As 9/11 Draws Near, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?

As 9/11 Draws Near, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?
© New York Times, September 2, 2007
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.

Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.

Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

As the ragged nature of life pushes on, it is natural that the national fixation on an ominous event becomes ruptured and its anniversary starts to wear out. Once-indelible dates no longer even incite curiosity. On Feb. 15, how many turn backward to the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898?

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

“Commemoration aims to simplify, but life as it’s lived and feelings as they’re felt are never simple,” said John Bodnar, a professor of history at Indiana University.

The Sept. 11 attack may well have an unusually long resonance. It was a watershed moment in the nation’s history. And it is a tragedy named after a date. But the way it is recalled is sure to undergo editing.

For the first time this year at ground zero, the main ceremony will not be at the trade center site. Because of construction, the families will be allowed to pass onto the ground only momentarily, but the ceremony will be shifted to nearby Zuccotti Park, at Broadway and Liberty Street — its moving on somewhat of a metaphor for the feelings of those who favor change.

Sept. 11, of course, remains complicated by its unfinished contours — continuing worry over terrorism, the war in Iraq, a presidential race in which candidates repeatedly invoke the day and its portents. Episodes like the fire at the vacant Deutsche Bank building stir up haunting memories. Books rooted in the attack continue to arrive.

Some people are troubled by what they see as others’ taking advantage of the event. “Six years later, we can see that a lot of people have used 9/11 for some gain,” said Matt Brosseau, 27, of Westfield, N.J. He sees the public tributes as “crassly corporatized and co-opted by false patriots.”

“Me personally, I wouldn’t involve myself in a public commemoration,” he said. “I don’t see the need for an official remembrance from the city or anyone else. In six years, is Minneapolis going to pay for something for the people who died in the bridge collapse?”

David Hendrickson, 56, a computer software trainer who lives in Manhattan, said he began being somewhat irritated by the attention to the commemoration on the third anniversary. “It seems a little much to me to still be talking about this six years later,” he said. “I understand it’s a sad thing. I understand it’s a tragedy. I’ve had my own share of tragedies — my uncle was killed in a tornado. But you get on. I have the sense that some people are living on their victimhood, which I find a little tiring.”

Mental health practitioners see a certain value in the growing fatigue.

“It’s a good sign when people don’t need an anniversary commemoration or demarcation,” said Charles R. Figley, the director of the Florida State University Traumatology Institute. “And it’s not disrespectful to those who died.”

Laurie Pearlman, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, said, “Our society has a very low tolerance for grief — it’s exhausting and unrelenting, and we don’t want to hear about it.”

Some of the relatives of those who died that day hold fast to the anniversary and are the most insistent that it not be dismantled.

“I would no sooner tell survivors of the Holocaust how to mourn or how to commemorate their atrocity, so why do others feel they have any right to dictate how family members should feel or memorialize our loved ones on Sept. 11 or any day, for that matter?” said Nancy Nee, whose brother George Cain died in the attack. “Six years feels like the blink of an eye. That number means nothing to me.”

Ms. Korsonsky has not attended any of the ceremonies at ground zero, but she has watched them on television. “I always have a lot of friends who watch it and then call me and tell me they listened for my sister’s name. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. She’s remembered for that one instant. I’m just so afraid that she’ll be forgotten.”

But even family members diverge over what should or should not happen on this anniversary of death.

Lesli Rice, 26, who works in insurance and lost her mother, Eileen Rice, on Sept. 11, thinks something respectful should occur on the anniversary — a tolling of church bells or a moment of silence — but that otherwise the event should be scaled back. “The grieving part has to be more personal,” she said. “The whole city wasn’t affected by my mother’s death.”

A hairdresser’s question told Nikki Stern something about her own sensibilities. Ms. Stern lost her husband, James Potorti, in the collapsing towers. Two years ago, her hairdresser mentioned that she was planning to marry on Sept. 11. It was a Sunday, a day that worked best for all involved. She was grasping for guidance: Was that all right?

Ms. Stern suggested that if it was the most convenient day, fine, but perhaps a portion of the wedding gifts could go to some charity.

“I thought that it was completely cool,” she said. “The last thing my husband would have wanted was for everyone to lie down and die.”

“I still get so many letters from people that even I suffer from 9/11 fatigue to some extent,” she said. “People who don’t want to do anything on 9/11, they shouldn’t be forced to. I never thought I’d say that.”

Part of the problem with remembrances is that people are unsure what is expected of them, said Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “People wonder, ‘How sad am I supposed to feel? What do you expect me to do, because possibly I’ve gotten over it,’ ” she said. “We have to figure out how to commemorate other people’s grief. It’s a generic question we haven’t answered that goes beyond 9/11.”

