story9599.xml
Title
story9599.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-09-11
911DA Story: Story
This is a copy of an emailI sent to friends around the world in the week after 9/11 to explain what was happening in DC.
Friends and family, I want to give you a rambling sense of what it's been like here this week.
First of all, it was the most gorgeous of mornings. The sky was so blue and clear, the heavens seemed transparent like fine crystal. It was wonderful to breathe the air; there was just a hint of autumn crispness to it, and it made me smile. The world couldn't have ended on a more bautiful day. I now imagine that Armageddon will start off like this. I suppose it's good to be warned - wasn't the start of WWII on an equally gorgeous morning?
I head about the attacks when my daughter Alisoun called me up from New York City (She and my son Christopher live in Long Island City, right across the East River from the World Trade Towers.). I was getting ready to go to work a bit late, and hadn't yet turned on the radio or TV. She told me that we had been attacked. I rushed to turn on my tv while talking to her. Alisoun, looking out her window across the East River, told me that she was watching one of the towers collapse before her eyes. I couldn't see that happening on my TV - I guess the angle of the camera was different from her real-life view, and I tried to tell her that she was wrong, that that couldn't be happening. But of course, it was... I was in denial.
Even days later, Alisoun tells me that she can smell the stench from the fire when the wind comes from the
west.
I then heard there was a bombing at the State Department, where (my husband) Bob used to work, which turned out to be a rumor, but I didn't know that then. It frightened me immensely because he works in the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building just three blocks from the White House, and for all I knew that building could have been next to be destroyed, so I called him and yelled at him to come home immediately when I heard what was happening, and for a change, he agreed.
With great misgivings, I then went to work (about a mile further away) because I had promised to bring a homeless, psychotic mother and her baby to a residential drug treatment program for mothers. I felt it would have been dishonorable to refuse to go when I was being depended upon. When I got to work, most of my colleagues were drifting out of the building, but my patient and her baby were waiting. It took me two hours to drive the 6 or 7 blocks to the program because all the federal government workers had been released from work and told to go home. The whole city -- not just the federal workers -- seem to be evacuating without any direction whatsoever. The streets of Washington were filled with persons walking, and cars were in total gridlock. It was as if the biggest 4th of July firework show ever had just ended, and the entire city was trying to get home. But it wasn't festive, it was purposeful Pedestrians were flowing over the streets like molasses, and with the same result. It was very difficult trying to make polite conversation with my patient under the best of circumstances, which this certainly wasn't! I wanted to listen to the radio to find out what was happening, but I didn't dare turn it on because I had no idea what dangerous thing sshe might do if she got excited. It was excruciating. After I finally (!) left the mother and baby off, I drove home by the most out-of-the-way route I could devise. It still took forever, and I was so relieved to see my hsuband when I finally got home, I started to cry. He had to put his arms around me to quiet my anxiety.
Since then,it's hard to believe that it has only been a week since the hijackings - it seems like an eternity ago. I found a New York Times I hadn't opened from the day before the attacks, and I felt as if I were looking at an artifact
from a long-ago civilization - which is, indeed, exactly what it was. Nothing seems the same -- everything seems different, and the relationships between everyone, and the things that seem important now are all different.
A small example... The neighborhood we live in has been invaded by yuppies over the years. We are older than they by 30-40 years. I feel strongly about our national flag, and have always put it out for the major national holidays. Usually, ours is the only flag out on the street. (I think they felt it was profoundly uncool to put out a flag.) Well, now there are at least 8 flags flying on the block or hanging in someone's window, and some of the other residential blocks in our neighborhood have even more of them! I couldn't believe what I was seeing when we took a walk the other night. Truly, it is a different neighborhood, city, country, world than it was last week.
Another interesting effect is that everyone seems to be on best behavior - they are acting kindly towards each other. Surely this won't last, butit's nice while we have it! The wish to do something to help has been tremendous; lines at blood banks have been up to 4 hours, which is great, because we have customarily had a great deficit in blood. I had just given, so I couldn't give again, but Bob gave, and so did Chris and Alisoun. Some kids raised $600 selling lemonade, and donated the money to the Red Cross. Millions have been raised for the families of the victims. Just tonight the governor of New York said that there would be free tuition, a completely free education at New York universities for children of the victims. That will be a big bill..
