TheObiBlog

I post this story every year. Paper trail: The guy who was my boss in 2001-02 sent this to me. His brother (who worked for Bank of America) sent it to him. The person writing the story (Cary Sheih) was a Bank of America GCIB associate who was in the World Trade Center during the attack.

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Dear All,

Now that I can begin to think clearly again, I would like to take the time to thank each and every one of you for your concern of my well-being. It was a very close call, and I am grateful to be alive.

As you probably all know by now, I narrowly escaped from the World Trade Center attack this past Tuesday, unlike the thousands who are still trapped beneath the rubble. At 8:48am on Tuesday morning, I was reading my email like I do every morning. I had just gotten off the phone with a traffic engineer at the Port Authority regarding a file that I had transmitted to him on the previous day. As I was finishing off my usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I heard a loud explosion, which was immediately followed by tremendous building sways and vibrations. As I was thrown out of my chair, I immediately thought that this was an earthquake, but still thinking rationally, I thought that it was abnormal since there are no earthquakes in NYC, especially of this magnitude. I remember thinking that the building felt like it was going to collapse from this initial explosion.

As I picked myself up and ran to the emergency staircase located in the core of the huge building, I saw through the east facing windows debris and fireballs falling from the top of the building. The building had stabilized by the time I reached the stairwell, and evacuation had commenced quickly but calmly. Not knowing the gravity of what was happening above us, people had started pouring into the stairwell from the hallways of the different floors. I saw a coworker from my floor (72nd), and we held and consoled each other.

There were no public announcements in the stairwell, but the evacuation seemed to be going smoothly, there were no more explosions as far as we could tell, no smoke coming up the stairwell, and the building had stopped swaying. We all felt like we were out of imminent danger. As we started to make it down the stairwell, people started chatting and gathering their composures. I heard some people who had been there in '93 telling others that this was a piece of cake since the stairwell was dark and full of smoke in '93. Others were joking about how Mr. Silverstein, who had just recently taken control of the complex, must be fuming at what was happening. A few moments passed and people began to receive messages over their pagers that a 767 had accidentally hit our building. There was no mention of a terrorist attack, and at no time was there any panic. Mobile phones were completely out in the core of the building due to its immenseness and the large distance from the core of the building to the exterior where signals were usually stronger. There was no smoke at all in the stairwell, but there was a strange peculiar smell, which I later remembered it smelling like how it does when one boards an aircraft. I later found out that this was jet fuel.

Soon we heard shouts from the people above us to keep to the right. I started seeing blind people, those with difficulty moving, asthmatics and injured people filing down to our left. People were burned so badly that I won't go into describing it. People kept filing down orderly and calmly, but stunned.

Sometime around the 30th or 40th floor, we passed the first firefighters coming up the stairs. They reassured people that we were safe and that we would all get out fine. By this point, they were already absolutely breathless, but still pushing upward, slowly and unyieldingly, one step at a time. I could only imagine how tired they were, carrying their axes, hoses and heavy outfits and climbing up all those stairs. Young men started offering the firemen to carry up their gear for a few flights, but they all refused. EACH and EVERY ONE of them. As I relive this moment over and over in my mind, I can't help but think that these courageous firemen already knew in their minds that they would not make it out of the building alive and that they didn't not want to endanger any more civilians and prevent one less person from making it to safety on the ground.

We continued down the stairwell, slowly and at times completely stalled. The smell of jet fuel had gotten so unbearable that people began covering their mouths and noses with anything that they could find - ties, shirts, handkerchiefs. Every few floors, emergency crew were passing out water and sodas from the vending machines that they had split open from the hallways. I had no idea how much time had passed by as I didn't have my mobile phone with me. Around the 20th or 15th floor, the emergency crew began diverting the people in our stairwell to a different stairwell. They led us out of our stairwell, across the hallway where I saw exhausted firemen and emergency crew sitting on the floor trying to catch their breaths. I began to think why? What's going on? This whole operation looked very confusing.

Nobody was giving us any indication as to what was going on. The wait in the hallway to get to the other staircase was excruciatingly long as we had to wait and merge with the people who were coming down the staircase into which we were filing. Why had they diverted us? As we started to get down to the lower floors, water started to pour down from behind us. I figured that a water pipe had burst or that it was water coming down from the rescue on the higher floors.

