I lived in New York during 9/11. A big part of the reason I’m leaving is because of everything that happened after. I don’t want to rehash it now but people who have read Courting for years know about my personal tragedy a month later and the help I couldn’t find.

Hillary Clinton was an influential senator who could have done much to alleviate the suffering. Not just the counseling I sought, but she could have helped New York get its promised aid in a timely manner. Montana needed it more. I can never forget her for forgetting about the city she claims to represent. I can’t stand the people who choose to overlook that.

So would Hillary be good in an emergency? Only if it suits her needs.

Here’s a post my nephew of choice Kenny Butler wrote. Kenny represents the successful Black professional family man. I’m proud to have posted it and to link to it now.

OBAMA BRINGS REASON AND INTELLECT. OBAMA BRINGS HOPE. OBAMA CARES ABOUT ALL PEOPLE. HE IS ALL PEOPLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE A CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS BOTH THE BLACK AND WHITE WORLD. OBAMA ISN’T A MACHINE CANDIDATE.

IF G-D FORBID SOMETHING ON THE SCALE OF 9/11 OR KATRINA HAPPENS I HAVE FAITH THAT OBAMA WILL BE THERE FOR ALL OF US. NOT JUST THE CHOSEN FEW.

Stumble it!

The above is the absolute worst blog post title I have ever written. But..
The average apartment in Manhattan stays on the market for 188 days, and that was before Bear Stearns. Have to keep remembering that. Then I feel guilty as I’m not facing foreclosure or being forced to sell. Yet I feel relaxed, so…

You never made it to 30. Then how did it seem you were there all my life?

We never talk about you anymore. We have moved on.

To some you’re a symbol of the beginning of a great war. Not to those of us who knew you well. We loved you for you; Manhattan’s best indoor mall. Manhattan’s largest office complex. A restaurant with the best views and decent food. A high flying lounge with great appetizers, a piano play and wonderful views. Even an observation deck we would go to once or twice, take tourists to, watch tourists go up to. The best damn TCKTS booth in NY. The line moved rapidly and the plays seemed better as the tickets were bought from you.

For several years, in my 20’s, I worked across the street from St Paul’s Church. It felt like such a long walk from your subway stop as it was so windy. I would often stop at Trinity Church to look at Alexander Hamilton’s grave.

In my earliest youth I would meet friends on the concourse for drinks. We would mean to stay for a drink or two and somewhere long after midnight….good thing subways were there and a never ending procession of cabs.

Later I moved up to the pricier places with a view worth dying for. I wanted to grow old with you. Not that I thought about it, except that day in 93, when I lived in an apartment that had a dead on view of you. I spent the night on the terrace looking at Staten Island and Jersey. Actually it was an amazing view seeing beyond your lights. Slightly discomforting but I knew you would be back in the morning.

My sister lived in the building closest to you. We had been together that day. I don’t remember if we thought it was a fire or knew that it was a bombing. We laughed about looking at Manhattan without your lights. Laughed and were frightened.

The new mall that was built was even better. You had more fun stores and better more modern concourse restaurants.

My sister’s daughter and all the kids I knew viewed you as a giant playground. One that was more fun than most real ones.

The “covered bridge” that lead to The World Financial Center had an art gallery for us older ones and pieces of rubber next to the large windows, kids could climb on and look. “Wow, Pia, can I really play on this?” The art gallery had socially significant events–the story of desegregation among other things. It forced you to think as you were walking. That’s the best kind of gallery to me.

That other day I try to forget it. But it’s imprinted in my mind. I can’t forget it, and I had my own personal tragedy the next month, the one that made me realize I would have to leave New York so yes I want to forget.

My heart still breaks for you. But this war, you wouldn’t have wanted it.

You were as New York as any of us. Many of us measured great moments in our lives through you. It hurt so much for so long to look down and not see you.

You had a New York tude. I was supposed to go to the last concert in your outdoor space. Pete the K9 cop was going to hold good spots for us. Janis Ian was playing. Fitting very fitting. We tried explaining how Ian was probably more socially significant than Alanis Morissette or any of the 90’s girl folk singers but each generation thinks theirs is the best.

You were so big. So sturdy. We didn’t realize we thought you would always be the backdrop to our lives. After your loss we realized how much we had depended on you.

People talked about “Ground Zero.” That’s meaningless to me. It’s you, The World Trade Center, that remains in my heart.

