I think this person said it best...
“Fuck you TWU. Why is it that the cops and fire fighters can go years with expired contracts and work their problems out, but you greedy fucks have to inconvenience the general public at the drop of a dime.
Go to hell you fucking scrooges.”
- Comment from an Anonymous poster on the TWU blog. (Or I should call it the Greedy Fucker Blog.)
It’s 9/11 again, and I can't help but feel really really sad. Sometimes I look through the photos that I collected from various places. Even now… four years later.. it’s really hard to think about that day. If I could say there was something good that came from all the bad of that day then it would be that 9/11 drove me to move to Fair Lawn, NJ. That then led me to date outside of the NYC area which brought me to Amy who is now my wife of three weeks. I also bought a house back in June which is something I would have never done if I stayed in NYC.
Today Amy had to go to a bridal shower so I’m just sitting at home, mowing the lawn, and trying not to be all bummed about what day it is. I guess though for those in the south this past week or so has been horrible this year. They have their own version of 9/11 except the sad thing is that George W. Bush brought this on them. His spending on his moronic war took away from costal defence both in dollars and in people that are over in Iraq. He’s such a putz. So anyway… while you throw money at the Red Cross because FEMA is unable to help the taxpayers of the south, remember that FEMA is failing the helpless animals down there too. North Shore Animal League has been one of the organizations that has stepped in to help. Rather than donating to the Red Cross I have decided to give to NSAL because I think it’s sad how FEMA and the Red Cross simply abandoned the animal population down there. Some would say that I’m crazy and that people come first. To those people I would say that the dogs and cats didn’t ask to live there. They didn’t ask to be left locked in apartments.. unable to run away… left to die. The people chose to live there. Many of them chose to stay through the storm. Some of them chose to loot. So if you are going to donate you should think about the cats, dogs, rabbits, hampsters, and more that never asked to be left behind… that the Federal Government refused to allow on evacuation buses… remember them.
So I have pretty much moved to NJ. I dragged all my junk from NYC to NJ yesterday. Here I sit in my new apartment. Here's a tip to anyone moving to NJ. When you call PSE&G for Electric and Gas be sure to ask if the gas will actually be turned on when you start your service. In my case it is not on. This sucks. No hot water, no oven, no laundry dryer. So I sit here unable to shower or wash my clothes or even cook a meal. Aside from that I love the new place. More later.
September 11, 2001
A letter from New York to America.
Author Unknown
Dear America,
We're feeling better now, thank you for asking.
And thank you for sending us your brave rescue workers, your kind donations and your sincere prayers.
We know that you feel bad for us.
But in some odd way, we feel bad for you. You weren't here to witness with your very own eyes humankind at its finest hour.
You didn't see thousands of ordinary Americans run to the disaster site clutching medical bags, grocery bags, and shovels. (Just where do we New Yorkers keep shovels in our tiny little apartments?)
You weren't here to see thousands of us line the roads and cheer rescue workers on.
Yes, we admit New York has been irreversibly changed. Don't get us wrong, the streets are still dirty, somehow the millions of tears shed here have yet to clear our sidewalks of litter. Yes, go ahead you can say it, it's okay, we are still the city that never sweeps.
But the adjectives that people have used, maybe even those that you have used to describe our city: dirty, smelly, noisy, have also been irreversibly altered. Impossible as it may seem to accept -- New York is now Holy. If you could only stand near the site of the World Trade Center, you would at once understand that it is one of the holiest places on earth, like the battlefield at Gettysburg, or the barb wired fences of Auschwitz. Our apologies to the Grand Canyon but surely God won't be found there, he is dwelling this moment above the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Maybe it is a result of all of the prayers that you have sent our way, but if you were here in the last two weeks you would realize that New Yorkers themselves have been in a state of grace. Tourists often remarked they could actually feel the energy of our city. Today you would feel the positive energy; you would feel a buzz, a life force that can only be described as basic human goodness.
