Okay, should I begin to moderate comments? In the post I’m putting in tonight, I admit that I don’t partially because it’s something that I do as a political blogger–this might be a political post–but Courting isn’t a political blog. And more, because all my blogging friends are so good at moderating comments, I’m scared to. I know–I never shut up and I’m scared to moderate non-political comments. Does make me laugh.
I answered one on this thread because it was thoughtful, though I believe wrong.
However I wrote a post on BIO yesterday–and the person who commented first and most–changed it from an opionion post to a “let’s kill all the babyboomers,” though he might or might not be one. I don’t make a great spokesperson for babyboomers, though I am one. While babyboomers might make the largest cohort group, there are more people both older and younger than us who are eligible to vote. It would be nice to see everybody who can vote in November.
First, my default category was going to be “impeach Bush.” Maybe it should be. The government would be very bored if they listened to my phone calls. Yes, I know that they’re only collecting info on phone calls made since 9/11, or so they say, and I don’t believe anything that they say. If they’re interested in the history of my life, they can read my blog, if they can make sense of it. Don’t see why they should be except that I began to call for Bush’s Impeachment Hearing almost as soon as I began to blog, and proudly cast blame as soon as Katrina happened.
While it made me incredibly sad to see their inaction, as a blogger, a person and a person who lives in Manhattan and had been here on 9/11, I had never exactly hated an entire administration as much as I did during Katrina and the aftermath–and I have only hated one entire administration, this one.
I am willing to settle for such small victories now, that the day Karl Rove is indicted will be one of the happiest of my life. But I’m not willing to lose the war. The Republicans must lose control of at least one house this November. That will be a battle won.
Have been exploring some of the darker incidents of my life recently. As I seem to need an audience for my catharses, thank you. All winter I was going to have a James Spader film festival, but I blogged. Or did blogging stuff. Blogged in Puerto Rico; blogged in California twice last year where I wrote some of my best posts, and not just because it was a change of scenery but because it was the right scenery for me
Truly realize now how much I need to leave New York. It’s not a want, but a need. Haven’t enjoyed Manhattan the city since 1990. I find looking at the new New Jersey skyline more interesting than the city. It’s like staying to long in a relationship that has lost both its lustre and its love.
I can’t physically leave until the fall, and I hope to have one last summer fling with the city. It’s not just the after affects of 9/11; it’s me. I feel free to leave because I have worked through a lot of crap that’s been bothering me for the past decade. Blogging did it. It really did; it’s the best therapy with the best therapists around. The comments and emails truly helped.
Felt very scared of some of the posts I have posted recently. Thought that I was sabotaging myself for a change. But I wasn’t. I was moving forward.
Think that the staircase at the Trade Center ground is a symbol of moving forward and should always always be there. Though I have lived in New York virtually my entire life, I, personally, don’t know one person who died but I know so many people who survived.
Not in the mood to look up the spelling of the terrorists name who was just sentenced but he was wrong. America won on 9/11. Many more people lived than died. While memorials to the people who died are important, it’s equally important to remember and honor the people who lived.
Had the attack happen just two hours later many many mothers wouldn’t be here to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday. Kids would have been in the mall.
Not one kid died on the ground. That was the only thing that we could tell children to make them feel at all reassured. They had their world torn apart, but not one kid died. That was a miracle. It was too early for tourists or for people buying Broadway tickets at the only tickets booth I liked.
It was an incredible day in American history. We could have used it to show the world that we are a strong united country. We could have celebrated the strengths of ordinary Americans, who were heroes along with firemen and cops. Will always wonder what happened to “we are all New Yorker’s.” Karl Rove doesn’t want you to like us. Made that clearer than clear last year.
It could have been the most amazing year in American history. We could have shown the terrorist world and the rest of the world, that we the American people were united. But it was used to divide us. We were so used.