I could only find “tributes” to “Society’s Child” but this will do.

Pete the K9 cop–my good friends the Waldo’s brother-in-law was supposed to go to work at noon that day. He was driving his wife to work when he saw smoke. Before he could get a call, he called. Both he and his dog survived. It’s an urban myth that all dogs died. I know as I know Pete.

He retired, and has a management job at a large security firm. He and his wife bought a large expensive house. Life goes on. He was always a good time guy and still is. But sometimes….

Happy birthday World Trade Center. You didn’t live the long life you should have but you are missed As long as I’m alive you will be talked about as you were. It doesn’t hurt to think of you. I’m numb when I think of that day, but everything after–that hurts. And you had nothing to do with that.

I don’t know how to end this because your ending was so unnatural and so wrong. I’m no longer in mourning for the people or my mother–my personal tragedy. Now I mourn for you.

The Trade Center was bounded by Tribeca and The Financial District. They are the richest zip codes in Manhattan now Perhaps that’s your tribute.

Stumble it!

This is my first attempt at Writer’s Island. This weeks prompt is Second Chance.
As always I thank Bone for the words.
Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the first attack on The Trade Center. I will never forget either attack. The fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq is quickly coming. We’re not honoring the dead by remaining in Iraq.

My printer is throwing a fit so I almost run to FedEx/Kinko’s on a very gentrified West 72nd Street. When it was just Kinko’s I used to feel I was in a Al Pacino movie, and would look for all the lonely crazy people. My cable was down more than it was up when I was a reporter and I thought it would be a fate worse than death not to have friends I could wake up at midnight to use their computer when I had just seen a movie and had a six AM deadline. I couldn’t imagine being in Kinko’s through the night. It seemed so transient.

I have had many second chances in life. It almost seems unfair to be constantly reinventing my careers. Same city–three apartments, same friends, but oh so many careers.

There is only one career I crave and I crave it so much I feel like a vampire sucking blood. Who am I to think I can make it as a writer? Lately I have been reading so many good blogs I think I’m not even a ripple.

On March 5, I will take a 90 minute plane ride to a new world for me.

90 minutes by plane but a world away. A new life. A new chance. I won’t be stressing about things costing more every day, or a woman yelling in Fairway:
You, you deserve to die.
I have no idea why she pointed to me and said that. Neither did the other people waiting on the long line. I could understand the man who screamed at me as I almost went to his check out counter instead of the one just across from it.

He told me that I owed him an apology. I didn’t think so, and I’m the former princess now queen of apologizes. I had already told him I was sorry. He wanted something more. Something neither I nor the other people in Fairway could have given him.

I accept people going crazy in Fairway. It’s built so that the aisles are too small and everything looks dirty though the fish is always ranked first in freshness, least in mercury, etc.

I know people who won’t shop there as they don’t want to be yelled at. They want to be distant from the fracas yet really all life in Manhattan is frazzled.I accept Fairway as a normal part of Upper West Side life.

When push comes to shove, and it does all the time there, do I have to accept it?

I write about Fairway too much as it’s the bane and justification of my existence.

The years immediately preceding and subsequent to 9/11 were the worst of my life. My mother was rapidly aging. She was the person I had always gone to for advice, for validation. She wasn’t at all demented but blind. People treated her as if she was demented. Sometimes they didn’t but she thought they did. It didn’t matter. I heard it all. I had no filter that separated her feelings from mine. I tried to consider her feelings. She tried to consider mine. Yet so many times we didn’t act considerate of each other.

I worked in a nursing home. Surrounded by old age I almost became old myself. I felt adrift and alienated from almost everybody. It should have been easy, for me, to find help to deal with my conflicted feelings. The professionals in the nursing home couldn’t understand how I could let my mother live alone.

I would quote them to them. “She has capability in all areas but sight.” They would tell me that if it were their mother they would insist she live in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. “But you’re the ones literally writing the book on the many types of capability. Don’t you understand, stubbornness? Vanity? The want to live an independent life? I can’t tell a woman with capabilty in almost all areas where to live” No, not in this case. She was blind. That she could distinguish medications by putting different sized rubber bands on the bottles–a home care agency test of cognizance–didn’t matter.

That she was sharp and mindful of all possible problems didn’t matter. Didn’t I know I was a bad daughter?

