story1265.xml

story1265.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-08-19

I am starting this with an e-mail I sent to family and friends the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Once I had sent that mail, the words could not stop. The essays that I am sending are only the tip of the iceberg of the experiences we had. There are still many stories left untold, many thoughts that still need to come to words. A friend who is both a newspaper reporter and grief counselor suggested that I keep writing, not only to tell the world what we were going through here but to try and heal myself....I still write about those days and weeks and months after and will continue to do so. There are days when I still cry. Here is only a small part of my story, told in the hope that someday peace and healing will come.

From: Boccegoddess@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 11, 2001 2:36 pm
Subject: World Trade Center


Just to let you all know that David and I are okay as is (Thank God) my entire family. We both work about 2 blocks from the trade center. Last night I was walking through the WTC to get the subway and there were alarms going off like crazy. About 8 months, I got a very, very uneasy feeling when going to the subway home one night and from then on decided not to go in there anymore. Last night was the first time in ages that I even walked near there.

This morning on the way in on the bus, we neared lower Manhattan and I got a glimpse of the first tower on fire. While watching that, I saw the second plane hit the other tower and the building seemed to just implode. Minutes later it crumbled to the ground and it was just gone. Dust, papers, pieces of debris floated across the East River like incandescent angels. It was the most unbelievable site I have ever seen. Absolutely horrifying. My hearts go out to the families of all those dead and injured. Waiting to hear from David (who left his building, covered in debris, after the first collapse and got to deal with the second collapse while walking across the Brooklyn Bridge) and my daughter (who thankfully works uptown and went in early) were the most terrifying moments of my life.

Thank's to all the roomies and friends who phoned and called and im'ed me to see if we were ok. I love each and every one of you. Pray please for all of the dead and injured and that the war that is sure to follow (we have already seen the jet fighters zooming across the sky) is swift and painless and that we all have the strength and faith to endure it. Light wins everytime.....

Love and Light
(especially today),

- Maureen

Wednesday September 12

We woke up here this morning in NYC with the skyline looking a whole lot different. Looking out my bedroom window, where the tip of the World Trade Center peeks above the trees, there is a gray and white cloud of smoke, breaking through the clear blue sky. I hear the jet fighters above us and the sadness fills me, the tears start to fall and I start to remember.....

Yesterday morning dawned so bright and beautiful. The sky was clear, the sun was shining. We went through our regular morning routine, school and day care drop offs. My husband left early for his monthly board meeting. I was right on schedule, getting on the express bus into the city at my regular time. It was on the bus, on the highway that leads into the city that we got our first glimpse of what had happened. At first it looked like a routine fire, high up on the trade center. I honestly half believed that it was a kitchen fire at Windows on the World. Then somebody, who was listening to the radio, said that it was a plane crash. Thinking that it was an accident, we watched the smoke billowing out and then the second plane hit. The second tower seemed to just implode, flames and smoke rolled down its side. We watched as the sky above the harbor filled with debris. Glass, dust, papers floated across the Harbor like incandescent angels, glowing in the light of the sun. And then the tower folded in on itself and it was gone...........

It was then that the horror set in. It was then that the worry began. We tried and tried on our cell phones to reach somebody, anybody. Stuck in the bus, there was nothing, nothing that we could do, except sit and watch, as the city that we all love so much, was changed in an instant. On the bus, we reached out for each other, sharing cell phones, comforting those who had family members in the buildings. The fear and worry that I felt was tremendous, what time did David leave this morning? I knew it was early but how early? He usually gets off the train at the WTC at around 8:45, what time is it now? And oh my God, my daughter, working uptown, her train passes under there, doesn't it? I worked the cell furiously, but no answer, circuits busy......the sense of frustration was overwhelming. Finally, amidst more emergency vehicles that I ever knew existed, the bus turned around and we were on the way home, watching through the back window as the other tower crumbled and fell.

The traffic home was at a dead standstill, we crept along slowly and many of us wept as we kept looking at the sky, looking at where the twin towers stood only an hour ago. The bus finally left us off on the highway. We climbed the embankments to the street and then I was on my block, at my house, standing there, it looked so normal, even as the whole world fell around us. My brother-in-law opened the front door and it was then that I lost it. Sobbing, weeping filled with worry. And David I said, David is over there. Relief set in as Henri told me that David had called, he is ok. But Meegan, oh my God, what about Meegan? I raced upstairs to check my voice mail and my aunt had called. The worry was evident in her voice, but Meegan was with her. The relief was short lived though as I saw the news reports come in. What about the people in my office, only two blocks away? What of the friends that work in the towers? Where were they? Were they ok? And the biggest question of all, why? Who did this, who hated us this much to do this to us, why did this happen?

