile, painting and staining it all after the carpenter built it - The carpenter taught me a lot about quality... My bedroom set is an antique set that I love and was sold to be at a GREAT price from my "spiritual parents". Everything else is a hodgepodge of antiques and solid (mostly mission style) wood.
3. Sweets
I will almost always pick something filling over sweet... But if it is sweet: Hot brownies or chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream on top!
4. City
Hmmm...I grew up in a kinda small town, a suburb of Dallas/Ft Worth. I kinda like the suburb feel even still, living in two capitals: Oklahoma City, OK and Denver, CO. I have also lived in the middle of no-where (San Angelo, TX). I imagine I will eventually move to another state capital: Austin, TX; however, hopefully it will be a suburb!
5. Drink
Usually Lipton green tea and water...but I do have my soda cheat days on the weekend. Sad thing is I had quit cold turkey for 6 months last year - I really should do that again!
6. Music
I LOVE music - not sure why so much. No one in my family has been very "musical." But then again, none of them were really athletes either - I can't believe I'm not adopted... Anyway, give me a little of everything except the 80's retro weird crap (as you can see from the previous post). My favs: 90's-00's rock, anything with a bit of a folk/bluegrass/acoustic feel - stuff with more than 3 chords and repetitive lyrics that are not well thought out or stolen.
7. TV Series
The Office and Hell's Kitchen. Anything not involving the current politics!
8. Film
I really don't watch TV much, and even more so, films/movies... "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Land Before Time" made me cry multiple times - come on, he licked his own shadow!
9. Workout
I'm so up and down. I try to run at least 15 miles a week - anything else is pretty sporadic these days. I plan to start the P90X series...someday.
10. Pastries
Not a big "pastry fan" - who came up with "pastries?" It's not like at (10) they had used everything else that comes to the common mind! Does blueberry muffins count - they are about 600 calories too!
11. Coffee
Please don't even make me smell it! I'm not kidding; in fact, we have two coffee pots. One for coffee and one to brew my green tea - they cannot share!
I tag Kris - and anyone else who is actually reading this who hasn't done it already.
1. Clothes Shop
I put this off as long as possible - and only do it when I have to or am really, really bored. I'm one of those who go shopping knowing exactly what they need, find it, and then leave. Please don't make me walk around aimlessly at the mall... And when I do find what I am looking for, I will grab a small and a medium (I'm between sizes on everything) and then if there are multiple color choices in it, there's a small and medium of each color... I will not waste the time to go back to try different colors after I find the right size. So, I may be getting one thing, but I may be taking in 6 of them to try on...and then I hate all 6 of them.
2. Furniture Shop
I am very picky with furniture, but then I did work at a quality furniture store for awhile, painting and staining it all after the carpenter built it - The carpenter taught me a lot about quality... My bedroom set is an antique set that I love and was sold to be at a GREAT price from my "spiritual parents". Everything else is a hodgepodge of antiques and solid (mostly mission style) wood.
3. Sweets
I will almost always pick something filling over sweet... But if it is sweet: Hot brownies or chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream on top!
4. City
Hmmm...I grew up in a kinda small town, a suburb of Dallas/Ft Worth. I kinda like the suburb feel even still, living in two capitals: Oklahoma City, OK and Denver, CO. I have also lived in the middle of no-where (San Angelo, TX). I imagine I will eventually move to another state capital: Austin, TX; however, hopefully it will be a suburb!
5. Drink
Usually Lipton green tea and water...but I do have my soda cheat days on the weekend. Sad thing is I had quit cold turkey for 6 months last year - I really should do that again!
6. Music
I LOVE music - not sure why so much. No one in my family has been very "musical." But then again, none of them were really athletes either - I can't believe I'm not adopted... Anyway, give me a little of everything except the 80's retro weird crap (as you can see from the previous post). My favs: 90's-00's rock, anything with a bit of a folk/bluegrass/acoustic feel - stuff with more than 3 chords and repetitive lyrics that are not well thought out or stolen.
7. TV Series
The Office and Hell's Kitchen. Anything not involving the current politics!
8. Film
I really don't watch TV much, and even more so, films/movies... "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Land Before Time" made me cry multiple times - come on, he licked his own shadow!
9. Workout
I'm so up and down. I try to run at least 15 miles a week - anything else is pretty sporadic these days. I plan to start the P90X series...someday.
10. Pastries
Not a big "pastry fan" - who came up with "pastries?" It's not like at (10) they had used everything else that comes to the common mind! Does blueberry muffins count - they are about 600 calories too!
11. Coffee
Please don't even make me smell it! I'm not kidding; in fact, we have two coffee pots. One for coffee and one to brew my green tea - they cannot share!
I tag Kris - and anyone else who is actually reading this who hasn't done it already.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Day Before You
I completely stole this because my BFF would have tagged me - if she tagged someone...which she did not.
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write that song name down no matter how silly it sounds.
IF SOMEONE SAYS "YOU'RE HOT" YOU SAY?
"Demolition Man" (The Police)
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LIFE?
"Don't Stand so Close to Me" - lol (Sting)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE LONG GOAL?
"Everything you Want" (Vertical Horizon)
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"Turn me On" (Nora Jones)
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"A Rush of Blood to the Head" - perfect! (Coldplay)
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR LIFE?
"Signe" (Eric Clapton)
WHAT DO YOU OFTEN THINK ABOUT?
"Who Wouldn't want to be Me" - now I'm full of myself! (Keith Urban)
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR EX?
"Black" - I'm not being racist! (Pearl Jam)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON WHO LIKES YOU?
"Square One" (Coldplay)
WHAT DOES YOUR BEST FRIEND ALWAYS SAY TO YOU?
"Black and White People" - Kris, you're racist on here too! (Matchbox Twenty)
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"God of Us" - I don't think this will go well (Shaun Groves)
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SAYING?
"Song for You" (Michael Buble)
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"Seek Up" (Dave Mathews Band w/ Tim Reynolds)
WHAT WILL BE PLAYED AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"Sweetest Thing" - Dang straight! lol (U2)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
"Put it On" (Bob Marley)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"Jesus Don't want me for a Sunbeam" - sad (Nirvana)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR HOUSE?
"Like Toy Soldiers" -radio edit (Eminem)
WHAT WILL YOU NAME THIS?
"The Day Before You" (Rascal Flatts) - perhaps this would be the wedding dance...no offense DMB
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write that song name down no matter how silly it sounds.
IF SOMEONE SAYS "YOU'RE HOT" YOU SAY?
"Demolition Man" (The Police)
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LIFE?
"Don't Stand so Close to Me" - lol (Sting)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE LONG GOAL?
"Everything you Want" (Vertical Horizon)
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"Turn me On" (Nora Jones)
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"A Rush of Blood to the Head" - perfect! (Coldplay)
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR LIFE?
"Signe" (Eric Clapton)
WHAT DO YOU OFTEN THINK ABOUT?
"Who Wouldn't want to be Me" - now I'm full of myself! (Keith Urban)
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR EX?
"Black" - I'm not being racist! (Pearl Jam)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON WHO LIKES YOU?
"Square One" (Coldplay)
WHAT DOES YOUR BEST FRIEND ALWAYS SAY TO YOU?
"Black and White People" - Kris, you're racist on here too! (Matchbox Twenty)
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"God of Us" - I don't think this will go well (Shaun Groves)
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SAYING?
"Song for You" (Michael Buble)
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"Seek Up" (Dave Mathews Band w/ Tim Reynolds)
WHAT WILL BE PLAYED AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"Sweetest Thing" - Dang straight! lol (U2)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
"Put it On" (Bob Marley)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"Jesus Don't want me for a Sunbeam" - sad (Nirvana)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR HOUSE?
"Like Toy Soldiers" -radio edit (Eminem)
WHAT WILL YOU NAME THIS?
"The Day Before You" (Rascal Flatts) - perhaps this would be the wedding dance...no offense DMB
Monday, October 13, 2008
Pikes Peak Hike
The initial plan was to drive our bicycles to the top, drive down and park, and then hike it up - then ride our bikes down on the main road...
After we couldn't find the main road from the trail head, the plan changed to: Hike all the way up and then either hitch hike down on the main road or see if we could catch the train down. If neither, we'd huff it down...
And so we started the trail at 0730 - Did I mention I got up at 0445 to pick up Rocio and make the drive down to the Springs? It was half a mile hike just to get to the trail head from where we had to park.
And so we started our hike. I felt unseasonably warm and hiked the entire time in a t-shirt, debating on stopping and putting on shorts...more on this later.
We hiked and hiked...and hiked - and passed some neat sights. (yes, I look like a goof).
We finally got to Barr Camp, which is about 7 miles from the beginning of the trail.
It took us 3.5 hours to get there from the start. When we got there, the nice lady informed us the weather was drastically changing from the weather report we had looked up the previous evening. While it was in the 50's - low 60's where we had been hiking with a 30% chance of rain, it has turned into 100% precipitation up top with high winds. Further, we were informed that the road is often closed down and the train stopped if the weather is bad - meaning, you are on your own to hike it down in the bad weather.