Therapists outside the nursing home would tell me I had to separate. I knew that but how? I didn’t live with my mother. There were five mandatory phone calls a day. If I didn’t call at exactly nine AM she would get sick to her stomach. They didn’t know what I could do. They just knew her dependence on me wasn’t healthy. I knew that also. They refused to believe I was also dependent. I seemed so strong. I stopped believing in therapy. I knew this wasn’t an easy problem but I needed support. I needed to feel that I was a worthy person.

Oh sweet irony. I had gone into this field to learn how adult children and parents could get along. I had gone into the field to look for new ways of housing when people became old. I had gone into it with many expectations that people didn’t want to consider then.

Now the news is filled with this problem. Then I felt so alone. After her death, shortly after 9/11 I felt guilt, sadness, despair. Nothing but time could heal this.

I became the person I hated. I became a person who screamed in Fairway. My gait is slightly off. It’s not noticeable except when I’m tired or my psyche is worn out. I would bump into people. They would scream. I would scream back.

The supposed 9/11 affect of people becoming nicer; the halo that was supposed to have surrounded this city; it bypassed me. I felt as if I had become a punching bag for everybody with any problem to dump on.

Later I was to realize that no matter how horrible the problem we have a responsibility to only let it out at the right times. That there were few right times then–that this was a city in deep mourning—I truly should have understood that. Yet my need to mourn my mother should have been acknowledged.

I was right in giving up the friends who told me to stop mourning after six days. But I made my other friends responsible for my happiness and that’s always wrong. I felt so sad and distant from the world that once seemed to belong to me.

It was my straight male friends, and one great girlfriend, who were there for me. I can never participate in straight male bashing. One was physically present whenever I truly needed somebody to cry to. He would drive me where I needed to go, and basically translate my language of despair and need to our friends.

Another knew how to make me laugh. He has known me most of my life and knows I would rather laugh than cry, and needed people who understood that.
I hope that there is never another terrorist attack or Katrina type emergency. But if there is all people affected should be given counseling if they want it

I have moved past mourning my mother. Still I needed continuity. My city, the one constant in my life other than family and friends, was quickly changing into a city I no longer knew.

My best girlfriend would walk the streets with me and point out how many people bumped into me and yet I would be the one to apologize. That gave them license to yell at me. She pointed this out and pointed it out until I understood apologizes were unnecessary. Not everything in the world was my fault. I will always love her for that and much more.

The first time I was able to go into Fairway without feeling scared that I would blow up was my biggest victory in my adult life.

I came back to myself. I’m an improved version as I have gone through the eye of too many storms that hit back to back. I did come out of the funnels stronger.

I never yell in Fairway. Even this past Sunday when the store was wall to wall people, when I was told I deserved to die–something I had thought in the horrible years–even when the man thought my “sorry” wasn’t enough, I smiled.

I don’t want to use all my energy just getting through the day.

This past decade wasn’t all horrible. I watched two young girls turn into wonderful young women. I became closer to my true friends. I met many new people. I learned that America consists of more than the NorthEast Corridor, South Florida, and SoCal.

I learned that despite my disability, dyspraxia/non verbal learning disorder, I can move where ever I want to. I learned that I can take the best of me and make it better.

I have a chance, a true and planned chance at a new life. It hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t really understand that once I sell my apartment and buy something new, my expenses will be cut drastically. It hasn’t hit that when people in North Myrtle say something is crowded, I have to look–and never really find–the crowds.

It hasn’t hit that I will live in comfort with a dishwasher, washer/dryer and things other people take for granted. And it won’t cost more than $1200 a month above the purchase price.

Outside of New York I can focus on what’s important to me. I know the first six months or so will be difficult. I will be selling one apartment and looking for a townhouse to buy. A townhouse, a place with steps and room. It feels like a fairytale. It’s not

More importantly, New York, is the city of too many memories. I find myself reframing my mother’s final years. I wasn’t a bad daughter. I was a daughter who helped allow my mother to live her final years with the dignity she so badly wanted. Somehow it’s easier to understand that outside of New York.

New York was my dream city in my 20’s and 30’s. I have changed. New York has changed. Change is good. Change keeps cities thriving and people growing. New York has a chance to remake it into the model international city. I have a chance to devote my time to my passions, and I have many.

Really I’m just a simple girl from Long Island gone country.
•••••••••••••
I can’t comment right now so don’t feel the need to. ..

Stumble it!

