Amy's Place ... Poetry and Potpourri ... September, 2008

September 1, 2008 | JustAmy; St.Louie1; MamaBear; Billie

[Mama_Bear]

God bless America. May she always have patriots to defend her!

[JustAmy]

Thanks, DD.

Sounds like that is going to be a wonderful tribute.

God Bless America.

[JustAmy]

Sure, it is okay. In fact ..... it is GREAT!!!

Everyone is welcome at Amy’s Place.

[JustAmy]

Beautiful, Lori. Thank you.

God Bless our Military and God Bless America.

[gardengirl]

Billie—

Thank you so much for my bear! She’s PERFECT!:)

I’ve missed most of the thread this month, enjoyed my pings!
My computer and my roadrunner are conspiring to convince me that “cold molasses” = “Blazingly fast”. NOT! RR’s best suggestion is to unplug everything and wait a minute, then plug it back in. If I could get online long enough, I’d tell tehm it’s not working!

On top of that, everyone in my area has decided to plant a fall garden—not a bad thing, but they’re keeping me hopping and I can’t keep up! My long time right arm got a job at the school cafeteria, and I can’t blame her for that. 9-2 five days a week instead of 8-5:30 six days a week, with the possibility of becoming full time/benefits. She’s still working here at the garden center a couple days a week from 4-5:30, but doggone it, I miss her! Glad for her, sad for me.

I miss you guys, too, and I know I forgot to ping a bunch of my FRiends, but I’m at work and in between customers.

Y’all have a great day, and maybe next month I’ll be able to do more than lurk!

[OESY]

The Falling Man

Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day.

By: Tom Junod, Esquire



In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears comfortable in the grip of unimaginable motion. He does not appear intimidated by gravity's divine suction or by what awaits him. His arms are by his side, only slightly outriggered. His left leg is bent at the knee, almost casually. His white shirt, or jacket, or frock, is billowing free of his black pants. His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures, the people who did what he did — who jumped — appear to be struggling against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdrop of the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself. Some of them are shirtless; their shoes fly off as they flail and fall; they look confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain. The man in the picture, by contrast, is perfectly vertical, and so is in accord with the lines of the buildings behind him. He splits them, bisects them: Everything to the left of him in the picture is the North Tower; everything to the right, the South. Though oblivious to the geometric balance he has achieved, he is the essential element in the creation of a new flag, a banner composed entirely of steel bars shining in the sun. Some people who look at the picture see stoicism, willpower, a portrait of resignation; others see something else — something discordant and therefore terrible: freedom. There is something almost rebellious in the man's posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end. He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. He will soon be traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.

More at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN

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[JustAmy]

Beautiful, LadyJ. I love it! May I steal it? :)

God Bless

[JustAmy]

Good afternoon, OESY. Thank you for your post.

That picture is amazing ... I will never forget seeing our fellow citizens falling, jumping to their deaths. So many horrible pictures from that day. So many heros, that day.

God Bless America.

[JustAmy]

Good afternoon, GardenGirl.

Great to see you .... looking forward to seeing you more often.

God Bless America, today and forever.

[JustAmy]

I need to leave for an appt.

See you this afternoon.

[Lady Jag]

Paint Shop Pro doesn’t sell Animation Shop included with the graphics software anymore and I don’t know if they’re still compatible.

I can’t read manuals because geeks wrote them.

[Mama_Bear]

I just watched that video, all the way through. I had not seen it before.

You know, it was harder to watch that video today than when I watched the attack taking place in real time on 9/11. Then, as the events were unfolding, we didn't know the horrific number of casualties and the amazing acts of bravery that were taking place as those buildings were collapsing. Then we didn't know how all of our lives would be changed forever. We know now.

I remember, as I was watching the reports coming in on the news that day, my mind could not comprehend what my eyes were seeing. I kept telling my mother that I was sure all the people had gotten out. My mind would not allow me to believe that there were actually living, breathing people in those buildings. So, I had to keep telling myself that the people had gotten out....surely, there were no people in there. Now, watching that video, we know the thousands of lives that were lost. It was excruciatingly hard to watch, but I watched every minute. Like you, I think it is important to never forget, to never become complacent, and to never to stop remembering and mourning the American lives lost that day.

