This from my friend Hal Johnson in NY:

>The first we knew of it this morning was when Ana Doina called from
>New Jersey and asked Lynda if we were okay. Lynda (I think--I was
>upstairs taking a shower, getting ready to go off to Newark for my
>two Tuesday classes) said, "Sure, why? Who is this?" Ana said, "Look
>out your window." And Lynda looked out and saw great billows of
>smoke rising into the sky. Our windows on that side of the livingroom
>look south, but the WLC is blocked from view by an arm of the building
>we live in. At night, when we're going to bed we can see the skinny
>communications tower at the very top of . . . I guess it's WTC1. Just
>that, and its warning lights--lights intended to warn off aircraft, strange
>to say.
>
>Most of the day, we sat transfixed by the images on the TV screen, one
>or the other of us jumping up every now and then to check the billowing
>mountain of smoke downtown. The first phone call was from Lynda's
>mother in Florida.
>
>It wasn't until a bit after 5:00 in the afternoon that we ventured out of
>the apartment, first to go up to the roof about five floors above us. Waiting
>for the elevator, we checked out the large window near it that until today
>had a clear view of the WTC in all but the foggiest, cloudiest weathers.
Just
>smoke, today.A handful of people were up there, looking off to the south,
>where the smoke was still rising, and where a sudden rush of stronger
billowing
>may have betokened the collapse of Bldg. 7, which occurred, I think, about
>that time.
>
>It was warm and sunny on the roof. The late-afternoon sun was
>sparkling on the Hudson, just across West Street from our building.
>One of those gorgeous late-summer evenings--except for the
>large smudge of smoke. I remembered living as a kid in an apartment
>house at 7th Ave. and 14th St., where for a few weeks during WW2
>we could lean out the dining room window and see the black smoke
>rising from the French liner Normandy burning where it lay on its
>side at its dock at the foot of 14th St.
>
>There aren't many docks along the Hudson anymore. The riverfront
>is becoming people space, with miles of pathways for joggers, and
>skaters, and bikers. And there were a lot of them down there as
>we looked down from the roof. Dog-walkers too. Yes, the dogs
>still need to be walked here in New York.
>
>So, we decided to go down and walk for a bit ourselves. West Street
>is usually crowded with traffic, especially on weekdays, early in the
>morning and in the late afternoon. It's what the West-side Highway
>becomes here downtown. Today it was free of trucks, cars, taxis.
>Police cars and emergency vehicles were almost all we saw. But in
>the park and along the pathways used by joggers and bikers--lots
>of folks walking along, riding along, just standing or sitting staring
>south. Some people heading uptown, a couple with face masks
>hanging around their necks.
>
>We got down to Pier 40, just below Morton Street before coming
>to the police barrier, where two officers were turning people back.
>A block or two below, lots of emergency vehicles, ambulances,
>flashing lights, and beyond them the mountain of smoke where the
>WTC had been until this morning. Against the darkness of the
>smoke the white and green tower of the Woolworth Building
>seemed brighter and more elaborate than ever.
>
>Coming back up, we walked along Hudson Street (what 8th Ave.
>becomes south of Bleecker Street) and the scene was really
>strange--almost no traffic, some of the sidestreets barricaded
>(to secure the precinct house on W. 10th Street, a patrolman
>told me). Shops (almost all dark, with their security gates down
>and locked) were closed, as were most restaurants (all but a
>couple Chinese places). Even the White Horse was closed.
>
>At one point, a convoy of twenty ambulances went by, speeding
>north, with wailing police cars fore and aft. The ambulances
>I saw were from places as far away as Cherry Hill, New Jersey,
>just east of Philly. When emergency vehicles weren't passing by,
>the street had that eerie Sunday-morning sort of stillness to it.
>What wasn't there was what we saw--the taxis, the trucks, the
>twin towers (margarine sticks, I've enjoyed calling them) of the
>WTC, the business as usual.
>
>When we got home there were more phone calls and more TV.
>We learned from Timo (Lynda's son in Chicago) that Zach and
>Maggie had been heading this morning for Century 21, a big
>store right across the street from the WTC, to get Maggie a
>pair of shoes. Later, Zach called again and told us that he and
>Maggie had picked up people walking back into Brooklyn
>from Manhattan and ferried them home in their car. Folks on
>TV started wondering whether there wasn't some failure of
>intelligence involved in all this. Duh, double-duh.
>
>Hal "That's the way the world goes,
> and it's not going well."
> --Bertolt Brecht
>