At this moment for the first time since the initial explosion, a sense of panic began to grip me. Only floor 7, then 6. A few more to go, and I would be free. I couldn't wait. It didn't matter that the water was ankle deep. I was a few floors from the ground. Floor ,,,,4,,,,then all of a sudden, a loud boom, and the building began to shake unbearably again. People started falling down the stairwell as smoke started to rise from the bottom. The emergency lights flickered and then went out. The building was still shaking, and I could hear the steel buckling. Rescuers below us shouted for us to go back up the stairs. At this moment, I was choking and shaking tremendously. I managed to climb back up to the 6th or 7th floor and opened the door to that floor. The water had already risen to my ankles, and the floor was completely dark. A fireman led us with his flashlights to another staircase by the voices of another fireman who was guiding him through the darkness. We finally made it across that floor to the other stairwell where we were greeted by the other fireman and told to hold. The look on that fireman's face said it all. He said something under his lips to our fireman indicating the severity of the situation.

With the image of the firemen communicating to each other and hindsight, I believe that the fireman had whispered to the other one that Building Two had collapsed.

After a few minutes of huddling by the stairwell on the 6th floor, we were given the green light to run for our lives. I made it down six flights with a few other people and came out onto the mezzanine level of our building. I don't know what I was expecting to see when I got out of the stairwell, but I was not ready for this apocalyptic scene. It was completely covered in white dust and smoke. My initial reaction was that I couldn't believe that one plane, albeit a 767, 80 floors above our head caused all this damage on the ground floor - inside. I covered my head and ran towards the huge opening in the north side of the building through which we were being evacuated. As I approached this threshold, the firemen yelled to us to get over to the wall of the building quickly. Debris was still raining from all sides of the building. We could see the other firefighters who were outside standing underneath the cantilevered parts of the black immigration building (4 and/or 5 WTC). At their cue, we ran from our building to the outside world and back underneath the immigration building. I was completely disoriented, coughing, and looking at the strange new landscape at the WTC plaza - burning trees, wreckage, fireballs and dust, nothing short of a nuclear winter. I climbed over huge pieces of steel wreckage and made my way through to the skybridge leading to 7 WTC (building 3 to collapse). From there, I descended the escalators down to the street level onto Vesey Street and trotted to safety onto Church Street. I immediately looked back and saw the charred remains of the upper floors of my building. Smoke filled the sky, and I began to have this eerie feeling that WTC 2 was not there. I couldn't be sure because of all the smoke that was billowing from my building blowing eastward. As I was trying to find WTC 2, I saw the unthinkable happen in front of my eyes. WTC 1 began to disintegrate from where it was burning. I turned around and ran.

I later learned that another 767 had hit WTC 2 around the floors where sit in my building. I later learned that WTC 2 had collapsed when we were still inside my building on the fourth floor when it began to shake for a second time. I later learned that I had been spared from the sight of people falling from the higher floors. I am grateful to be alive and uninjured and to be able to share this life-changing experience with you. And, I am so grateful for the courage of the firemen and policemen who gave up their lives to help us down the burning tower.

Sincerely,
Cary Sheih

Finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Started a big honkin' Rudyard Kipling collection.

I'm here to talk to you and challenge you. Education matters, and what you do today, and what you don't do can change your future.
...
Education means the difference between a good future and a lousy one.
...
You've got the brains. Now, put them to work -- certainly, not for me, but for you.
...
Fast-forward -- 5 years from now. Unless things change, between now and 1996 as many as one in four of today's eighth graders will not graduate with their class. In some cities, the dropout rate is twice that high or higher. Imagine: Out of a total of nearly 3 million of your fellow classmates nationwide, an army of more than half a million dropouts.
...
Let's make a pact then right here. Let's work to see that 5 years from now, you and your friends will be more than sad statistics. Give yourself a decent shot at your dreams. Stay in school. Get that diploma.
...
I'm asking you to put two and two together: Make the connection between the homework you do tonight, the test you take tomorrow, and where you'll be 5, 15, even 50 years from now. You see, the real world doesn't begin somewhere else, some time way down there in the distant future. The real world starts right here. What you do here will have consequences for your whole lives.
...
Don't say school is boring and blame it on your teachers. Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn.
...
Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart. I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid. If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now when they're stuck in a dead-end job? Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.
...
Let me leave you with a simple message: Every time you walk through that classroom door, make it your mission to get a good education. Don't do it just because your parents, or even the President, tells you. Do it for yourselves. Do it for your future.

That was back in 1991. Pres. Bush's remarks were broadcast live by CNN, PBS, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and NBC radio.

The Washington Examiner has a nice opinion up, talking about how some folks reacted to Pres. Bush's speech:

The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props,"
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"The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"
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Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance.
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The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it "cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters."

SOLILOQUY
by
William Shakespeare's Cat

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
the cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.
To sit, to stare outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt.
To prowl; to sleep'
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain.
Aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
That cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten?
Who would spaniels fear
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.







