Hello, survivors:
It is possible that this newsletter is a little late. Sorry about that. All week I have been seeking distractions. Here are some:
“Word fact of the day: wend was once a regular alternative to the verb go. It is fossilized in the phrase wend our way. Go eventually took over, but we still use the past tense of wend — went — rather than goed.” (from @susie_dent on Twitter--I am guessing that simple future tense will wend was where the original verb first started to get replaced by go because shall we wend? is a bit of a tongue twister. Also I wonder if wending is more aimless while going is more direct?)
Why do people keep saying “pre-register” for an event? Isn’t it just “register”?
Why do rabbits have feet and not paws?
About 9/11:
Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, my husband and I were a block away in 2001, and yes the 20th anniversary hit pretty hard. I read a powerful interview with another longtime downtown resident in a local paper and this struck me: “as I’m getting older, I glance at my photographs because memory is softening and I’m surrounded by people who don’t even know of that day and I have to remind myself that yes — it happened.” - in that light I pulled up some stories I wrote that used my knowledge of the area around that time.
“Each tower had its own Zip Code. 10047 and 10048. Are they now available? Or were these numbers retired, like the baseball uniform of a great player?”
That sentence is actually from a really chilling short story that was published in Oklahoma Review in 2006 on the 5th anniversary of the event. Please be advised the imagery in this story is as chilling as it is compelling. I wrote a great deal to process things I had seen and experienced, and I used those images as well as writing stories based on experiences others had gone through, my writing from back then is pretty vivid. This one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. If you are interested in reading the whole short story, it is here.
Thank you to those of you who attended the Society of Arts & Literature fundraiser that I read at with Cheryl J Fish on September 11th (last night). It wasn’t at all easy for me to be out on that particular day, nor to be discussing the events of that day. But it was lovely to be with such a beautiful community of resilient humans. We are a decent species. Thanks to Marianne Huntington for creating the opportunity and for being such an avid supporter of Pen Parentis.