Death, Downtown

Dear friends,

I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City.

My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center.

I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.

It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.

On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed to occur at the same moment.)

I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live

I agree with Mr. Moore. In addition we Americans need to take back the control of our government. For decades, our government has been involved in actions that very few of us would support if we were given the choice. Basically, our government has been serving an entity other than their people and now we see the what these power games can bring home. I can only hope that the government did not directly have anything to do with the NYC devastation, but isn't it revealing that I do not have the confidence to say for sure?

Hey we may never learn the TRUTH re: US complicity in this or any act of terror. But the fact that so many people are willing to entertain the thought, the fact that this idea materializes in much of our popular fiction IS A TRUTH that we can grable with right now. It is more than revelaing - it is very significant all by itself.