I was just telling somebody a story about two guys I have known. One intimitely and forever though not forever intimitely, and the other just kind of forever. Both are rather well known in their fields which I will leave as pop culture.

Then I realized, not for the first time, I have had a whole incredible life that’s never been talked about here or will be in a memoir because while I will tell good friends stories about my life as it did happen, I don’t feel comfortable talking about my true personal life–even things that happened many years ago. Courting and hence Google presents a very distorted view of my life.

Sometimes I wish that I were a very different type of person. One who would really say anything rather than giving the illusion of saying too much.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I put my friend’s letter in about the super delegates because this is an election
unlike one I have ever seen. Here’s an oped on letting the people decide. hey even I’m too young to really remember Kennedy’s election.

I will vote Democratic as I personally believe it extremely important that a Democrat occupy the White House. I believe that Ralph Nader was the true reason Gore didn’t win.

In this current election I have seen people who were totally disenfranchised become involved. I have seen them begin to believe a bit in America as a true democracy. I find that wonderful.

Hillary is a machine candidate, (here’s Frank Rich on her) and here’s something more personal. New York made a remarkable recovery after 9/11 or did we?

Bloomberg who few people truly like but most people respect has moved as much money around as he can. I can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore and will sell my apartment, shortly, to somebody who does have several million in “disposable” income, and access to much credit.

Is that what we want Manhattan to be? Anybody who has read this blog for any length of time knows that 9/11 changed my life and not in a good way. I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about how great the people were. I remember the people and I do speak in glittering generalities as being worn and not able to deal with my personal tragedy.

It was the first time in my adult life I felt out of place. Time heals and I have put my mother’s death into perspective. There should have been help for people like me. I am a licensed social worker who did offer to begin support groups for people who lost loved ones around the time of 9/11 but not in it.

The man who lives upstairs from me is a drunk, fortunately in recovery now. He had to move back to the building as he was deemed a security risk living in The Boat Basin. He fell not once but many times every night for months. I would incorporate his falls into my dreams. Every night I would dream of people falling from The Towers. They would have my mother’s face as she died from a fall. She lived in the city; I live in Manhattan.

Yet I wasn’t eligible for the free help that was given so readily to people who had a second cousin once removed die in the attacks. I can’t forget that. I can’t help but believe if we had an administration that gave a damn–and senators who cared it might have been different. Every person who lived in the city was affected yet we were the only city not to have rallies, not to have the little things that help people heal. It was everybody for herself.

Yes that began my dislike of Hillary. She could have done so much for the people of New York City. She chose not to. She should have been screaming for the promised aid to come to New York then not to Montana and finally to New York three years later.

I will vote for her if I have to but it will be reluctantly.

I’m sorry I’m playing the same old song. I don’t enjoy it. I had to totally remake myself after 9/11. It wasn’t easy and it took time. I did but the psychic scars remain.

Stumble it!

I delete spam pingbacks so don’t even think about it. Actually you can’t as I turned pingbacks off. Tired of deleting them. Don’t know who pings to everything I post–at least twice but they don’t even get the name of this blog or my blog right. which would be the only thing saving them–but I don’t like blogs that are made just to ping articles and then sell products that would land in any persons spam

Cooper has great Obama posters.

Here is Frank Rich. on the “Kennedy myth.”

Here is Nicholas Kristof on “Christian evangelicals.” I don’t think that Kristof understands that many liberals talk about the radical right–no religious denomination–for a reason. We are intelligent people who can separate the good from the bad.

I care about the zealots losing power and believe that they have.

It does upset me that so many minority group members in New York are planning on vote for Hillary. Fact: Downstate New York has long supported Upstate. Any good she has done for Upstate has been mitigated for what she hasn’t done for Downstate.

She’s a carpetbagger (I was never in love with Robert Kennedy) who has had one aim and one aim only since she began to run for president, uh that was a typo I will live in–since she began to run for Senator. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I delete spam pingbacks

A good blogger to me is somebody who moderates comments, is constantly reading new blogs, and commenting. I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. Not now. I need to write and to write I begin blogs. I have a few private ones and one not so secret one.