While this sounded like a great challenge and story later - we also weren't prepared for this. A TX girl and a CA girl, hiking in the elements with a sweatshirt and light jacket and no real plan for getting down before dark...we decided a great story wasn't worth our misery and possible MIA status.
So we stuck around the camp for about 45 minutes eating our nasty MRE's and discussing our options. Then we decided to go ahead and hike it back down. And so we did, 15 miles total (we jogged a lot of the way down just to go with the momentum/inertia/gravity - we were pretty tired and my eyes were on fire (still, more on this later.)
We got to the bottom and decided to jump on the next train to the top - might as well, right? Lucky for us because it was the last train for the day. As soon as we got to the top and inside the little shop, a park ranger came in and made a big announcement that anyone who drove up had to get in their cars and leave. They were closing down the road and if they did not leave with his escort, their cars would be sequestered up top - and if the train was full, they would "magically transform into hikers." They then announced our train would be heading down early due to the snow and we had 20 minutes to board before departure.
When we got back on the train, they made an announcement over the radio that the "lost hiker" was found - he got on the bus and slept the whole way down...enough said.
We got back down and Rocio told me she was going to go to the bathroom before we left - nothing normally significant, except that it was at this time I realized she had gone to the bathroom several times now and I had pretty much drank my 1 liter of water in my Camelback + another 16 oz of water on the train - and still didn't have to go to the bathroom...
So we headed back up to Denver and I just wanted to go to sleep. I dropped her off and went back to my hotel where I sat in the hot tub for about 15 minutes before deciding I should just go to bed. So I did - about 9pm. Then I started waking up every 1/2 hour starting around midnight until about 11am the next day... I was running 101.5 temperature (mine is usually about 96.8 - 97, not 98.6).
I think I had been sick the whole time - at least running a fever that made me very hot, tired, dehydrated, and my eyes burn... but at least I "kinda" marked it off my list of CO things to do. My mom would be sooooo mad...(lol) We made it a little more than halfway up/down; 14 miles of the full official 25 mile round trip trail (15 miles total from/to the parking spot).
After we couldn't find the main road from the trail head, the plan changed to: Hike all the way up and then either hitch hike down on the main road or see if we could catch the train down. If neither, we'd huff it down...
And so we started the trail at 0730 - Did I mention I got up at 0445 to pick up Rocio and make the drive down to the Springs? It was half a mile hike just to get to the trail head from where we had to park.
And so we started our hike. I felt unseasonably warm and hiked the entire time in a t-shirt, debating on stopping and putting on shorts...more on this later.
We hiked and hiked...and hiked - and passed some neat sights. (yes, I look like a goof).
We finally got to Barr Camp, which is about 7 miles from the beginning of the trail.
It took us 3.5 hours to get there from the start. When we got there, the nice lady informed us the weather was drastically changing from the weather report we had looked up the previous evening. While it was in the 50's - low 60's where we had been hiking with a 30% chance of rain, it has turned into 100% precipitation up top with high winds. Further, we were informed that the road is often closed down and the train stopped if the weather is bad - meaning, you are on your own to hike it down in the bad weather.
While this sounded like a great challenge and story later - we also weren't prepared for this. A TX girl and a CA girl, hiking in the elements with a sweatshirt and light jacket and no real plan for getting down before dark...we decided a great story wasn't worth our misery and possible MIA status.
So we stuck around the camp for about 45 minutes eating our nasty MRE's and discussing our options. Then we decided to go ahead and hike it back down. And so we did, 15 miles total (we jogged a lot of the way down just to go with the momentum/inertia/gravity - we were pretty tired and my eyes were on fire (still, more on this later.)
We got to the bottom and decided to jump on the next train to the top - might as well, right? Lucky for us because it was the last train for the day. As soon as we got to the top and inside the little shop, a park ranger came in and made a big announcement that anyone who drove up had to get in their cars and leave. They were closing down the road and if they did not leave with his escort, their cars would be sequestered up top - and if the train was full, they would "magically transform into hikers." They then announced our train would be heading down early due to the snow and we had 20 minutes to board before departure.
When we got back on the train, they made an announcement over the radio that the "lost hiker" was found - he got on the bus and slept the whole way down...enough said.
We got back down and Rocio told me she was going to go to the bathroom before we left - nothing normally significant, except that it was at this time I realized she had gone to the bathroom several times now and I had pretty much drank my 1 liter of water in my Camelback + another 16 oz of water on the train - and still didn't have to go to the bathroom...
So we headed back up to Denver and I just wanted to go to sleep. I dropped her off and went back to my hotel where I sat in the hot tub for about 15 minutes before deciding I should just go to bed. So I did - about 9pm. Then I started waking up every 1/2 hour starting around midnight until about 11am the next day... I was running 101.5 temperature (mine is usually about 96.8 - 97, not 98.6).
I think I had been sick the whole time - at least running a fever that made me very hot, tired, dehydrated, and my eyes burn... but at least I "kinda" marked it off my list of CO things to do. My mom would be sooooo mad...(lol) We made it a little more than halfway up/down; 14 miles of the full official 25 mile round trip trail (15 miles total from/to the parking spot).
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Reflections of Being Elsewhere
Today I have had a lot of time to think:
I will have been away from home for 5 months on Wednesday - two more months to go before being home (forced volunteer). I have also figured out that in my current job, I have been away almost as much as I have been home (sigh). My roommate, who moved into the house a year after I purchased it, has lived in the house longer than I have.
I also have to say that this trip has been a lot easier emotionally than previous trips, but I think it goes without saying that many people become sad when they can't spend Christmas with their families - and even more so when they are alone. Well, same goes for many of us who follow the Messianic realm of "religion." As all my close friends begin to prepare for the "high Holy days": namely Rosh Hashanah this week as well as Yom Kippur and Sukkot the rest of the month, I find myself wishing I could be home with them celebrating (especially for Sukkot).
Every year for Sukkot, we pick someone's in the groups' backyard and we all camp out all week - all together in the backyard. We share meals, stories around the campfire, tents, and genuine fellowship while we reflect on the Biblical pilgrimage the Israelites took from Egypt. We get up in the morning and take turns getting ready for work, etc (on days that aren't Sabbaths) - I just go to the gym before work and get ready there.
Anyway, as crazy as it sounds to some - I'm really sad I can't take part in that with my group this year... And I'm really looking forward to having a job where I can take off my religious holidays or at least be home during them. -Because jobs where you have to start over every fiscal year (Oct 1) with no vacation and your religious holidays fall right after that and are not "Federally Observed Religious Holidays" SUCK!
I will have been away from home for 5 months on Wednesday - two more months to go before being home (forced volunteer). I have also figured out that in my current job, I have been away almost as much as I have been home (sigh). My roommate, who moved into the house a year after I purchased it, has lived in the house longer than I have.
I also have to say that this trip has been a lot easier emotionally than previous trips, but I think it goes without saying that many people become sad when they can't spend Christmas with their families - and even more so when they are alone. Well, same goes for many of us who follow the Messianic realm of "religion." As all my close friends begin to prepare for the "high Holy days": namely Rosh Hashanah this week as well as Yom Kippur and Sukkot the rest of the month, I find myself wishing I could be home with them celebrating (especially for Sukkot).
Every year for Sukkot, we pick someone's in the groups' backyard and we all camp out all week - all together in the backyard. We share meals, stories around the campfire, tents, and genuine fellowship while we reflect on the Biblical pilgrimage the Israelites took from Egypt. We get up in the morning and take turns getting ready for work, etc (on days that aren't Sabbaths) - I just go to the gym before work and get ready there.
Anyway, as crazy as it sounds to some - I'm really sad I can't take part in that with my group this year... And I'm really looking forward to having a job where I can take off my religious holidays or at least be home during them. -Because jobs where you have to start over every fiscal year (Oct 1) with no vacation and your religious holidays fall right after that and are not "Federally Observed Religious Holidays" SUCK!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My Race for the Cure - Your Opportunity to Help
Hey everyone (friends and strangers alike)
I will be running in the Denver Susan G. Koman "Race for the Cure" along with my teammates from Buckley AFB on Sunday, 5 Oct. I am running in honor of both of my grandmothers who are survivors...(yes, Mammy).
I have less than 20 days to fundraise before the race - please help me raise money to help find a cure.
Did you know that one in eight women will be stricken with breast cancer in her lifetime? 75% of the funds I raise will be used for breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs. 25% of the money will be used for national research to find a cure for breast cancer.
Every $100 raised helps one woman receive a mammogram. A $250 donation will pay for five clinical breast exams, and $1,000 will help pay for one round of chemotherapy drug Taxotere.
It is easy to contribute. You can make a donation online by simply clicking the link below. Click here to visit my personal page and pledge your support!
Thanks!
