email627.xml
Title
email627.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
email
Date Entered
2002-08-30
September 11 Email: Body
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 8:31 AM
Subject: New York Trip--Part 3
The strongest set of impressions that I have from the trip to New York made by our group of six Alamogordo citizens, revolves around some very strong and personal reactions to certain sights and scenes. The first of these has to do with two trips to Greenwich Village.
The Village is far south on Manhattan. It, along with East Village, SoHo, TriBeCa, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Battery Park area comprise Downtown. This is the area south of 14th Street and contains the World Trade Center, City Hall Park, the Stock Exchange, and the South Street Seaport, among other attractions. Fourteenth Street,Houston (which, by the way, the New Yorkers pronounce HOWSTEN), and Canal Street at various times after the World Trade Center tragedy, served as the boundaries for persons moving south on the island. Any movement south of 14th Street was generally prohibited. The war zone started there.
As I noted in an earlier article, our group of six had ventured down to Greenwich Village on Monday evening, September 10, the evening before the attack on the World Trade Center. We had a good time walking the lively and friendly streets of the Village, teeming with people enjoying the after-rain coolness of a dog-day summer evening. We stopped in a local pub on the corner of Houston and Sullivan Street, had a drink or two, and listened to the more-than-mildly obscene lyrics of a singer auditioning for a job or just jamming around. It had been a long travel day so we made our way back to our hotel on 47th Street and called it a day. The next morning literal hell broke loose.
What makes this visit to the Village so poignant in my mind is a return trip to the same area that Linnie and I made on Thursday, September 13. We had tickets to see The Fantasticks, which has been playing at the Sullivan Street Playhouse for 42 years. It is due to close for good in January, 2002. New York theatres had been closed on Tuesday and Wednesday but a few planned to open on Thursday. I called the box office and was assured that it would be open and the play was a go. The box office manager also told me we could ride the subway all the way to Houston Street.
Linnie and I headed south on the subway. We found cars that were not nearly filled to capacity, an unusual condition. We also found that the farther south we traveled the more the train slowed. Its vibration was considered a danger to some buildings standing near the Trade Center area. We found that we could not go as far south as Houston but had to exit the subway at 14th Street. No big deal, we would catch a bus or taxi and continue the several blocks to Sullivan Street. Wrong! No buses or taxis were allowed south of 14th Street. We walked to Houston and retraced Monday's steps over to Sullivan Street. We went to the box office and picked up our tickets and went back to the bar we had been in on Monday.
The difference in the Village was so startling as to stay etched in my brain. It was as if the spirit had gone. The streets and gutters were filled with particulate matter that had settled and continued to settle. The air was acrid with bitter smoke. Most of the people on the street had filters or masks over their nose and mouth. To say that the people were zombie-like would be a bit of exaggeration, but not much. They were hollow-eyed and moved with some sort of stress-induced slowness. I keep coming back to the appearance of Londoners during the blitz; the analogy holds true here. There was an added feature that addressed the most touching of human tragedy. Impromtu bulletin boards had made their appearance in any place that would support them. On these boards were pictures, descriptions, pleas for information concerning the missing. These very human reminders were heartbreaking.
The bar we had enjoyed previously was quiet and subdued. The ubiquitous TV played out the latest in the doleful story. The barmaid was eager to tell us her story of where she was and what she saw. We had run into the same thing with the man at the theatre box office. Everybody had a story and seemed to need the catharsis of telling it. We nursed our drinks until time to head the half block to the theatre. When we arrived we were informed that the cast of the play simply could not go on. They could not deal with light comedy in the midst of the misery around the Village.
Disappointed but certainly understanding, Linnie and I started our trek back north. We got as far as Washington Square Park which is just off 5th Avenue and generally forms a sort of entry way into the Village. We rested on a park bench and watched a bit of the human drama which is always there in a New York park. As we sat, somewhat in our own thoughts, an attractive, middle-aged, slight, Oriental woman tapped Linnie on the shoulder. She looked up 5th Avenue and nodded toward a building and inquired in very broken English, "Empire State Building?" Linnie, who is in love with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, answered in the affirmative. The lady then looked south and said, "World Trade Center. So sorry, so sorry." She very politely bowed and turned and walked away. This, I think, was a defining moment for Linnie. She has not had a truly dry eye since then.
We returned to the subway prepared to wait for our train only to be informed that it did not matter which train we took, they were just running in one direction: away from the war zone. The difference between Greenwich Village on Monday, September 10, 2001, and Thursday, September 13, 2001, defines in my mind what happened to this great city. It remains my most vivid impression of this week in our history.
