I was reviewing my 2003 9-11 blogpost this evening, and then noticed that Joe had reposted his from last year. So below are the 9-11 sites and stories that still affect me (that aren't in Joe's post).
This photo was taken by a friend of a friend, who had access to the buildings surrounding Ground Zero in the week following the attack. There are more at the end of this post.
First, a few current related news items:
Four years later, New York is almost back to normal.
9-11 families join Katrina relief efforts.
300 NYC police officers go to Louisiana to repay a debt:Many of the officers have military experience. Others sent south were chosen because they had expertise in large search-and-rescue operations or building collapses. When they think back on Sept. 11, Inspector Graham and many others who arrived from New York remember especially that officers from New Orleans were among the first to join them at ground zero. "They were there in the first 24 to 48 hours," Inspector Graham said. "Not our request, they just came. They got on a bus and headed up. During 9/11 they were cooking gumbo and feeding us. So, when we got a request for Jefferson Parish, I think that is one of the reasons we came."Looks like the protests against the "Freedom Center" got results:
A museum devoted to freedom on Tuesday named a seven-member family advisory group, part of a plan it proposed last month to involve Sept. 11 family members more in a center it hopes to bring to the World Trade Center site. . . . The Freedom Center was chosen last year to fill cultural space at the center that was set aside by Daniel Libeskind, who designed a master plan for the trade center site. Earlier this year, a group of family members issued vigorous objections to the museum, saying it would detract from the planned memorial and may contain anti-American exhibits.
Links about the attack and its aftermath:
Here is New York. Hundreds of photographs from the construction of the WTC to the rubble at Fresh Kills.
Personal stories collected by the Jewish Week, including Lyzbeth Glick's last conversation with her husband Jeremy, one of the heroes of Flight 93.
My favorite 9-11 story. Always makes me cry.
NYTimes interactive sites about 9-11. These give me chills: Stories from different floors in the WTC that were affected, with links to a timeline and graphics showing number of phonecalls from each floor, transcripts of radio transmissions from 9-11 taped by the Port Authority, and accounts of final conversations by cellphone from people trapped in the towers.
Also chilling: Audio montage from 9-11 including from the "black box" of one of the planes.
The Black Day: A Photo Montage (with a great essay by one of my favorite columnists Leonard Pitts).
Slide show of the "unbuilding" of the WTC remains.
The following pieces of paper blew into the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY.
Huge JPG aerial view of the Ground Zero area.
More photos:
Some of those photos have a weird underwater appearance; as if looking down on a shipwreck on a coral reef.
I can't tell if that's smoke or out of focus lens or analog photos being scanned. (They were emailed to me.)
Glen, Yehudit:
I see it too. I think it's chiefly the shafts of light and the haze. The thin spots in the dust clouds let the sun through to produce an underwater effect -- the occasional (relatively rare) alignment of water surface and sun do in some underwater shots in not-perfectly-clear water. You can get the same sort of "cathedral" shafts-of-light effect in, e.g., Muir Wood. There the effect due to is mist from transpiring trees, fog, and an occasional shaft of light that makes it through the canopy.
It's a most disquieting effect here. Thanks for posting these, Y.
Nort
Also they were taken through a window that probably has crud on it.
As a SCUBA instructor in a past period of my life, the underwater analogy is exactly apt. The biggest technical problem with underwater photography is suspended particles in a fluid.
That was also, of course, the problem here.
As a diver, even when you think the suspended particles aren't there, your flash is likely to remind you otherwise when you look at the subsequent picture. This is why underwater photographs you see are so heavily weighted towards extreme close-up shots. Less stuff in the way = clearer shot.
Again, I believe you'll see the same phenomena in on-the-scene close-ups vs. panoramas for the 9/11 shots.