Courting isn’t going on hiatus. I will be writing and moderating comments but I won’t be commenting until I’m in a different space. I mean that physically. Actually I go through this every few months. I’m obsessed with blogging and admire bloggers who never tire of commenting. I’m not comment crazy and enjoy reading blogs without commenting often but then I’m called a lurker. I don’t understand why “reader” isn’t acceptable and people can’t be happy with people reading their blogs without commenting at times.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The three most exciting parts of the State of the Union address to me where:
3) Looking at men’s ties–and I don’t have a large TV or LCD or plasma
2) Watching Ted Kennedy sleep–for one of the few times in my life I agreed completely with David Brooks–on my birthday, or the next day in 1969, he knew he could never become President so he focused on becoming a great senator
1) Watching Nancy Pelosi try to find a proper facial expression–she went through every fake smile I know

I don’t usually link editorials but I loved this one. On what could have been had our president made a different speech six years ago.

CAN YOU SAY PORK BARREL? I ADMIT I KEPT FALLING ASLEEP BUT I WOULD WAKE TO HEAR BUSH TALK AGAIN AND AGAIN ABOUT ENDING OR DRASTICALLY REDUCING EAR MARKED RESOURCES.

Stumble it!

Beach music–really great beach music. There’s about a 30 second buffer and then some of the best beach music you will ever hear. It will change your perception about beach music. It’s wonderful.

And to certain friends of mine who can’t stop laughing about me living in South Carolina and going to clandestine Democratic party meetings–I should let them tell the jokes but I have a kind of rule in Courting to only talk about my own stupidity–two words–Barack Obama. While we’re all bitching about the economy, I will be bitching in comfort as you take dwindling subways, buses, and have all the old problems come back

It’s been pretty obvious since Bloomberg became mayor he had to take monies from one place to cover another. Did Hillary try to get money for the city? I didn’t hear her screaming for the aide we were supposed to get–that came three years after 9/11.

.Caroline Kennedy on why she supports Obama.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

Here’s Bob Herbert, the columnist closest to my heart after Frank Rich on some questions for the Clintons.

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It’s time to truly think outside the box and only Barack Obama seems to be able to think that way.

The next president is going to inherit the biggest mess, arguably since The Depression. Obama has grace, style and substance. Yes grace and style are damn important. The President has to be a healer. I hate losing respect for the Clintons. After the presidents of my lifetime, Clinton brought fresh air. It’s not the same Bill and Hill. They have changed.

I was an SSI claims rep in The Bronx then. Our zip codes included some of the poorest in the country and some middle class–we were the second most diverse area after Jackson Heights. People would tell me stories…they had done everything right and found themselves in deep debt because of sickness.

The real 90’s of easy money hadn’t happened yet, but I always felt those two years at SSI–then I became a social worker. While everybody else seemed to enjoy the ease my life became mired in other peoples sicknesses, dementia, poverty, sadder than sad stories. My background is one of privilege. I felt compelled to work in these worlds.

I live among the very affluent. I feel comfortable in this world, but random events happen that we have no control over. Including a president beginning a very immoral war. We need a president who can look at the war, economy and health insurance with unjaded analytical eyes.

The more I hear Obama and read about him I know he’s going to age 30 years in eight but he can pave the way back to a great America.

I’m psyched that I’m finally going to be a real American–I stopped feeling superior because I’m a New Yorker sometime ago. I will never forget the state of Iowa again and what it now stands for.

If we’re to regain confidence in ourselves and hence be respected by the rest of the world we need Obama.

Stumble it!

This is a very scary time for me. Getting ready to leave all that is known. I bitch about New York all the time but I have only lived here except for two years in Cambridge in my early 20’s–and all over the place before then. But I was young, very young and had few things. I was impulsive then and am so the opposite of impulsive now.
I don’t know how that happens. Becoming settled. Thinking of everything that can go wrong, when once I just did. I have such deep roots here yet I know it’s time to shake the roots.
Writing has become so important to me. Once it was a hobby. Something I did to amuse myself. Something I did better than other people at work or in school. It’s the anchor that’s almost making me do this. Lately I have been scared that I’m losing my talent or whatever makes me unique. I begin to think that I’m too old. That great books and articles belong to the young(er) and I never gave myself the chance before. Serious writing requires an organizational skill I lacked until modern computers.
I have an entirely different side. In person I’m funny. In many emails and some comments, but here…I think I need to be settled.