A strange sort of impression also stays in my mind. It has to do with the group with which I was traveling and a protective device we arrived at without fully realizing what we were doing. Get in mind, this was a bunch of school teachers who had been educated to have some trust in the things that civilized man has developed to mark that civilization; things like poetry, music, art. We seemed to want some assurance that the best ideas of mankind still existed. We found ourselves reciting bits of poetry. All of us had come through small schools in the days when memorizing poetry was required. The poems, or more nearly the bits of poems, we remembered seemed to speak to a time when civility and not incivility prevailed, when good seemed more in command than evil. I got a chance to recite the last verse of William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis in Bryant Park. We could not remember the author of Invictus (William Ernest Henley, as we later discovered). We stopped at a street book vendor and found an old volume of poetry that Roger Haley purchased.
It was not just poetry; we sought things that demonstrated our culture. Through the days we were in New York, all or some of us visited the Metropolitan Museum, after it reopened, the New York Public Library, one of the four or five great libraries in the world, the Hispanic Society of America Museum, Columbia University, Riverside Church, St. John the Divine Church, or any other place where we could find that cultural spark we were seeking. In a way, I think we all understood the deep and jarring contrast as we sat in Bryant Park and saw the growing column of smoke and debris that marked one of the great acts of inhumanity in our history, and immediately to the east of us just a few feet was the New York Public Library, one of the greatest repositories of the best ideas of humanity. The contrast was jarring, particularly when coupled with the very real possibility that a hijacked plane might be heading for that Library.
Roger Haley has tried to isolate some articles that explain what motivated our actions in regard to poetry and art and books during this period. He has sent a couple that seem to speak to the phenomena. Robert McCrum, writing in the London Observer, "Poetry is one thing. Books also give us the reassurance that others have been here before us and have suffered something of what we are suffering. They signal across a black universe of despair, like stars, saying 'You are not alone'." Eric McHenry sent a copy of W.H.Auden's poem, September 1, 1939, to several friends. It was written on the occasion of Hitler's attack on Poland and is amazing in its insights into our condition as we looked at the World Trade Center disaster. McHenry wrote "Tragedy sends people to poetry," and "Poetry does justice to life by describing it,not by reducing it to more reasonable dimensions." Auden's poem ends with this stanza:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The despair of our little group was deepened when we received word of the death of Al Marchand. Two of our number, Linnie Townsend and Jimmy Smith, had had Al in classes at the college. We all knew him. The loss of a good man diminishes all of us but it becomes an affirmation that good men lived and labored and good men still live to carry on.
To:
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 8:31 AM
Subject: New York Trip--Part 3
The strongest set of impressions that I have from the trip to New York made by our group of six Alamogordo citizens, revolves around some very strong and personal reactions to certain sights and scenes. The first of these has to do with two trips to Greenwich Village.
The Village is far south on Manhattan. It, along with East Village, SoHo, TriBeCa, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Battery Park area comprise Downtown. This is the area south of 14th Street and contains the World Trade Center, City Hall Park, the Stock Exchange, and the South Street Seaport, among other attractions. Fourteenth Street,Houston (which, by the way, the New Yorkers pronounce HOWSTEN), and Canal Street at various times after the World Trade Center tragedy, served as the boundaries for persons moving south on the island. Any movement south of 14th Street was generally prohibited. The war zone started there.
As I noted in an earlier article, our group of six had ventured down to Greenwich Village on Monday evening, September 10, the evening before the attack on the World Trade Center. We had a good time walking the lively and friendly streets of the Village, teeming with people enjoying the after-rain coolness of a dog-day summer evening. We stopped in a local pub on the corner of Houston and Sullivan Street, had a drink or two, and listened to the more-than-mildly obscene lyrics of a singer auditioning for a job or just jamming around. It had been a long travel day so we made our way back to our hotel on 47th Street and called it a day. The next morning literal hell broke loose.
What makes this visit to the Village so poignant in my mind is a return trip to the same area that Linnie and I made on Thursday, September 13. We had tickets to see The Fantasticks, which has been playing at the Sullivan Street Playhouse for 42 years. It is due to close for good in January, 2002. New York theatres had been closed on Tuesday and Wednesday but a few planned to open on Thursday. I called the box office and was assured that it would be open and the play was a go. The box office manager also told me we could ride the subway all the way to Houston Street.
Linnie and I headed south on the subway. We found cars that were not nearly filled to capacity, an unusual condition. We also found that the farther south we traveled the more the train slowed. Its vibration was considered a danger to some buildings standing near the Trade Center area. We found that we could not go as far south as Houston but had to exit the subway at 14th Street. No big deal, we would catch a bus or taxi and continue the several blocks to Sullivan Street. Wrong! No buses or taxis were allowed south of 14th Street. We walked to Houston and retraced Monday's steps over to Sullivan Street. We went to the box office and picked up our tickets and went back to the bar we had been in on Monday.
