In a moment of retrospest.. how appropriate to this blog, I sat outside in the dark this September 23rd 2012, fall evening and listened to the noises. Crickets, cicadas tree frogs.. Decades of doing this and I still can't say which are which.... But since my early childhood, frequently lying in a tent at camp Wawokiye at the East end of Long Island, I listened to the same sounds. I remember my father telling me that you could guage the temperature by the frequency of a crickets chirp.. But what really struck me tonight, a day after Fall officially started was that, in the cosmic order, whether you believe in a great creator or a higher power or just a great cosmic accident that is based on unified physical laws, there is an interesting similarity to music that I noted this evening.
There is the larger picture that is dictated by the seasons, and also smaller but immediate weather changes that affect the overall ebb and flow of nature. Nature as a whole is predisposed to respond to it as an orchestra to a conductor. Fortisimo, allegro no troppo, etc... It all rises and drops in unison, but... there are those individual voices that stand out.. that break from the overall rhythm, that are working within the context of the whole yet just outside the typical flow... soloists improvising... making a special effort to be a seperate voice yet contribute to the overall theme... The crickets, cicadas, and frogs,.. the rustle of the trees in the wind.. an occasional dog barking...
I listened to the song of the night and could easily tell winter was approaching just as I could tell in the tent at camp, that the camp season was drawing to an end.. There is a shift from the easy, languid, carefree rhythm of summer, to a more desperate urgency, with a build to a crescendo that leaves us eventually in the quiet of a snow storm. That time when the world grows surrealistically quiet with the soft, dull roar of a world of white... Everything muffled,.. and nature takes an intermision...
Then spring.. and the piccolo's accompany the birds and the crickets until they are joined by the cicadas and tree frogs.. and lets not forget the thunder.. and it all builds again once more towards this glorious end called Fall.. but its just a little bit sad... because I know an end to this performance is near...
I can't wait for the next show....
WC 9-23-12
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
9-11 Reflections
Perhaps this would have been a more relevant post on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on 9-11-01, however, like many, the ten year anniversary was especially poignant and our minds were elsewhere.
Stepping outside this morning, it immediately struck me how the day was much like that fateful day eleven years ago. A cool September morning. Cloudless and warming into what should have been a perfect day.
It happened that on that day, I was to attend an Emergency Management training seminar being held at the Nassau County Police Academy, then situated on the grounds of the Nassau County Correctional Facility. Just a block or two away from the facility, the radio station I was listening to suddenly ceased broadcasting. Minutes later, as I pulled into a parking space and went to enter the facility, I saw people running out to their cars, checking pagers and talking on cell phones. I asked one of the individuals what was going on, and was told a plane hit the World Trade Center. Hurrying into the building, I quickly located the classroom I was supposed to be in and found a dozen people glued to a large screen TV watching the breaking news. There was a lot of speculation running around the room as we followed the event. It was, however, when the second plane hit the South tower that the room fell silent. There was no question in anyones mind. We'ld been attacked.
It was shortly there after when reports of an incident at the Pentagon and an additional missing plane started coming in, that I left the facility to get to work and try to ascertain what may be required of me in the hours to follow. I stopped to make one quick phone call to my girlfriend at the time who was a school teacher and had a son in a private school in Manhattan. She was not aware what was happening and when she learned of events proceeded to attempt to contact the school.
Upon my arrival at my job in Roslyn, the shock was apparent on everones face and the haunted silence I experienced at the academy as the south tower was hit was prevelant here too. I continued to monitor the news and took a call from my girlfriend who was frantic as she was unable to get a call through to her sons school. By sheer luck I was able to get through, ascertained what actions the school was undertaking and contacted her to relay the information. My next call was to the Captain of the Glen Cove Harbor Patrol. I was instructed to get into full uniform and report to the Glen Cove Fire House. We would be taking the high speed ferry out of Glen Cove into Manhattan to aid in the evacuation of lower Manhattan.
A quick run home, I suit up, report to the fire house command post and then a short ride to the ferry terminal. We left the dock for a tense and somber 40 minute ride to the South Street Seaport area.
As we cleared Randall's Island and entered the East River proper, we got our first glimpse of the devestation we were heading into. Both towers had collapsed by this time. Before us, rising above the skyline, was a tremendous plume of gray-black smoke unlike anything any of us could have imagined. As we got closer to lower Manhattan you could see that the streets, in fact, all of the Southern end of the city was engulfed in this cloud.
We received our orders on which pier to tie up to. As we exited the ferry, we entered the most surreal landscape I have ever known. Everything, every road, every sidewalk, every car, every building and every person was covered in layers of ash which continued to fall from the sky like some hellish snow and reduced visability to less than a block. We proceeded to load people into the ferry and assist other ferries, boats and emergency service workers at the piers.
Much of the remainder of the day is a blur. More of the same. Numerous trips back and forth getting people out of the city, all of who had the same shell shocked looks on their faces that would become the norm for the duration of the operation. Later we would come to learn that the emergency evacuation of lower Manhattan by water would be the largest boatlift in history.
