Some things worth reading or listening to.
This American Life has six stories that provide six narrative perspectives of what that day wrought. Today you’ll have to find it on the radio. But tomorrow, Monday, a podcast will be available for download. Whatever the case, don’t miss listening.
TAL also has links to some of their other 9/11 stories.
This NY Times op ed by Jim Dyer is one of the day’s must reads: In Love With Death: Years of grieving and war. But recall, too, the hour of human decency.
The Fire This Time by Reza Aslan in the Los Angeles Review of Books looks at the long-term affect of September 11, 2001, on America, and on the Arab world. I was going to post a clip here, but I’d be doing Reza’s essay a disservice. It’s too good to present piecemeal. Just read it.
This week’s Talk of the Town in the New Yorker magazine is devoted to 9/11 memories and musings by various writers. They are all good, but best when read in a string, for their cumulative weight. I especially recommend the stories by Zadie Smith, Edward Conlon, who was a NYPD officer at the time, Jonathan Safran Foer and Edwidge Danticat (none of which, thankfully, are stuck behind the NYer paywall, for those of you who don’t subscribe.
LA HAS A 9/11 COMMEMORATION EVENT AT USC’S BOVARD AUDITORIUM
The mayor and other dignitaries came, as did approximately 1000 students. (My former Annenberg student Josh Woo shot most of the video.)
Neon Tommy reports on the interfaith commemoration at City Hall.
By the way, the original New Yorker cover above is by Art Spiegelman, and to me is still the only magazine cover that could even vaguely suggest the emotional magnitude of what occurred. Simply representational photographs couldn’t even touch it, which is why art matters. (The 10th anniversary cover is by Francoise Mouly.)
For the NYFD firefighters and the NYPD officers and who died that day.…Your heroism still stuns.
“It was dark, too dark to see, you held me in the light you gave
You lay your hand on me
Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire…
May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love”
–Bruce Springsteen, “Into the Fire”