THIS September 11...

For some reason, THIS September 11 is packing a really powerful punch to my solar plexus

As I remark in the video I am making now, Sept. 11 was one of those days that changed everything..

I am not the first person to remark on that, I know my old friend Deborah Eisenberg wrote something to that effect and I just read another article on the internet that had the same theme.

(For me and many others, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a world changing event too)...

I remember the time just before Sept 11 2001 very well-- I remember thinking at the time " this is the most serene and NORMAL New York City I have ever known...( I wondered if people in "The Belle Epoque" in Europe were living the same way before their world was destroyed by War).
There were some weird and sinister indications, however.

There were Arab owned stores around where I lived and there was something very furtive and off about them in the months before Sept 11.

In fact, one strange large Arab shop keeper said to me one day, after I had bought something, " You are in for a big surprise, you know that? " and gave me this enigmatic smile/

I walked out thinking, sheesh, that was creepy but a lot of those Arabs were very creepy types.
(We didn't realize of course how bad they were until they set off fireworks in Brooklyn and celebrated openly after the attack on the Towers...)

( I am not the first person to have remarked on this, either).

Anyway, this year all I meant to do really was to make a video going around Manhattan showing how life went on in different places-- at a Sept 11 memorial service, in Times Square, in Central Park, and down at the Kips Bay firehouse Eng 16 L7 on East 29th Street where people bring all sorts of candles and flowers --there is sort of a shrine to Sept 11 there, L 7 in particular having suffered such casualties..the roster ( or one like it) for the day is still on the wall. 

But as I arrived at the Firemen's Memorial at Riverside Drive and West 100th Street, and saw the Marine Band contingent there, I felt myself getting drawn into the event more and more as a participant than as an observer.

I didn't tape that much,. it didn't seem right.

I needed the catharsis of being with all those people, especially all those FDNY firefighters,
as the names of the 343 FF's who were killed were read off with the striking of a bell..

( I recognized some of the names very well, having seen them or heard about them down in the area where I used to live, Kips Bay/Murray Hill, where a street sign honors Capt. William Burke Jr....and from reading the Facebook page of Eng16 L7, where I remember one man making reference to one of those who didn't come back, a FF Muldowney). ( And others.. but that is neither here nor there).

I have nothing very profound to say about all this, as you will see in the video, but a few facts are very clear, such as the need to make the Zadroga Act permanent.

And of course this year I am in touch with legendary NY Firefighter and Author Dennis Smith, who is launching his new Wavepeg Social Media site and discussed it with me after I emailed him--noticing he had reappeared after a long absence-- and asked what he was doing).

Wavepeg is ambitious, but I guess I should not be surprised at that, as Dennis is not the sort of person to let the grass grow under his feet.

He has , like many others, suffered a great deal already from his work on Sept 11 and then on "the pile," but wants me ( and everyone else), that he would never do anything differently and feels honored to have worked along with all those other Sept 11 heroes.

There always have to be new beginnings, and I guess Wavepeg is a sign of that...we live in a world that seems more uncertain than ever all the time, with events such as the incredible refugee crisis the World is experiencing right now ( and its affect on the children involved in particular) presenting a challenge on a whole new scale. 

I wonder what we will be doing next Sept 11, assuming we are around for it,--it will be the 15th anniversary, --who knows how we will be handling it ( Numbers like the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th etc as anniversaries somehow get played up more). Or maybe not. Only time will tell.