My name is Joan Fischer, and I'm pleased to introduce this event on behalf of the Wisconsin Humanities Council.
Whether this is your first festival or you're a long-time fan, we're very glad you're here.
First, I'd like to thank some of the people who helped make this festival happen. Our volunteers, who make your
festival experience a good one, and our more than three dozen festival sponsors, including the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation,
the Madison Community Foundation, and Isthmus weekly newspaper. Their support helps keep the
festival free to the public. While you're here, we hope you'll visit, at some point, the book sellers' lounge on the
second floor of the Overture Center. There will be books for sale and free coffee on hand.
And if you come on Saturday and Sunday after 1 PM, you might be one of the 200 people to enjoy a 10th birthday cupcake.
So free food, free food. You received two things on your way in: a survey and a birthday card.
You can help keep events like this one in our community by filling out the survey and by considering a small donation to
the festival's birthday fund. Your gift in whatever size can make a big difference. And last, some logistics.
After our speakers are finished, we'll have a few moments for Q&A. We do need to be out of here
promptly at 6:30, though. At the end of the event, the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative will be selling books and
hosting a signing with our authors right out here in the lobby. So just the way you came in.
And one final note, as Shakespeare once said, please turn off your cell phones. [LAUGHTER]
I did not make up that joke, this is the festival people. And now I'm excited to introduce
today's speakers who offer their very different perspectives, their distinct perspectives in Portraits of Manhattan Before
and After 9/11: Voice of a City. Richard Quinney, editor and publisher of "And Then Came the Liberators," is the author of
several books that combine autobiography and photography, including, to name a few, "Journey to a Far Place,"
"Borderland," "Where Yet the Sweet Birds Sing," and a "Lifetime Burning." He received the August Derleth
Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers for his book "Things Once Seen." His other books are primarily in
the field of sociology. He established Borderland Books as an independent publishing house of crafted books.
Now, regarding tonight's events, as the 1960s drew to a close, Richard Quinney walked the streets of Manhattan, camera in
hand, documenting the life of the city. After the events of September 11, 2001, the images acquired a
meaning and significance beyond anything he could have imagined. His book, "Once Upon an Island," includes photographs of the
construction of the World Trade Center and images that capture the experience of living on the island at the end of the 1960s.
After Richard Quinney, we will hear from Susan Fox, who lived near Ground Zero from 2002 to 2006 and focused her
compassionate pen on an overlooked part of the much-told story of September 11, the lives of the people and the affected
downtown New York neighborhood. From horror to recovery, she allows us to know her community, office workers, bartenders,
shopkeepers, priests, residents and more who came together to heal a scar. So we would first like to
welcome Richard Quinney for his part of the presentation. Please join me in applauding. [APPLAUSE]
Richard Quinney: Before then, this is 1969, the World Trade Center is under construction. You'll see it as the couple are
seeing it, as they're on the Staten Island ferry. And on the left is the first tower going up.
Walt Whitman walked the streets in the mid-1800s of Manhattan, and I want to quote a couple lines, four lines from him.
The question, oh me, so sad, recurring. What good amid these, oh me, oh life?
Answer. That you are here, that life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse. This is the verse that we are contributing. I have 67 black and white that I
wanted to show you. I was doing it at the same time I was doing color. I want to show you the black and
white and then go to the color world like "The Wizard of Oz" story. All of the sudden there's color.
I'm going to read some from my introduction voice over. Andy at the Historical Society is at the controls.
He's helped me with this project from the beginning of archiving them at the Historical Society. So I'll begin.
Once upon a time on the island, I walked the streets and the byways, camera in hand, seeing things I had never seen before.
I had grown up on a farm in Wisconsin. Early in my 30s in 1965, I moved to New York to teach at New York
University. I'd spent my early years farming the land and yearning to leave the farm.
Now it seemed I was where I was supposed to be. I was fascinated with the fact that I was living on an island,
the island of Manhattan. I walked 35 miles of the shoreline of the island, photographing along the edges.