It's almost as if 8 million people had decided that through sheer goodwill and compassion they could outweigh the evil wickedness of 19 of their fellow humans. (Is it too harsh to call them in-humans?)
It is a glory to behold. You must, if you can, come and be a part of it.
You've told us that we acted honorably. How could we not act with honor? We were horrified eyewitnesses as misguided souls sacrificed their lives so others would die. Then watched in awe as our police and firemen sacrificed their lives so that others might live. We take solace in the certain knowledge that our firemen are safe in heaven, while the hijackers are surely battling the flames of hell.
No doubt about it New York has changed in other ways. It's time that we admit it. We've always been a part of the American family, but for some reason or another we never quite got around to sitting down with the rest of you for a Thanksgiving dinner.
We know. We understand. We are different. Yes, we're always in a hurry. But maybe now you understand that we've always known that life is short, accomplish what you can before it's too late. Yes we are loud. But maybe now you understand that we've always known, that God is a long way off. Sometimes you have to shout to be heard.
We're aware that there exists someplace out there in America something called the Heartland. Our apologies to Iowa, but from now on when we hear the word Heartland, our thoughts will not be of rolling cornfields. Rather it will be the picture of one of our brave firemen climbing a tower to heaven. Surely you won't begrudge us that.
Through your prayers and concern you have accepted us back into the family. You will have to excuse us if we seemed confused. We are not quite sure whether on September 11th all New Yorkers became American, or all Americans became New Yorkers.
What we do know is that for years you have been sending us your sons and daughters. They came here to be a part of this grand experiment in humankind. They tell us native New Yorkers about the beauty of the Arizona desert. The simple joys of Southern hospitality. We smile and accept them as one of us. How can we not when we have a lady standing in our harbor beckoning the world to send us her children?
When you come to our city you'll see some amazing things. Yes it sounds like we're being boastful again. It's one of our faults, we'll try to work on that. But it's hard. Because if you were here you would have seen that when the smoke had cleared the tallest things standing in New York were its citizens.
We New Yorkers have always been a bit embarrassed by our Mayor when he claims New York is the Capital of the World. But there is not one of us who wouldn't plant a kiss square on his mouth, if he would only just stand still for a moment. In our city where the police were once jeered, they are now cheered. Our firemen no longer need ladders, for they already stand on pedestals 10 stories high.
Surely every American wished they could live in a community like that.
We thank you for giving us the honor of representing America. That the face of America that the world saw (in NY pronounced "sore") was that of a cop from Brooklyn, a fireman from Queens, a secretary in sneakers from Staten Island. We hope you won't be too upset that many of those faces wore Yankee caps. We're hoping that our Damn Yanks win the World Series again this year. Not because we need another Championship banner. No, what we need right now is a tickertape parade right up Broadway. In this parade our sports heroes and our citizens will line the streets and cheer for all the brave rescue workers, our true heroes. And if you, the rest of America, can't make it to our parade, at least watch it on TV. Scan the crowds and you'll see the faces of your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters. Your fellow New Yorkers. Your fellow Americans.
In closing we should mention that one of our favorite expressions in New York has always been "fuggedaboutit." But we will never forget. We will always remember your kindness, your compassion, and your prayers.
Now if you'll excuse us, we don't won't to seem rude, but we really have to get back to work.
With sincere thanks.
New York, N.Y.
Every U down in Uville liked U.S. a lot,
But the Binch, who lived Far East of Uville, did not.
The Binch hated U.S! the whole U.S. way!
Now don't ask me why, for nobody can say,
It could be his turban was screwed on too tight.
Or the sun from the desert had beaten too bright
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
But, Whatever the reason, his heart or his turban,
He stood facing Uville, the part that was urban.
"They're doing their business," he snarled from his perch.
"They're raising their families! They're going to church!
They're leading the world, and their empire is thriving,
I MUST keep the S's and U's from surviving!"
Tomorrow, he knew, all the U's and the S's,
Would put on their pants and their shirts and their dresses,
They'd go to their offices, playgrounds and schools,
And abide by their U and S values and rules,
And then they'd do something he liked least of all,
Every U down in U-ville, the tall and the small,
Would stand all united, each U and each S,
And they'd sing Uville's anthem, "God bless us! God bless!"
