9/11
4 posts
I got an instant message from one of the young writers in the newsroom yesterday (Saturday).
This one will tear your heart out, she wrote, sending me a cut of a boy, born less than a month after 9/11, speaking in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday — a message to his firefighter father who died on that terrible day. Patrick Mate Lyon told that packed church, and all the cameras and microphones and pens taking notes he wished he could have known his dad. Continue reading
In 1984, I was working on a show so far off Broadway that the best seats were on the Staten Island Ferry. It closed early, as grad student theater projects tend to do, and we were at loose ends for the rest of the summer.
September 11, 2001 meant many things to many people. When it occurred to me that I wanted to write something about that day, I had a hard time coming up with a subject that I felt I could confidently tackle within the confines of this space. Should I address the war on “tear“, as Bush pronounces the word? The discrimination imposed on Muslims? How we started a war against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks based on faulty intelligence?
I had second thoughts on even writing about this subject at all. Between the news this past Friday being all 9/11, all the time, and the round-the-clock Very Special Episodes of coverage on practically every channel, those doubts persisted. The supposed “credible threat” about an attack on NY and DC on the tenth anniversary did nothing to ease the media frenzy. I ultimately decided to just share what the day was like for me. Continue reading