Twenty-one years after the fact, and I can’t see a cloudless sky without thinking of September 11, 2001. I remember that day and those that followed as having intensely blue and cloudless skies.
I remember that cloudless sky as well. I had just dropped off my older (crying) daughter for her first day of preschool and was headed into the office in Boston. She's out of graduate school by a couple of years now and has started her career, but I'll never forget calling the office to alert people of what I'd heard on the radio on my drive. We had 5 people that left Boston's Logan Airport that morning for a business trip to NY. Fortunately, they weren't on AA11 and were all safe, though stranded in, I believe, Brooklyn.
I remember being on the phone with a friend (here in Illinois) who said, “I gotta go — a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.” I assumed it was an accident, as when a small plane hit the Empire State Building decades ago. And then I put on the news and began to understand what had happened.
“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
Don’t look for premiums or coupons, as the cost of the thoughts blended in ORANGE CRATE ART pro- hibits the use of them.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
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Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
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Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
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Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
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Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
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I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
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I’m not afraid to get it right I turn around and I give it one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
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L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
comments: 4
I remember that cloudless sky as well. I had just dropped off my older (crying) daughter for her first day of preschool and was headed into the office in Boston. She's out of graduate school by a couple of years now and has started her career, but I'll never forget calling the office to alert people of what I'd heard on the radio on my drive. We had 5 people that left Boston's Logan Airport that morning for a business trip to NY. Fortunately, they weren't on AA11 and were all safe, though stranded in, I believe, Brooklyn.
I remember being on the phone with a friend (here in Illinois) who said, “I gotta go — a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.” I assumed it was an accident, as when a small plane hit the Empire State Building decades ago. And then I put on the news and began to understand what had happened.
Blue, cloudless... and quiet.
Right — no planes.
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