We are all AMERICANS

May YOU walk in Peace and light,

 and recognize

that God isn't on anyone's side.

 There are no sides

to a circle,

and we are all part

of the same circle,

the Planet Earth.

Warmest blessings

Rev. Judi coyote crone

Native and Natural

http://www.geocities.com/jarm48/ayukii.html

ULC Ministry Archives

http://www.geocities.com/jarm48/ministry.html

JUST AN AMERICAN

I know we have all received

some very beautiful pages

and our email has been full.

I have read everyone sent and tried to reply to all.

This is a VERY special, fast loading page

. The piece was sent to me

from my very dear Australian friend, Kate.

Thanks Kate.

This shows the TRUE heroes.

I send my deepest sympathy to all countries

that lost family and friends.

I am very proud to be an American.

I know you will enjoy this very touching work.

Karen did a great job on the graphics also.

Blessings Always,

Samantha

http://members.tripod.com/~SamanthaS_2/IM-JUST-AN-AMERICAN.html


UP CLOSE- THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS


Today

 I thought I'd try my luck at getting down

at least to 14th Street
where, television news reports said,

the public was being stopped by
police.


By the end of the day,

I found myself not 200 yards from the wreckage of
the
World Trade Center,

sitting on a tall pile of bricks

 with my camera,

a
notebook and three surgical masks.

I thought I'd try to tell you all
what I saw between 14th Street and that pile of bricks.
.
The subway stop

 that runs downtown on the West Side

emerges right in
front of
St. Vincent's hospital,

 which I'm sure you guys have seen on television.
Disturbingly

little action was to be seen by the hospital.

 At a
Starbucks nearby,

a woman came rushing in to the coffeehouse

 begging the
employees for coffee -

 "The doctors have run out," she said.

 "Please,"
she said.


.
The closer you get

 to the southern downtown tip of Manhattan,

the harder
it is to breathe -

the smell is so acrid, the air so harsh.

 It was
another gorgeous day here in New York,

but visibility downtown was
fairly hazy.


.
As I walked the blocks farther downtown,

more and more people had
surgical masks,

 but drugstores across the area were sold out.

 A Hispanic
woman and her young daughter

 sold American flag bandanas and flags to
passersby near a newsstand.

I used an old camp bandana to cover my nose
as I breathed.
.
The first police barricade I encountered

ran along the entire island,

 a
policeman told me.

They were only letting in emergency workers

 and
people who lived south of the barricade

and could prove it with a
specially-issued ID.

I am neither,

but it was easy for me to walk into a
large office building with an entrance on the north side

 and slip out
the door on the south side.


.
No one noticed me.

 Not the security guards sitting inside the building,
not the soldiers posted on every corner,

not the blue-shirted policemen
by the barricades.


At first,

I thought to myself,

 "My God! I am so intrepid and sneaky, I
can't
believe I made it past that."

That emotion was closely followed by
anger.

 If I

could get past a police and military barricade,

who knows
who else could??

 I was so pissed at the lack of security

 that I just
fumed past the next few blocks,

noticing little.
.
Rounding a corner crowded with pedestrians,

I passed a group of doctors
whose pant legs were covered in a white soot.

One of them looked me
right in
the eye and as I passed him,

 wordlessly handed me a surgical mask to
replace
the bandana I was using.

He said nothing,

I said nothing,

not even
"thanks."

I don't think I'll ever forget that gesture.
.
In a crusty old Irish bar farther south,

construction workers and
firemen crowded in with the posh Villagers

and chic artists of the
neighborhood,

 beers being served side-by-side with martinis and white
wines.
.
I got past another police barricade later:

simply by stepping over the
Police Line -

Do Not Cross yellow tape

where it sagged a bit between two
trash cans.

 No one tried to stop me,

 no one even looked up.

Police were
busy answering the questions of bike riders

who wanted to know how they
could reach their apartments,

 now blocked off by young soldiers from
Omaha and Toledo,

 now guarding thick urban streets.
.    
I had really reached an area now

where almost no one remained.

I saw a
few
people lugging suitcases,

heading north, away from the rubble and smoke.


They had grabbed whatever necessities

they needed

 and headed uptown to
stay with friends or family members.
.
Suddenly,

I really saw what had happened.

I had maneuvered my way around
policemen and soldiers,

sliding in and out with a group of Hispanic
contractors who were headed for Ground Zero.

 No one seemed to notice
that I
was the only blond, white woman in the group

with a North Face backpack.


No
one questioned me

 or my presence

so close to the death zone.

 And death
zone it is.


.
Emerging onto Reade and West Broadway,

I was only two blocks from the
World Trade Center.

 Only two blocks

from where it had once stood.

 In its
place now is a pile of what reporters keep calling

 "rubble."
.
It's not rubble.


It is an enormous mass of twisted steel and metal,

 thousands of broken
windows and jagged metal parts.

It is a building

 - a mountain -

of
wreckage

nearly 10 stories tall

I would estimate,

of an ugly, raw,
unorganized and horrifyingly intertwined mess.
.
From this hugely tall pile

rise clouds of smoke,

as if someone had just
thrown water on a blazing campfire.

 It's hot.
It's Smokey,

 hard to see and breathe.


Television cannot do this sight justice.
.
No two-dimensional media

can relay
to you what it LOOKS like.

It is horrifying.

In three-dimensions,

it is
surreal and disturbing enough

to make you nauseous.