We don’t think about the glory of the day. We were manipulated into not thinking about it by a government that wanted war, and wanted us to only remember the horror. It was horrific. It could have been much worse. Frankly for awhile after I heard the news all I could think about was how much more horrible it would have been had it happened at lunch time.
People came to the Trade Center for lunch from all over downtown. After the 93 bombing the mall was redone and it was wonderful. It would have been packed just two and half hours later with people doing banking, errands, buying tickets, having an early lunch. Yet we never think of that.
Our country runs on a half empty premise. Our president and his administration want to take credit for building up New York’s morale after the attacks. I know. I read about it all the time in radical right newspapers and blogs. Well it wasn’t true. I was in New York.
We weren’t New Orleans. We had Giuliani who I might not like but…it was a smaller physical scale. It wasn’t the federal government that saved us. They didn’t even give us the promised aid for three years. We saved us.
And the people who walked down that staircase or the other ones should be honored. Almost every Morgan Stanley employee survived because they didn’t listen to the official instructions. Their former Director of Security had made Morgan Stanley employees very aware that there could be and would be another bombing. Unfortunately he became Director for The Trade Center just a few month before. He did die.
We could have and should have turned 9/11 into a victory for America because it was. We showed how strong we were, but our administration thought it in their best interest to divide us. The radical right followed hook, line and sink–and they will sink deep into the murky waters.
They aren’t what America is about. America is about diversity. America is about true freedom for every person.
That victory has become hollow in light of everything that has happened to this once amazing country. We have fallen so far in such a short time period. I hope that we gain our former glory.
Glory isn’t Manhattan turning into a Disneyfied city. Yes that began before 9/11.
Artists and other people who gave the city its creative edge can’t afford to live here anymore. It would have happened without 9/11 but it would have happened honest. My fixed expenses have gone up over 60 percent in the past four and a half years. How many salaries have gone up that much? Most people here have seen their salaries go up three percent a year.
I’m not confusing isssues. Most of those increases are a direct result of paying the costs of 9/11 over and over again. This country’s administration has to pay for what they have done to us. They made us fear one another. That didn’t have to happen.
But this weekend I’m going to forget about the world, watch James Spader movies, Viggio Mortenson ones. If you haven’t seen this season’s Boston Legal, watch it on DVD, it has more truth in it than almost anything.
Then I will get on with my life. We all have our own staircases we walk down, and I walked down mine.
Crossposted in radically different form at BIO
Pia ~
These words are brillant. You know I’m a fan but this takes it to another level.
How can they even think about removing that staircase… it boggles the mind.
The bit about the Morgan Stanley employees will be mentioned to my son as I am always looking for real concrete examples of why you should follow gut instincts and that people of authourity are to be resp[ected and watched — never blindly followed.
This one goes into a file on my HD.
Thank you for this, thank you.
New Yorkers are wonderful people. I spent many happy days working in all the boroughs, I think I liked Queens the best. I had already moved to Florida on 9/11 and was at work when the attacks took place. I must have driven past the Trade Towers a hundred times on my way through the Battery Tunnel or going to the Brooklyn Bridge. What I remember about that area of Manhattan the most is the diversity of people that called it home.
Pia, I for one would welcome you to Florida with open arms.
I agree with just about everything you have written in this post. I sometimes wonder if my own view is more controversial than most – that many people in the US are complete hypocrits when it comes to the “war on terror”… who’s been invading countries all over the world, after all.
That victory has become hollow in light of everything that has happened to this once amazing country.
That is a brilliant line Pia… as well as everything preceding and following it. 9/11 affected me deeply and changed me for life and I was not in NY. I don’t envy you your position… and I think that by writing about it, stepping on all the BS that is being fed the masses, you are honoring the memories of those who died as well as honoring the survivors and I for one applaud you my friend…
I agree with you totally, Pia – the staircase should strong>always be there. I too, did not personally know anyone who died, but friends of friends, etc. I do know many who survived and each story is a testament to the true spirit of New York and not the federal government’s help. Actually, Brian, Queens was where I was commuting into the city from on that fateful day. On the Express Bus QM12, as I was 7 months pregnant and subways just weren’t the way to go. I remember seeing the first tower flaming… Somehow, it is no coincidence that my son, Julian embodies all that is love and determination and strength. Pia, thanks for another great post.