We picked David up in downtown Brooklyn, where he had wound up after crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. His shoes were covered in dust. Look, he said, that?s the World Trade Center there on my feet. We picked up some hitchhikers on the way back. I saw the first plane, one said, it was weaving and going so fast. Speeding across the sky, and then bam into the building. I tell them about the second plane and about how fast the tower fell. There had to have been bombs too we all conclude, it just all went down too fast. We share our stories and then we are silent. The only sounds, the reports coming from the radio and the incessant whirl of sirens and alarms.

At home later in the day the phone doesn?t stop ringing. Family friends calling from all over the country, wondering, worrying. We watch the TV, seeing the streets that I walk everyday. There?s the building on Broadway where I saw so many Yankee parades in the clear October air. It?s covered in dust now; the windows all blown out and shattered. And there across that street, isn?t that where the Border?s bookstore is. I?ve spent so much time there. But where is it? Can it really be gone? The reality starts to set in. Windows on the World, one of the most beautiful restaurants I have ever been in, gone forever. The plaza and the fountains, the flowers and the trees, they?re just not there anymore??

About eight months ago, I was walking through the WTC to the subway home when I felt a terrible sense of uneasiness, a sense of foreboding. Shortly after that, I began to take the bus home; the feeling was so strong I did not want to be in those buildings. On Monday night though, I had no choice. I was going to a seminar and I had to take the train from out of there. Walking through the concourse by the Path trains, alarms were going off like crazy. A security guard at one point rushed by with his radio. I got on the train and left, as did so many others around me. Today, I have to wonder, what was that all about it? Was it an omen? Was the building itself trying to tell us all something? These are questions that I know will never really be answered.

So this morning, we look over to Manhattan and where once two buildings stood tall against the open sky, there is nothing but air. Nothing but a memory of a place where there was so much life that someone with hate in their heart just needed to come and take it away. I like to think of myself as a tough New Yorker, but there is no strength in me today. Only sorrow and longing for the streets and buildings that I knew so well, changed and gone forever.

Thursday September 13 ?

Another day has dawned in New York City and the human reality of our collective tragedy is just starting to set in. We are beginning to get word of friends and neighbors missing and dead. A colleague of David?s, who was married only two weeks ago, can't find his wife. She worked on the 102nd floor. Her husband is of course filled with worry. I have to think when do you stop wondering and give up hope?

Last night, I was sitting on the porch when my neighbors bought their firefighter son home from the hospital. He normally works in Brooklyn and had a day off on Tuesday and was across the street from the Trade Center when all hell broke loose. He jumped right in to help, nearly losing his fingers and his eye. His father showed us his boots and uniform. The smell of smoke emitting from them is still rattling around my nostrils. So pungent was the scent.........We got word yesterday of another friend's son. A firefighter who cheated death three years ago in a terrible fire out in Queens, he was at the WTC when the bodies, dead and alive starting falling from the building and was crushed by one. I remember his mother collecting the blessed waters down at the beach a lifetime ago and how we all prayed for him then. What is a saved life then that is lost now? I don't know, I really don't know.....

We still smell smoke in the air and hear the sounds of the jet fighters circling. There is a collective sadness that permeates throughout. The view from my bedroom window is different. There are no twin towers peeking above the trees there anymore. Just a plume of smoke and ashes. They're just not there anymore.

Streets and buildings, so familiar to me, the pictures of them on TV looking like those places are from another planet. I walk that area everyday and now it is gone, changed forever. I have no idea when I will be able to go back to work. My office, as well as David?s, remains closed. Shuttered with debris still in the lobbies, blood still on the streets. I understand a concrete dust covers everything.

There has been a lot of talk about a return to normalcy. The schools reopen today. Normalcy? What was once normal here before, will never be again. New York City, we jaded New Yorkers, everything is changed, changed forever. We will never be the same here again.