Amber
I will be running in the Denver Susan G. Koman "Race for the Cure" along with my teammates from Buckley AFB on Sunday, 5 Oct. I am running in honor of both of my grandmothers who are survivors...(yes, Mammy).
I have less than 20 days to fundraise before the race - please help me raise money to help find a cure.
Did you know that one in eight women will be stricken with breast cancer in her lifetime? 75% of the funds I raise will be used for breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs. 25% of the money will be used for national research to find a cure for breast cancer.
Every $100 raised helps one woman receive a mammogram. A $250 donation will pay for five clinical breast exams, and $1,000 will help pay for one round of chemotherapy drug Taxotere.
It is easy to contribute. You can make a donation online by simply clicking the link below. Click here to visit my personal page and pledge your support!
Thanks!
Amber
Thursday, September 11, 2008
For Thou Art With Us - Sara Bunting 9/14/2001
I didn't really want to go downtown in the first place. I had to speak on a breakfast panel, but I didn't feel very well and I didn't like my outfit so much, and I briefly considered bagging it and going back to bed — I mean, since when do I get up at six forty-five? Since never, that's when. But, as so often happens, my ego prevailed, and I caught a cab down to the financial district. We didn't see much traffic heading down the FDR Drive, which made a pleasant change, and I jumped out at 55 Broad Street at 8:15 and headed upstairs for some pre-panel coffee.
Fast-forward an hour. I'm in the middle of mentally composing yet another "uhhh"-studded sentence of impossible convolution about perspectives in content valuation (yeah, no kidding — I don't know what I meant either), in response a point Omar Wasow has just made, when there's a loud bang from outside that makes my coffee cup jump on the table. We look out the window. We figure it's a big truck going over one of the giant metal plates Con Ed puts down in the street all the time. We shrug. We keep talking.
A runner comes in. The moderator steps outside with the runner while Bob Poncé is talking about streaming media, and she comes back in a moment later to tell us that a suicide bomber has landed a plane on top of one of the World Trade towers, and do we want to continue? I lean into the microphone to say that it's probably not that important that we keep on about content subscriptions on the Web, all things considered, and if anyone has questions, they can catch us at the coffee urn on the way out. The group breaks up. There's small talk. The moderator grabs a giant plate of bagels, and we head for the elevator.
Down on the street, Bob and I say goodbye to the moderator. Bob's a reporter, and he wants to get closer to the towers and see what's going on; I have no discernible common sense, so I follow him. I don't go to that part of town very often even when I live there full-time — maybe twice a year — so I ask Bob if the streets are usually this busy at 9:45 in the morning. "It depends, but — well, actually, no." We hang a left onto Exchange Place and see clusters of blue-jacketed traders on the street. I observe that, fifteen minutes after the opening bell, there's no way those guys should be outside. "This has to be bad," I say. Bob agrees with me.
We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. "Ohhh, man," we both say, and "Jeeeesus Christ," and "This is not good. This is not good at all. This is f----'n bad." So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there's nothing else we can say about what we've got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn't seem real. It doesn't even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. "This isn't the kind of history I want to be present at," I say, lamely, to Bob. "Me neither," he says.
We try to figure out what happened from what the crowd is saying. "A 767," one woman says, not looking up from her camcorder. "Two of 'em. Just slammed right into the damn thing," a man offers. We continue to stand there, staring up. Papers and debris flutter down against the sharp blue of the sky, kind of like a really horrible leaflet drop. Bob and I watch, almost amused, as more people come up to the corner and have the same double-take reaction we did: "Oh, it's not gonna be that bad, a plane can't just fly into the — oh my holy God, look at that shit."
More people come to stand with us on the corner. People walk out into the street to look. The building on a hundred million postcards, panned past in establishing shots in a thousand movies, visible from my bedroom window growing up, has an angry jagged yell full of twisted steel and fire punched into its side. I don't know what else to do, so I stand there, mouth agape, and stare at it. It seems like a particularly realistic CGI rendering in a movie trailer. I try to get my brain to deal with what my eyes are telling it, but it's just not sinking in, and just then a hot fragment of something or other lands on my head, and I duck my head to shake it free, and as I do, I see a shirt cuff land gently on the sidewalk a few feet away. I stare at that, too. "Dude, look at that, this is seriously seriously bad," I start to say to Bob, who's digging in his bag for his tape recorder, but I don't have time, because I've turned my attention back to the building again, and the building has chosen that moment to die.
Everything happens at once, and yet at the same time somehow nothing happens at all for a second, as the building sighs and slumps towards us, and the top section shrugs down into the hole made by the plane, and a ring of debris and ash shoots out from where the hole starts. From the ground, it looks like the top of the building is going to come clean off and fall in our direction, but for a full two beats, we all just…stand there…admiring it: "It's coming down." But it isn't coming down, not really. It's not real. We see it, of course. But it's not happening. The building isn't coming down. The building can't come down. It wouldn't do that.
The ground begins to shake. The building groans deeply, regretfully, almost an apology for its failure to hold: "MUHHHHRUHHHHAAAAH." The building is dying. The building is sending a wave of dust and detritus to give us the bad news, and the wave is running through the streets towards us with a sad, choking sigh: "HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA." And then all of us all at once realize that now's the time in the movie when the nameless extras run screaming, so finally, at last, as the building begins its awful death swoon, that's what we do. Well, most of us do. I settle for walking purposefully, and get knocked into a mailbox as a result. People flee to nearby buildings, stopping only long enough to grab the elbows of those who have tripped and fallen, pushing others in front of them towards the door, any door. I wind up in a revolving door at the Bank of New York, squashed into it with four other people. We are ejected stumbling into the lobby as the wave goes by. "HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA." More people tumble in behind us, clutching onto each other, coughing, staring at nothing in disbelief.
And so we all just stand there, alive, with nowhere to go. A few people cry, but mostly we stare and stare, looking at each other, pacing, shaking our heads, clearing our throats, cursing. Dust starts to filter into the lobby, and the security guys herd us towards the elevator banks, and then away, and then out into the office area, and then away from the windows, and that's when it starts to get hectic and weird, what are we doing, does anyone know what's going on, I heard there's seven planes, if that whole thing comes down we're dead anyway, where's the vault we could hide there I think, I can't believe this I just can't believe it, I can't get a go-d-mn signal why can't I get a go-d-mn signal, can't they tell us where to go, Jesus look at that guy he's practically covered in — whatever that stuff is, how do I get an outside line, what's happening, what's happening, for God's sake what's happening, this is f---'ed totally f---'ed man, did you see that, what do I do now, I don't — I don't know what to do now.
We don't know what we've seen. Even seeing it, we didn't — see it. It's like Godzilla. It's like Independence Day, like Deep Impact. It's like the demolition footage of old Vegas hotels. And it's like nothing we have ever seen before, or wanted to see, or thought or dreamed of seeing. It isn't happening. It hasn't happened. Nothing's happening — what's happening?
We fan out into the offices beside the lobby. There's a smoke alarm going off. I find a phone on a desk that's free, get an outside line, and leave a stupid, meaningless message for my brother: "I don't know if you know what's going on down here, but I'm in the Bank of New York and — I don't think, uh, I don't think we're doing lunch today, dude. This is — I'm okay, but I don't — I don't know. Try my cell if you get this." It's the most banal voicemail ever, under the circumstances, but my mind is on autopilot, to the point where I've actually begun wondering where I might find a bathroom and whether they'll let us smoke in here. The view out the windows is nonexistent; the wave is still passing us. Dust and ash hiss against them.
Minutes pass, minutes we spend alternating between asking fervent questions and listening very hard. I meet a guy named Don. Don just came into the city via the PATH train, World Trade Center station. It's Don's birthday today. Don and I try to figure out what's going on outside. Don buttonholes a guard — where should we stand, what's the latest, where's everyone going, tell us what you know, tell us what you don't know, tell us anything at all. The guard doesn't know anything and has nothing to say. We walk over into the branch lobby, which has cleaner air. The mood is that there is no mood — null, flat. Everyone is instinctively clustering together in pairs and groups, some already knowing each other, some just meeting, and Don and I decide, without saying so out loud, to stay together — disaster "buddies," so to speak. Don has a soft-sided briefcase and a crisp business suit and a compact build, all of which project an air of neat, good-natured competence. Don laughs at my feeble gallows-humor jokes and responds with his own; Don looks like Blair Underwood a little bit, around the eyes. Don is, in short, pretty normal and nice, and I'd like him anyway, out in the world where we both used to live, so it seems like a good idea to stick with Don.
Don and I drift around the room, watching the people calling frantically, watching a woman sitting quietly on the floor with a cat carrier beside her, watching other people watching us watch them. Muttering. Listening. Praying. A man says a Hail Mary. A radio is found, and turned all the way up. We can't hear much over the smoke alarm, but the broadcaster sounds close to tears. We learn about the Pentagon. We learn about other planes. A woman warns us away from the windows where we linger: "The Stock Exchange is back there. I'd get down, I were you."
