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- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

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- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

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Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 - 1:47 a.m.

New York City

I am living through a movie.

It's not even like I'm a main character, or even one that gets mentioned in the credits. I'm not even an extra in the exciting scenes; I'm merely just a background body milling about the newsroom in the one short shot of a chaotic newsroom.

Casey's cell phone rang this morning while we slept. I looked at the clock -- 9:14 a.m. Thinking it might possibly by Rolling Stone (she's supposed to hear any day now), she jumped out of bed and I repeated to myself, "Please be Yes, please be Yes..." but when she said, "Mother fucker!" I knew it was her father.

But quickly the conversation changed, her voice changed, and her responses to Dad were, "No way. ... Oh my God ... You're kidding me." or things along those lines; I had just woken up.

"Dan," she said to me, jostling my arm, "turn on the news." I rolled over and flipped on the TV near my head, the one in the house not hooked up to cable. Channel 4 -- NBC -- was fuzzy, Channel 5 -- Fox -- was out and 7 -- ABC -- was nothing. I turned it off and hurried into the living room, not knowing what I was looking for, and turned on the TV. I don't know if I went to Channel 2 -- CBS -- on purpose, or if that's just what was left on when the TV had been turned off.

But it didn't matter. Just about any of the channels I could've chosen would've had the same picture: Smoke billowing from the two recognizable Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. The graphic on the screen said two planes had hit the buildings. I forgot, yet again, just how big those two buildings are -- sorry, were -- and in looking at them, the thick smoke rising into the bright morning sky, I thought it must've been two small planes, two Cessnas or private jets or something. The first words I heard from the local CBS ancherpersons were along the lines of two planes that might have been flying together, like it was some maneuver gone wrong.

Oh how it all quickly changed. Casey got off the phone with her father and we watched the events unfold like some sickening, horrible reality TV show. Her father had been concerned that she would be in New York today, on another interview or apartment search. "It's OK, Dad, we're going to D.C. today for a concert anyway," she said. "We'll be fine."

Once the Pentagon was hit, we called off the D.C. trip and figured Ben Folds would not be playing at the 9:30 Club anyway.

The next few hours went by in a blur of phone calls, e-mails and channel flipping. Casey left a message for her mom, I heard from mine three times and went online to check the status of my sister's flight to Paris from the night before. Storms had delayed Jess's takeoff from Newark for Pittsburgh, so she had been switched to a Continental flight due to land at de Gaulle Airport at 4:30 a.m. Eastern time. She made it fine and had met up with -- this is the sketchy details I got from Mom -- a guy from the UN who suggested she not go to her hotel, which she didn't. Don't know exactly where she ended up, but I know Mom's heard from her a few more times today.

Before I knew it, it was 11:30 or noon -- I'm still not sure -- and among the various phone calls that came in was one from work asking me to come in. It was my day off, but with the paper putting out an extra edition, they were looking for all possible help. I went in for three hours and basically watched more TV coverage, read some wire stories at my leisure, and edited one story, writing the headline, and coming home. The drive into work was eerie. The last radio station on in my car was WFAN, New York's all-sports station. The voice I heard was Tom Brokaw's, and soon it was Don Imus', the I-Man still on the air at 1 p.m. Over on WPLJ, 95.5, the Top 40 station, Scott and Todd -- the morning guys there -- were still broadcasting. But what else would they do? They both live outside Manhattan. It's not like they would've gone home this morning. When I left the office, driving home at 4:30 p.m., Scott and Todd were still on the air, taking phone calls, relaying news reports, and discussing the events.

By the time we'd eaten dinner and watched more of the reports on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC, and 8 p.m. rolled around, we'd become tired of it all. Brokaw and the NBC evening news managed to alter their coverage with interesting and insightful pieces with the architect of the World Trade Center and a profile report on Osama bin Laden, the terrorist most likely responsible -- "officials believe" -- for the attacks. So Dave called and we went out to rent a movie (went with Snatch) and watch something that didn't have to do with burning cities; shut airports; hijacked planes; cancelled sporting events; the terms "triage," "collapse," "cowardly," "national security" and all the others that are etched in my mind.

But after every respite, after every break I'd come back to it an not believe it. Every time I'd get my mind of what had happened, when I remembered, I'd slip into mild shock again. The World Trade Center is gone. I could've driven out to Highlands and looked out across Sandy Hook Bay and New York Harbor and seen the smoke billowing from Manhattan. I could've seen the devestation from a distance, because it was so great as to alter the most famous skyline in the world. I thought of all the pictures I'd taken, of the time I went to the top of the tower to the observation deck with Mia, and on the way down the elevator somehow went into super slow motion and it took us 20 minutes to descend 110 stories. I thought of the time I saw Mary Chapin Carpenter perform on the plaza in a summertime noontime concert in the area between the Twin Towers. I thought of my last trip on the PATH train in November to meet Mia for lunch and how I took some time after that to walk around Lower Manhattan and the financial district and then went into the Borders on street level of one of the towers and how it was mentioned in one of the stories I read today.

And, of course, I thought of all the people I know in the City. Mia called from work in the Financial District. At 11 a.m., at least, the world banks were still operating, so she was still working. But she did get to see the two towers collapse -- from her office window. Amy Beth IMed me from New Orleans and had talked with Lisa in Brooklyn -- somehow reaching her on her cell phone. I talked with both my parents and a few other friends -- including Matt in D.C. to tell him we weren't coming. "Good idea," he said.

And I wondered about Jen and Megan, just two of my Diaryland contacts who live and work in or near Manhattan.

Had someone come up with this idea, this plot, and written it out and presented the script to Hollywood and gotten Jerry Bruckheimer to produce it and cast Bruce Willis and a lot of pyrotechnics, and had it all played out on a movie screen in two hours just as it did over the course of the past 17 (and counting), American moviegoers would've walked out of the theater thinking, "Nice spectacle, but that would never happen."

Never say never.

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