It just isn't easy here right now. We sent the kids off to school and day care, trying to keep things as 'normal' as we can for them. Afterwards we went to breakfast and then drove down to the harbor. Just so we could see. Maybe to take the first steps towards healing. There is a big hole in the skyline now, only smoke and ash there. Where once two buildings stood, towering over all the others, there is now nothing. As long as I live, I do not believe that I will ever, ever get used to the trade center not being there. I remember when it was being built. One tower taller then the other at first, and then as the construction moved, both towers growing bigger in the sky. I remember when George Willig scaled one of the towers. Urban mountain climbing. I remember when Philip Petite strung a wire between the two towers. Doing a high wire act over all of Manhattan. My first real job was across the street from the south tower. I'd ride the escalator up from the subway there everyday. There used to be a bank there that had a baby grand piano in the lobby. There was a pianist who played classical music there at lunchtime. The bank has been gone for a while and now, in one short hour, the rest of it is all gone too.

In a way going down to the harbor was a catharsis, seeing the smoke up close and the nothingness. There were a few other people there as well, looking for the same thing we were looking for. Some kind of closure I guess. It helped a bit and we both wept bitter tears and just thanked God that David left for work early that day. I don't think that I will ever get used to not seeing the towers there. I don't think that anyone ever will.
The tears still flow easily today, but maybe not as often....the healing process is slow, very slow, it's so hard to heal when there is so much pain.

We went over to the bank where my sister is the manager after that. She has started, all on her own, a drop-off point for supplies. I couldn?t understand why one of the supplies being requested is dog food and then I realized, search dogs need to eat. My brother works for the Salvation Army and he is going to pick up the stuff and bring it down to 'Ground Zero' as they are calling the WTC now. He is heading there tonight, we've all told him if they need any help we'd be willing to jump in. There is still no inkling as to when the offices downtown will re-open. My agency suggested alternative sites for us to go to tomorrow. Quite honestly, I am not really up to it yet. I do though intend to try for Monday. So life goes on here, not really the same, but similar...........

It seems like just yesterday that we met some friends for dinner at the Millenium hotel across the street from the WTC last year. What a beautiful view of the plaza and the towers they had from their room. It just kills me that it is gone forever.......

Friday September 14 ?

We kept the routine today and dropped the kids off at school and day care and went to breakfast. We watched the prayer service in Washington and then went to church ourselves. Our local church has a regular Friday 11:30 mass of the church school kids and we arrived in the middle of that. The mood there was somber, sad. As I went up for communion I noticed all the kids searching the queue, looking for their parents I guess. Their faces so full of innocence, it pulled at my heart how anyone would want to harm them. We hid our tears from them, holding their well being close to us. I sobbed when I returned to my pew, joining so many others with the same pain inside. The closing hymnal was America the Beautiful. I stumbled over the words as tears streamed down my face. I hugged David, held onto him tight and apologized for bringing him to New York from California. Somehow I feel responsible for what he has gone though, what he had to see??

At times today, it has all become too much to bear. The pain and the sorrow. The loss of so much that we hold dear. The sadness hovering over this city is palpable. It can be touched, it can be felt, it can be seen?.

The president finally showed up here today. The skies were filled with even more F-16s. In a way, we feel safer then we have in days, though the security does not take away the pain.

At 7 tonight, I stepped out on the porch and saw the candles. All up and down the block, candles lit in sorrow and in hope. One of the things that I love about New York is the diversity and tonight here it is in action?Italian, Arab, Russian, Chinese, Irish families, all standing outside their homes with candles lit. Standing silently, we watch as the candles burn. Their light the only beacon is a world suddenly gone dark.

Saturday September 15

This is such a terrible thing to live with. You wake up with it, you go to sleep with it, you dream about it. I keep remembering the silliest things about the World Trade Center, the newsstand where I used to buy magazines, the Warner Brothers store, the New Balance store that I stopped into just the other night, the Borders bookstore, the Strawberry, where I bought the dress I wore in Vegas on my first 'date' with David, even the blood bank where my entire office used to donate blood. Buried in rubble now, they are all gone forever?.And I remember that feeling, that terrible feeling I had eight months ago when it felt like a freight train roaring in my head and I couldn?t wait to get out of the trade center?..if only I knew then all that I know now.

The commercial planes came back today. Their engines drowning out all other noise. I almost wish I never had to see another plane ever again.