An organization called myGoodDeed.org was begun last year to urge people to do something nice for Sept. 11, and, if they want, to post it on its Web site. “We asked what should 9/11 be 20 or 30 years from now, and the big concern is that people will become tired of conventional ceremonies,” said David Paine, president of the organization.

Some 150,000 deeds were posted last year, with more than 40,000 intentions clocked so far this year. One person chose to put quarters in expired parking meters. Another is knitting socks for soldiers. A boy said he would help his mother around the house and not torment his siblings.

Where you were, your proximity to the attack — these things shade your tie to the anniversary. On Sept. 11, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, was crossing Washington Square in Greenwich Village and was approached by a panhandler, whom he brushed off. The panhandler then said, “The World Trade Center is on fire.”

Dr. Zimmerman didn’t even look. Not until he got to his office did he find out it was truth. “I now pay more attention to what homeless people say,” he said.

Dr. Zimmerman knows that the N.Y.U. dynamic is now different, the undergraduates who were there during the attack gone, supplanted largely by students who did not see it and whose feelings are thus likely to be more varied.

“I’m quite troubled about all this talk of 9/11 fatigue,” he said. “It’s true that commemorations can take on bombastic and ritualistic forms that trivialize them, but 9/11 is with us every day. Every political issue in our times is refracted through this event. I can understand why some people are sick of hearing about it, but they should get used to it.”

It seems likely that attention to the anniversary will ebb and flow. Events become artificially magnified during 10-year, 25-year, 50-year demarcations.

What might happen on Sept. 11 a hundred years from now? “It’s conceivable that it could be virtually forgotten,” said Dr. Bodnar, the history professor. “Does anyone go out on the streets of New York and commemorate the firing on Fort Sumter?”

Fuckin' doctors.

I'm sure you guys are curious as to whether or not I can drive.

Trust me. I am too.

But there's no answer for me just yet.

Still waiting on that answer.

I'm back.

...and I still haven't got any answers.

They said I'd get answers "by Tuesday".


Oh, and I didn't bring any pictures, either. Just know that my head was almost completely wrapped in bandages to hold the wires on. Couple that with the fact that I spent most of my time coloring... yeah.

So, apparently, I'm still part of the pediatric system, but when I went to check in, they were like, "um... no."

So they sent me to the regular Neuroscience ward.

And then the regular Neurologists and the Pediatric Neurologists were fighting over who got to be in charge.

And then a Pediatrician showed up, only to find out that, "oh, hey, you're 19. I, uh, I really don't have to be here."


It was good times.

Wires. Lol.

So.

I hope you like the fact that Sixty Percent updated every day for almost a week.


Oh, and I spilled my soul out onto the keyboard.


So, I get back from Maryland, only to find out that I have to go back, because, hey, wait, we still have more wires that we have to glue to your head.

I'll be in the hospital having a Video EEG.


No more chapters for a bit.

But I might get a driver's license out of all this.

Quote of the Day

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason." --J. P. Morgan

I believe that the best way to solve an inherently private and personal problem is to air it in the most public of places.

In other, simpler words: The best way to solve a really personal problem is to dump it on the internet and hope to God that no one makes fun of you.

This is probably why I have a blog.


At any rate, I'm going to go ahead and fill you in on my personal problem.

I can't drive. But it's not like "I'm 16 and I can't get my mom to take me to get my learner's permit this sucks so bad!". It's a bit more complicated than that.

When I was little, my parents knew I was fucked up. The fact that I didn't figure out something as basic as how to talk was pretty much a dead giveaway. Something was obviously wrong.

In the third grade -- yup, I'm a dork, and my timing goes by grades -- a doctor found out that I was having seizures. Petit-mal seizures.

He told me I'd grow out of them by the time I was 15.


It's the eleventh grade. I'm 16. I've had an Electroencephalogram every two years since the third grade. /* EEGs, for those keeping score at home, record brain activity. They basically glue wires to your head, and the little wires tell the computer some stuff, in the form of squiddly lines. And if the lines are smooth and even, you're normal, but if it's all fucked up looking, then, well, you're all fucked up. */

My doctor -- the same one that told me I'd grow out of the seizures -- tells me that, well, I'm never going to be able to drive, and that, state laws aside, even if I did improve, he wouldn't sign off on the letter.

/* New York state law: you must be seizure free for a bunch of time and have a letter from your neurologist saying it's safe for you to be on the road and you have to be on a course of treatment. But if you have a seizure, you aren't required by law to tell the DMV. */


Okay. Fine.

He put me on some medication. It was mostly for migraines, but it's technically a seizure medication... one of those "two birds with one stone" thing.


So. It's three years later.

I start playing with buses, and trains. I got a really kickass bike.

But it's just not the same as a car.