Later still, around 10:30. We can see outside now, and a few of us venture out to get the lay of the land. The land is covered with half an inch of dirt and debris, the sky and the ground all the same flat pinkish-beige. Silt is still falling. I light a cigarette. It seems wrong to smoke, in a way — disrespectful, I guess — but I don't know what else to do with myself. Knots of people stand outside, blaming Saddam, testing out possible bright sides. It's like a snowy day in Manhattan, the way people hustle down the street all huddled up against the weather, but with charred papers everywhere and sirens going like crazy. It's like The Stand, only the hundreds of us inside left, the occasional police car chirring past, kicking up a wake of dust. It's like the blizzard of '96. It's like nuclear winter. It's not like anything. The sky is blank and dusky. Ash sifts down on our shoulders and hair. A night of sorts is falling. The air feels cool. We blink a lot.
Another rumble. "I don't like the sound of that," I tell Don, but laughingly. And why shouldn't I laugh? What else could happen, after all? This didn't even happen, even though I saw it, saw the building die, heard it moan and give up, so sorry, so angry, watched it begin to fall and then turned and walked away without a single thought in my head. I didn't think. I didn't fear for my life. I didn't know what I should do, or where. I just turned around and went…elsewhere. What else could I do? What else is there? I don't know — I don't even know a thing that I just saw. How many ways can I ask "what?" and not get an answer without laughing?
Don thinks the rumbling is coming from a dusty motorcycle that is slowly and bizarrely making its way up the street. I choose to believe that — but the rumbling doesn't stop, and when the ground starts to shake again and another wave of debris crests over the top of a neighboring building, we bolt back inside. Don stuffs me in the door ahead of him, shouting, "Go! Go!" and I have a crystal-clear moment of "oh please, it's no time to hold doors for 'the ladies'" annoyance in spite of everything. It soon passes, and when we've all gotten safely back inside, I thank him. We turn to look outside, but once again, outside is gone. We wander back into the banks of desks just off of the lobby and hear on the radio that the second tower has now given way.
More chatting. More speculating. I leave Don near the radio and walk around the lobby, hoping to find a pocket of air where my cell phone will work, but the signal is fine; the system is, it appears, "busy." I don't even know who to call, really, or why, or what I would say. "I'm alive, so far"? It doesn't matter. No calls go through. The windows remain blank expanses of grainy beige. On our side of the windows, no genuine sense of what has happened, no true reaction to what we hear — except to the smoke alarm, which is redundant and stress-causing and which several of us have begun yelling at, to wit: "Oh yeah, THAT'S HELPING — someone TURN that shit OFF!"
I meet up with Don again. We know now that both towers have gone down, that it's maybe not over yet, that the entire lower half of the island is under a cloud. But the verb "to know" doesn't apply here, quite. We heard that on the radio, and from others in the room. We saw part of it. But we don't know it.
How do I know we don't know it? Well, at around eleven, when the second wave has ebbed, a (shirtless) firefighter in the lobby tells us that, if we want to leave, we should head for the water. And we head for the water. Passenger planes have come out of nowhere and slammed into giant buildings. Passenger planes have turned the Pentagon into the Horseshoe. Thousands have died, gotten crushed, while we watched, while we fled. And yet, outside we go. No helmets. No masks. I have three-inch heels on and they don't fit quite right. I can't run, I can't breathe or see very well, and still I decide to go. Well, I don't decide, exactly. I just…go. I mean, Don and I look at each other, and one of us says that it's probably no better inside than out, in the end, and then shock-addled Don holds the door open for taken-leave-of-the-senses me and we just…walk out into it.
There is now an inch of ash on the ground. Burnt papers — depositions, fax cover sheets, annotated minutes, reports with shopping lists scribbled in the margins. Bits of cloth. Chunks of wood and plastic. Mostly, though, dust. Coagulated air. Nothing for it, though. We will go. I pull my t-shirt up over my nose and unholster a Camel Light, Don claps a kerchief over his nose, and we go. First, south. Then, west. Then we consult my street map. Then we keep going. We don't walk quickly. Others, ahead and behind, proceed at the same strange zombie-ish pace. We put on our sunglasses to protect our eyes from the dust. Don picks up a piece of paper, idly, just to look at it. After a moment, he drops it as though it's too hot to hold. It's simultaneously eerily quiet and shockingly loud on the street. The whole world is one color — the color of a shadow. A fog of dust hangs low in the streets, London-style.
After a few minutes, it begins to get lighter and easier to see; the air thins a bit. The occasional police officer waves us towards the FDR Drive. They seem casual, business-like. We walk. We clamber over barriers. I hop awkwardly over a divider, still for some reason concerned about my mini, when I feel it on my shoulders — heat, heaviness.
It's the sun. The sun is out. The sun is out?
The sun is out. The sun hasn't turned on the TV today.
Don and I turn north. The police won't tell us anything, except to keep going north. Once in a while, we have to crowd over to the side and let radio cars through. There's not much talking now, just a column of dusty, rattled, dogged people five or six across, trudging uptown, squinting into the distance, trying to figure out where we can go, or ought to go. Now and then, Don and I pick up a snippet of news from a fellow refugee on the road, but we pretty much just walk and murmur to each other. We don't say anything memorable. We just walk and hear our own voices and our shoes on the pavement.
I turn to look over my shoulder. It's hot out here on the road — a clear, sunny day in late summer. Behind me, night. A pall of stormy smoke hangs over the lower end of the island, billowing up from the ground to the west, from what remains of the towers. Here, it's day. There, it's not. I turn back around.
As we approach the Brooklyn Bridge, a ferry pulls in to the pier, calling for passengers to Jersey City. That's where Don lives. We both stop, frowning, and for a moment we just stand there together as others pass us with their heads down, concentrating on going. We don't want to leave each other. Without each other, it's just us by ourselves. It seems strange and worrisome, and I sense that he wants me to go with him so we can stick together still, but I also know he knows I have to go north and finish the walk, that it's important for both of us to get to our homes. All of these thoughts come and go and we don't say any of them aloud. We shake hands, wish each other the very best of luck, although it's not a day with much of that. Don heads back towards the pier. I turn back to the hill ahead of me. I don't turn around. It's just me now, going home.
With Don gone, uncomfortable things become clearer. My feet hurt. My mouth is dry. I have just seen thousands of people die. I can't reach anyone on the phone. I have to pee. The World Trade Center is gone. Military planes shoot through the air in the distance. I want to go home. I must go home. Get home; try the phone. Get home; try the phone. That's all. That's all there is now.
Down the FDR ramp and into the streets, heading up through Chinatown. It's wild and busy, people jogging and jostling, crossing against traffic. The sirens persist. I finally get through to my mother's voicemail and pant out a message. More dialing — calling Wing Chun, calling my dad, calling my brother, seeing "system busy" on the display, trying again.
I ask a traffic officer where I should go. "Just zig up, and then zig over, and just keep goin' that way," he says. I zig. I zag. I try to think about what I've just seen, force it into my mind, but my mind keeps dodging it and hiding behind the blisters on my feet and my full bladder. I walk in the street because there's no traffic moving. Along the curbs, men sit in commercial vans with the doors open, blasting the radios so everyone can listen to the news. A few people gather around the vans; a few stand on the steps of buildings and look south with blank faces. Most of us, hundreds of thousands of us, keep walking. The war planes fly overhead. Sirens wail all around. In front of a church, the staff hands out water and orange slices, douses the overheated with water, leads people inside to talk to a priest. I consider going inside the church, where it will be cool and dry and smell of Murphy's Oil Soap, just to sit down for a minute and maybe to feel a cool hand on my forehead, but I walk on by. My feet hurt a lot. I need better shoes, and I need a bathroom, and I need to get home.
Chinatown. Everyone's out on the street here, too, but most of what they say, I can't understand. I stop at Green Garden, a restaurant, and the sympathetic hostess lets me use the ladies' room. It's a very nice ladies' room. I splash water on my face. There's ash in my hair and eyebrows, which I note dispassionately before hiking my tights back up and going back out into the street. Further up, on Mott, I stop again to buy a cheap pair of shoes, and the lady manning the booth absently quotes me a price of ten dollars. After she sees my face, my legs — coated with dust up to the knees — she'll only take a dollar. And so I continue uptown, in a black t-shirt, Burberry mini, black tights, and red-white-and-blue Sport USA shower flip-flops.
Somewhere near Lafayette and Bond, I get my mother on the phone. So far, everyone's okay. Mr. Stupidhead is okay. Dad is okay. I am okay. I walk and chat, breathless, animated, unable to describe what's happening or what happened with any coherence. "Unbelievable," I say. "You wouldn't believe it," I say. I say the words because I have to, must, should say them, should feel them, must, have to feel them, but the words don't touch me and I feel nothing. I feel the flip-flops slapping against my heels, and I feel thirsty. One hundred and ten stories telescoping in on themselves — I don't feel that. Seeing it from so close — I don't feel that either. I only feel the walking. I hear people talking, see them crying and hugging one another. I hear the radios talking about the President and the Pentagon and the terrorist campaign and the National Guard. I hear F-14s zinging through New York airspace. Sirens. Sobbing. I hear all of that. I feel none of it. I do not feel lucky to have escaped. I do not feel worry or fear. My mind is clear. No, not clear — dead. As it counts off the blocks between me and home, my mind is as silent and motionless as death.