The title of this post refers to my great love of Frank Rich–and how he’s writing about people I can’t stand. I so hope Judith Regan is Rudy’s Linda Tripp. But often I think he should be the Republican candidate as nobody in New York can imagine him winning. We have been wrong before. I remember going to vote in 2000 and a woman said “if everybody on the Upper West Side stands a certain way we can win.” I thought she was crazy, but have thought about what she said she often–that was before that night, and the Florida results. Maybe we didn’t stand the right way.
The quote from the Frank Rich article is beneath all this–If anybody can explain how RudyG can be so truly devoid of morals yet be so popular when Clinton was crucified I would love an explanation.
and click the help stop global warming link
Have to decide what to give away and what to keep. Not easy. My apartment will be on the market shortly. I know there’s still a market in New York for apartments like mine. Not sure how to price it.
Help stop global warming. Got this from Little Luce who got it from her school.
Frank Rich on Judith Regan and Giuliani. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

When Rudy first became mayor I was an SSI Claims Rep in the Bronx so I do know a thing or two.

New York City’s welfare department sent us so many claimants who weren’t sick we had to do a special notation “welfare sent them. They don’t know why they’re here.:

It was crack and drive by shooting days. New York was hit hard by the recession that had begun in 87. But the economy began to improve officially on March 31, 1991.

With a good national and city economy fewer people do drugs or randomly shoot other people. Much as i hate to credit Newt Gingrich with anything–it was his Contract With America that ended “welfare as we knew it.:

Rudy made some great quality of life changes in his first term. However he thought he was elected dictator in his second term and went too far.

He announced his divorce in a press conference before informing his then wife. Had he been Clinton he would have been crucified

By September 2001, most New Yorkers couldn’t wait for his term to end. We all know what happened next. He did ask for his term to be extended.

The more I have been reading about 9/11, Bernie Kerik and some others, the more I begin to doubt that he was this great leader we all thought him to be. Kerik spending the day kissing his ass instead of being in the trenches as a police commissioner should have been.

I have written a lot about Kerik. He’s slime, sleaze, gross and those are the nice things.

A person is judged by the company he keeps. Judith Regan, Kerik’s former lover announced her law suit. Of course it has a Rudy angle–refuse to dignify him by giving him a last name.

RudyG fails in that area as he does in so many others. And I kind of want him to be the Republican candidate as I can’t believe he could win. But stranger things have happened.

After eight years of Bush we deserve a good president. I can’t stand the thought of four years under Rudy

If he becomes president we truly deserve to be the joke of the world

Stumble it!

It’s afternoon and I’m not feeling this way anymore. I want to put up a “light” “happy” post to cover it, but I don’t want to take this post down as it’s a testament to the way I felt too often the past six years. Good to have it down to one night, one morning and half an afternoon.

Days like today make me scared that I will never leave the legacy I want to. Days like today should make me appreciate life so much more. I’m surrounded by so much beauty and wish I were in the only place that will ever really be home. I have never been away before on 9/11. I think I will have to return to New York every September
I wrote this several weeks ago, and never edited it. It’s rambling but explains a lot about me–things I have never said, even. It’s a sidebar post. All side bar posts can be found under the category
“250 word rant.”

I wrote a long post. Actually I wrote three. The title now has nothing to do with the post. I just like it

Six generations of my family have lived in Manhattan. I thought it was fewer but forgot to count great grandparents and cousins kids.

I found every excuse not to leave including having to go to the most expensive dentists in New York I have finally run out of excuses

They say nobody has ever gone broke living in Manhattan. Obviously nobody has ever lived in a building where owner’s expenses went up 40% with one months notice and no meeting to talk about it. That should be criminal. It’s not.

I no longer believe in any kind of security–in all its meanings. I do believe that as long as people refuse to discuss how 9/11 hastened the ever rising costs in New York, and the lack of help available to people who didn’t meet strict criteria, we haven’t learned anything.
I can’t apologize for caring about something that changed my life.

Yet I feel self-centered and wrong for bringing this up. The story I wrote below this is much better.

I have no perspective today. At home, in New York, it’s just another day. Here I look at the American flags raised in homes that don’t usually have them and wonder the myriad of reasons for raising them. Is it pure patriotism? Do people believe we went to war in the name of 9/11? God, I hope not

This was my last 9/11 post. I too suffer from 9/11 fatigue but until I sell my apartment it won’t be over for me. I repeat myself because I haven’t done what so badly needs to be done.

As Michael Stipes says it’s easier to leave than to be left behind…. Leaving New York never easy. I saw the light fading out

Stumble it!