All around their Twin Towers of Uville, they'd stand,
and their voices would drown every sound in the land.
"I must stop that singing," Binch said with a smirk,
And he had an idea--an idea that might work!
The Binch stole some U airplanes in U morning hours,
And crashed them right into the Uville Twin Towers.
"They'll wake to disaster!" he snickered, so sour,
"And how can they sing when they can't find a tower?"
The Binch cocked his ear as they woke from their sleeping,
All set to enjoy their U-wailing and weeping,
Instead he heard something that started quite low,
And it built up quite slow, but it started to grow--
And the Binch heard the most unpredictable thing...
And he couldn't believe it--they started to sing!
He stared down at U-ville, not trusting his eyes,
What he saw was a shocking, disgusting surprise!
Every U down in U-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any towers at all!
He HADN'T stopped U-Ville from singing! It sung!
For down deep in the hearts of the old and the young,
Those Twin Towers were standing, called Hope and called Pride,
And you can't smash the towers we hold deep inside.
So we circle the sites where our heroes did fall,
With a hand in each hand of the tall and the small,
And we mourn for our losses while knowing we'll cope,
For we still have inside that U-Pride and U-Hope.
For America means a bit more than tall towers,
It means more than wealth or political powers,
It's more than our enemies ever could guess,
So may G-d bless America! Bless us! G-d bless!
As September 11th approaches I can't help but feel really really sad. Sometimes I look through my photos that I collected from various places. It never gets easier to think about that day even now that two years has past. I remember it clearly. On September 10th, 2001 I was down at AOL in Virginia having a security meeting. I drove home to New York with my co-workers, and I got to bed rather late. I woke up in the morning to my ambulance pager going off. I figured it was a normal chest pain call or such. Then I heard the dispatcher. It was chaos. (The same kind of chaos we had in the first few minutes of the Blackout of 2003.) I met up with my coordinators down on 67th Street in about a minute. From the time I got out of bed to the time I met up with them, I had no idea what had happened. Andy, one of my ambulance coordinators, said a small plane had hit the towers. As Andy and David and I drove down to the WTC we were getting ready mentally for a small incident with maybe a few floors damaged and some loss of life. We parked down on Fulton Street, just east of Broadway. From there we walked to the east side of the towers. Looking up you could tell something much worse than a small plane had hit. Papers were falling everywhere, and we could see many floors blown out.
Andy, David, and I walked to West Street (the west side of the towers) to meet up with other units from my ambulance company. It was when we were over there planning to walk down to the south side of the tower when a huge chunk of the south tower flew out over West Street. We evacuated up to Chambers Street in an ambulance, and after the debris cleared out of the air we went back to help. It was dark as night when the debris was all around us. You couldn't see anything. That day I took 2 people from the towers. Both of them maintenance workers from the WTC. Most of the rest of the day was spent on the Upper East Side covering for 911 calls. I went on a few 911 runs, and that night I went back down to the towers to help out. When we were waiting in line with my ambulance to assist we got an ambulance call on the Upper East Side so I had to respond back to my district.
The rest of the week pretty much I just did ambulance calls or errands or whatever I could think to do that was helpful. I am leaving out lots of stuff from that horrible day, and that week, because it's really hard to think about. Even now. Two years later. If it weren't for the blackout a few weeks ago I would probably be doing better this year. That whole experience was so much like 9/11, but luckily the night turned in to more of a party than a bad thing. It was just the first 2 hours or so of that night that really got to me. The time when I knew something really bad had happened, but I wasn't sure what, and we didn't know how long we'd be in the dark.