Home. The death of the building. Home. The sun. Home. The cloud. Home. I will get home. I don't think beyond that. I don't think before that. Just that. Just home.
I slog into a deli to buy a Coke. It's not far now. There's Karim at Jean-Claude Biguine who gave me a sassy haircut yesterday. I wave to Karim. Here's the hill. Ah, the hill. Here's the light at 34th Street. I cross the street. Here's the corner. Here's the building. Here's the lobby, and the elevator. Here's the front door. Here's the bed and the desk and the window and the clothes on the floor. Here's home.
I change clothes. I write emails and place phone calls and check websites and stare dully at the television. I watch what happened, to try to prove it to myself from a dozen different angles. Here's the plane. Here's the next plane. Here's the collapse of the first tower, and then the second. Here's the hulking smoking Pentagon and the President on the run. Here's the bang and the fire and the smoke and the unbelievable unbelieving screams on the ground. I watch. My mind lies quiet.
I have come home, but this is now not home. It is not safe, or familiar. It is where I live, a place I know, but it is not home. I call my mother again: "I'm coming home." "Can you get home today?" she asks me. "I don't know."
I pack up my things. I retrieve my car. I sit at a stop light as fire engines stream by, dozens of fire companies come from Long Island to help us. I cheer for them, or try to, but it's hard to summon up the necessary volume. I drive around, thwarted at the tunnel entrance, leaning out of windows to talk to harried cops, trying to find the bridge entrance, nearly crossing a bridge to Long Island by mistake, getting hit by a semi, listening to the radio, sitting in traffic, talking on the phone, all done at a safe distance from reality.
At last, I get onto the bridge. Automatically, without thinking, I turn to see the skyline stretching away on the left. The skyline is gone. The Empire State Building is dark. The World Trade towers have disappeared. The lights below 14th Street have gone out. Nothing moves or sparkles; the occupied city is dark except for a necklace of EMS lights, and the slow, steady, sorrowing plume of ash wending its way down into the harbor. And my mind wakes up. I imagine the screams of the dead, from which the scream of the building protected me before. I hear the evenness my father willed into his voice, hear Don telling me hesitantly, "Well. Take good care, Sarah." I feel the hole in the city as a hole ripped out of my chest and head, thousands burned and crushed and orphaned and ruined and dead. I merge onto I-95 South, and I cry — great whooping moaning sobs, strangling me, fighting to get out of my throat and go nowhere except back into my ears. I clutch the wheel to keep it straight, signaling, getting left, barreling onto the ramp for I-78 West, driving home as I've done a thousand times before, and I cry and cry and cry.
Near Hillside, I stop crying. I don't feel better, but I stop crying. On the radio, the President refers to the 23rd Psalm. "Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for Thou art with us."
The President is wrong. I fear evil. No rod or staff can comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy have turned their backs on all of us today. I have no interest in the house of the Lord.
I come up the driveway — home. My mother stands in the doorway waiting for me, and with the light behind her, she looks small. The house itself seems small and weak. Everything seems small and weak. I have come home, but the story is just starting, and I don't know that I can tell it right. Telling a story is all I have, all I have ever had, to give. The telling used to seem important and strong. A story used to seem powerful, and now it's really nothing at all. Just paper, in the end, easily burnt and blown away."
_______________________________
This was written 3 days after 9/11 - one of the most enlightening recaps I've read.
I hope you all take time to remember and reflect today on those lost, those who continue to fight for our freedom, and the personal responsibilities we all have as a country/world to bind together to combat such violence.
Fast-forward an hour. I'm in the middle of mentally composing yet another "uhhh"-studded sentence of impossible convolution about perspectives in content valuation (yeah, no kidding — I don't know what I meant either), in response a point Omar Wasow has just made, when there's a loud bang from outside that makes my coffee cup jump on the table. We look out the window. We figure it's a big truck going over one of the giant metal plates Con Ed puts down in the street all the time. We shrug. We keep talking.
A runner comes in. The moderator steps outside with the runner while Bob Poncé is talking about streaming media, and she comes back in a moment later to tell us that a suicide bomber has landed a plane on top of one of the World Trade towers, and do we want to continue? I lean into the microphone to say that it's probably not that important that we keep on about content subscriptions on the Web, all things considered, and if anyone has questions, they can catch us at the coffee urn on the way out. The group breaks up. There's small talk. The moderator grabs a giant plate of bagels, and we head for the elevator.
Down on the street, Bob and I say goodbye to the moderator. Bob's a reporter, and he wants to get closer to the towers and see what's going on; I have no discernible common sense, so I follow him. I don't go to that part of town very often even when I live there full-time — maybe twice a year — so I ask Bob if the streets are usually this busy at 9:45 in the morning. "It depends, but — well, actually, no." We hang a left onto Exchange Place and see clusters of blue-jacketed traders on the street. I observe that, fifteen minutes after the opening bell, there's no way those guys should be outside. "This has to be bad," I say. Bob agrees with me.
We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. "Ohhh, man," we both say, and "Jeeeesus Christ," and "This is not good. This is not good at all. This is f----'n bad." So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there's nothing else we can say about what we've got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn't seem real. It doesn't even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. "This isn't the kind of history I want to be present at," I say, lamely, to Bob. "Me neither," he says.
We try to figure out what happened from what the crowd is saying. "A 767," one woman says, not looking up from her camcorder. "Two of 'em. Just slammed right into the damn thing," a man offers. We continue to stand there, staring up. Papers and debris flutter down against the sharp blue of the sky, kind of like a really horrible leaflet drop. Bob and I watch, almost amused, as more people come up to the corner and have the same double-take reaction we did: "Oh, it's not gonna be that bad, a plane can't just fly into the — oh my holy God, look at that shit."
More people come to stand with us on the corner. People walk out into the street to look. The building on a hundred million postcards, panned past in establishing shots in a thousand movies, visible from my bedroom window growing up, has an angry jagged yell full of twisted steel and fire punched into its side. I don't know what else to do, so I stand there, mouth agape, and stare at it. It seems like a particularly realistic CGI rendering in a movie trailer. I try to get my brain to deal with what my eyes are telling it, but it's just not sinking in, and just then a hot fragment of something or other lands on my head, and I duck my head to shake it free, and as I do, I see a shirt cuff land gently on the sidewalk a few feet away. I stare at that, too. "Dude, look at that, this is seriously seriously bad," I start to say to Bob, who's digging in his bag for his tape recorder, but I don't have time, because I've turned my attention back to the building again, and the building has chosen that moment to die.
Everything happens at once, and yet at the same time somehow nothing happens at all for a second, as the building sighs and slumps towards us, and the top section shrugs down into the hole made by the plane, and a ring of debris and ash shoots out from where the hole starts. From the ground, it looks like the top of the building is going to come clean off and fall in our direction, but for a full two beats, we all just…stand there…admiring it: "It's coming down." But it isn't coming down, not really. It's not real. We see it, of course. But it's not happening. The building isn't coming down. The building can't come down. It wouldn't do that.
The ground begins to shake. The building groans deeply, regretfully, almost an apology for its failure to hold: "MUHHHHRUHHHHAAAAH." The building is dying. The building is sending a wave of dust and detritus to give us the bad news, and the wave is running through the streets towards us with a sad, choking sigh: "HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA." And then all of us all at once realize that now's the time in the movie when the nameless extras run screaming, so finally, at last, as the building begins its awful death swoon, that's what we do. Well, most of us do. I settle for walking purposefully, and get knocked into a mailbox as a result. People flee to nearby buildings, stopping only long enough to grab the elbows of those who have tripped and fallen, pushing others in front of them towards the door, any door. I wind up in a revolving door at the Bank of New York, squashed into it with four other people. We are ejected stumbling into the lobby as the wave goes by. "HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA." More people tumble in behind us, clutching onto each other, coughing, staring at nothing in disbelief.
And so we all just stand there, alive, with nowhere to go. A few people cry, but mostly we stare and stare, looking at each other, pacing, shaking our heads, clearing our throats, cursing. Dust starts to filter into the lobby, and the security guys herd us towards the elevator banks, and then away, and then out into the office area, and then away from the windows, and that's when it starts to get hectic and weird, what are we doing, does anyone know what's going on, I heard there's seven planes, if that whole thing comes down we're dead anyway, where's the vault we could hide there I think, I can't believe this I just can't believe it, I can't get a go-d-mn signal why can't I get a go-d-mn signal, can't they tell us where to go, Jesus look at that guy he's practically covered in — whatever that stuff is, how do I get an outside line, what's happening, what's happening, for God's sake what's happening, this is f---'ed totally f---'ed man, did you see that, what do I do now, I don't — I don't know what to do now.