It’s like staying too long in a relationship that has lost both its lustre and its love. Amazing usage (I’ve been using this word now, thanks Doug)…I can actually say I understand this feeling.
I was on my way to pick up horses near Chicago by myself when 9/11 happened…and I was 20 years old and in shock that we were attacked on our own soil…can’t even imagine being there. That was the day I decided to join the ARNG.
If you ever want to see corn on the horizon, you are always welcome here.
A nice read as usual. You get better every day.
Another brilliant post…
“While memorials to the people who died are important, it’s equally important to remember and honor the people who lived.” This is so true… so true indeed…
Your writing gets better daily if that’s possible.
Enjoy your weekend. Spader and all.
Good post, may you have one heck of a summer fling with NYC!
Nicely said. I too can’t stand this administration either. I’ve slowed by blogging on them because it is just constant, it gets tiring to keep writing about this.
On the digs against the Administration I disagree with to a point. This administration is no better or no worse than any administration for the past 20 or so years. It is our total system that has broken significantly over the past several years. We went to war on terror for the right reasons, and there WERE weapons of mass distruction with Saddam. He admits it, his staff admits it, and we saw them used on people over the last several years before we attacked. One of his Sr. Aides that we captured a few weeks after our attack admitted that they hid and removed the weapons of mass distruction the day before we attacked (not knowing we were attacking the next day) in hopes to stop us from attacking. We found those burried trailers, with residue left in them several weeks after our attack. The reasons for attacking were legit, and as told us. How we are handling it now is a different story, but we did the right thing at the right time.
On the rest of your post, I agree with. 🙂 I do belive that the PEOPLE of the US restored NY, yes, mainly the NYers!, and not the government.
The Katrina mess was caused by New Orleans “Management”, not FEMA, etc. The local Mayor there refused support from MANY sources, including FEMA at first, once he realized that he couldn’t do it, he called for help and started blaming FEMA for the problems. Now, that said, the person that led FEMA shouldn’t have been there, and he had made some bad changes to the system, at the decree of Homeland Security, his new boss, but over all FEMA did most of what they are mandated to do, and in the way that the Democratic (at the time of creation) Congress decreed they should do.
Our entire system needs to be looked at, reviewed and updated to todays needs and interst.
Good post punctuated with a sensational last line, Pia. Bravo.
And I second Pia’s directive to watch Boston Legal!!!
This post should be on the New York Times.
You have not only spoken from your heart, but also from your soul.
The worst thing to happen to America after 9/11 is the unfortuante war in Iraq. The war has worsened the trauma of 9/11. The war in Iraq has not allowed the wounds of 9/11 to heal.
God bless.
PIA!
Thank you for the lovely comment, and yes, I think that you should be commended for your willingness to care for men with AIDS in those early days. I have it. Of course, the whole thing has changed since 1996, when the new meds came out, but I do feel that there is a dearth of oral history about those early days. Why? Because a whole generation died. Fortunately, I “came out” in 1981, and I had wonderful friends that were much older than me. The stories they could tell! But, as you say, they are gone now, due to this dreadful disease. I do so hope that you are not offended by my uninclusive (word?) of straight women who made lives better for those of us who suffered. I did not mean it as a slight. I acknowledge your work. I appreciate your sorrow. I love your site and visit it often.
Thanks for the word on my Grandparents. I cried and cried writing it. They had Neptune Society, so they simply disappeared.
You are a wonderful person. I’m so lucky to have met you…….
Craig
Pia!