I really need for 2004 to be uneventful. I just need one year to go by without some big incident, and then maybe I can not be such a flake when September rolls around. My heart goes out to all the families that lost love ones. For them every September will be a sad time. The Shapiros are one such family. Sareve Dukat was the mother of my ex-girlfriend Athena Dawn Shapiro, and her sister Lauren Rebecca Shapiro who was also a close friend of mine. I dated Athena when she lived at home with her parents. I spent a lot of time around her mother. Athena invited me to her mother's memorial service. It was hard for me, but I went because I knew it was harder for Athena and Lauren to be there. Sareve was only 53 years old. Her life was stolen from her. It makes me ill just to think about how thousands of families were affected by WTC, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania plane crashes.
At my day job I am a System Engineer for a large publishing company. My boss Tony and I were sitting in a meeting at 4:15p.m. when the lights went out. We looked out the window to see if it was just us, and noticed that it looked a little dark at Chase next door. Then we noticed flashing emergency lights flashing on some of the floors across the street. I turned on my ambulance radio to see if I could figure out what was going on. It was silent which is not normal. Then I heard my mid-town ambulance trying to reach anyone on the air. I realized the blackout was at least from 50th -> 47th street because the mid-town bus sits on 47th and 5th Avenue. 6 minutes later the dispatcher came back on the air. H-Base, the radio ID of our dispatcher, started asking units to respond to buses in all neighborhoods from down in Manhattan all the way up to the catskills. I knew it was -very- bad. I half thought that Indian Point or some other nuclear plant blew, and an EMP disrupted the power. All sorts of horrible thoughts ran through my head. I was kind of freaked. I had some flashbacks to 9/11. I just could not stay in the office. I needed to get outside to the street. I felt like I was in a very very small box and I was in danger being inside. It's hard to explain, but I think I have some idea what soldiers that come home from a war feel when they say they have flashbacks. It's really scary when you feel like you are back in a dangerous place, and you aren't sure what to do, but you know you need to not be where you are. Tony and I went to our dark cave of an office.
With no windows in our office we had to use laptops to light the way. I just held up my laptop in front of me and the screen lit the way. We each threw laptops in our bags to use if we needed them when the power came back, and then we went to my car a block away on 50th and Broadway. There were people everywhere. It was just like back on 9/11 as far as people in the streets, and lots of confusion. It was a wild sight seeing all the traffic lights in mid-town dark. We drove with my lights and sirens in my car up to 85th and Lexington where the ambulances for my neighborhood usually are parked. Tony and I drove to the 19th Precinct on 67th and Lexington in one of the ambulances with a bunch of EMTs. One ambulance stayed behind on 85th and Lexinton because our Synagogue is there so it was likely that someone needing help might go there. Most of us went down to 67th street though because that was going to be our main base of operations. From 67th street we took calls from my ambulance company and 911 calls because 911 was down from 4:15p.m. until about 6:15p.m.
Right before the 911 system came back up I assisted FDNY in getting some people out of an elevator at the 63rd and Lexington subway station. One person needed medical treatment so we took them to a local hospital, but everyone else was able to go although they had nowhere to go because none of them lived in Manhattan. Most of them were going to try to walk home to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. After leaving Lenox Hill we went back to the 19th Precinct where I dispatched for the Upper East Side and relayed messages to the Upper West Side dispatcher because they were too far from the tower to hear H-Base. (Our main dispatcher.) We took calls through the evening. Tony got lucky. One of the EMTs on my ambulance was driving home to Long Island so Tony was able to catch a ride with him to get home to his wife and two kids.
By around 8pm or so we got nervous because our ambulances only had half a tank of fuel and our explorers also were low. We found the firehouse on 103rd and 3rd Avenue had Diesel gas and they had a generator that was still working. To pump gas you need electricity. There was nowhere with gas and electricity in the whole city. We found that Metropolitan Hospital on 97th between 1st and 2nd avenue had regular gas on a pump that was on the generator. They let us pump from them to fill our explorers up. There is no amount of thanks that I could give Metropolitan Hospital and the firefighters of the 103rd street firehouse that would be enough to thank them for keeping our ambulances in operation. Both of them needed the gas for their own vehicles so by giving gas to us they risked their own rigs not having gas, but they still helped us out. Kindness is not something you think about often when you think about New York City.