We don't know what we've seen. Even seeing it, we didn't — see it. It's like Godzilla. It's like Independence Day, like Deep Impact. It's like the demolition footage of old Vegas hotels. And it's like nothing we have ever seen before, or wanted to see, or thought or dreamed of seeing. It isn't happening. It hasn't happened. Nothing's happening — what's happening?
We fan out into the offices beside the lobby. There's a smoke alarm going off. I find a phone on a desk that's free, get an outside line, and leave a stupid, meaningless message for my brother: "I don't know if you know what's going on down here, but I'm in the Bank of New York and — I don't think, uh, I don't think we're doing lunch today, dude. This is — I'm okay, but I don't — I don't know. Try my cell if you get this." It's the most banal voicemail ever, under the circumstances, but my mind is on autopilot, to the point where I've actually begun wondering where I might find a bathroom and whether they'll let us smoke in here. The view out the windows is nonexistent; the wave is still passing us. Dust and ash hiss against them.
Minutes pass, minutes we spend alternating between asking fervent questions and listening very hard. I meet a guy named Don. Don just came into the city via the PATH train, World Trade Center station. It's Don's birthday today. Don and I try to figure out what's going on outside. Don buttonholes a guard — where should we stand, what's the latest, where's everyone going, tell us what you know, tell us what you don't know, tell us anything at all. The guard doesn't know anything and has nothing to say. We walk over into the branch lobby, which has cleaner air. The mood is that there is no mood — null, flat. Everyone is instinctively clustering together in pairs and groups, some already knowing each other, some just meeting, and Don and I decide, without saying so out loud, to stay together — disaster "buddies," so to speak. Don has a soft-sided briefcase and a crisp business suit and a compact build, all of which project an air of neat, good-natured competence. Don laughs at my feeble gallows-humor jokes and responds with his own; Don looks like Blair Underwood a little bit, around the eyes. Don is, in short, pretty normal and nice, and I'd like him anyway, out in the world where we both used to live, so it seems like a good idea to stick with Don.
Don and I drift around the room, watching the people calling frantically, watching a woman sitting quietly on the floor with a cat carrier beside her, watching other people watching us watch them. Muttering. Listening. Praying. A man says a Hail Mary. A radio is found, and turned all the way up. We can't hear much over the smoke alarm, but the broadcaster sounds close to tears. We learn about the Pentagon. We learn about other planes. A woman warns us away from the windows where we linger: "The Stock Exchange is back there. I'd get down, I were you."
Later still, around 10:30. We can see outside now, and a few of us venture out to get the lay of the land. The land is covered with half an inch of dirt and debris, the sky and the ground all the same flat pinkish-beige. Silt is still falling. I light a cigarette. It seems wrong to smoke, in a way — disrespectful, I guess — but I don't know what else to do with myself. Knots of people stand outside, blaming Saddam, testing out possible bright sides. It's like a snowy day in Manhattan, the way people hustle down the street all huddled up against the weather, but with charred papers everywhere and sirens going like crazy. It's like The Stand, only the hundreds of us inside left, the occasional police car chirring past, kicking up a wake of dust. It's like the blizzard of '96. It's like nuclear winter. It's not like anything. The sky is blank and dusky. Ash sifts down on our shoulders and hair. A night of sorts is falling. The air feels cool. We blink a lot.
Another rumble. "I don't like the sound of that," I tell Don, but laughingly. And why shouldn't I laugh? What else could happen, after all? This didn't even happen, even though I saw it, saw the building die, heard it moan and give up, so sorry, so angry, watched it begin to fall and then turned and walked away without a single thought in my head. I didn't think. I didn't fear for my life. I didn't know what I should do, or where. I just turned around and went…elsewhere. What else could I do? What else is there? I don't know — I don't even know a thing that I just saw. How many ways can I ask "what?" and not get an answer without laughing?
Don thinks the rumbling is coming from a dusty motorcycle that is slowly and bizarrely making its way up the street. I choose to believe that — but the rumbling doesn't stop, and when the ground starts to shake again and another wave of debris crests over the top of a neighboring building, we bolt back inside. Don stuffs me in the door ahead of him, shouting, "Go! Go!" and I have a crystal-clear moment of "oh please, it's no time to hold doors for 'the ladies'" annoyance in spite of everything. It soon passes, and when we've all gotten safely back inside, I thank him. We turn to look outside, but once again, outside is gone. We wander back into the banks of desks just off of the lobby and hear on the radio that the second tower has now given way.
More chatting. More speculating. I leave Don near the radio and walk around the lobby, hoping to find a pocket of air where my cell phone will work, but the signal is fine; the system is, it appears, "busy." I don't even know who to call, really, or why, or what I would say. "I'm alive, so far"? It doesn't matter. No calls go through. The windows remain blank expanses of grainy beige. On our side of the windows, no genuine sense of what has happened, no true reaction to what we hear — except to the smoke alarm, which is redundant and stress-causing and which several of us have begun yelling at, to wit: "Oh yeah, THAT'S HELPING — someone TURN that shit OFF!"
I meet up with Don again. We know now that both towers have gone down, that it's maybe not over yet, that the entire lower half of the island is under a cloud. But the verb "to know" doesn't apply here, quite. We heard that on the radio, and from others in the room. We saw part of it. But we don't know it.
How do I know we don't know it? Well, at around eleven, when the second wave has ebbed, a (shirtless) firefighter in the lobby tells us that, if we want to leave, we should head for the water. And we head for the water. Passenger planes have come out of nowhere and slammed into giant buildings. Passenger planes have turned the Pentagon into the Horseshoe. Thousands have died, gotten crushed, while we watched, while we fled. And yet, outside we go. No helmets. No masks. I have three-inch heels on and they don't fit quite right. I can't run, I can't breathe or see very well, and still I decide to go. Well, I don't decide, exactly. I just…go. I mean, Don and I look at each other, and one of us says that it's probably no better inside than out, in the end, and then shock-addled Don holds the door open for taken-leave-of-the-senses me and we just…walk out into it.
There is now an inch of ash on the ground. Burnt papers — depositions, fax cover sheets, annotated minutes, reports with shopping lists scribbled in the margins. Bits of cloth. Chunks of wood and plastic. Mostly, though, dust. Coagulated air. Nothing for it, though. We will go. I pull my t-shirt up over my nose and unholster a Camel Light, Don claps a kerchief over his nose, and we go. First, south. Then, west. Then we consult my street map. Then we keep going. We don't walk quickly. Others, ahead and behind, proceed at the same strange zombie-ish pace. We put on our sunglasses to protect our eyes from the dust. Don picks up a piece of paper, idly, just to look at it. After a moment, he drops it as though it's too hot to hold. It's simultaneously eerily quiet and shockingly loud on the street. The whole world is one color — the color of a shadow. A fog of dust hangs low in the streets, London-style.
After a few minutes, it begins to get lighter and easier to see; the air thins a bit. The occasional police officer waves us towards the FDR Drive. They seem casual, business-like. We walk. We clamber over barriers. I hop awkwardly over a divider, still for some reason concerned about my mini, when I feel it on my shoulders — heat, heaviness.
It's the sun. The sun is out. The sun is out?
The sun is out. The sun hasn't turned on the TV today.
Don and I turn north. The police won't tell us anything, except to keep going north. Once in a while, we have to crowd over to the side and let radio cars through. There's not much talking now, just a column of dusty, rattled, dogged people five or six across, trudging uptown, squinting into the distance, trying to figure out where we can go, or ought to go. Now and then, Don and I pick up a snippet of news from a fellow refugee on the road, but we pretty much just walk and murmur to each other. We don't say anything memorable. We just walk and hear our own voices and our shoes on the pavement.
I turn to look over my shoulder. It's hot out here on the road — a clear, sunny day in late summer. Behind me, night. A pall of stormy smoke hangs over the lower end of the island, billowing up from the ground to the west, from what remains of the towers. Here, it's day. There, it's not. I turn back around.
As we approach the Brooklyn Bridge, a ferry pulls in to the pier, calling for passengers to Jersey City. That's where Don lives. We both stop, frowning, and for a moment we just stand there together as others pass us with their heads down, concentrating on going. We don't want to leave each other. Without each other, it's just us by ourselves. It seems strange and worrisome, and I sense that he wants me to go with him so we can stick together still, but I also know he knows I have to go north and finish the walk, that it's important for both of us to get to our homes. All of these thoughts come and go and we don't say any of them aloud. We shake hands, wish each other the very best of luck, although it's not a day with much of that. Don heads back towards the pier. I turn back to the hill ahead of me. I don't turn around. It's just me now, going home.
With Don gone, uncomfortable things become clearer. My feet hurt. My mouth is dry. I have just seen thousands of people die. I can't reach anyone on the phone. I have to pee. The World Trade Center is gone. Military planes shoot through the air in the distance. I want to go home. I must go home. Get home; try the phone. Get home; try the phone. That's all. That's all there is now.
