Friends, I wish I knew less about the WTC, in my town, it's like the large gorilla in the corner that nobody really wants to talk about anymore, but still really dominiates much of our public discourse. Sometimes, because the media didn't choose to cover the right things, public perception/reaction is not as reflective of reality as it might be. As someone who worked there during the first bombing back in '93 (and coughed out soot for a month after descending down 60 flights of stairs with the help of firemen) saw the second plane hit and with thousands of others helped support the recovery effort, I learned a few things. While this is slightly off topic ( community gardening) please bear with me.
Re: "When the T.V. stations were surveying the country about what the memorial at the World Trade Center site should be, I thought that it should be a statute of an Indian with a handful of beads with a sign engraved that says, "What goes around comes around." When the World Trade Center was built, thousandsof families lost their homes." Re: My father-in-law's last job in NYC before he retired as a tin-knocker ( sheet metal worker) was at the WTC where he helped install the airconditioning duct-work. He had a great deal of respect for native American ironworkers from the Mohawk tribe who were, as he said, the best of the best. He said that the only reason why the WTC didn't go up faster was that there weren't enough Mohawks on the job, whose sure footedness and craftsmanship is legendary. After 9/11, I spent many lunch hours loading trucks of ventilators, boots and other items that workers at the site needed at a volunteer warehouse near my job. A few weekends, I went on deliveries to Ground Zero or the Fresh Kills Sanitation facility on Staten Island. I remember passing out boots, ventilator filters and cigarettes to some ironworkers from the Mohawk tribe one Saturday last fall. One of the younger guys had feathers hanging from his helmet ( to make a point, I guess, the older guys were known entities to their co-workers. ) Handing out the stuff, I thanked everyone for being there and their work at disentangling a then huge pile of rubble and steel in NY style, "How ya doin'. Does this fit? Thanks for being here with us...sure take another for your buddy. " But this was interesting, one of the Mohawks said, " My dad worked on the WTC site and it paid for our house upstate. ( Note: the reservation near the Canadian border). Another Mohawk, "We had great Christmases those years growing up, didn't we guys? All of our dads worked the job. Hanging out on the roof in Brooklyn ( the Mohawk Iroworkers mostly live around Greenpoint) it was always something to say that our Dads built that. Hope to get a chance at the new job." Re: "What goes around comes around" - People from all nationalities died in the WTC that day including Saudi and Arab nationals who went to work at their offices and didn't come home. The writer of that statement was better than that. Re: When the World Trade Center was built, thousandsof families lost their homes. In fact, unlike other large scale mid-century NYC construction projects ( like Lincoln Center, which dispossessed 7,000 and the Midtown Tunnel which dispossessed 15,000 folks in Hell's Kitchen) the WTC land condemnation hearings only dispossed the electronic businesses (radio kits, ship radios) that were sited in the 7 acred WTC site. While some folks lived above the stores in tenement type buildings, only about 200 families had to move. The WTC was a place for 35,000 people to work in - key to the economy of the region and the nation. A fair trade-off. Right now, there are a great many proposals in the works for how the WTC site is rebuilt. I'm a fan of 50,000 units of affordable housing with a respectful memorial and open volunteer green space ( AKA community gardens) . Others want a large memorial park and others want to build four towers. For information on some of these suggestions, you may want to go to the Project for Public Spaces website. P.S. In this month's Atlantic Monthly ( there's a picture of Uncle Sam carrying Iraq on his back on the cover) the fine American novelist John Updike has wrapped his mind around 9/11 and written the best piece of fiction about the event I've seen yet. Sometimes an artist sees things that the rest of us don't. A must read. Best wishes, Adam Honigman ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