With full tanks of gas we were able to run the engines on the ambulances full-time without worrying that we'd run out of fuel. We were turning them off and running the radios off of the battery to save gas, but that was dangerous because if the battery got too low then the ambulance wouldn't start up again and we'd have to jump-start it. We had a few calls during the evening. The worst call I heard was a double stabbing in Brooklyn. Aside from that there wasn't any violence that I heard on the radios at all. Our operation was extremely coordinated and well done. It wasn't anywhere near the chaos of 9/11. H-Base would give a call to a regional base over one radio channel and that regional base would dispatch resources to handle the job using a secondary radio channel. It worked without a hitch. In some ways I felt like dispatching was going smoother than when a normal night when there is electricity, but that's because instead of one dispatcher there was maybe 10 dispatchers taking car of managing calls, and each regional dispatcher knew their neighborhood because they lived there.
At around midnight things got quiet. From about 3am until 5:30 when the sun started coming up I drove around the city just seeing what was doing. At Bryant Park on 42nd and 6th Avenue I saw people sleeping all over the park. Some people pushed chairs together to make a bed for themselves. Others were sleeping on the grass. I saw two people having sex even. (I really didn't need to see that though.) In Times Square I saw that NYPD had setup ESU trucks with bright lights up so it was pretty well lit up there. People were all over the sidewalks sleeping or talking. The side streets around the Empire State Building were completely shut down, and there were two NYPD cars on the avenue which was unusual because I didn't see any NYPD camped out at any other locations aside from Times Square. I assume maybe because the city was afraid of terrorism during the blackout maybe? Anyway I saw lots of stuff on the overnight. I saw Mr. Softee ice cream trucks around the city. I thought that was a really smart idea of them to come in to NYC. I saw business men wearing suits sleeping on park benches in Central Park. I saw the United Nations in total darkness. People were all over the sidewalks in front of Grand Central Station on 42nd Street. Some buildings in mid-town seemed to have good generators because through the whole thing I saw some buildings comepletely lit up, but it was only a handful of buildings. I wished my apartment building had a generator. It was completely dark at my building. My doorman was camped out on a lawn chair in front of the building with candles lighting up the lobby. I gave him and the maintenance guys whatever snacks I had in my apartment.
Morning came and the lights were still out on the Upper East Side. At 9:00a.m. I decided to venture in to mid-town to see if the lights were on at the office. I heard rumors that lights were on there, but I had not seen any lights on since 4:15pm on Thursday. Sure enough there was some power in mid-town. I went to a friend's office on 50th and 6th avenue. We found everything on. Thankfully the plumbing was working so I was able to use a functional bathroom for the first time in 24 hours. You really can't imagine how bad it was to not find working bathrooms all night. At Lenox Hill Hospital there was working plumbing but there were no lights in the bathroom. Just when I was going to head over to my office a block away there was an ambulance call in mid-town on 38th street. So my friend and I responded in our cars (with lights and sirens) down there. We found that part of the city was still without power so apparently not all of mid-town was back up on the grid. We couldn't find the patient so we left the call as unfounded. I headed back to 85th and Lex where we had been stationed for much of the night.
Some time later we had the hardest call of the night. We helped carry a woman that was pregnant with triplets down from the 17th floor to the lobby because we was unable to walk the 17 flights so she was trapped in the apartment. I was just dead tired after that. It was like noon, and the power wasn't on yet on the Upper East Side. I had been working on the ambulance for 20 hours now without sleep. I hadn't had a meal in 24 hours and I had been awake for 29 hours. I was hungry and tired and just wanted to crawl in to bed and turn the air conditioner on. My last stop before going home at 4pm (24 hours after the blackout began) was to go to my butcher, Park East, on 84th and 2nd Avenue. I had heard rumors that at 4am they had come to work and cooked all the meat before it thawed so they could sell it and it woldn't go bad. They were extremely nice. I had no money because no ATMs were working so they let me give them my credit card number so I could buy food so I could eat over the weekend. Even at 5pm there was no power on the Upper East Side. I didn't know if I needed food for Friday night or for the weekend. My butcher had some steaks that had not even thawed yet so I treated myself to steaks, and cooked chicken, chulent, potato kugel, barley, and green bean salad. I went home and cooked up the steaks on my gas stove (thank g-d they didn't update my kitchen to have an electric one.) I had my steaks and then plopped in to my bed.