There were two meetings for worship at our Friends Meeting on Sunday - one at the usual 11 am time, and one which I organized for that evening at 6:00 pm. There are usually 60-80 people at our 11 am service, and of that number, about a quarter to a third are visitors. Yesterday, more
than 450 persons showed up!! Most were not Quakers, or hadn't been to a Friends Meeting in years, or had been students at Quaker schools years ago, and some just wanted to sit in quiet with others. There was NO room for another person at all. Apparently the same thing happened at
many churches (although I think that coming to a pacifistic Friends Meeting took a bit more serious consideration).
The 600 pm service that I organized was called, in very old Quaker parlance, a Meeting for Sufferings. (That's because in the 1600's, so many Quakers were imprisoned or killed or financially ruined that the fmilies joined together to try to help. Out of that eventually grew the Friends World Service and the American Friends Service Committee.)
More than 100 people came - mostly Meeting members. I sat as head of Meeting and explained how such meetings arose. It was quite wonderful - one man rose to read the only verse of the Koran I've heard of - the one about how he who saves one person, it is as if he has saved a universe. There were many wonderful speakers, including a Meeting member who was a former American Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. After meeting was over, many of us went to have dinner at an Afghan restaurant to show our friendliness to a business that was probably hurting a lot. The food was delicious, and the proprietor was grateful.
I called up two people I have worked with politically in past years, both Muslims, both African-American, just to touch base and to reach out to an Islamic community here which is probably in shock and fear. The first guy is
sophisticated, widely-travelled and very well-spoken. He told me that he had been called by three Jewish friends, and now me, all of us calling to wish him well in these troubled times. He was most apreciative, and we had a wonderful conversation, agreeing that if the root causes of the anti-americanism that is so powerful today is not
explored, addressed and eased, any military action would only cause more [ersons to turn to terrorism. The other guy is pretty militant, someone who hasn't been exactly easy to work with, and I'm a pretty tolerant person. Nevertheless, I wanted to reach out to him. After a bit of the usual harangue from him saying that the Black community wasn't going to put out any flags because of being so badly treated, he ended up saying that I was the first one to have called him about the attacks and to find out how he was, and that he appreciated the thoughtful conversation.You could have knocked me over with a feather! (BTW, there are
PLENTY of flags flying in the Black community just east of where I live.)
On Saturday, my husband and I had to do some shopping, and we got a bit lost and found ourselves on a road that went quite near where the Pentagon had been sliced. Pretty soon we were told by police to turn around. Honestly, we weren't morbid accident gapers1 However, in turning around, we could see how enormous the operation to put out the fire and take away the debris is. Acres of equipment and tents for the collateral efforts. Of course the scale of that pales besides the scale of the tragedy in NYC, and there they have
to be extra especially cautious because of the closeness of the Hudson River, which could easily pour in to the WTB site if proper precautions aren't taken.
So, what can I say? We are all trembling a bit, and give each other extra good hugs. We don't know, but fear what can happen next -- aftera ll, Bob and I live a mere 8 blocks from the White House! And so like so many others, we are putting on flags and contributing to charities for the victims and their families, and hoping that our government will be thoughtful and want to try to address some of the problems that have mde us so hated. Some of aren't behaving well at all, while others have been angels.
Clearly life will not be the same -- before seems so far away . There is a heightened sense of reality, the vividness that comes when times are parlous, or so I've heard. We all flock to TVs to find out what the latest story is, while the New York Times and the Washington Post bring us so much information, that we don't have time to distill it all, but can't help reading it anyway, Many of us have been evacuated from work as a result of bomb scares, and that makes us just more jittery. I hope this is going to be a better world, but giving birth involves much pain
and suffering. Whatever happens, I hope to do my part.
This has been a long e-mail, but I hope it gives you some taste of what it is like here. It is not Lake Wobegone.