We could go on and on forever…
I think that the loss of Wendy Wasserstein was great. And you’re right, she was a voice of the generation. I fall into that odd block of people (born 1963) who remembers the astronauts landing on the moon, Nixon sweating out his last days, the Vietnam War (I was out on the lines protesting, not by choice, but mom figured that with a couple of kids in tow, they’d never arrest her). Mom was born in ’46 (she was 16 when she had me—much to my Grandparent’s chagrin), so we both fall under the “boomer” category.
I want to urge you to write your life on paper. You are a talented author of a “lost” generation. PLEASE give us more of your wit, courage and insight. You are a lovely person with a great site! I have a feeling that a memoir is in the offing……Get at it, doll! You have a voice worth listening to.
And.
As I say.
We must remember.
csc
As always, I feel terribly enlightened after erading one of your posts.
Well said.
I don’t know.I guess I am tired of reading the opinions of people who change their opinions when the tide turns.
I lost a cousin and two friends on 9/11.I worked for 7 yrs. at 55 water street,a hop skip and a jump from the wtc.
I am not for war.I was very involved in the anti war movement in the 60’s.I did not feel that war was necessary or legal but that is more than I care to share right now.
I do believe that the war we are in Was necessary.We learned nothing from the previous 30yrs. and we were being attacked long before 9/11.Remember Ramzi Youseff and 1993?Funny how no one mentions that.Remember all the plane hijackings and boat hijackings in years past?Remember the oil embargo of the 70’s which almost destroyed america?Remember the proclamations by Iran,Bin Laden and many others how their mission in life was to destroy America and Israel?Remember the threats Hussein was making?Has history taught us nothing?
I believe Darwin was right.It is truly the survival of the fittest.History has taught us that lesson over and over again.The intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals drone on and on.Could it be that man has never and is not configured to live in peace?Could it be that the scene in 2001 a space odyssey with the monkey’s was been an amazing portrayal of the way things really are?Go see the movie and let me know what you think.
I wonder if those who speak so fervently against the Iraq war would feel the same way if there was no gasoline,no heating oil,a dirty bomb episode,the loss of a city,the loss of friends and family,the destruction of our economy.Those things became real possibilities on 9/11.
Does anyone really think that if we didn’t fight now that we wouldn’t have to later?The oceans don’t protect us anymore folks.
It seems we didn’t learn a whole lot since ww2.We waited and the result was millions of lives lost and the near total genocide of the Jewish people.
I didn’t create human nature and I didn’t create history.It is there for all to see and learn from.Sometimes you have to stand up and fight for what you believe in,for survival.Does anyone really believe that this is not such a time?
I know that I will be lambasted for what I think but I am too old and too disgusted to care.
We became a country out of war,we have survived by having to defend ourselves in times of war and now is no different.
The thing that irks me the most is that we don’t fight to win.I would also like,for once,to mention the role the Clinton administration had in the horrors of 9/11 and the middle east.Bill Clinton knew about Bin Laden,the simmering middle east and the possibilities of what was happening.He was too busy fighting scandals and impeachment to do what he was elected to do.That’s right folks,8 yrs.I find it comical that so many seem to forget that Bush was in office all of a few months when we were attacked.It is such drival to accuse the man of responsibility for any of it.What I think was absurd about the invasion of Iraq is that we didn’t have a plan to win and get out.I do blame the administration for that.Pleasant dreams.
Peter
Thanks everybody–and thank you Peter for your thoughtful comment. It is the kind of comment I welcome and would never delete. You’re not personally attacking me, my beliefs, my morals or my city, obviously.
I never changed my mind. I didn’t know what was really happening. I didn’t know that we were going to go after Bush’s enemy, not ours–and there was a difference
Roosevelt and his government knew what was happening during the Holocaust. Not in the beginning but they learned. They chose not to act. The American people didn’t know.
What we have learned since 9/11 is the difference. I’m not a big fan of the media. But had the media existed in its current form then we would have known. The train tracks would have been bombed. The concentration camps would have been liberated
Bush knew on August 6th that an attack was being planned. He chose not to do anything
The scandals Clinton were fighting were made up, stupid scandals. You’re right they should have left him with no time, yet he took every terrorist warning seriously.