So I called up my Doctor and was like, "hey, I never got an EEG after I started these meds... and, um, hey, I'd like to drive. Is that cool?"

So I get an appointment for an EEG and for an actual consultation.

I get the EEG done. And the guy was cool. He was just gluing crap to my head, y'know, and talking, and we were talking about frivolous lawsuits, and shit. It was cool. And then afterward I had to wash my hair in the ladies' room sink. I know from experience what happens if you leave that crap in your hair.

So then I get to my doctor's appointment. And I have to recount my entire medical history. And they're like "have you had any seizures?" I don't know. No body else notices them. How the fuck should I?

And then I got my retard physical -- which I passed, by the way. /* Anyone who has ever had a doctor play the "touch your nose then touch my finger" game knows exactly what I'm talking about. */

...But he didn't tell me how I did on the EEG. He was like, "so, we want to see a brain MRI. Oh, and a Video EEG. You're okay with a Video EEG, right? 'Cause, you'll have to be checked into the hospital for about four days so we can, um, monitor you."

That's right, kids. I can get checked into the hospital for four days so they can glue crap to my head and have a computer draw squiddly lines.


So. I have no idea if I'm ever going to get to drive.

But I do feel better airing all of this in public.

Quote of the Day

"So we are favored, you and I, who only want the living truth."

-- Paul Laurence Dunbar

So, apparently, it's only slightly drizzly.

Posts about Sixty Percent = Bad puns involving rain.

Anyways.

If you're actually reading that mess, you've probably noticed a couple things.

First off, it's taken a turn for the worst. It's getting weirder. And darker. What's-her-face got kidnapped, the other one got shot at (again), and, oh, hey, there's a crazy dude in a robe.

It's good times all around.


Also, I'm not updating on Fridays anymore. That's not to say I don't like Fridays; I mean, it's Friday. But, I need to get back in the habit of actually writing it before I can get in the habit of posting it on a regular schedule.

Edit: Didn't even notice that today was Friday. Wow. I'm fuckin' swift.

So... yeah.


Also: I've got eighty-eight chapters written. Holy crap. When did that happen?

It's things like this that make me happy.

Amtrak Offers Free Booze

Aug 1 03:26 PM US/Eastern
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains.

The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips.

Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program—the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers—can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January.

The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the California Zephyr—chugging between Chicago and San Francisco—the Southwest Chief between Chicago and Los Angeles, or the Silver Meteor between Washington, D.C., and Miami or Orlando, Fla.

At about $6 for a house wine or $7 for a top-shelf scotch, that credit could fuel a long ride. The credit would not go nearly as far for, say, a $250 bottle of Dom Perignon—also available.

Christina Messa, vice president of marketing for GrandLuxe, said the drinks promotion is part of an effort to revive some of the luxury of old-fashioned, cross-country train trips.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving questioned whether $100 in free alcohol was too much.

"This sounds like a lot of credit toward possible overindulging," said MADD spokeswoman Misty Moyse.

GrandLuxe offers separate cars, with their own private dining and lounge sections, attached to regular Amtrak trains. Tickets for such trips range from $789 per person for a two-day, one night trip on the East Coast to $1,599 or higher for three days and two nights for travel to or from the West Coast.

Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Morero said the goal is to entice people to try the new, high-end sleeper car service. The free alcohol promotion "is a test run so we're going to see how our passengers respond to it," she said.

In Long Island, N.Y., the commuter rail company considered ending alcohol service out of concern some passengers might disembark at their destination and drive home while they were drunk. The proposal was shelved after some patrons opposed the idea.

Quote of the Day

"Bullfights are the only method of producing beef that gives the animal any say in the matter."

Guess what guess what guess what guess what guess what guess what?!

Well, first off, I've decided to change up the layouts for both squirrel king and Sixty Percent. They're all spiffy looking and shit. But I kinda broke some of my <span> tags for my Quotes of the Day, so it still needs work.

Also, I've finally gotten around to actually updating Sixty Percent! (I know, it's so exciting. Six months later, and they're just sitting around, talking.)

Okay Boys and Girls, It's time to talk about common fucking courtesy.

• Just because you happen to have a car, and you're surrounded by a ton or two of steel, that doesn't mean that you don't have to share the road with pedestrians and cyclists.


• Don't get pissed at me that I'm in the crosswalk when you wanted to run that red light.


• If I say "Excuse me," it's because I want you to move, and because I'm too fucking polite to say "Get out of the way you Goddamned shitstain."


• It isn't that hard to share the Goddamned road. Or the sidewalk, for that matter. If you see a cyclist coming toward you, don't make them swerve into a pole, streetsign, or shrubs, just to get around your fat ass.


• Turning sprinklers on while Pedestrians and Cyclists are in front of your house is fucking lame. Especially when I can fucking see you doing it.