Love to all,
Susan
Friends and family, I want to give you a rambling sense of what it's been like here this week.
First of all, it was the most gorgeous of mornings. The sky was so blue and clear, the heavens seemed transparent like fine crystal. It was wonderful to breathe the air; there was just a hint of autumn crispness to it, and it made me smile. The world couldn't have ended on a more bautiful day. I now imagine that Armageddon will start off like this. I suppose it's good to be warned - wasn't the start of WWII on an equally gorgeous morning?
I head about the attacks when my daughter Alisoun called me up from New York City (She and my son Christopher live in Long Island City, right across the East River from the World Trade Towers.). I was getting ready to go to work a bit late, and hadn't yet turned on the radio or TV. She told me that we had been attacked. I rushed to turn on my tv while talking to her. Alisoun, looking out her window across the East River, told me that she was watching one of the towers collapse before her eyes. I couldn't see that happening on my TV - I guess the angle of the camera was different from her real-life view, and I tried to tell her that she was wrong, that that couldn't be happening. But of course, it was... I was in denial.
Even days later, Alisoun tells me that she can smell the stench from the fire when the wind comes from the
west.
I then heard there was a bombing at the State Department, where (my husband) Bob used to work, which turned out to be a rumor, but I didn't know that then. It frightened me immensely because he works in the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building just three blocks from the White House, and for all I knew that building could have been next to be destroyed, so I called him and yelled at him to come home immediately when I heard what was happening, and for a change, he agreed.
With great misgivings, I then went to work (about a mile further away) because I had promised to bring a homeless, psychotic mother and her baby to a residential drug treatment program for mothers. I felt it would have been dishonorable to refuse to go when I was being depended upon. When I got to work, most of my colleagues were drifting out of the building, but my patient and her baby were waiting. It took me two hours to drive the 6 or 7 blocks to the program because all the federal government workers had been released from work and told to go home. The whole city -- not just the federal workers -- seem to be evacuating without any direction whatsoever. The streets of Washington were filled with persons walking, and cars were in total gridlock. It was as if the biggest 4th of July firework show ever had just ended, and the entire city was trying to get home. But it wasn't festive, it was purposeful Pedestrians were flowing over the streets like molasses, and with the same result. It was very difficult trying to make polite conversation with my patient under the best of circumstances, which this certainly wasn't! I wanted to listen to the radio to find out what was happening, but I didn't dare turn it on because I had no idea what dangerous thing sshe might do if she got excited. It was excruciating. After I finally (!) left the mother and baby off, I drove home by the most out-of-the-way route I could devise. It still took forever, and I was so relieved to see my hsuband when I finally got home, I started to cry. He had to put his arms around me to quiet my anxiety.
Since then,it's hard to believe that it has only been a week since the hijackings - it seems like an eternity ago. I found a New York Times I hadn't opened from the day before the attacks, and I felt as if I were looking at an artifact
from a long-ago civilization - which is, indeed, exactly what it was. Nothing seems the same -- everything seems different, and the relationships between everyone, and the things that seem important now are all different.
A small example... The neighborhood we live in has been invaded by yuppies over the years. We are older than they by 30-40 years. I feel strongly about our national flag, and have always put it out for the major national holidays. Usually, ours is the only flag out on the street. (I think they felt it was profoundly uncool to put out a flag.) Well, now there are at least 8 flags flying on the block or hanging in someone's window, and some of the other residential blocks in our neighborhood have even more of them! I couldn't believe what I was seeing when we took a walk the other night. Truly, it is a different neighborhood, city, country, world than it was last week.
Another interesting effect is that everyone seems to be on best behavior - they are acting kindly towards each other. Surely this won't last, butit's nice while we have it! The wish to do something to help has been tremendous; lines at blood banks have been up to 4 hours, which is great, because we have customarily had a great deficit in blood. I had just given, so I couldn't give again, but Bob gave, and so did Chris and Alisoun. Some kids raised $600 selling lemonade, and donated the money to the Red Cross. Millions have been raised for the families of the victims. Just tonight the governor of New York said that there would be free tuition, a completely free education at New York universities for children of the victims. That will be a big bill..
