[queerleft] NEW YORK TRADE CENTER BOTH BOMBED
Marc Stauffer
Hank wrote - " Anyone else freaking out"?
YES!. My lover was having coffee in our living room window which looks
down upon the Pentagon. He was listening to the TV reports from NYC when he
noticed a plane coming in low and fast and on the wrong trajectory to land
at Reagon-National Airport He watched and saw the place hit the Pentagon
and as it erupted in flames. He is in total shock and tears and has been
periodically since then. He called me in a panic - feeling he didn't know
what to do.
I was at The Washington Post already gearing up for the NY story when he
called - I told our people who asked how in hell do you think that. I told
them my spouse had called and had just seen the crash. I left work and
tried to get home. Metro stopped at Arlington National Cemetery and I
exited. Since I know the trails people use for walks - I managed to get
with in a quarter mile of the Pentagon. There I encountered a Washington
Post reporter and between our ID's we made it as close as the press was
allowed at that point.
From there they wouldn't allow me to get through to home - so I finally got
as far as the MP's guarding the highway and explained I needed to get home
to my lover. A Marine General told me that if I could duck, run low to the
ground and make it to the barged wire, concrete, and spiked fence and could
work my way through - He'd seen nothing. I make it with scratches, bruises
and some exhaustion to home. - elapsed time - two and one half hours. From
home we could watch with a better view than any news organization of the
Pentagon Fire which was still burning when I left home this morning. The
smoke seeped through the windows ( we're on the 14th floor of a high rise-
closest residential building to the Pentagon. ) Acrid smoke - a combination
between gasoline fire, a blast furnace - sulphur - and a substance I
couldn't identify. We spent most of the night up and down watching flames
erupt from the roof of the Pentagon and gagging from the smoke.
There was an eerie silence yesterday. I tried to drive 2 miles to get some
items in case this extended multiple days. It took me three hours to drive
two miles. The strip mall was closed - a usually crowded parking lot empty.
Security guards stationed in front of each store. No one walking. No one on
the street. I drove home taking various short cuts. The Crystal City
Business-Military complex closed, silent and vacant. Just me and an armored
personnel carrier - guards in front of every hotel but private and public
police on security detail.
A friend had told me recently to think of the question asked at the end of
the National Anthem. "Say does that star spangled banner yet wave?
It does my friends, it does! I watched through the smoke and the haze of
the Pentagon Fire and saw the flags around the Washington Monument through
the flames that burst into air from the Pentagon - flag was waving yet -
over the land of the free and home of the brave.
You might think it trite - but the citizens of your nation's capitol were
calm. The police efficient and dutiful. People were brave in the face of
attack after attack yesterday. We weren't under subject of the military -
it was the civilian police and disaster management people who kept calm -
answering questions as directly and as quickly as possible. They were
concerned about John Q. Public and individual problems.
The flag yet waves; we've survived; we will triumph.
copyright
M. G. Stauffer
All rights reserved.
contact Tyler St. Mark at Wildca...@aol.com for price and rights to
publish.
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This is message #655.
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