When we went shopping this afternoon, we passed by the stop where I got on the bus on Tuesday morning. I glanced at it and then looked up at the sky in front of me. I saw it all again in the clear blue sky. The smoke coming out of the first tower. The second plane coming out of nowhere, moving so fast. Hitting the building with so much force that it looked like it was slicing it in half. The first tower falling, collapsing on top of itself and the second one going, just going away like the first. This image, this memory will stay with me forever. I saw over 6 thousand people die in that instant. Six thousand innocent people who were guilty only of waking up and going to work that morning?.

Sunday September 16 ?

I went to mass this morning, somehow trying to find an answer. The doors of our church have remained open since Tuesday, open for all who need something?During the Lord?s Prayer, the pastor asked us to hold hands. I held the hand of the stranger next to me tightly. We cried quietly and at the peace greeting we hugged. So many unusual things in this city now, church doors open, hugging strangers, weeping openly in the streets.

My next door neighbor, who also works in my office building rings my bell this afternoon. Her brother in law is a firefighter; six men are missing from his house. Their wives wait and still hope. My neighbor is not sure she ever wants to return to work. Caught in the cloud of debris, the memory haunts her, she is shattered with the thought of facing the city again. When I went back upstairs after speaking with her, I tell David her story and then again I cry. I cry harder then I can ever remember and I ask the same question over and over, ?What have these bastards done to us? What have they done??.

Monday ? September 17 ?

We are the city of the walking wounded now. We are a wake in motion. Displaced from our homes and offices, we wander silent streets. The traffic is heavy, as always, yet there is not a sound. Not one horn honks, not one brake squeals. We are greeted this morning at the subway with a flyer that says our train line 'no longer exists'. No longer exists. That phrase hangs ominously in the air along with the ever-present smoke and ash.

There is not a sound on the subway. Reddened eyes, tears well behind newspapers. We wince each time the conductor announces 'due to the World Trade Center incident...'. We breath deeply each time the train comes to a stop.

On the subway steps downtown, surgical masks sit and roll in the breeze. A reminder....

The alternative office sites are full of confusion. We run into old friends. We exchange stories about last Tuesday. We all thank God for the living and we say a silent prayer for the missing.......

This morning getting up and getting dressed for work and leaving here was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. But somehow I did it and I got through and I made it back.

My office is still not open yet. We have no word on when we can return. I went to an alternate site in downtown Brooklyn and it was there I heard the stories. Stories about having to leave Manhattan last Tuesday morning. Running through the streets, people vomiting and having asthma attacks. Stories about a cousin missing, a friend dead. Stories about bomb sniffing dogs in the World Trade Center the week before last. Stories about being frozen, staring as the buildings fell. Stories about death. There were no stories about life........

One of the most honest remarks I heard today was 'they really did a number on us'. I could only nod in agreement and turn my head away.

I was very tempted to get on the subway and go to lower Manhattan by my office. I couldn't do it though. The smell of smoke even permeates the subway tunnels. Maybe tomorrow. I'd really like to give it try before I have to go back there to face the workaday world.

The whole city remains in mourning. The quiet is surreal. At one point today I thought, this is not my city, this has got to be somewhere else.

The missing posters are the strangest touch. People's smiling faces and then the text, 87th floor of World Trade Center, WTC number 2. Cantor Fitzgerald employee. Hope against hope, they continue to appear. The faces so young, the smiles so bright.

Tomorrow marks one week. The healing has begun but it is slow. There is not a person in this entire city who can honestly believe that a whole week has passed. It seems not just like yesterday, but like an hour ago. The memories are that strong....

Tuesday ? September 18

We went to 'Ground Zero' today. I wanted to finish the journey that I had started last Tuesday morning. I also wanted to take a 'dry run' before I have to go back there for real. And quite honestly, I had to see it close up, for myself.....

The first thing we saw getting off the train was the burnt out shell of what used to be 5 WTC, where the Borders bookstore is...or was. From the angle we were at, the building just looked burnt out, it's windows shattered. I understand though that what we saw is like a facade. In back of there, the rest of the building is gone.

The streets are relatively clean. According to David, the streets looked like they were covered with snow last Tuesday. There are still areas that are full of dust and debris. The vents on the manhole covers look solid, packed with gray powder. We passed by a car that looked like it was caked in mud. It obviously hadn't been moved since last week.

There are cracks in the heavy duty plastic that borders the railings on the plaza level of the Chase Manhattan Bank headquarters. They were hosing down the sculpture of 3 trees on the plaza itself. We passed by a shoe store, its windows intact, but the shoes inside covered with a fine powder.

