Mabfan's Musings

Exactly thirteen years ago today, terrorists attacked the United States of America. They flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon near Washington, DC. They most likely would also have flown a plane into the Capitol building but were stopped by the passengers of United 93. Almost 3,000 people died that day.

Because I'm obsessed with exactness, I've made sure for a while now to know the exact times of certain events that took place on 9/11. The bare sequence of events at the World Trade Center was as follows:

8:46:26 AM: North Tower Hit
9:02:54 AM: South Tower Hit
9:59:04 AM: South Tower Collapsed
10:28:31 AM: North Tower Collapsed

I'm a New York City native, born and raised in Queens, and I grew up in a city in which the Towers always stood. On 9/11, I was a teacher at a private school in Newton, Massachusetts. The following comes from my journal, a hand-written one that I was keeping at the time.

"The second [staff] meeting ended early, and I went back to the Science lab to check my e-mail. I idly noted a message...which said that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.

"I didn't really think much of it and I went back to the Information Center. Shortly after the meeting...began, [a colleague] walked in and asked if we had heard the news. He told us that two planes had hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and he set up the small TV to receive CNN. They showed pictures of two commercial jets crashing into the twin towers...

"I ran to the phone...to call [my younger brother] at work. At 9:35 AM I called and got him. He had just gotten in, and he said that he seen the smoke from the 7 train. I told him to stay in touch, but due to circuits being busy, I wasn't able to reach New York City again for a while.

"The rest of the day passed in a blur of rumors and news. I kept checking webpages; when I couldn't reach cnn.com, checked the New York Post webpage and the Newsday webpage. [I had called Nomi, and she had suggested the second-tier news sites.]

"At 10:15 AM, the...students returned from their physical education class...and...we told them the news...

"When the meeting with the students ended, I collapsed in tears..."

There's more, of course, but to summarize, I spent the day trying to get news of family and friends, making sure they were all safe. The drive home was surreal, knowing that fighter planes and battleships were protecting New York City. Nomi was already home, as her office had sent everyone home early. The rest of my family was safe, but my older brother, an emergency medicine physician, had been called up to report to New York City. Nomi and I took a walk at 5:30 PM, which included browsing at Brookline Booksmith and getting ice cream at JP Licks. Everything on TV was the news; we watched C-SPAN, which was running a feed from the CBC, so we could get the Canadian perspective.

The next few days, the events were fresh in everyone's mind. On Wednesday, I flinched at hearing an airplane in the sky, then remembered that all commercial flights had been grounded, so it had to be one of our military aircraft, protecting us. I bought my regular comic books that day; Adventures of Superman #596 had an eerie panel of the twin towers of Metropolis being repaired. A friend came over that evening after attending a local religious service.

On Thursday, Nomi and I were sick of the news, and Animal Planet had gone back to regular programming. We watched a documentary about moose to help us get our minds off things.

And life went on. Today, I'm no longer teaching, but editing science curricular materials in Boston; my younger brother no longer lives in New York City, but in Eugene, Oregon with his wife and three children; and my older brother is still an emergency medicine physician in the Boston area, specializing in disaster management.

And as all my friends know, there have been other changes in my life. In 2007 I lost my mom. In 2008 I published a book collection of many of my short stories. And in 2009, Nomi and I welcomed two precious and adorable girls into our lives. Being a parent changes your perspective on a lot of things, and 9/11 is no exception. When the attacks happened, I was worried for my mom and my brothers; if something were to happen today, my first priority would be to make sure that my children were safe.

I probably don't need to tell anyone this, but today's a very good day to remind your loved ones, families, and friends how much they mean to you.

I work in the Back Bay area of Boston, and as I left work yesterday, I could smell the smoke from the fire at 298 Beacon Street, even though it was a ten-minute walk away. The air was filled with a haze, and the odor stung my eyes, causing them to well up with tears.

Later on, my eyes welled up with tears again, as we heard that two firefighters, Michael R. Kennedy and Edward J. Walsh, Jr., had made the ultimate sacrifice as they tried to stop the fire and save other people's lives.

My friend Andrew Marc Greene (530nm330hz) said the following on Facebook:

I will never understand what gives a person the courage to run into a burning building, to put his own life at risk in the hope of saving others. I can merely be humbled and grateful that others do. Baruch Dayan ha-Emet.

I had been thinking of similar words, from a powerful story. And I want to share them.

After 9/11, some of the major comic book artists and writers contributed to two tribute books, the proceeds of which were donated to charity. One of those writers was Kurt Busiek, who wrote an Astro City story called "Since the Fire." With his permission, I'm going to discuss it and quote it here. I still urge all of you to track it down, as it is much more powerful with Brent Anderson's art.

The story is about a boy named Farrell, who almost died when his family's apartment got set on fire during a fight among super-powered people. Farrell almost died, but a firefighter named Arnie Prentice rescued him and then went back inside the building to save other people. Because Prentice went back in, he lost a leg and now walks on crutches (and presumably can't work as a firefighter any more).

In the story, Farrell's father takes him to meet Prentice for the first time since the fire, so the boy can thank him. And then Farrell asks Prentice why he was willing to risk his life to save him, and why he was willing to go back inside and would do it again, even though it cost him a leg.

Prentice looks somber for a moment, and then says:

Because someone's got to do it. And better that it's someone trained, skilled, and equipped to have the best chance of getting kids like you out.

Take a look around. All these people, they're livin' their lives, and they do what they do, and sleep a little easier because of guys like me and the others back there. The superheroes flying' around, they're okay -- but they can't always be there. We gotta take care of ourselves.

And when you're in a jam, like you were --

-- you want to hear that siren, you want to know someone'll come help. That you're not on your own.

