ANNIVERSARIES:...The 22nd For Sept. 11, 2001...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

NEW YORK, N.Y. | It wasn't a place I'd hang out at, not the World Trade Center towers. Too far in South Manhattan. Greenwich Village, yeah, the towers, what for? There was a great restaurant with a view at one of them, I was told when I lived in New York and wrote for the sensationalist NY Post.

Those were great days, yes, ones for remembering other haunts, however, not the famous towers that would fall in the stunning terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

The restaurant had a great view of Upper Manhattan, primary in the scene being the also-tall Empire State building in mid-Manhattan. Today is the 22nd anniversary of the downing of the towers, and there will be a lot of bad memories and remembrances in the Big Apple and across the country.

New York City is as resilient a slab of geography as there is on this God-abandoned planet.

As we know, it overcame that horrible day and a new tower has risen place of the iconic old duo. America grew up that day. A scene better suited for war had come home. London had been bombed mercilessly by the Nazis in WW II, the U.S. mainland never.

Seeing the towers fall and the resulting pile of debris was a war scene, no doubt.

With any luck, we won't see another such attack, although we all know we live in a world gone crazy. Life is short enough without being killed in such a bloody way. There were more than a few of the unlucky to be in those towers that day who choose to jump to their deaths and not be fried by the raging fires brought on when the two airliners tore into the buildings.

You can still see video of that on Youtube, nameless Americans who saw no other way out of the disaster, who perhaps sought only one last breath of fresh air...

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