The walls of buildings are covered with the missing posters. And another poster that they don't show you on TV. It's pictures of what the airplane's black box looks like. About a half dozen shots of the flight recorder, along with a number to call in case you come across it. Could any of us have imagined just a week ago that we'd be searching the streets of lower Manhattan for a black box?

The presence of police and military is massive. Cops and soldiers on every street corner. The streets closest to Broadway are cordoned off. There are checkpoints there. I expected it but was really kind of shocked that the Federal Reserve Bank, a massive stone structure across the street from my office that has stood there since probably the 1800's, had, what appeared to me anyway, little protection, with only one or two soldiers on the corner.

The air is changeable. The smell of smoke still lingers and is very heavy at times. People are wearing surgical masks, construction masks. The police and military wear half face ventilators, they look like gas masks. Some people wear charcoal respirator like devices, their eyes the only thing visible on their face.

One Liberty Plaza, widely reported over the weekend as coming close to collapse, lists weirdly to the side. David said he thought it was just an illusion. I believe the building is crooked, mangled. It looks in no way the way it did when I got out of the subway there last Monday.

At the corner of Liberty and Nassau, we got our first glimpse of that now infamous shot of what is left of the Trade Center's steel beams. It looks totally surreal. Like those shots of Europe during WWII where the church steeples stood amongst fields of destruction the steel is taller then you would expect. It juts up in the air like a sentinel over what I heard a fireman call this week, the gates of hell. A fine miasma of smoke covers that whole area. A pile of smoldering, twisted building parts stands about 6 stories high. Cranes dot the landscape. There are patches of sky there that I have never seen before. Rays of sunlight hit the sidewalk for the first time in years.

It was at this point that I cried. To see what was done, to see it live. The TV pictures don't give credence to the reality. I wish everyone in the whole world could come and see it. Just so they could see what was done to us, just so they could never forget......

Wednesday September 19 ?

On the way in to work this morning, I turn a page of the paper and there are the pictures of the missing. Page upon page of portraits. The woman next me looks over her shoulder, she shakes her head in sadness. I put the paper down then and lower my eyes. I just can?t take looking anymore.

Thursday September 20 ?

This morning as the subway went over the Manhattan Bridge; every eye turned to the windows on the left of the train. Not one cell phone was turned on, not one Walkman was listened to. Not one face hid behind a newspaper. We all looked in the direction of lower Manhattan and the emptiness that is now in the sky. We stared and stared until we couldn?t stare anymore and then we lowered our heads and turned away.

We went to Union Square this afternoon. In the rain, the grass was muddy; the thousands of flowers bowed their heads to the ground. The hundreds of candles were mostly extinguished, though a few flickered defiantly, lights of hope in a cloudy world. Mostly there was silence as a small crowd milled around and read the poems and the memorials that have been placed in the park. A lone Buddhist banged rhythmically on a drum encased in plastic. He softly chanted his song of peace.

We went back to ?Ground Zero? after, so that those who hadn?t seen, could see. The barricades have been moved up a block. Liberty Park, a block wide urban oasis is full of trucks and cranes. The benches and the trees where lunchtime workers and chess players relaxed in the shade are now gone. Some blown away in the debris storm of the collapsing towers, some removed for the staging area. The Burger King across the block is an NYPD out station. The Brooks Brother?s store an infirmary, for patients who never came. Lower Broadway, the ?Canyon of Heroes? where so many tickertape parades have taken place is half open, though no traffic except police and military vehicles and the occasional rubble truck are permitted in it?s sacred path. The closer view is even more devastating then what we saw the other day. It is total and complete carnage. The rain makes the dust rise up like vapors. Grey clouds of smoke spiral towards the sky. At Ground Zero, the piles of mangled steel and debris grow ever higher. There is nothing else left there now. The souls missing and now presumed dead have moved along. Their faces still present on the posters hang on the sides of buildings and phone booths, their souls having left this earthly plane.

It?s funny how we keep referring to September 11 as ?Tuesday?, even though another Tuesday has already passed. It?s like there never was any other Tuesday and there never will be any other one.

I had real hopes today that I could make it through the day without crying. I have now cried so many times that I have lost count. I almost made it and then my daughter called on the phone asking me to look at the CNN web-site, at the pictures of the missing. The sister of one of her grade school friends is there. My eyes filled with tears as I looked at that beautiful face. You think of kids as invincible sometimes. You give them love and they grow and you send them out into the world. And then in one short sun-filled morning, it all changes. Life cut short, hopes diminished. It was then I realized that Meegan will probably know even more of the missing than I will. This is and will be the war of the young.

