Upon opening my e-mail yesterday morning, I found the following message:
Dear Bookblog
I am an editor at Vanity Fair. And my new book from FSG, Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11
, has received a good deal of critical acclaim. But right now it is the book's blog
http://www.watchingtheworldchange.com
that has become something of a full-fledged community bulletin-board for people dealing with issues concerning September 11 and its aftermath, as readers continually send in their unsolicited memories and images. I would be grateful if you'd take a look and, if intrigued, let your Bookblog audience know about it.
Thanks for your consideration,
David Friend
Everyone has a September 11th story. I was fast asleep in my bed in Chicago when the first plane hit, and was soon awakened by a frantic call from my mother in New Jersey telling me to turn on the television. A thousand miles apart, we watched the second plane. My mother, who left Vietnam, pregnant with me, in 1969 with an American sailor, sobbed, "Now you know what it's like to be at war." Later, her television showed snow when the antennas went down with the buildings.
What we didn't know was that my sister was shopping on the World Trade Center concourse. On her way to work in Brooklyn, she took the escalators from the PATH station to buy a new shirt because she was unhappy with how she looked that morning. She went to Express, bought two sweaters, and received a receipt stamped at 8:48 a.m. She was going to duck into a bathroom to change her top but realized she was late and got on a subway train. She saw a lot of police activity upon disembarking but didn't learn about her close call until arriving at work. Although stuck in Brooklyn for the night, she was able to get into Manhattan and onto a New Jersey-bound PATH train the very next morning.
But like I said, everyone has a September 11th story.
Did our lives change? Not really. I spent the days after September 11th preparing for my move back to New Jersey on the 28th. My sister's route to work changed because of the closing of the WTC PATH station, but she still went to Brooklyn every day. She even flew to Chicago on the 26th to help me finish packing and share the driving back to New Jersey.
Have our lives changed? Of course, but none of it has anything to do with September 11th. I went back to school and taught 3rd and 4th grade in Manhattan. Now I own a house and am on an extended vacation while I figure out what I want to do next. My sister got engaged and has a new job that she loves. My mother retired and is anxiously awaiting the wedding and the grandchildren that will hopefully soon follow.
To be perfectly frank, I haven't noticed much of a change in the lives of anyone I know. It was a tragic event for the victims and their families, but, at the risk of sounding cold, good people die every day. I watched a cable reality show about homicide detectives the other night that profiled two murders. In the first, a nine-year-old girl died while playing on her front porch after being hit by a stray bullet from a gang-related shootout. In the other, a young father was shot trying to stop a robbery at the gas station where he worked one of his two jobs. He left behind a toddler and a four-months pregnant wife. These deaths were also tragic, and, like on September 11th, I watched the aftermath on television.
My sister and I spoke briefly about the post-9/11 world. She said, "People's anxiety levels are higher. Like when you see extra police in train stations." Her comment is certainly true, but the logic, to me personally, seems backwards. When you see more police, shouldn't you feel safer because they are there to protect you? Why fear being killed by a terrorist when you're more likely to die by your own hand behind the wheel of your car? Right now, I could probably die in a hundred different ways while sitting here in my office chair. Life and death can intersect anytime and anywhere. I don't see the point in constantly feeling anxious about it.
So I probably won't be reading David Friend's Watching the World Change. I have my own story and look back on that day through the lens of a personal camera. I did look at his web site and took some interest in a post about a woman who is haunted by a New York Times photograph of a businessman falling from the Twin Towers. I couldn't help comparing her words to the flip book at the end of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Did the world change? Although we were told the terrorists wouldn't win, many still grapple with terror and anxiety. We've been looking but haven't found Osama bin Laden. A group of mourning families has become a powerful political lobbying group. In Manhattan, a major tourist attraction is a gigantic hole in the ground. Fear and unsubstantiated intelligence were used to put us into an unwinnable situation in Iraq. The media is filled with frightening images. And good people still die in tragic events every day. The world has changed since September 11th, but, to be perfectly honest, it needs to change again.
