Andare, Partire, Tornare ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 911 So there are downsides to working so near the White House. We were caught in the upheaval caused by the horrible occurences today. I was upstairs in my office/hallway, idly listening to the radio with one ear and chatting with my boss, who was about to start interviewing somebody for another museum position. When the news first came out, I assumed some idiot had stolen a piper cub, or something, and had crashed into the buildings. We never expected something of this magnitude. They evacuated our building briefly, and then let us back in. Our museum instituted its disaster plan, which meant that we went to each period room and pulled things away from the windows, and took paintings down from outside walls so that vibrations wouldn't hurt them. Some items were wrapped in blankets just in case of flying glass. It was a surreal experience, but it was good to be doing something, rather than just sitting around and listening to the news, helpless. The sirens were all around us, as police closed off streets and cordoned off the roads near the White House. I'm still quite numb. Because I was at the office, I haven't seen a lot of the tv news on it, just radio, and I wonder if I'm still disassociating from what happened because of that. I did see the World Trade Center collapse, and something in my chest seemed to break free as I watched. While I was leaving DC, with other museum staff, we could see the grey plume of smoke from the Pentagon lifting up into the air. My god, everybody works at the Pentagon - neighbors, friends, it's the big employer in our area. The surreal thing was that the streets looked fairly normal, until you realized that there weren't enough people on the sidewalks, and suddenly yellow tape was appearing accross intersections to block them off until they could move in these rolling barricade truck things. I feel very shaky, and sad. It's almost too much for tears. I take that back. I just read an account of people in Stockholm holding a vigil in front of the US embassy with white candles, and just lost it. My god, my god, my god. 5:24 p.m. - 2001-09-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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