 In between buildings
nearly 40 or 50 stories high is a huge hole;

a cleared area large enough
for a few football fields.

And occupying this hole,

like some sort of
bogglingly huge and gripping cancerous mass,

lie -

no,

STAND

 - the
remains

 of what was once

the World Trade Center.

 It is a mountain.
.
It's hard to imagine

stepping onto any part of this mountain,

 let alone
trying to extricate someone

buried a few stories down.

 It IS a mountain.


It is enormous.

 It's hard to imagine getting any nearer

 than where I
was, let alone

 trying to survive,

 buried beneath it all.
.
Cars down there,

 emergency vehicles

and civilian vehicles,

 are covered
in dust and debris,

 gray ghosts still parked on the street.

 Their black
and white images are splashed

 with the colors of purple lilacs tucked
under their windshields

 in remembrance.

 Yellow roses have been placed on
the burnt out, metal frames

of what were the seats of some cars.


"Fuck you bastards"

is etched in the dust on some cars,

"We will
rebuild"

and
"The USA loves you,"

on others.
.
The main artery

 into Ground Zero is the West Side Highway

overlooking
the Hudson River

where I found myself at the end of the day.
.
Lined up for miles and miles

along the length of Manhattan

 are hundreds
of rescue vehicles,

 ambulances,

police cars,

specialized fire vehicles
marked
"Decontamination,"

"Asbestos and Construction Removal"

and

 "Collapse."
.
They can't

get in to the site,

 there are simply too many of them.

But
they are lined up waiting for when they will be needed.
.
I sat there,

on this stack of bricks,

 a construction site's plans to
build a
new skyscraper

or

 condominium complex

now forgotten,

and looked at

what
was in front of me.
.
Red Cross volunteers,

yelling

that they had Tylenol

for whoever needed
it,

eyewash for those whose eyes

were stinging too badly.

 McDonald's
reps carrying huge trays of chicken mcnuggets,

handing them to reporters
on the scene,

volunteers,

 firemen and onlookers.

 A golf cart shuttled
rescue workers in and out;

 it was probably the only kind of car

that
could maneuver its way in and out of the rubble.
.
Though

 there are blips of emergency sirens,

 there really are hardly no
sounds.

 It is too quiet for this,

one of the busiest sections of
Manhattan.
.
On the way back uptown,

 NYPD

and

NYFD

vehicles leaving the scene are
applauded by crowds of the people

of downtown Manhattan

 who line the
West Side Highway,

 carrying flags and signs saying

"We love you

 and
thank you,"

 "America's heroes,"

and

 "You are our lights."
.
A man in his seventies

 stands on the highway divide on a concrete wall,
waving a very very old flag back and forth,

in slow salute.

Above all of
this hangs a huge cloud of dirty,

polluted brown debris dust.
.
"I have a present for you,"

 comes a voice to me through a chain link
fence.

 A rescue worker,

 wearing neon orange coveralls and heavy
workboots hands me a mask,

 saying,

 "You really should be wearing long
pants,

you're going to be itching all night.

The asbestos levels here
are 20 times the accepted levels."
.
Again,

another act of just - total generosity.

The simplest things down
there...

he was offering me

the the opportunity

to breathe better.

 My
God.
.
A few other onlookers

 like myself had made our way down that far.

We
shouldn't have been there.

 But no one made us leave.

 There, among the
emergency vehicles,

the concrete dust

and the piles of baby wipes

used
to cleanse the grime from rescuers' faces,

we could share something.
What it was,

I don't think any of us knew.

But at least we were
together.

At least we had all SEEN.

 That may have been the most
important thing.
.
In a city that craves and lauds its anonymity,

 this thing has brought us
together in some horrifying way.

People who pass one another on the
street below 14th Street

 don't smile at each other or give greetings.
.
They look glazed into each other's eyes

or nod,

 understanding exactly
what it is that is going through

the other person's mind,

though I don't
think that either one could describe it in words.
.
We are inoculated

 by the pictures we see on television.

 After seeing
the same plane

ram into the same tower

over

and

 over

a hundred times,

 we
don't really want to see it again.

 We've been there, done that.
.
We move on now,

 on to the next step,

on to the who did it's

 and the
retaliation effort.

Reporters remind us that the real characters

in this
story are

 those who were killed,

or who are missing relatives.

 We nod,
yes, of course,

and after awhile,

 our minds drift again

to who planned
it,

what the president is doing, etc.
.
These people

 were not

 "lost,"

as they keep repeating on TV.

 They aren't
just
"gone."

 Such words do not describe what I saw today.

 I SAW that
wreckage.
And the people who died in it

 died deaths of unimaginable magnitude.
Huge metal girders rammed into them,

 they were riddled with glass parts
and nails,
they were crushed

 by tons and tons of steel and concrete.
.
I don't think I will ever be the same

 after seeing what I saw today;

a
city of desperate ruins

within

 a city of desperate citizens.

 It is only
matched by pictures of London in World War II.
.
To imagine

the human struggles going
on inside and around it...

incomprehensible. .
A rescuer told an idiotic reporter

who had the nerve,

 the gumption,

 to
ask him yesterday

"What he made of all this,"

 stared at him dumbly

 and
replied

 "Words fail."
.
My friends...words fail.
.
But I tried.
.
Join me in praying for those people tonight.
.
Maggie Shnayerson

PLEASE CONTINUE