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The End of the Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe's Cat
from POETRY FOR CATS by Henry Beard

On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting,
I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for.
Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven,
Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door.
"Raven's very tasty," thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor,

"There is nothing I like more."

Soft upon the rug I treaded, calm and careful as I headed
Toward his roost atop that dreaded bust of Pallas I deplore.
While the bard and birdie chattered, I made sure that nothing clattered,
or snapped, or fell, or shattered, as I crossed the corridor;
For his house is crammed with trinkets, curios and weird decor--

Bric-a-brac and junk galore.

Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered,
In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth-- Nevermore."
While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up,
Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore.
Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore--

Only this and not much more.

"Oooo!" my pickled poet cried out, "Pussycat, it's time I dried out!
Never sat I in my hideout talking to a bird before;
How I've wallowed in self-pity, while my gallant, valiant kitty
Put an end to that damned ditty"--then I heard him start to snore,
Back atop the door I clambered, eyed that statue I abhor,
Jumped--and smashed it on the floor.







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Grendel's Dog A Fragment from /Beocat/
by the Old English Epic's Unknown Author's Cat
(Modern English verse translation by the Editor's Cat) from Henry Beard's /Poetry for Cats/

Brave Beocat, brood kit of Ecgthmeow,
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar, in whose high halls
He mauled without mercy many fat mice,
Night did not find napping nor snack-feasting.
The wary war-cat, whiskered paw-wielder,
Bearer of the burnished neck-belt, gold-braided collar-band,
Feller of fleas, fatal, too, to ticks,
The work of wonder-smiths, woven with witches' charms,
Sat on the throne-seat, his ears like sword-points
Upraised, sharp-tipped, listening for peril-sounds,
When he heard from the moor-hill howls of the hell-hound,
Gruesome hunger-grunts of Grendel's Great Dane,
Deadly doom-mutt, dread demon-dog.
Then boasted Beocat, noble battle-kitten,
Bane of barrow-bunnies, bold seeker of nest-booty,
"If hand of man unhasped the heavy hall-door
And freed me to frolic forth to fight the fang-bearing fiend,
I would lay the whelpling low with lethal claw-blows;
Fur would fly and the foe would taste death-food.
But resounding snooze-noise, stern slumber-thunder,
Nose-music of men snoring mead-hammered in the wine-hall,
Fills me with sorrow-feeling for Fate does not see fit
To send some fingered folk to lift the firm-fastened latch
That I might go grapple with the grim ghoul-pooch."
Thus spake the mouse-shredder, hunter of hall-pests,
Short-haired Hrodent-slayer, greatest of the pussy-Geats.



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The Hairball and the Mouse
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Cat

I chased a mouse beneath the stair,
It went to ground, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it ran, my sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I coughed a hairball in the air,
It fell to earth, I know not where;
For though my sight is sharp and true,
I saw not where that fur-bullet flew.

Some time aferward, quite by chance,
I spied them both in a single glance;
For the mouse in a corner lay dead,
A hairball lodged in his tiny head.



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TO A VASE
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Cat

How do I break thee? Let me count the ways.
I break thee if thou art at any height
My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight,
I sulk, or have one of my crazy days,
I break thee with an accidental graze
Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright.
I break thee out of pure and simple spite
The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise.
I break thee if I'm in a playful mood,
And then I wrestle with the shiny bits.
I break thee if I do not like my food.
And if someone thy shards together fits,
I'll break thee once again when thou art glued.

From the book: Poetry for Cats:
The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse
by Henry Beard

Tickets were cheaper than ever, so heck, we took them up on it. A flight to El Paso, a raft over the rio, and a burro to Juarez, and there we were. Free admission to the zoo - bunling got to say hi.

Kudos to MI5 for rolling up Operation Pathway before anything happened. 11 Pakistani citizens in the UK on student visas and one other guy all arrested in Merseyside, Manchester and Lancashire over Easter weekend.

From Stratfor.com:

According to press reports, the British MI5 surveillance teams assigned to monitor the activities of the purported plotters observed some of them videotaping themselves outside of the Arndale and Trafford shopping centers in Manchester, as well as at St. Ann’s Square, which lies in the center of Manchester’s main shopping district. Other reports suggest that the plotters had also conducted surveillance of Manchester’s Piccadilly train station, an intercity train station that is one of the busiest in the United Kingdom outside London, and Manchester’s Birdcage nightclub.

Not sure that I welcome the move from airplanes to shopping malls, but hey, if this change comes across the pond to us, at least your average joe will get a chance to shoot back.

Finished The Hobbit

Started Charlotte's Web