[Kitty Mittens]

[Lady Jag]

Be my guest.

[Mama_Bear]

May I steal it? :)

No, you can't steal it, Amy, I already did. I'll split it with you. ;-) LOL

[luvie]

It was very difficult to watch the video, but I couldn’t turn it off till it was over. It brought back ALL the memories. I also have a video of the two photographers that were documenting the firefighters that day...on VHS. I will watch it again, too. It was very powerful....and released very soon after the event.

NEVER FORGET!

[OESY]

They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building’s fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors — the top. For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself. One photograph, taken at a distance, shows people jumping in perfect sequence, like parachutists, forming an arc composed of three plummeting people, evenly spaced. Indeed, there were reports that some tried parachuting, before the force generated by their fall ripped the drapes, the tablecloths, the desperately gathered fabric, from their hands. They were all, obviously, very much alive on their way down, and their way down lasted an approximate count of ten seconds. They were all, obviously, not just killed when they landed but destroyed, in body though not, one prays, in soul. One hit a fireman on the ground and killed him; the fireman’s body was anointed by Father Mychal Judge, whose own death, shortly thereafter, was embraced as an example of martyrdom after the photograph — the redemptive tableau — of firefighters carrying his body from the rubble made its way around the world.

From the beginning, the spectacle of doomed people jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center resisted redemption. They were called “jumpers” or “the jumpers,” as though they represented a new lemminglike class. The trial that hundreds endured in the building and then in the air became its own kind of trial for the thousands watching them from the ground. No one ever got used to it; no one who saw it wished to see it again, although, of course, many saw it again. Each jumper, no matter how many there were, brought fresh horror, elicited shock, tested the spirit, struck a lasting blow. Those tumbling through the air remained, by all accounts, eerily silent; those on the ground screamed. It was the sight of the jumpers that prompted Rudy Giuliani to say to his police commissioner, “We’re in uncharted waters now.” It was the sight of the jumpers that prompted a woman to wail, “God! Save their souls! They’re jumping! Oh, please God! Save their souls!” And it was, at last, the sight of the jumpers that provided the corrective to those who insisted on saying that what they were witnessing was “like a movie,” for this was an ending as unimaginable as it was unbearable: Americans responding to the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world with acts of heroism, with acts of sacrifice, with acts of generosity, with acts of martyrdom, and, by terrible necessity, with one prolonged act of — if these words can be applied to mass murder — mass suicide.

[Lady Jag]

There’s no way you can evenly split 57 states.

[Mama_Bear]

I had seen that photo, but had never read the story behind it. Thanks for posting that. Like so many images from 9/11, it is hard to see, but necessary if we are to truly never forget. That imagine must never disappear from history. No matter how desparatley we might wish for all of it to have just been a horrific nightmare, it wasn't, it did happen. Terrorist who hate us and our freedom visciously attacked us. Real people died, real heroes and real patriots leapt into action that day and gave their lives for people they didn't even know.

What we must never forget is this; they still hate us.

[MHGinTN]

BUT, never forget who it is that is celebrating this evil of 911. World TV is not showing you the truth of whom it is that is relishing the video of Americans in their last moments of life plummeting toward certain death, death these American citizens chose rather than standing as mere victims of the Islamic murderers. Palestinians handed out candy to celebrate this evil murder scheme. And today, Islamic fools are celebrating in remembrance of this evil. How would the world receive Americans celebrating August 5 as a glorious day when tens of thousands of Japanese citizens and soldiers were incinerated. We Americans do not celbrate such a holocaust. We did not start that war which ended because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saving perhaps millions from coming holocaust with assault ont he Japanese Islands. With God’s help we will end the current war against these demonspawn who would slaughter American citizens and celebrate the evil. But ending this war on satan’s spawn will not come with ‘just words’.