10th anniversay

I've done my best to avoid all the news and reporting on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It means what it means to people and I don't think we need media saturation to tell us what to think. I have my own reflections. I was working in the city that day, as every day, and just like any other day I was walking to work from Grand Central. One unusual thing happened on the walk down Madison Avenue . . . a big passenger plane flew over, and pretty low too. I may have commented on how unusual that was, but thought nothing of it. Then as I got to 34th St. I saw a big cloud of smoke further downtown. I remember thinking that it was smoke from some building's incenerator. And when I got to work at 28th and Madison, the doorman at the building told me a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. A little later I went to Madison Square park and looked downtown at the burning WTC . . . that would be the last time I saw them standing.

Work was pretty much called off that day, and for several days after. I walked to Grand Central and just missed the last train out of town. And later walked up to a friend's place on York Avenue on the upper east side. The stream of people walking out of town that day looked like something out of a refugee movie . . . thousands and thousands of people walking out of town because mass transit wasn't running. Every now and then the scream of a fighter jet patrolling the skies. It was very strange. And the feeling . . . inside . . . was something of a state of shock. Everyone I knew was safe and sound . . . but we all, or at least I, felt a little vulnerable that day. Finally, at about 5:30 the trains started running again and I took the subway to Grand Central and went home.

We were all very glad to see each other.