WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
![[5 Out of] 21 Vintage Snapshots Of Woman in Killer Sunglasses](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Women-In-Sunglasses-Vintage-Snapshot-Photos-18-768x967-1.jpg "[5 Out of] 21 Vintage Snapshots Of Woman in Killer Sunglasses")
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Gosh, witness to the world’s largest “controlled demolition”….Special.
My son was born August 31st, 2001, so I always know how long ago 9-11 was.
Surely the taker of this photo realized that something unbelievably horrific was going on, yet he posed this little boy for the photo. What kind of person would do this?
@Lynne, Keep in mind that tarriss had the pedal to the floor and that jet was going maybe 500+ mph (something like 6 miles a second), so when that person knelt to take that pik the 1st jet was off in the distance and probably of no concern (jets are over NYC all day long) and by the time they focused, told the kid to say cheesecakearooni, and then clicked, the jet made it’s impromptu appearance.
Uncanny? Yes.
Planned retardation? Doubtful.
It might have been a *she* that took the pik.
Notice how the other strolling pedestrians seem unconcerned – how cruel of them. heh
@ghostsniper — I don’t think your scenario checks out. That pic looks to me like both planes had hit some time earlier (note how dark the tower in the background looks mid-way down). And if the first plane had hit while the shot was being set up, we’d likely see flame in the smoke cloud and debris still in the air. And I’m not sure the pedestrians look “unconcerned” to me. I have the impression their pace is fairly quick, and they do all seem to be northbound. Before the towers actually collapsed, a lot of the folks leaving the area were more quietly shocked or kind of grumpy, if anything, rather than panicked.
While the kid’s binoculars might just be standard tourist equipment, I think it possible that he and his parent(s) came from their nearby home specifically to see what all the fuss was about, and to get a few shots of a pretty spectacular event in their neighborhood.
Lynne might consider it callous or ghoulish to behave in such fashion, I think it’s important to consider the moment, and the shock and cognitive dissonance that surrounded it. I myself was working in Midtown that day (made my way home, Dunkirk-like, via a ferry to Hoboken), and remember the shock and distance I felt — how weird it was to be in the presence of an event of such magnitude, and not having had time to process its significance. If I’d been where they were, with a camera in hand, I would likely have snapped some pics too, and if I was the sort of parent prone to photo-document my kid’s every move, I might well have done so here as well.
Geez, what is the world coming to when Ghostsniper is the sane one…
Could be wrong but, wasn’t the first plane to hit the highest?
(the 2nd plane was lower on the building?)
Also, notice the hole on this side of the building, the entry point?, thus the exiting debris would be on the opposite side?
Hey, it’s been 16 years and my memory may not be as crisp.
I was trying to blow Capt Browns brain housing group by coming up with a kinder reason.
I’m not familiar enough with the physical layout to be sure where the pic was taken, and which tower is the nearest. But the selfie phenomenon shows that people are weird, in that way. A bad car wreck will happen, and you will see folks doing selfies with the wreck in the background, steam rising, injured passengers still in the wrecked cars. This is not uncommon at all. It might have been uncommon in 2001, but it isn’t now.
I agree with ghostsniper, I don’t think those people on the bridge are yet aware of what’s happened behind them. Directly behind the little boy’s head is a person who’s stopped dead in his tracks and is staring at the disaster. Near the middle of the picture is one man who’s turning around to look. Maybe he sees the horror on the faces of people approaching looking up and behind him, and he’s turning to see what’s happening. The others are just minding their own business for a few seconds longer. At that distance, the normal thing would be to stop and stare. It’s not close enough for people to be fleeing in fear yet.
Man you guys clearly suck at photo interpretation. Based on the building to the left in the picture the little boy is about a block north of 230 W. St. He’s on the Hudson River Greenway. We’re looking South since the shadows are falling to the right in the picture. WTC1 (North tower) is the one in front and has clearly been hit from the North side. WTC2 has already been hit lower so it probably 10-15 minutes after the second plane hit at 9:03. The fireball has dissipated and smoke is coming from around the 78th floor (dark area) A picture taken from the southwest at about the same time can be seen at: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/attack/docs1/amanz/wtc9.jpg
As to why the person took the picture, you have no idea what they saw or didn’t see that morning… maybe they just walked across the street after getting up and saw the buildings on fire. Judging those you know nothing about is a task best left for Liberals. The photographer took a picture of a child at a moment in historic time….
Moments of shock and awe can make people do strange things.
Grandson same age as the kiddo in the photo and looked about the same.
I can imagine trying to distract the child by doing something normal…or maybe she just wasn’t paying attention to what was going on up in the air. Who knows.
You would have been surprised at how little noise it all made. people at that distance didn’t hear a thing. Only turned their backs to look when someone said, “hey, look at that?” Towers didn’t make a noise till they hit the street.
@Casey – our son too on 9/6/01. His due date was 9/11.
My wife spent many many nights after that trying to nurse our son at 2-3am while watching news coverage of searching for bodies, tears streaming down her face.
It’s hard for others to comprehend it but let me tell you, it’s quite an extraordinary emotional experience to have a baby and feel good about the world around you and the future ahead of your new child … and then a few days later, 19 despicable pieces of garbage murder a bunch of innocent people with airplane bombs because they hate everything about you, your religion, your history, and your civilization.
Greetings. That’s amazing and my son, now 20, has only ever known America at war in the Mideast.
We live in fly-over country, and I see no neighbors. It’s all wheat fields. The fly-overs are from the nearby airport and Fairchild Air Force Base. All of that stopped after 9-11. It was very eerie – just silence at night as I would take my son out to the front yard and feed him in the middle of the night. One night, around 3 AM, I held my baby in the front yard and the dead silence was interrupted by the sound a high flying jet going SW instead of West or SE, as is typical. 7 minutes later, same thing. 7 minutes later, same again. What repeated at 7 minute intervals was a flight of Air Force jets, in a combat formation over the USA, headed for Afghanistan. That was resolve; that was kinetic action and initiative.
I don’t regret one day of the hell we gave those goatfuxrs. Today, I have to listen to the news about Biden having droned the wrong man about a week ago in Afghanistan, and I have to recall 9-11 through the lens of a motherfucking repeat of Saigon/’75, but in Kabul. People jumping from the twin towers – fast forward to people falling out of landing gear wells.
OK to be angry now? Because I am.
And now the planes and bombs and even the muslims are gone (for now) but what remains is a vast host of your fellow countrymen so crazed that “they hate everything about you, your religion, your history, and your civilization.”
The enemy is inside the gate, and you put them there if you are a voter.
My wife’s birthday is today. I’ll never forget it. Why are we still in Afghanistan? Guarding the opium? Empires die there I’m told.
@chris : +1
Objective truth and sanity
toastsniffer publicly effs up again.
Well Frog. Republics can go to Afghanistan to die also. Our’s did.