Clinton acted when he had to. Quite honestly, I began to lose my faith in this country when the Republicans took every opportunity to demonize and mire Clinton to scandals so that many people would dislike him, not think of him as an effective leader when he was.
If Bill Clinton had been president, there might not have been a 9/11 for the following reasons: he took all intelligence seriously–he would have read, comprehended and acted on the August 6, 2001 memo–any prior memo’s and subsequent ones.
He read. Period. Our current president has the news told to him.
He said so last week.
Had 9/11 happened for whatever reasons, Clinton would have been on the job immediately.
About that–New York would have got the aid that it desperately needed–there wouldn’t have been pork barrel aid with more going to Montana as they have a sparse population which can’t make sense to anybody with any intelligence, or was it Wyoming? Just woke up.
We didn’t go to war for eighteen more months. Had we gone to war soon after 9/11 and had gone after the right enemy–I would have supported it with all my heart. So would have many New Yorkers.
But eighteen months later and Hussein rather than Bin Laden–no, no, no. So I never changed my mind. By the 3/19/03 I had lost all faith
Thank you for a thoughtful comment, and I truly mean that. It’s so much better to argue with somebody who isn’t coming from an attack mentality
I have thought about everything that you brought up. It became too real to me on 9/11.
But I also believe with all my heart that the Bush admin and the radical right set out to begin a civil war in this country
As a New York Jew, I had no idea how much we are hated until I began to blog. Not by most people. But many people in the radical right truly believe that The First Amendment established a national religion. It didn’t.
The Bush admin has allowed this thinking to ferment. As a blogger I do consider it my responsibility to help in any way possible to stop that thinking.
There are many Muslims who would love to see America become mired in this absurd civil war that we are fighting both with words and aid not given to the right people at the right time.
Yes, the Bush admin had no plan to win–but blames us for that somehow
Had they not gone to war looking for bogus wmd’s, had they gone to war with a stated true goal, maybe many people would have felt differently.
The Bush Admin has spread much propaganda–which was so brilliantly summed up by Karl Rove last June when he spoke to the Conservative club–in New York–and talked about liberals wanting therapy for the terrorists.
New York–therapy capital of the world–New York home to more Jews than any other city–many of whom are therapists, in therapy, or both
That day Rove became the symbol of a very sick admin to me that fights dirty and fights the American people. Then Plamegate–then Katrina made everything so plain
New York desperately needed aid and support. We got support from everybody but the federal government.
Remember the job fairs that stretched blocks near Penn Station? People in New York were very fiscally hurt by 9/11. Many still are.
I don’t have to wonder about a city without oil–my coop maintenance, food prices, health insurance and all fixed expenses have gone up so much I am leaving–for my emotional and financial health–I did the math–my expenses have gone up by 65% since 9/11. My maintenance had been borderline high for the space before 9/11–now it’s absurd.
I can still afford it because I did plan for the future–but will I be able to afford it in five or ten years? I don’t know
I am also leaving because I find other places to be much more interesting.
We are driving out the creative class, but that began before 9/11, and I don’t want to muddy issues.
The problem is I don’t know how to separate them
But the whole point is that Bush knew prior to 9/11 that there was a very real possiblity of an attack
Maybe he thought that because of the Florida election, he in particular, was immune to an attack
Vincent Buglisoi (sic?) the prosecuter in the Manson case and no liberal in anyway shape or form wrote a brilliant book about the Florida election that would have been much talked about and acted on had 9/11 not happened.
I pray that I’m wrong but sometimes I truly believe that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen for two reasons at least: that the truth about the Florida election never come out, and who cares about NY anyway?
We are a city based on immigrant labor and vitality. We are a city that historically has looked the other way when it comes to undocumented workers We are a city–that Moniyhan and Glasier talked about in beyond the melting pot as a city that many other cities dumped their weakest and poor into. Would give people a one way bus ticket to New York.
