Let’s groan!
They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Typo.
Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.
I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid, but he says he can stop any time.
I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can’t put it down
I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.
Velcro – what a rip off!
Don’t worry about old age; it doesn’t last.
“Democracy dies in darkness” – a quote from the Washington Post (I don’t have the article source)
17 years ago, 4 weeks after 9/11, I walked the perimeter of Ground Zero. I dubbed this “The Mile of Tears” and wrote about it in my blog The World Trade Center Journal. The images, the smells, and the dust, I shall never forget that walk. In the corner of a building’s entrance (all stores were shuttered during that time) I saw some dust piled into a crevice. Taking a plastic bag from my purse and carefully, tenderly, I scooped that dust into it. I felt that this was the last remains of the towers and might even contain human ash from when they burned.
That small bag of dust has been contained in a special box for all these years. Each 9/11 I place that small box in a prominent place in my house, along with a crucifix, a picture of the twin towers and candles. This is MY annual 9/11 memorial. This year it takes on a new meaning.
When the first responders ran to the WTC to rescue people they had no time to think about themselves. As we know many lost their lives in their acts of heroism during those ensuing hours. Later, hundreds of these first responders descended upon Ground Zero, to work on what was then known as “the Pile”, trying to locate anyone who might have been buried alive. Days, weeks, months passed that they worked down there, many without wearing any protective masks, inhaling the dark, gray, toxic dust. The same dust I now have in my little box.
Over the years that dust, lodged in their bodies, spawned cancers of all types. During these years they also had to fight for their rights for health insurance payouts, as one after another succumbed to the various diseases. Our heroes, those who died after that day in September, though not quite forgotten were never memorialized in either the WTC memorial or in the annual reading of names.
This year, that’s been rectified. The conceptual design for a new memorial at Ground Zero was unveiled Wednesday May 23, 2018 for the “Memorial Glade”. It will honor those first responders who labored for months on the toxic site and remember the neighborhood residents and workers also poisoned by the air.
Morgan Gstalter writes, “The 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center will be modified to honor rescue and recovery workers who have died from related illnesses. ‘The 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center is determined to build greater awareness about this unabating health crisis,’ Stewart and Greenwald wrote. Six large stone elements will be placed along a new pathway on the southwest side of the existing plaza.
‘The stones are worn and broken, but not beaten; they appear to jut up and out of the plaza as if violently displaced, and convey strength and resistance,’ according to Michael Arad.
Arad, along with Peter Walker, were the original designers of the 9/11 Memorial and also designed the addition.
The stones will mirror the path of the main ramp used by the rescue and recovery workers.
The 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund released new data earlier this month that found victims and first responders are reporting ‘increasing numbers and types of illnesses’ nearly two decades after the attacks.”
Morgan Gstalter – 05/30/18 11:24 am edt “Jon Stewart announces new section of 9/11 memorial to honor first responders” http://Thehill.Com/Homenews/News/389879-Jon-Stewart-Announces-9-11-Memorial-For-First-Responders-Who-Died-From
And the path will end near the Survivor Tree, the enduring symbol of the city’s resilience.
Word Power 