For many people who live in NYC, there is a clear line between those that were here on 9\/11\/01 and those that were not. In prepping for the 5 year anniversay next Monday, the Times has an article today about this very topic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m amazed because it was such a big event, and people never mention it,\u201d said Deenah Vollmer, 20, who moved to the city last year. \u201cWhen you do mention it, everyone has these crazy intense stories.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I myself have a crazy intense story and unless you were here on that day, and by here I mean in NYC close enough to smell the odor of burnt everything in the air, to see the fighter jets circling Manhattan like slot car racers and to hear the deafening wail of sirens then you have a much<\/em> different understanding and experience of that day than I do. Unfortunately, I got to experience it live with all five senses.
\nI do not know if I’ve touched on my personal experiences from that day on my blog yet. I’m not sure I want to frankly but in my hopes that “100 years from now a researcher, in his attempts to learn more about the late 20th and early 21st centuries, will discover these words on a server somewhere” I feel that I should. Stay tuned.
\nOld New Yorkers, Newer Ones, and a Line Etched by a Day of Disaster<\/strong> by Micahel Brick
\nFive years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center. Downtown smelled like Coke cans and hair on fire. It was televised live.
\nIn New York City, 2,749 people were killed. About eight million remained. Since that day, the numbers have changed.
\nThe population grew by more than 134,000 from 2000 to 2005, the city\u2019s latest Planning Department calculations show. In that time, 645,416 babies were born and 304,773 people died. A half-million more people came from other countries than departed for them, and 800,000 more people left for the 50 states than came wide-eyed from them.
\nThe meaning in the math is that today a great many New Yorkers lack firsthand knowledge of the city\u2019s critical modern moment.
\nFive years on, New York is a city of newcomers and survivors. And between them runs a line. The line makes for no conflict, no discernible tension; it works a quieter breach.
\nBorne of the routine comings and goings of urban life, of births and deaths, the line divides views of a singular moment. Across the line, consummately familiar events can appear contorted.
\nOn one side, the newcomer side, a man seeks accounts of that day; on the other side a man withholds his account. On the newcomer side, a woman visits the absent towers to feel some connection; on the other side a woman feels connected, and then some.
\nOn the side of those who lived in New York, you can share a sense of trauma both layered and ill-defined.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s like someone who has been in a war zone,\u201d said William Stockbridge, 50, a finance executive who was working downtown during the attack. \u201cIt\u2019s different.\u201d
\nOn the other side, you can feel like the new boyfriend at your girlfriend\u2019s family reunion the year somebody died \u2014 somebody young, somebody you never met.
\n\u201cYou feel like you\u2019re on the outside,\u201d said Matthew Molnar, 26, a waiter in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who lived in Middlesex County, N.J., in 2001. \u201cYou feel like you missed out on a little bit of history.\u201d
\nNewcomers and survivors: those terms ring harsh and blunt only because the line is so often unspoken. It runs soundless and invisible down Broadway from Harlem over the Williamsburg Bridge out to Coney Island and to Fresh Kills, up past the airports across the Grand Concourse into Yankee Stadium, through the bleachers where you can\u2019t drink beer anymore and up out of the park into the nighttime sky.
\nThe line flashes into view on the city streets for moments at a time. When jet fighters buzz the skyscrapers for Fleet Week, some of the people below \u2014 the ones who were here on Sept. 11 \u2014 flinch. More frequently, though, the line operates beneath the surface of conversations, of interactions, of transactions, of life. The line controls small things, controls the way people react to the phrase \u201cand then Sept. 11 happened,\u201d as though a date on the calendar could \u201chappen.\u201d
\nThe line\u2019s contours emerge in conversations. Ask about the attack, and people will describe a sense of ownership.
\n\u201cYou either experienced it firsthand,\u201d said Amanda Spielman, 30, a graphic designer from Jackson Heights, Queens, who was in the city, \u201cor you didn\u2019t.\u201d
\nOthers describe that sense differently, but draw the line in the same place.
\n\u201cI think for the people that seen it on TV, it is more painful than for the people who saw it here,\u201d said Paolo Gonzalez, 29, who manages a parking lot under the Brooklyn Bridge and who saw the attack. \u201cFor the other people it was real. If you was here, when the buildings came down the only thing you were thinking was, \u2018Run.\u2019 \u201d
\nAcross the line, the new arrivals recognize that sense of ownership.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been told that I just don\u2019t get it and that I could never understand what it was like to be there in New York on Sept. 11,\u201d said Laura Bassett, 27, who moved to the city from North Carolina after 2001. \u201cI hate that five years later, people still debate which bystander is allowed to be more upset, the New Yorker or the American.\u201d
\nThe line emerges perhaps most powerfully around the fallen towers, 2.06 acres of concrete known as ground zero. Because of the line, the site is a paradox, an emotional contradiction, a mass grave and a tourist attraction.