I woke up to my phone ringing. I had plugged in an old phone that didn't need power before going to sleep so I would hear the phone if there was an ambulance call. My father got me on the phone at around 7:30p.m. ... right before shabbos was starting... and it seemed the power was back on. I had no clue because I had all my circuit breakers off so I wouldn't hurt my computer equipment when the power came on. I quickly ran to the breaker box. I turned everything on... closed the windows... stood in front of the air conditioner for 5 minutes.. and then used my nice comfortable bathroom for the first time since the morning before. It was off to bed after that because I didn't know when the next ambulance call would come, and I needed to be rested because I felt really sick from being up so long, and not eating or drinking right.
Saturday came and here it is. The power is still on. I'm still here. NYC appears to have survived. I really could use a nap.
The news is so depressing. I'm not really sure why I watch it. Something makes me turn it on each night. Tonight's news told us about 2 pregnant women that were beaten to the point of losing their babies. We saw Marines killed in Iraq. There was a horrible fire in NJ that left firefighters with 2nd and 3rd degree burns. There was a car accident on I-80 that killed a mother, daughter and grandmother leaving man without his sister, niece, and mother. They were on their way to a religious retreat when their brakes apparently failed. Lastly we have the Port Authority of New York / New Jersey that wants to put a Bus Station at ground zero. They want to put it under the memorial ground. Don't you love how respectful the government can be? It's only been 2 years, and already NYC is back to the same old shit. Man.. I really need not to turn on the news at night.
I found a story on NY1 that an Ohio truck driver admitted Thursday he was part of a terrorist plot to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge. This is some scary ass stuff. I don't know about other New Yorkers, but I'm freaked. Here we are in June, and coming up in 3 months is the 2 year anniversary of the World Trade Center. I am not sure how to stay in New York City, and not go koo koo. For anyone that doesn't know, I was a first responder to the WTC with an ambulance on September 11th so for me all of this is a little more real than for someone that watched it on TV.
Heads up...
May be nothing but I have seen this mentioned through several news feeds I
read. Just be aware if you need to get around NYC tomorrow there may or may
not be closed streets. The website below has details locations that may be
affected.
------------------------------------
http://www.m27coalition.org/
NO BUSINESS AS USUAL - MASSIVE ANTI-WAR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ON 3/27
An ad-hoc coalition of anti-war groups is planning a massive non-violent
civil disobedience at 8 am on Thursday, March 27, 2003.
We target corporate war profiteers and the media/corporate/government
collusion that is promoting this war. We target the Rockefeller Center area
since many media and corporations have offices there or nearby. We target
the corporate structure that is profiting from this war.
Every day now the lives of Iraqis are ending, and our everyday lives must
end as well. We cannot routinely go to work and school, come home, turn on
the government-manipulated media and watch the Iraqi skies light up with
bombs while we eat dinner. We cannot stand by as our government slaughters
thousands of Iraqi civilians. We cannot continue to watch passively the
homeless, hungry and sick on the streets of New York City while billions of
dollars are being spent on bombs. No business as usual!
The plan is for a massive civil disobedience at Rockefeller Center, with
coordinated actions planned by affinity groups throughout the city. Spread
the word as widely as possible. The action will take place near 5th Avenue
and 50th Streets. There will also be space for a legal protest at the
action.
A pre-action meeting is planned for Weds evening, 6pm, March 26, Washington
Square United Methodist Church, 135 West 4th Street, (just east of 6th Ave.,
Village, NYC).
We need all photographers, lawyers, people with video cameras, media people,
people who care to help! Spread this info to all your friends and family.
