[vox] [OT] alive

[Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirMAPSac.org>]

hi all,

rhonda and i are both alive and well.  thank you, everyone, for worrying.
it's comforting to know that we have friends who care.

we were destined to go to the financial district on the 11'th.  basically,
the fact that we slept in late might have saved our lives.

i'm fairly certain that we won't be able to to fly home on sunday; there will
be a LOT of people ahead of us who are also stranded in new york.  we might
just ixnay the tickets and use the train to california.  depends.  i'm
guessing that we won't be able to fly until NEXT thursday or friday.
basically a 4-5 day delay.  and we've very anxious to get back to california.

i can't quite describe what it's like in new york right now.  you can watch
hours and hours of TV clips, but it coulodn't possibly capture the mood, the
feelings, the emotion and the devastation.  we watched the aftermath from
very far away; you could see the dust/asbestos cloud go all the way out to
the horizon.  we spoke to a fireman who lost half of his entire squad (24
people).  you could see the exhaustion and pain in his face.

i'm heart broken beyond belief.  watching the destruction of the twin towers
was enough to make anyone cry.  every day that i wake up, before getting out
of bed, i pray that the past few days have been a really bad dream.

the tv news showed clips of palestinians in jerusalem dancing in the streets,
singing and giving candy to children to celebrate the destruction of the
towers, the loss of perhaps 50,000+ lives, the halt of the finance markets
and the grounding of all flights in north america.  it was enough to bring
tears to my eyes again.

i won't be checking email for quite awhile.  there's basically no internet
here, and long distance phone service is spotty.   i might not see any replies 
until we get back to california.

sorry if this email was a bummer.  all in all, we're having as good of a time
here as can be expected.  most new yorkers are capable of surprising
compassion, and are a truly resiliant group of people.

pete

-- 
"The following addresses had permanent fatal errors..."      p@dirac.org
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