I'd want to know that at least.

And the story ends with Prentice visiting the graves of the two firefighters who got him out.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about yesterday, and I hugged my kids a little tighter. Kurt, thank you for the words and the permission to quote them.

Fifty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

This morning, I woke up in Brookline, Massachusetts, the town where Kennedy was born. gnomi and I took the T to work as usual, but what wasn't usual was Nomi's Boston Globe newspaper. The editors had decided to publish a wraparound cover facsimile of the Globe from November 23, 1963, reporting on the Kennedy assassination. I took two pictures of Nomi reading the paper.





It felt oddly like time travel. Which ties into another anniversary, that of the TV show Doctor Who, which premiered the day after the assassination and is still going strong. For years, I remember reading retrospectives of the broadcast of that first episode, and they almost always noted that enthusiasm for the premiere was dampened by the recent news. After the show went off the air, I never expected was that on this anniversary I would be both living in the town where Kennedy was born and expecting to watch a 50th anniversary special episode of Doctor Who.



(All photos and the entry copyright ©Michael A. Burstein.)

Exactly twelve years ago today, terrorists attacked the United States of America. They flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon near Washington, DC. They most likely would also have flown a plane into the Capitol building but were stopped by the passengers of United 93. Almost 3,000 people died that day.

Because I'm obsessed with exactness, I've made sure for a while now to know the exact times of certain events that took place on 9/11. The bare sequence of events at the World Trade Center was as follows:

8:46:26 AM: North Tower Hit
9:02:54 AM: South Tower Hit
9:59:04 AM: South Tower Collapsed
10:28:31 AM: North Tower Collapsed

I'm a New York City native, born and raised in Queens, and I grew up in a city in which the Towers always stood. On 9/11, I was a teacher at a private school in Newton, Massachusetts. The following comes from my journal, a hand-written one that I was keeping at the time.

"The second [staff] meeting ended early, and I went back to the Science lab to check my e-mail. I idly noted a message...which said that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.

"I didn't really think much of it and I went back to the Information Center. Shortly after the meeting...began, [a colleague] walked in and asked if we had heard the news. He told us that two planes had hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and he set up the small TV to receive CNN. They showed pictures of two commercial jets crashing into the twin towers...

"I ran to the phone...to call [my younger brother] at work. At 9:35 AM I called and got him. He had just gotten in, and he said that he seen the smoke from the 7 train. I told him to stay in touch, but due to circuits being busy, I wasn't able to reach New York City again for a while.

"The rest of the day passed in a blur of rumors and news. I kept checking webpages; when I couldn't reach cnn.com, checked the New York Post webpage and the Newsday webpage. [I had called Nomi, and she had suggested the second-tier news sites.]

"At 10:15 AM, the...students returned from their physical education class...and...we told them the news...

"When the meeting with the students ended, I collapsed in tears..."

There's more, of course, but to summarize, I spent the day trying to get news of family and friends, making sure they were all safe. The drive home was surreal, knowing that fighter planes and battleships were protecting New York City. Nomi was already home, as her office had sent everyone home early. The rest of my family was safe, but my older brother, an emergency medicine physician, had been called up to report to New York City. Nomi and I took a walk at 5:30 PM, which included browsing at Brookline Booksmith and getting ice cream at JP Licks. Everything on TV was the news; we watched C-SPAN, which was running a feed from the CBC, so we could get the Canadian perspective.

The next few days, the events were fresh in everyone's mind. On Wednesday, I flinched at hearing an airplane in the sky, then remembered that all commercial flights had been grounded, so it had to be one of our military aircraft, protecting us. I bought my regular comic books that day; Adventures of Superman #596 had an eerie panel of the twin towers of Metropolis being repaired. A friend came over that evening after attending a local religious service.

On Thursday, Nomi and I were sick of the news, and Animal Planet had gone back to regular programming. We watched a documentary about moose to help us get our minds off things.

And life went on. Today, I'm no longer teaching, but editing textbooks in Boston; my younger brother no longer lives in New York City, but in Eugene, Oregon with his wife and three children; and my older brother is still an emergency medicine physician in the Boston area, specializing in disaster management.

And as all my friends know, there have been other changes in my life. In 2007 I lost my mom. In 2008 I published a book collection of many of my short stories. And in 2009, Nomi and I welcomed two precious and adorable girls into our lives. Being a parent changes your perspective on a lot of things, and 9/11 is no exception. When the attacks happened, I was worried for my mom and my brothers; if something were to happen today, my first priority would be to make sure that my children were safe.

I probably don't need to tell anyone this, but today's a very good day to remind your loved ones, families, and friends how much they mean to you.

On the morning of August 13, 2013, as I was walking through Copley Square to work, I discovered the "Cool Globes" art installation. There were six globes present; more globes can be found in other places in Boston. I photographed the globes, and took some closer pictures of the "Brighter Future" globe because of all the book covers.

More pictures of the memorial. Someone moved it to the side, and many more items and messages have been left. Scroll over each photo for the title.

Since Google is noting that today is the birthday of Douglas Adams, I feel compelled to mention that I met him once, when he was touring the United States promoting his books Last Chance to See and Mostly Harmless. The late lamented bookstore Wordsworth hosted a reading at the Brattle Theatre, and although he was a draw, it was not so crowded that we didn't all get a chance to spend a few minutes talking with him. He was quite friendly and personable. And tall. Boy was he tall. I finally understood why Ford Prefect felt that one of the things humans say over and over is the obvious phrase, "You're very tall." Because he was tall. Even taller than my friend Ian Soboroff, who is very tall.

Did I mention that he was tall? He was.

gnomi has a post about today's 70th anniversary of the Cocoanut Grove Fire. Go read it and follow the links.