Until SSI was established in 1974 we paid them benefits, and still did, if they weren’t eligible for SSI–or at least their kids.
We are a city with a heart and I do believe that Bush and his admin has none.
Pia,
Well said and I am not offended either.We are of different minds so,there is no point to debate.We simply see things very differently.
I too am a native New Yorker.I worked in Manhattan from 1972-1986.I felt as you feel way back when.The price of real estate,rents,you name it were astronimcal even back then.I felt I needed to leave to live and breathe some fresh air.Once a New Yorker,always a New Yorker.What happended in 1993 and what happened on 9/11 broke my heart.I still mourn for what New York was.I lived in the west village for many years.
Pia,my father was a Russian immigrant.I am a Jew.I am proud of my heritage.My father and his family escaped the Bolshevic Revolution with nothing and,I mean nothing.When they arrived at Ellis Island they were stone cold broke and had nowhere to go,they did not speak english.They were still full of excitement and hope.There were nine when they started theit journey and only eight when they arrived.They found a cold water flat with one room for eight people.That was the beginning for them and so many others.My dad worked all day doing the things no one will do today.So did all his brothers and sisters.My father went to Brooklyn Law School at night and graduated Magna Cum Laude.Yes,he still worked menial day jobs.He went on to have a good life although he left this earth way too early.
I find it weird that we could see Bill Clinton so differently.I ask one thing maybe two.Hillary Rodham Clinton your erstwhile senator made $100,000 dollars trading commodities while in Arkansas.This is a fact.She made that money on a $1000 dollar investment.This is a fact.She was a novice at commodity investing.I was a professional in the investment business for a number of years.I also was a professional musician.The odds of her doing what she did are astronomical at best impossible at worst.Tyson foods is a major company in Arkansas.Yes,their business is “Chicken” and they hedge commodities as part of their business.The Clintons were the first family of Arkansas.Then,their was White Water,the “suicide” of a confident,the “sex scandals” the bombing of a country that was of NO threat to the United States,the lies about the affair and in my opinion,the lack of a foreign policy to deal with what the Bush administration inherited.Say what you will but these things happened.A lot more happened but,what’s the point?I will not change your mind as you will not change mine.What we both are,well,we are Americans who love N.Y. and our country.We simply have different opinions.I believe we are in secular decline and that scares me.Not so much for me as for our children and their children.The world changed in the 60’s and it wasn’t for the better.
There is not a president in all the years that I have been eligible to vote that I am proud of.There is not a president for anyone to be proud of in my opinion.
I question whether democracy really functions as democracy anymore.The system worked a lot better when there were less people,doctors made house calls,milk was delivered to the front door,there were newspaper boys and girls,a home was affordable to all and there was job security.You knew your neighbors and you could leave the door open without being robbed or killed.I went out on halloween without fear and there weren’t police and metal detectors in the school.
Ride on
Peter
Who has seen “United 93”?
Pia said:
“Clinton acted when he had to. Quite honestly, I began to lose my faith in this country when the Republicans took every opportunity to demonize and mire Clinton to scandals so that many people would dislike him, not think of him as an effective leader when he was.
If Bill Clinton had been president, there might not have been a 9/11 for the following reasons: he took all intelligence seriously–he would have read, comprehended and acted on the August 6, 2001 memo–any prior memo’s and subsequent ones.”
Actually Clinton knew of pending attacks, possible dates, and avenues in his tenure as well. This information had been gathering and reported for about 6 years prior to the attacks on 9/11. If you go back into the press of the time right after 9/11, Clinton was 100% behind the attack, once we were committed, he back out, but he was vocally behind it at the onset. (Mind you, I don’t think we should be over there anymore, but feel we need to agressively get the locals taking care of themselves again, wihtout Saddam.)
I don’t think it is a Democratic vs Republican thing anymore. It’s about our system being 100% broken now. We need to get back to the intent of what our Founding Fathers wanted, as well as what We The People want out of our government.