Dear Reader:
Twenty years? Truly… Really? So hard to believe… yet the largest sculpture , once located between the Twin Towers is now testimony to the perseverance of man and his works… as the damaged but still standing architectural design ” The Sphere” was returned to Liberty Park ( 2018) to once more watch over the 9/11 Ground Zero!
It has had the same effect on tourists that Apollo 11 astronauts felt when seeing the blue marble sphere we call home for the first time.
This state of mental clarity is known as the ” overview effect” in which the viewer becomes overwhelmed and awed by the size of Earth!
Somehow, miraculously the ” Sphere” was wedged in between the collapsing towers and managed to survive -damaged-but not destroyed! Many tourists fall on their knees when viewing it for the first time… completely overwhelmed by yet another miracle!
Why? Perhaps Louise Penny expresses it best in her latest detective series-The Madness of Crowd.
” And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what’s invisible to the eye.”
Being correct and being right are two different entities.
Take the true story of the “elevator ” man, on 9/11, for example. Chuck Costello.
On 9/11 2001 -Costello was working on elevators in the Mercer Hotel in the Sojo neighborhood. When he heard the first news about a plane flying into the North Tower… he knew he would be more needed there than doing routine elevator check-ups in a luxury hotel.
He took off running towards the disaster… not away from it as fleeing crowds kept knocking him down. Chuck yelled back to a friend as he ran in the burning building, ” I’ll be fine.”
As explosions, fire, and smoke took the lives of people, Chuck Costello went to work freeing persons he did not know from someone else’s elevators!
Later accounts by the New York City firemen and police who witnessed Chuck’s heroics simply called him ” the elevator man” because of his courage and determination to save as many lives as possible. He was seeing ” with his heart.”
In January 2002 his remains were found in debris of the south tower. One worker was so moved he ran alongside the ambulance all the way up the street with tears in his eyes! He had never met Chuck but only knew him as” the elevator man.”
This weekend let us find a way to to give back to the fire departments and police departments who lost so many brave men and continue to do so through diseases brought on by the toxins they were exposed to on that fateful day twenty years ago.
Sunday my nephew Lee Barbour is playing in Honor Fest -a fund-raiser on Daniel Island with a Jazz Band to honor first responders, armed forces, and veterans! I know Ben will be so proud to watch him perform! !
So until tomorrow… As Chuck Costello knew… ” the terror is in the first step but the key to a full life is taking it. The trick wasn’t having less fear… it was finding more courage.” ( Gamache-The Madness of Crowds!”)
” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh
Ben beat me putt-putting/a hole -in-one yesterday at Wellmore!
ichaseferalcats
John Turner
Legally Ohm
Becky Dingle
The day those towers collapsed to the ground was a day I’ll never forget! The awful scenes of people opting to jump from windows numerous stories in the air, over being burned alive and or deprived of oxygen from toxic smoke coming from all the man made materials burning. I was at work at Bosch when my Boss called our entire Engineering group to the largest meeting room in the building. I noticed even the real workers as I called them, the hourly people as management called them were also leaving their work places. A television was on in the meeting room and of course it was the twin tower on fire as the talking head was saying a lane crashed into the tower. At the very second the talking head was on the screen more urgent language came over the television as the second plane hit the second tower. Bosch asked all of us to please go back to work, unless you had personal connections to the area of the twin towers and we had 3 people that had loved ones that worked inside the tower. The Lord was watching over their loved ones none of which were severely injured. But that made the whole thing more personal. Awful day in the History of our Country yet set up even more death to come. Hopefully now that it’s over, monuments back in place, hopefully an era of peace has started and will remain. If God’s willing and the creek don’t rise!
Johnny ….so sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I had to switch computers again WordPress wouldn’t let me respond…so I am jumping from one computer to the next…but loved your response and your memory is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!…I pray for a new era of peace too- leaving anger behind,
Will never forget…