Musings on the Ugly Beauty of the World Trade Center
Let’s face it, the World Trade Center, actually a complex of seven buildings with the centerpieces the towers which once stood majestically in Lower Manhattan, wasn’t exactly an architectural beauty.
They were even called ugly.
The two primary towers, one rising to 1,368 feet, the other to 1,362feet, dominated the landscape and were a source of boundless pride and tributes to the supremacy of American commerce for politicians and builders even as most New Yorkers regarded them as impressive but essentially unattractive oblong boxes reaching into the skies.
My family and I visited the World Trade Center in 1988 along with an aged uncle from Ireland. My uncle, terrified of heights, stood petrified against the back wall of the Top of the World observatory and understatedly remarked that the view was “very nice.”
Soaring a full hundred feet above the Empire State Building, the WTC did indeed provide a “very nice” panorama, remarkable, breathtaking views for miles in every direction, in fact, even if the design of the towers was less than pleasing. Those vistas and the pride New Yorkers and all Americans felt for the World Trade Center fully compensated for the towers’ stark severity, described by one architect as “glass-and-metal filing cabinets.”
Despite all their architectural and aesthetic flaws, I still miss the strange, symmetrical elegance of those “filing cabinets” and, despite the passage of ten years, I freely admit that I still weep over the events of September 11th, 2001.
None of us could have anticipated the devastation wreaked on America by Islamic terrorists on that brilliantly-bright morning.
What happened that day didn’t simply involve the destruction of of human life and of buildings. It didn’t merely represent a shocking, unprovoked attack on our homeland. It involved much more than the resultant phenomenal costs, disruptions, and upheavals.
Obviously, the greatest loss was the 2,753 lives snuffed out but not to be forgotten either was the loss of Americans’ illusory senses of invulnerability and indestructibility, the loss of our collective national innocence.
Those attributes were barely shaken by the failed Muslim attempt to knock down the towers in 1993 primarily because they failed. Eight years later they succeeded. What could never happen, happened.
The incomprehensibility of 9/11 was perhaps best illustrated in the reaction of a WTC survivor. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5387.)
Showing posts with label world trade center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world trade center. Show all posts
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
A True 9/11 Lowlife: Natarajan Venkataram
A True 9/11 Lowlife: Natarajan Venkataram
Call them low-lifes or low-lives, they abound in our society today and Natarajan Venkataram isn’t the first and won’t be the last. He just qualifies as being among the lowest for stealing as much as $10 million in funds intended to identify the remains of the World Trade Center’s 9/11 victims.
India-native Venkataram admits to stealing from New York City’s Medical Examiner’s office, is abjectly sorry for his acts, is currently in federal detention at the Fort Dix Army Base, and refuses to turn over what’s left of his thievery.
Compounding his gross iniquities, he’s bitching about prison conditions.
The job of identifying the remains of 1,100 of the approximately 2,780 people who died at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001 is stupefying as evidenced by the vast number yet unidentified a decade later.
Many of the dead were vaporized in the fiery cataclysm of the attacks and relatives of the dead have suggested some remains were ignominiously dumped at the former Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, where an estimated two million tons of Ground Zero debris from the WTC were literally dumped to enable the rebuilding of the center complex.
The contentions of the relatives have been substantiated by the recovery of hundreds of bone and other human fragments at Fresh Kills as well as on the roof of the Deutsche Bank building.
Not that the ghoulish Venkataram cared about the horrors of 9/11 or where victims were buried or dumped. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5366.)
Call them low-lifes or low-lives, they abound in our society today and Natarajan Venkataram isn’t the first and won’t be the last. He just qualifies as being among the lowest for stealing as much as $10 million in funds intended to identify the remains of the World Trade Center’s 9/11 victims.
India-native Venkataram admits to stealing from New York City’s Medical Examiner’s office, is abjectly sorry for his acts, is currently in federal detention at the Fort Dix Army Base, and refuses to turn over what’s left of his thievery.
Compounding his gross iniquities, he’s bitching about prison conditions.
The job of identifying the remains of 1,100 of the approximately 2,780 people who died at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001 is stupefying as evidenced by the vast number yet unidentified a decade later.
Many of the dead were vaporized in the fiery cataclysm of the attacks and relatives of the dead have suggested some remains were ignominiously dumped at the former Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, where an estimated two million tons of Ground Zero debris from the WTC were literally dumped to enable the rebuilding of the center complex.
The contentions of the relatives have been substantiated by the recovery of hundreds of bone and other human fragments at Fresh Kills as well as on the roof of the Deutsche Bank building.
Not that the ghoulish Venkataram cared about the horrors of 9/11 or where victims were buried or dumped. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5366.)
Saturday, September 11, 2010
"Meet Me in the Stairwell"--A Prayer for 9/11
(Received as an email)
"Meet Me in the Stairwell"--A Prayer for 9/11
“Meet Me in the Stairwell”
You say you will never forget where you were when
you heard the news On September 11, 2001.
Neither will I.
I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room
with a man who called his wife to say ‘Good-Bye.’ I
held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the
peace to say, ‘Honey, I am not going to make it, but it
is OK. . . I am ready to go.’
I was with his wife when he called as she fed
breakfast to their children. I held her up as she
tried to understand his words and as she realized
he wasn’t coming home that night.
I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a
woman cried out to Me for help. ‘I have been
knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!’ I said.
‘Of course I will show you the way home - only
believe in Me now.’
I was at the base of the building with the Priest
ministering to the injured and devastated souls.
I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He
heard my voice and answered. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1891)
"Meet Me in the Stairwell"--A Prayer for 9/11
“Meet Me in the Stairwell”
You say you will never forget where you were when
you heard the news On September 11, 2001.
Neither will I.
I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room
with a man who called his wife to say ‘Good-Bye.’ I
held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the
peace to say, ‘Honey, I am not going to make it, but it
is OK. . . I am ready to go.’
I was with his wife when he called as she fed
breakfast to their children. I held her up as she
tried to understand his words and as she realized
he wasn’t coming home that night.
I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a
woman cried out to Me for help. ‘I have been
knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!’ I said.
‘Of course I will show you the way home - only
believe in Me now.’
I was at the base of the building with the Priest
ministering to the injured and devastated souls.
I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He
heard my voice and answered. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1891)
3 Retrospectives on the World Trade Center
3 Retrospectives on the World Trade Center
The utter destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists on September 11th, 2001, the attack on the Pentagon, and the failed attack that ended in a barren Pennsylvania field that same day will long be remembered and long be the subject of books, articles, poems, anecdotes, remembrances, movies, documentaries as well as rumors, innuendos, and outright lies.
Without diminishing the tragedies in Washington or in Shanksville, by the sheer force of the death toll in New York City, the attacks on the WTC must be considered the greatest loss America suffered nine years ago.
The venerable, New York-based television series, “Naked City,” used to begin with the narrator’s words, “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” Following are three more which help capture the reactions, lack of reactions, and feelings of residents of that same city nine years ago. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1890)
The utter destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists on September 11th, 2001, the attack on the Pentagon, and the failed attack that ended in a barren Pennsylvania field that same day will long be remembered and long be the subject of books, articles, poems, anecdotes, remembrances, movies, documentaries as well as rumors, innuendos, and outright lies.
Without diminishing the tragedies in Washington or in Shanksville, by the sheer force of the death toll in New York City, the attacks on the WTC must be considered the greatest loss America suffered nine years ago.
The venerable, New York-based television series, “Naked City,” used to begin with the narrator’s words, “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” Following are three more which help capture the reactions, lack of reactions, and feelings of residents of that same city nine years ago. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1890)
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