Down the FDR ramp and into the streets, heading up through Chinatown. It's wild and busy, people jogging and jostling, crossing against traffic. The sirens persist. I finally get through to my mother's voicemail and pant out a message. More dialing — calling Wing Chun, calling my dad, calling my brother, seeing "system busy" on the display, trying again.
I ask a traffic officer where I should go. "Just zig up, and then zig over, and just keep goin' that way," he says. I zig. I zag. I try to think about what I've just seen, force it into my mind, but my mind keeps dodging it and hiding behind the blisters on my feet and my full bladder. I walk in the street because there's no traffic moving. Along the curbs, men sit in commercial vans with the doors open, blasting the radios so everyone can listen to the news. A few people gather around the vans; a few stand on the steps of buildings and look south with blank faces. Most of us, hundreds of thousands of us, keep walking. The war planes fly overhead. Sirens wail all around. In front of a church, the staff hands out water and orange slices, douses the overheated with water, leads people inside to talk to a priest. I consider going inside the church, where it will be cool and dry and smell of Murphy's Oil Soap, just to sit down for a minute and maybe to feel a cool hand on my forehead, but I walk on by. My feet hurt a lot. I need better shoes, and I need a bathroom, and I need to get home.
Chinatown. Everyone's out on the street here, too, but most of what they say, I can't understand. I stop at Green Garden, a restaurant, and the sympathetic hostess lets me use the ladies' room. It's a very nice ladies' room. I splash water on my face. There's ash in my hair and eyebrows, which I note dispassionately before hiking my tights back up and going back out into the street. Further up, on Mott, I stop again to buy a cheap pair of shoes, and the lady manning the booth absently quotes me a price of ten dollars. After she sees my face, my legs — coated with dust up to the knees — she'll only take a dollar. And so I continue uptown, in a black t-shirt, Burberry mini, black tights, and red-white-and-blue Sport USA shower flip-flops.
Somewhere near Lafayette and Bond, I get my mother on the phone. So far, everyone's okay. Mr. Stupidhead is okay. Dad is okay. I am okay. I walk and chat, breathless, animated, unable to describe what's happening or what happened with any coherence. "Unbelievable," I say. "You wouldn't believe it," I say. I say the words because I have to, must, should say them, should feel them, must, have to feel them, but the words don't touch me and I feel nothing. I feel the flip-flops slapping against my heels, and I feel thirsty. One hundred and ten stories telescoping in on themselves — I don't feel that. Seeing it from so close — I don't feel that either. I only feel the walking. I hear people talking, see them crying and hugging one another. I hear the radios talking about the President and the Pentagon and the terrorist campaign and the National Guard. I hear F-14s zinging through New York airspace. Sirens. Sobbing. I hear all of that. I feel none of it. I do not feel lucky to have escaped. I do not feel worry or fear. My mind is clear. No, not clear — dead. As it counts off the blocks between me and home, my mind is as silent and motionless as death.
Home. The death of the building. Home. The sun. Home. The cloud. Home. I will get home. I don't think beyond that. I don't think before that. Just that. Just home.
I slog into a deli to buy a Coke. It's not far now. There's Karim at Jean-Claude Biguine who gave me a sassy haircut yesterday. I wave to Karim. Here's the hill. Ah, the hill. Here's the light at 34th Street. I cross the street. Here's the corner. Here's the building. Here's the lobby, and the elevator. Here's the front door. Here's the bed and the desk and the window and the clothes on the floor. Here's home.
I change clothes. I write emails and place phone calls and check websites and stare dully at the television. I watch what happened, to try to prove it to myself from a dozen different angles. Here's the plane. Here's the next plane. Here's the collapse of the first tower, and then the second. Here's the hulking smoking Pentagon and the President on the run. Here's the bang and the fire and the smoke and the unbelievable unbelieving screams on the ground. I watch. My mind lies quiet.
I have come home, but this is now not home. It is not safe, or familiar. It is where I live, a place I know, but it is not home. I call my mother again: "I'm coming home." "Can you get home today?" she asks me. "I don't know."
I pack up my things. I retrieve my car. I sit at a stop light as fire engines stream by, dozens of fire companies come from Long Island to help us. I cheer for them, or try to, but it's hard to summon up the necessary volume. I drive around, thwarted at the tunnel entrance, leaning out of windows to talk to harried cops, trying to find the bridge entrance, nearly crossing a bridge to Long Island by mistake, getting hit by a semi, listening to the radio, sitting in traffic, talking on the phone, all done at a safe distance from reality.
At last, I get onto the bridge. Automatically, without thinking, I turn to see the skyline stretching away on the left. The skyline is gone. The Empire State Building is dark. The World Trade towers have disappeared. The lights below 14th Street have gone out. Nothing moves or sparkles; the occupied city is dark except for a necklace of EMS lights, and the slow, steady, sorrowing plume of ash wending its way down into the harbor. And my mind wakes up. I imagine the screams of the dead, from which the scream of the building protected me before. I hear the evenness my father willed into his voice, hear Don telling me hesitantly, "Well. Take good care, Sarah." I feel the hole in the city as a hole ripped out of my chest and head, thousands burned and crushed and orphaned and ruined and dead. I merge onto I-95 South, and I cry — great whooping moaning sobs, strangling me, fighting to get out of my throat and go nowhere except back into my ears. I clutch the wheel to keep it straight, signaling, getting left, barreling onto the ramp for I-78 West, driving home as I've done a thousand times before, and I cry and cry and cry.
Near Hillside, I stop crying. I don't feel better, but I stop crying. On the radio, the President refers to the 23rd Psalm. "Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for Thou art with us."
The President is wrong. I fear evil. No rod or staff can comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy have turned their backs on all of us today. I have no interest in the house of the Lord.
I come up the driveway — home. My mother stands in the doorway waiting for me, and with the light behind her, she looks small. The house itself seems small and weak. Everything seems small and weak. I have come home, but the story is just starting, and I don't know that I can tell it right. Telling a story is all I have, all I have ever had, to give. The telling used to seem important and strong. A story used to seem powerful, and now it's really nothing at all. Just paper, in the end, easily burnt and blown away."
_______________________________
This was written 3 days after 9/11 - one of the most enlightening recaps I've read.
I hope you all take time to remember and reflect today on those lost, those who continue to fight for our freedom, and the personal responsibilities we all have as a country/world to bind together to combat such violence.
As for me, I was broken yet again reading the recapps and watching the documentaries - and spent some time in solitude praying to my Messiah under the "Survivor Tree" at the Oklahoma Bombing Memorial...my way of coping I guess.
"...Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
'Tis but a Flesh Wound
Okay, so I had a minor little hand surgery last week... If you don't like mildly gross pictures, this post is not for you.
I apparently had some form of a cyst or something that formed on the tendon of my middle finger - in the palm of my hand. They originally thought it was "Trigger Finger," but alas after surgery, they think it might have just been a weird cystic knot. Who knows?
I thought it would go away, but it didn't and the entire tendon was sore to touch, it was hard to open my hand all the way, or put my hand down flat on anything. Yea for being currently insured!
They sent me home looking like a mummy. Of course I'm right handed...and swollen.
My pretty little stitches...very itchy by the way.
Got the stitches out today and steri-strips instead. -And brought home more pen marks :)
The strips didn't last long...the healing mark after one week.
I apparently had some form of a cyst or something that formed on the tendon of my middle finger - in the palm of my hand. They originally thought it was "Trigger Finger," but alas after surgery, they think it might have just been a weird cystic knot. Who knows?
I thought it would go away, but it didn't and the entire tendon was sore to touch, it was hard to open my hand all the way, or put my hand down flat on anything. Yea for being currently insured!
See the weird knot under my middle finger? Never mind the pen marks on my hand I seem to come home from work with everyday?.?.?
They sent me home looking like a mummy. Of course I'm right handed...and swollen.
My pretty little stitches...very itchy by the way.
Got the stitches out today and steri-strips instead. -And brought home more pen marks :)
The strips didn't last long...the healing mark after one week.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
What is this World Coming To?
Okay, so it's not often I hear a news story and it's still on my mind days later unless it's:
1. Overly played/analyzed.
2. Something local.
3. Related to something I've been following socially/politically.
4. Or just completely shocking/outrageous.
Well, this is a #4. It is just so peculiar and horrifying - and I never saw it on the news, although we have Fox News running 24/7 in my office. I did hear about it through a friend who saw it on the news though.
You can read the full story here and here.
Here's the gist though: (You'll never think of public transportation the same)
A greyhound bus driving overnight through the plains of Canada - A 40 year-old man gets on the bus and rides for about an hour quietly. Then he just decides to get up and calmly (some reported "robotic like") stab a 22 year-old guy, who is sleeping with headphones on, about 50-60 times with a hunting knife and kills him - and doesn't seem to know the guy at all. It's gets worse...
