PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
I was in my office in Finland and my boss called from France to say "look at the news, look at the internet". I looked at the Beeb's site and we talked a bit about the incredible pictures. Boss then went on to say "the Americans are going to go beserk" (he wasn't too far off on that one, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) and "we're going to have a very serious recession, so get the company ready". He was quite a bit off on that point, as the amazing thing for me was how quickly the US in general (and New Yorkers in particular) dusted themselves off and went back to work. I found out later that a relative survived by being late for his breakfast appointment.
We had been living in upstate NY until July 2001, so we had been up on the observation deck many times with my daughter and with visiting friends. It was strange to realize it was all gone, and it gave us a small feeling of what our parents went through with WW2.
The old WTC Towers were amazing buildings. Pretty much my first exposure to NY in 1980 was being invited to lunch at the restaurant (still a stuffy place back then: they lent awful ties to plebs like me who didn't think of bringing one - so much for American informality). There was an area where you could stand nose to the windows between two columns and look straight down to the ground, as the glass ran all the way to the floor. It was spectacular. The views stretched 20, 30 miles in all directions. The new buildings are almost as impressive, in a different way, and much more beautiful (the old towers were pretty plain).
Overall, the message that it takes more than disasters like the WTC and the Pentagon to bring a city or a country to its knees is a good one. It probably wasn't the worst disaster in US history (Pearl Harbor, the Civil War probably had a bigger impact) but, for our generation at least, the pictures of the towers collapsing, people jumping to their deaths or performing acts of selfless bravery will remain.
We had been living in upstate NY until July 2001, so we had been up on the observation deck many times with my daughter and with visiting friends. It was strange to realize it was all gone, and it gave us a small feeling of what our parents went through with WW2.
The old WTC Towers were amazing buildings. Pretty much my first exposure to NY in 1980 was being invited to lunch at the restaurant (still a stuffy place back then: they lent awful ties to plebs like me who didn't think of bringing one - so much for American informality). There was an area where you could stand nose to the windows between two columns and look straight down to the ground, as the glass ran all the way to the floor. It was spectacular. The views stretched 20, 30 miles in all directions. The new buildings are almost as impressive, in a different way, and much more beautiful (the old towers were pretty plain).
Overall, the message that it takes more than disasters like the WTC and the Pentagon to bring a city or a country to its knees is a good one. It probably wasn't the worst disaster in US history (Pearl Harbor, the Civil War probably had a bigger impact) but, for our generation at least, the pictures of the towers collapsing, people jumping to their deaths or performing acts of selfless bravery will remain.