\nSome people feel so strongly about the place they cannot agree on an arrangement for listing the names of the dead; others feel so strongly about the place that they make sure to visit between Radio City Music Hall and the Statue of Liberty. Between those emotional poles is a middle ground, and the line runs through its center.
\n\u201cPeople who moved to New York, everyone wanted to go down and see it,\u201d said Dede Minor, 51, a real estate broker who was in her office in Midtown on the day of the attack. \u201cFor New Yorkers, it was too real.\u201d
\nJose Martias, 57, a construction worker who was drinking coffee near the East River when the attack began, said he knew why the newcomers visit the site.
\n\u201cThey don\u2019t understand it so they go down there to see the hole,\u201d Mr. Martias said. \u201cIt\u2019s an attraction to them, like going to the circus.\u201d
\nBut across the line there is genuine emotional curiosity, a feeling that people in less cynical times used to call empathy.
\n\u201cI\u2019d didn\u2019t think I\u2019d be that affected,\u201d said Leah Hamilton, 24, a logistics consultant who moved to Manhattan from Washington State last year. \u201cBut when I went to ground zero, it was the first time I\u2019ve felt an emotional reaction like that to something I wasn\u2019t a part of. You feel the energy and you could feel the sadness.\u201d
\nThe line can reach into the future, forging perceptions of New York and its destiny. Some new arrivals speak of the attack as a reason to come to the city.
\n\u201cWe felt like there was a lot of energy here,\u201d said Meg Glasser, 26, a student who moved to the East Village from Boston this year. \u201cWe wanted to be a part of it in some way.\u201d
\nBut across the line, that sense of energy is tempered by standards for comparison.
\n\u201cI know people who have been here a year or two, and they find New York fantastic,\u201d said Father Bernard, 67, a Roman Catholic monk who was born in Brooklyn and who goes by only that name. \u201cThey\u2019re right, but they didn\u2019t know the New York before.\u201d
\nThe line reaches into the past as well, dividing memories. Each generation tells the next where they were when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were killed or when a space shuttle exploded, but a major act of destruction in a major American city creates more firsthand accounts.
\nPsychological studies suggest those accounts have played a role in drawing the line. After the attack, a group of academic researchers interviewed 1,500 people, including 550 in New York City, to gauge memories of detail, said Elizabeth Phelps, a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. Proximity to Lower Manhattan during the attack, Dr. Phelps said, \u201cincreases your confidence in your memories, and your accuracy as well.\u201d
\nIn a separate study, the researchers measured activity in parts of the brain connected to memory. With verbal cues, subjects were asked to conjure visions of the terror attack and of personal events from the summer of 2001. Only half registered a difference in neural activity.
\n\u201cThose who did show a difference were, on average, in Washington Square Park,\u201d Dr. Phelps said. \u201cThose who didn\u2019t were, on average, in Midtown.\u201d
\nAmong those who have come to the city since 2001, the line dividing memories is undisputed.
\n\u201cI had been there as a tourist to the World Trade Center, so I have memories,\u201d said Marielle Solan, 22, a photographer who moved to the city from Delaware this year. \u201cBut obviously I can\u2019t have any sense of what it was like. Every Sept, 11, you get a sense of fear and depression, but in terms of actual visceral reactions, I don\u2019t really have that.\u201d
\nThe new arrivals have found a conspicuous void of shared memory.
\n\u201cI\u2019m amazed because it was such a big event, and people never mention it,\u201d said Deenah Vollmer, 20, who moved to the city last year. \u201cWhen you do mention it, everyone has these crazy intense stories.\u201d
\nAcross the line, many of those who lived in the city hold their memories close.
\n\u201cThe people I already knew know my stories from that day, so there\u2019s no need to repeat them,\u201d said Ms. Spielman, the graphic designer. \u201cThe new people I\u2019ve met don\u2019t ask me. It\u2019s not something I bring up.\u201d
\nBut each year the calendar brings it up. Alexandria Lambert, 28, who works as an administrative assistant, sees the line run through the center of her office. Each year, a co-worker who witnessed the attack asks for the day off, and each year a boss who did not declines the request.
\n\u201cHis point of view is, \u2018Don\u2019t let it get you down,\u2019 \u201d Ms. Lambert said, \u201cbut she just doesn\u2019t want to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many people who live in NYC, there is a clear line between those that were here on 9\/11\/01 and those that were not. In prepping for the 5 year anniversay next Monday, the Times has an article today about this very topic. \u201cI\u2019m amazed because it was such a big event, and people never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[27,455,636,642],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-27","tag-nyc","tag-terrorism","tag-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}