He throws the body on the floor and decapitates him, holding the head up for all the other passengers to see as they are fleeing off the bus! Then meticulously disassembles and disembowels him as well - one passenger reported he's certain he saw the guy eat some of him!?!??!
The bus driver and a trucker who stopped with all the frantic people fleeing the bus, held the door closed, containing the crazy on the bus, as he tried to get off with the knife. He has been arrested, not without trying to flee - and has not been interviewed as of yet... Currently, it appears this was a completely random attack.
All I have to say: "What is this world coming to?"
1. Overly played/analyzed.
2. Something local.
3. Related to something I've been following socially/politically.
4. Or just completely shocking/outrageous.
Well, this is a #4. It is just so peculiar and horrifying - and I never saw it on the news, although we have Fox News running 24/7 in my office. I did hear about it through a friend who saw it on the news though.
You can read the full story here and here.
Here's the gist though: (You'll never think of public transportation the same)
A greyhound bus driving overnight through the plains of Canada - A 40 year-old man gets on the bus and rides for about an hour quietly. Then he just decides to get up and calmly (some reported "robotic like") stab a 22 year-old guy, who is sleeping with headphones on, about 50-60 times with a hunting knife and kills him - and doesn't seem to know the guy at all. It's gets worse...
He throws the body on the floor and decapitates him, holding the head up for all the other passengers to see as they are fleeing off the bus! Then meticulously disassembles and disembowels him as well - one passenger reported he's certain he saw the guy eat some of him!?!??!
The bus driver and a trucker who stopped with all the frantic people fleeing the bus, held the door closed, containing the crazy on the bus, as he tried to get off with the knife. He has been arrested, not without trying to flee - and has not been interviewed as of yet... Currently, it appears this was a completely random attack.
All I have to say: "What is this world coming to?"
Saturday, July 26, 2008
From the "Mile High City" to the "City of Brotherly Love"
I left for Philadelphia last week for another conference, this one being much better than all previously attended... While many good things occurred on this trip, it wasn't without Murphy's Law.
For instance, here is a short list of of craptastic events (we'll get this out of the way first, then on to good stuff and pictures!)
1. I dropped my uniform hat in the toilet (it tucks under your belt; you loosen your belt before taking your hat out from under it, it falls to the floor - or whatever stops it first.)
2. I had Bronchitis the entire time - hacking until I hyperventilate and continuously have to run out of conference events.
3. During the huge formal dinner event, I had run out while the General was speaking and coughed until I threw up outside the hotel in my formal uniform.
4. I somehow lost my cell phone the morning I flew out. I didn't get to the airport with it, but I did see it that morning - so it's either in the hotel (which they didn't find) or in the cab I took - can't tell you even what cab company it was... So, if you get a phone call saying you were in my phone book on my cell - it's mine!
Okay, on to the cool stuff -
We were fortunate enough to be staying in the historical district, which allowed for us to do walking tours and such in the evenings since none of us had cars.
(The Liberty Bell...this shirt looks like a maternity shirt!)
(Independence Square - where the Declaration of Independence was read publicly for the first time. That is Liberty Hall, where it was signed and Washington was inaugurated for his second term as the first president of the new free nation).
Note: I have some really cool pictures from our group inside Independence Hall, but they are on the boss' camera - so I'll add those when I get them.
(The Betsy Ross house where she sewed the first American Flag)
(Carpenter's Hall: "The Birthplace of the American Identity"
The meeting place where it was decided that America was going to become independent and congressed passed bans on slave imports/trades, which was the first major step to ending slavery in the US.)
(The Delaware River - New Jersey on the other side)
(The Washington Memorial in Washington Square: This was once a Potter's Field and then became a mass grave for soldiers and those who died of Yellow Fever.)
(Closer view of the memorial with the tomb of the unknown soldier)
(Click on the picture for a larger view to read the wall inscriptions)
(The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the Revolutionary War: There are thousands of unknown soldiers buried in mass graves amongst the grounds of Washington Square.)
(A foot stone along the memorial path)
(And because no Philly tour is complete without a Philly Cheese Steak...it was tasty)
(Another stop along the way in a bus stop booth when it started hailing - fortunately, I had a cami on under my thin light-colored shirt!)
(Me and the Col at the formal dinner the last night - Her uniforms are TBD as she is in the middle of a PCS from the Desert to another overseas location...sucks).
For instance, here is a short list of of craptastic events (we'll get this out of the way first, then on to good stuff and pictures!)
1. I dropped my uniform hat in the toilet (it tucks under your belt; you loosen your belt before taking your hat out from under it, it falls to the floor - or whatever stops it first.)
2. I had Bronchitis the entire time - hacking until I hyperventilate and continuously have to run out of conference events.
3. During the huge formal dinner event, I had run out while the General was speaking and coughed until I threw up outside the hotel in my formal uniform.
4. I somehow lost my cell phone the morning I flew out. I didn't get to the airport with it, but I did see it that morning - so it's either in the hotel (which they didn't find) or in the cab I took - can't tell you even what cab company it was... So, if you get a phone call saying you were in my phone book on my cell - it's mine!
Okay, on to the cool stuff -
We were fortunate enough to be staying in the historical district, which allowed for us to do walking tours and such in the evenings since none of us had cars.
(My room)
(The view from my room)
(The Liberty Bell...this shirt looks like a maternity shirt!)
(Independence Square - where the Declaration of Independence was read publicly for the first time. That is Liberty Hall, where it was signed and Washington was inaugurated for his second term as the first president of the new free nation).
Note: I have some really cool pictures from our group inside Independence Hall, but they are on the boss' camera - so I'll add those when I get them.
(The Betsy Ross house where she sewed the first American Flag)
(Carpenter's Hall: "The Birthplace of the American Identity"
The meeting place where it was decided that America was going to become independent and congressed passed bans on slave imports/trades, which was the first major step to ending slavery in the US.)
(The Delaware River - New Jersey on the other side)
(The Washington Memorial in Washington Square: This was once a Potter's Field and then became a mass grave for soldiers and those who died of Yellow Fever.)
(Closer view of the memorial with the tomb of the unknown soldier)
(Click on the picture for a larger view to read the wall inscriptions)
(The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the Revolutionary War: There are thousands of unknown soldiers buried in mass graves amongst the grounds of Washington Square.)
(A foot stone along the memorial path)
(And because no Philly tour is complete without a Philly Cheese Steak...it was tasty)
And my little tour ended with me getting caught in a huge rain/hail storm. I had planned to walk over the bridge over the Delaware into NJ...so I had to backtrack about eight blocks to get to a bridge. There I sat for about half an hour before realizing it was only getting worse with no end in sight, pretty late and I was a female alone in an unfamiliar area, I still had Bronchitis and was cold/wet, and I might as well just go ahead and run the rest of the way back to the hotel and take a hot shower.
(Siting under the bridge: That is my hotel ahead, but there is a big fence that runs down another 4 blocks)
(Another stop along the way in a bus stop booth when it started hailing - fortunately, I had a cami on under my thin light-colored shirt!)
Other stuff that happened:
1. I was invited to dinner with another female who didn't know anyone at the conference. Little did I know she was the General's personnelist and that some of the staff was having dinner with the General. (she wanted someone near her rank with her...we were the two junior's there). So I had a 3 hr dinner with the General and his wife along with 6 of his staff members. I got to sit across from him and have a very lengthy conversation...he loves fellow Texans! (Sorry, I didn't have my camera ready as it would have been really awkward, though I did take a small pic on my phone cam, which is...somewhere). I really admire this man - and am HONORED to serve under his command.
2. There are three alumni from my college within the organization; myself, one much higher ranking than I, and one that is about 3 years behind me. The higher ranking one, whom I will refer to as "Col," has mentored and kept up with me via e-mail for a little over 2 years... We finally got to meet in person.
1. I was invited to dinner with another female who didn't know anyone at the conference. Little did I know she was the General's personnelist and that some of the staff was having dinner with the General. (she wanted someone near her rank with her...we were the two junior's there). So I had a 3 hr dinner with the General and his wife along with 6 of his staff members. I got to sit across from him and have a very lengthy conversation...he loves fellow Texans! (Sorry, I didn't have my camera ready as it would have been really awkward, though I did take a small pic on my phone cam, which is...somewhere). I really admire this man - and am HONORED to serve under his command.
2. There are three alumni from my college within the organization; myself, one much higher ranking than I, and one that is about 3 years behind me. The higher ranking one, whom I will refer to as "Col," has mentored and kept up with me via e-mail for a little over 2 years... We finally got to meet in person.
(Me and the Col at the formal dinner the last night - Her uniforms are TBD as she is in the middle of a PCS from the Desert to another overseas location...sucks).
3. I was informed I am an annual award winner for the entire command and will be competing in my respective category for the entire Air Force!
So, now I'm back in my little hotel room in Colorado. Four more months here and then back to home for awhile...
So, now I'm back in my little hotel room in Colorado. Four more months here and then back to home for awhile...
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