Tuesday September 24 Two Weeks Later

Last night I laughed out loud, at something my youngest daughter said, for the first time in what seems like years. It was like a foreign language to me. It was a weird feeling to laugh. I never imagined that I would think that way??..

From: Boccegoddess@aol.com
Date: Sun Nov 4, 2001 4:37 pm
Subject: NYC-November 4

This morning, on one of the most beautiful Fall days ever, we stood on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, in Bay Ridge, in my hometown, and as the subway rumbled beneath our feet, we watched as tens of thousands of people, from all over the country, from all over the world, ran in the New York City Marathon. Amid cheers of 'USA' and 'NYPD' and even 'Go Yankees', there were also shouts for 'Brazil', 'France', 'Kenya'. It occured to me then, that what we were all really cheering for was for ourselves. We are healing. We are coming back. They may have knocked down our buildings, they may have permanently bruised our hearts, but what they did not do is destroy our souls and they did not break our spirit. And even though we still mourn, we are going forward with hope and faith.


February 25 -

My bus returned to its regular route today. This means that in the morning it will travel down Church Street, the street that runs directly parallel to the World Trade Center site, Ground Zero. Right smack through the middle of what is known as the "Frozen Zone". Church Street up until Liberty Street is still off-limits to pedestrians and non-official traffic. In order to get down Church Street, we passed through a checkpoint and barricades there. For the first time in almost 6 months, I passed by the area that I had walked through on September 10. The Burger King that has been on the corner for the last 23 years is still there, but it is not a Burger King anymore. The windows are covered with dust. Spray-painted on the outside, it says "NYPD Station" and "Medical Trauma Center". Though chain link fences covered by canvas surround most of the area, there is an entrance to the site directly across from the Burger King. This is the same place where the entrance was to building number 4, the building I used to walk through to get the subway. At this point, it is possible to see directly into the site itself. A big gaping hole, the concrete walls and foundation are visible where the SouthTower stood. Where building Number 4 itself stood there is nothing at all recognizable. The long sloping black marble wall where lunchtime workers once sat in the sun is gone. The area right outside the building where vendors would hawk everything from roses to batteries to newspapers and even out-of-state lottery tickets and where the green grocers used to put up their stands on Tuesdays and Thursdays is totally unfamiliar to me. The last Tuesday the stands were there was September 11. As the bus moved slowly forward down Church Street, the whole area remained totally unrecognizable to me. Even the parking area in front of the buildings and the traffic islands that had to be crossed when walking across Church Street are all gone.

I felt the energy change, the further along we moved. Though the street and the site were full of construction workers, police and firemen, it seemed oddly quiet to me. It was almost as though time were standing still, as if the bus itself was moving through some sort of Twilight Zone, some kind of netherland, stuck between reality and someplace else. Here in NYC, we have what we call ghost stations on the subway. These stops have been closed to subway traffic for one reason or other. The subway train will pass them by, sometimes very slowly. They can be very quiet and eerie. Kind of otherworldly. I got the same feeling passing by Ground Zero as I have had riding past these ghost stations.

Where the entrance to the plaza once was, there are rows and rows of construction trailers. Standing high above them is one of the beams that had been discovered amongst the rubble, a few days after September 11. These are the beams that have formed a perfect cross, a crucifix. Some kind of gray material was draped over one of the arms of the cross. It was still in the windless air. Across the plaza area, the skeleton of the Winter Garden atrium, the only thing visible anymore from outside the site, stands silently. Before September 11, the North Tower hid it from this viewpoint. There was nothing else that was even remotely recognizable to me. A few months back, the Sunday New York Times had pictures of artwork, sculptures that had resided in the WTC plaza. The most famous of these was the big round sphere or globe that was the centerpiece of the fountain. In the picture, it was totally bashed in, it's hard metal crushed by 110 stories of falling building. Along with the globe, there was also a picture of the big red Calder sculpture that stood in the plaza. Here was a sculpture that I walked past for years, never really paying it much attention, now perversely misshapen. At the time that I read the article, I had thought about how much we take for granted in life, and how quickly it can all disappear. This was the same thought that I had this morning, as my bus finally got past Ground Zero and out into the world of the living.

Maureen Godwin
Brooklyn, New York