There were two meetings for worship at our Friends Meeting on Sunday - one at the usual 11 am time, and one which I organized for that evening at 6:00 pm. There are usually 60-80 people at our 11 am service, and of that number, about a quarter to a third are visitors. Yesterday, more
than 450 persons showed up!! Most were not Quakers, or hadn't been to a Friends Meeting in years, or had been students at Quaker schools years ago, and some just wanted to sit in quiet with others. There was NO room for another person at all. Apparently the same thing happened at
many churches (although I think that coming to a pacifistic Friends Meeting took a bit more serious consideration).
The 600 pm service that I organized was called, in very old Quaker parlance, a Meeting for Sufferings. (That's because in the 1600's, so many Quakers were imprisoned or killed or financially ruined that the fmilies joined together to try to help. Out of that eventually grew the Friends World Service and the American Friends Service Committee.)
More than 100 people came - mostly Meeting members. I sat as head of Meeting and explained how such meetings arose. It was quite wonderful - one man rose to read the only verse of the Koran I've heard of - the one about how he who saves one person, it is as if he has saved a universe. There were many wonderful speakers, including a Meeting member who was a former American Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. After meeting was over, many of us went to have dinner at an Afghan restaurant to show our friendliness to a business that was probably hurting a lot. The food was delicious, and the proprietor was grateful.
I called up two people I have worked with politically in past years, both Muslims, both African-American, just to touch base and to reach out to an Islamic community here which is probably in shock and fear. The first guy is
sophisticated, widely-travelled and very well-spoken. He told me that he had been called by three Jewish friends, and now me, all of us calling to wish him well in these troubled times. He was most apreciative, and we had a wonderful conversation, agreeing that if the root causes of the anti-americanism that is so powerful today is not
explored, addressed and eased, any military action would only cause more [ersons to turn to terrorism. The other guy is pretty militant, someone who hasn't been exactly easy to work with, and I'm a pretty tolerant person. Nevertheless, I wanted to reach out to him. After a bit of the usual harangue from him saying that the Black community wasn't going to put out any flags because of being so badly treated, he ended up saying that I was the first one to have called him about the attacks and to find out how he was, and that he appreciated the thoughtful conversation.You could have knocked me over with a feather! (BTW, there are
PLENTY of flags flying in the Black community just east of where I live.)
On Saturday, my husband and I had to do some shopping, and we got a bit lost and found ourselves on a road that went quite near where the Pentagon had been sliced. Pretty soon we were told by police to turn around. Honestly, we weren't morbid accident gapers1 However, in turning around, we could see how enormous the operation to put out the fire and take away the debris is. Acres of equipment and tents for the collateral efforts. Of course the scale of that pales besides the scale of the tragedy in NYC, and there they have
to be extra especially cautious because of the closeness of the Hudson River, which could easily pour in to the WTB site if proper precautions aren't taken.
So, what can I say? We are all trembling a bit, and give each other extra good hugs. We don't know, but fear what can happen next -- aftera ll, Bob and I live a mere 8 blocks from the White House! And so like so many others, we are putting on flags and contributing to charities for the victims and their families, and hoping that our government will be thoughtful and want to try to address some of the problems that have mde us so hated. Some of aren't behaving well at all, while others have been angels.
Clearly life will not be the same -- before seems so far away . There is a heightened sense of reality, the vividness that comes when times are parlous, or so I've heard. We all flock to TVs to find out what the latest story is, while the New York Times and the Washington Post bring us so much information, that we don't have time to distill it all, but can't help reading it anyway, Many of us have been evacuated from work as a result of bomb scares, and that makes us just more jittery. I hope this is going to be a better world, but giving birth involves much pain
and suffering. Whatever happens, I hope to do my part.
This has been a long e-mail, but I hope it gives you some taste of what it is like here. It is not Lake Wobegone.
Love to all,
Susan
Collection
Citation
“story9599.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 20, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/11548.