In the following days we continued to ride the ferry on a daily basis as an armed law enforcement presence was required on all the ferries operating in the NY waterways. I worked the detail and followed the news closely til I could watch it no more. It soon became apparent that there would be no survivors recovered from the Trade Center site. We continued the security detail, and continued to try to put things in perspective every time we arrived in lower Manhattan and saw that cloud billowing out of the heart of the city. We couldn't put it into perspective. The City was changed forever, we were changed forever, the world was changed forever.
On the morning of September 17th 2001, just 6 days after the attack, Wall St. officially reopened. It would be our last tour of duty on this detail. As we got off the ferry that morning in lower Manhattan we were met at the pier by city workers who were handing out American flags.
On the mantle above the fireplace in my home, sit two american flags. The first and largest belonged to my father who proudly hung it outside on appropriate holidays. I still follow that practice. However, this morning, before hanging the larger one, I sat for awhile with the smaller one given to me by a city worker on September 17th 2001, and I remembered.
WC 9-11-11
Stepping outside this morning, it immediately struck me how the day was much like that fateful day eleven years ago. A cool September morning. Cloudless and warming into what should have been a perfect day.
It happened that on that day, I was to attend an Emergency Management training seminar being held at the Nassau County Police Academy, then situated on the grounds of the Nassau County Correctional Facility. Just a block or two away from the facility, the radio station I was listening to suddenly ceased broadcasting. Minutes later, as I pulled into a parking space and went to enter the facility, I saw people running out to their cars, checking pagers and talking on cell phones. I asked one of the individuals what was going on, and was told a plane hit the World Trade Center. Hurrying into the building, I quickly located the classroom I was supposed to be in and found a dozen people glued to a large screen TV watching the breaking news. There was a lot of speculation running around the room as we followed the event. It was, however, when the second plane hit the South tower that the room fell silent. There was no question in anyones mind. We'ld been attacked.
It was shortly there after when reports of an incident at the Pentagon and an additional missing plane started coming in, that I left the facility to get to work and try to ascertain what may be required of me in the hours to follow. I stopped to make one quick phone call to my girlfriend at the time who was a school teacher and had a son in a private school in Manhattan. She was not aware what was happening and when she learned of events proceeded to attempt to contact the school.
Upon my arrival at my job in Roslyn, the shock was apparent on everones face and the haunted silence I experienced at the academy as the south tower was hit was prevelant here too. I continued to monitor the news and took a call from my girlfriend who was frantic as she was unable to get a call through to her sons school. By sheer luck I was able to get through, ascertained what actions the school was undertaking and contacted her to relay the information. My next call was to the Captain of the Glen Cove Harbor Patrol. I was instructed to get into full uniform and report to the Glen Cove Fire House. We would be taking the high speed ferry out of Glen Cove into Manhattan to aid in the evacuation of lower Manhattan.
A quick run home, I suit up, report to the fire house command post and then a short ride to the ferry terminal. We left the dock for a tense and somber 40 minute ride to the South Street Seaport area.
As we cleared Randall's Island and entered the East River proper, we got our first glimpse of the devestation we were heading into. Both towers had collapsed by this time. Before us, rising above the skyline, was a tremendous plume of gray-black smoke unlike anything any of us could have imagined. As we got closer to lower Manhattan you could see that the streets, in fact, all of the Southern end of the city was engulfed in this cloud.
We received our orders on which pier to tie up to. As we exited the ferry, we entered the most surreal landscape I have ever known. Everything, every road, every sidewalk, every car, every building and every person was covered in layers of ash which continued to fall from the sky like some hellish snow and reduced visability to less than a block. We proceeded to load people into the ferry and assist other ferries, boats and emergency service workers at the piers.
Much of the remainder of the day is a blur. More of the same. Numerous trips back and forth getting people out of the city, all of who had the same shell shocked looks on their faces that would become the norm for the duration of the operation. Later we would come to learn that the emergency evacuation of lower Manhattan by water would be the largest boatlift in history.
In the following days we continued to ride the ferry on a daily basis as an armed law enforcement presence was required on all the ferries operating in the NY waterways. I worked the detail and followed the news closely til I could watch it no more. It soon became apparent that there would be no survivors recovered from the Trade Center site. We continued the security detail, and continued to try to put things in perspective every time we arrived in lower Manhattan and saw that cloud billowing out of the heart of the city. We couldn't put it into perspective. The City was changed forever, we were changed forever, the world was changed forever.
On the morning of September 17th 2001, just 6 days after the attack, Wall St. officially reopened. It would be our last tour of duty on this detail. As we got off the ferry that morning in lower Manhattan we were met at the pier by city workers who were handing out American flags.
On the mantle above the fireplace in my home, sit two american flags. The first and largest belonged to my father who proudly hung it outside on appropriate holidays. I still follow that practice. However, this morning, before hanging the larger one, I sat for awhile with the smaller one given to me by a city worker on September 17th 2001, and I remembered.
WC 9-11-11
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