9/11/08
I’m headed up to NY on Thursday for the anniversary of 9/11. For reasons I don’t quite understand, I’d rather not be there on that day. Any other day but that one. I was living in Manhattan on 9/11, and I maintain a deep affection for the city. I love the train ride up, the happy-cup coffee I’ll get on the street when I arrive, the rush of consumption and conversation and humanity.
But to see it up close on that day is always a little raw. It’s hard to know what expression to put on your face. Let alone what to feel in your heart. Other than the hole that was there the day before and the year before. Seven years is a lot and nothing all at once.
But the city churns on, in some ways for the better. The World Trade Center Survivors’ Network has a day of remembrance planned for people who evacuated from the Trade Center. Obama and McCain will pay their respects together at Ground Zero, which is kind of a nice touch. On Friday, I’ll be moderating a panel at the ServiceNation Summit on creative ideas to get people involved in disaster relief. I’m not sure if we’ll come up with anything revolutionary, but there’s always that chance.
Elle Smith Fagan said on September 14, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Dear Ms. Ripley,
Thanksomuch for the new book. I will find it and read it with interest.
I should have been on your consulting staff for it. My comments on a range of disaster-response experiences, including a few of my own, might have been helpful. Besides, my daughter is an Amazing Amanda, too..would have been fun!
Lifelong arts and redcross-and-similar work, I do no more on site response, but use my art in donations to raise funds ‘for those behind me, in the good work’ Very rewarding.
But I have such an important message re: Nineleven, that I do hope you read on:
When you see a picture of the Lunar Landing Module, and the gold foil that was a ‘first’ , back then, it was my Dad whose hands fashioned it. He and his SciTech friends and scientists had me clapping with glee, as a little girl, on sunny afternoon, 50 years ago.
They had a table full of things on Escape Pods for planes and tall buildings, before them, and were chatting away in brilliant excitement, so I got curious and they shared it all with me. We live in an age of miracles!
But Technology’s first efforts to actualize such ideas, were so sensationally disastrous, that the concept was buried deeper than the Edsel, the Ford Car model whose tech had the world hooting in derision at the time.
Mother looked at me, firm but gentle, and said “Don’t bring it up to them again - it is no longer an ok topic.” And I loved them, so forgot it instantly and effectively.
This suppression is behind the fact that Occupant Safety and Escape technology was avoided, even years later, when other innovations just sprang up and ran ahead.
If things had gone as they should have, the Escape Pods would have been The SciTech Jewel in the Crown of Bi-centennial events in 1976!
But no.....suppression is very effective, and so there was no tech-easy, safe escape option and folks died , needlessly and horribly on Nineleven.
As for me: the memory of that sunny morning with tech designs for modern Occupant Safety and Escape on our Kitchen table came back , on Nineleven, like a psychic tsunami.
I held the edge of the counter, realizing that those people did not need to die, and realizing that the amazing ‘group unconscious’ had ‘just plain missed the boat - major!’
I am just getting normal income, income-ing after a disability, and must stay on my own topics to have a normal life again, but I have made a webpage and have written every valid address, with this story, at every practical window for it. I follow links/story alerts, on relevant topics and bring it up with all my power...to all my Government leaders, always.
At Nineleven, United Technologies friends prodded me to take my story to the top. But those who did, at that time, were hooted down for madness. So I do this, instead, and watch for the window to do a thing better....a thing that might work. You, me, an architect acquaintance whose wife died in the towers, and an aero-tech person of our development with a focused , polite presentation to the President - the sort that works? Fantasy, maybe, but....
Furthermore, the Nineleven Survivors DID go , ‘en groupe’, immediately to Government and Architecture, to be respected on this issue, but,they were absolutely stonewalled....early days and too much paranoia.
But ‘what about now’?
It is a ‘not an option’ thing for all of us.
We will not be forgiven, if, in the light of the losses, we still fail to ‘get around to it’ , and get some of today’s tech razzle-dazzle applied to this issue.
I hope your book takes ups some thread as this, and gets some action and thought to the issue.
I look forward to the read, and thank you for this kind of attention to add to our understanding of what happens to the psyche when disaster strikes.
Truly
Elle Smith Fagan
ellefagan.com
Rathna said on October 29, 2008 at 4:17 am
Very interesting post! Many thanks to the author, I have learned a lot of new information and it was very useful too.
elle fagan said on October 29, 2008 at 10:24 am
Thank you , Rathna, for your compliment on my comment.
“Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovation” needs a lot of attention - in media, and in the minds and hearts of all.
Think about it for a moment, from time to time - begin to realize its import, and share the idea at every window.
Tell our leaders, and maybe, the next time a skyscraper falls, at least the lives of all the occupants won’t be lost, with
“Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovation” implemented.
http://www.ellefagan.com/patriotsite/wtcreconstruction.html
elle
ellefagan.com