The difference in the Village was so startling as to stay etched in my brain. It was as if the spirit had gone. The streets and gutters were filled with particulate matter that had settled and continued to settle. The air was acrid with bitter smoke. Most of the people on the street had filters or masks over their nose and mouth. To say that the people were zombie-like would be a bit of exaggeration, but not much. They were hollow-eyed and moved with some sort of stress-induced slowness. I keep coming back to the appearance of Londoners during the blitz; the analogy holds true here. There was an added feature that addressed the most touching of human tragedy. Impromtu bulletin boards had made their appearance in any place that would support them. On these boards were pictures, descriptions, pleas for information concerning the missing. These very human reminders were heartbreaking.
The bar we had enjoyed previously was quiet and subdued. The ubiquitous TV played out the latest in the doleful story. The barmaid was eager to tell us her story of where she was and what she saw. We had run into the same thing with the man at the theatre box office. Everybody had a story and seemed to need the catharsis of telling it. We nursed our drinks until time to head the half block to the theatre. When we arrived we were informed that the cast of the play simply could not go on. They could not deal with light comedy in the midst of the misery around the Village.
Disappointed but certainly understanding, Linnie and I started our trek back north. We got as far as Washington Square Park which is just off 5th Avenue and generally forms a sort of entry way into the Village. We rested on a park bench and watched a bit of the human drama which is always there in a New York park. As we sat, somewhat in our own thoughts, an attractive, middle-aged, slight, Oriental woman tapped Linnie on the shoulder. She looked up 5th Avenue and nodded toward a building and inquired in very broken English, "Empire State Building?" Linnie, who is in love with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, answered in the affirmative. The lady then looked south and said, "World Trade Center. So sorry, so sorry." She very politely bowed and turned and walked away. This, I think, was a defining moment for Linnie. She has not had a truly dry eye since then.
We returned to the subway prepared to wait for our train only to be informed that it did not matter which train we took, they were just running in one direction: away from the war zone. The difference between Greenwich Village on Monday, September 10, 2001, and Thursday, September 13, 2001, defines in my mind what happened to this great city. It remains my most vivid impression of this week in our history.
A strange sort of impression also stays in my mind. It has to do with the group with which I was traveling and a protective device we arrived at without fully realizing what we were doing. Get in mind, this was a bunch of school teachers who had been educated to have some trust in the things that civilized man has developed to mark that civilization; things like poetry, music, art. We seemed to want some assurance that the best ideas of mankind still existed. We found ourselves reciting bits of poetry. All of us had come through small schools in the days when memorizing poetry was required. The poems, or more nearly the bits of poems, we remembered seemed to speak to a time when civility and not incivility prevailed, when good seemed more in command than evil. I got a chance to recite the last verse of William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis in Bryant Park. We could not remember the author of Invictus (William Ernest Henley, as we later discovered). We stopped at a street book vendor and found an old volume of poetry that Roger Haley purchased.
It was not just poetry; we sought things that demonstrated our culture. Through the days we were in New York, all or some of us visited the Metropolitan Museum, after it reopened, the New York Public Library, one of the four or five great libraries in the world, the Hispanic Society of America Museum, Columbia University, Riverside Church, St. John the Divine Church, or any other place where we could find that cultural spark we were seeking. In a way, I think we all understood the deep and jarring contrast as we sat in Bryant Park and saw the growing column of smoke and debris that marked one of the great acts of inhumanity in our history, and immediately to the east of us just a few feet was the New York Public Library, one of the greatest repositories of the best ideas of humanity. The contrast was jarring, particularly when coupled with the very real possibility that a hijacked plane might be heading for that Library.
Roger Haley has tried to isolate some articles that explain what motivated our actions in regard to poetry and art and books during this period. He has sent a couple that seem to speak to the phenomena. Robert McCrum, writing in the London Observer, "Poetry is one thing. Books also give us the reassurance that others have been here before us and have suffered something of what we are suffering. They signal across a black universe of despair, like stars, saying 'You are not alone'." Eric McHenry sent a copy of W.H.Auden's poem, September 1, 1939, to several friends. It was written on the occasion of Hitler's attack on Poland and is amazing in its insights into our condition as we looked at the World Trade Center disaster. McHenry wrote "Tragedy sends people to poetry," and "Poetry does justice to life by describing it,not by reducing it to more reasonable dimensions." Auden's poem ends with this stanza:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The despair of our little group was deepened when we received word of the death of Al Marchand. Two of our number, Linnie Townsend and Jimmy Smith, had had Al in classes at the college. We all knew him. The loss of a good man diminishes all of us but it becomes an affirmation that good men lived and labored and good men still live to carry on.
September 11 Email: Date
Monday, September 24, 2001 8:31 AM
September 11 Email: Subject
New York Trip--Part 3
Collection
Citation
“email627.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed October 6, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/39200.