Walking the edges of the island became a metaphor for the way I was experiencing my own life. I thought then that I was living
at the center of the world. I was witnessing the events and the movements of the '60s. In 1968, I began to photograph
in ways I had never photographed before. I was interested and instructed and inspired by the
photographers known as the concerned photographers. I took courses with Sandra Weiner and Cornell Capa.
And I met other photographers who were exploring the new cultural landscape. During those years in New York,
I photographed almost daily what I was seeing and experiencing. Usually I used black and white film and a 35-millimeter camera.
For several months with color film in my camera, I walked to lower Manhattan and photographed the construction of the World
Trade Center. The opposing and conflicting dynamics of the times could be seen as one world was coming
down and another was going up. I left the island at the beginning of the '70s. I sought relief from the
consumption of things both material and cultural, and I needed to pursue other possibilities with my life.
Eventually, I would move back to the Midwest to be near the farm. But what I have found on the island would never leave me.
These photographs are reminders of the life, my life, and the lives of others once lived on the island.
Music was a very important part of the photographing and the times. One of the songs that was
playing in 1969 was David Bowie's "Space Oddity." This is Major Tom to ground control; I'm stepping through
the door; and I'm floating in a most peculiar way; and the stars look very different today.
I walked the 35 miles beginning at lower, going to upper and coming down on the east side, and these photographs are
presented that way, and we end at Coney Island. And the last photograph of the man and the footprints in the
sand at Coney Island.
Moving to color. For 40 years I kept the photographs I had taken on the island, as the decade of the
'60s was ending. As I moved from one place to another, the sleeves of negatives and the trays of
slides moved with me from one closet to another. Someday, I thought, the documentation might serve some
unforeseen purpose. I did not know until September 11, 2001, that the photographs would take on the meaning and
significance beyond anything I could have imagined. Construction of the World Trade Center on the 16-acre site was
in full progress in the fall of '69 and the spring of '70, and would culminate in the completion of the 110-story
Twin Towers. The Trade Center's mission, backed by the world's largest corporations, was the
advancement of international trade. It was to become the central market of world trade.
With color film loaded in my camera, I walked from my apartment in Greenwich Village to the construction site.
On days that I did not teach, I spent the day at the site. I also carried a tape recorder to capture the sounds of the
construction. Eventually, I synchronized the photographs with sounds, Bach, organ fugues, the songs of The
Beatles, Harry Nelson singing, "I Guess the Lord Must be in New York City," and David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat
and Tears singing his song "Spinning Wheel," and David Bowie singing as the astronauts were walking on the moon,
"Space Oddity." Construction of the World Trade Center was taking place in the dynamic and social context of
the times. Lyndon Johnson had been elected president in '64 to deliver the great society.
And the war in Vietnam was going on, causing cut-backs in the program. Opposition to the war increased
and there were protest marches down 5th Avenue and we were in Washington in anti-war demonstrations.
In Washington Square Village and in the East Village along 1st Avenue and 2nd, another form of resistance was taking place.
Hippies and flower children, as the media called them, were on the streets and --. We were shocked and shaken by
the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Exhausted by the protests
against his policies, Johnson announced he would not run for reelection, and in January of '69, Nixon was inaugurated as
president. As I walked with my camera along the streets of lower Manhattan, I observed the times in a
microcosm. My proclaimed project was to document the changes that were taking place.
The public had not endorsed the building of the World Trade Center. Many regarded the project as a
triumph of corporate business over the public interest. Local merchants were losing their shops, and the
neighborhood was vanishing, bulldozed to make way for corporate headquarters. The police heavily patrolled the
area. Construction workers boldly displayed the American flag and protesters of the war and the
construction were present daily. There was excitement and fascination with the construction,
nearby residents, by visitors to the city, and much of the population of Manhattan. The sounds were of jackhammers
and pile drivers, the constant grind and roar of heavy equipment and the voices of the workers.
And there were the moments of repose. Workers lunching and taking breaks, talking to each other.
Men and women stood quietly and viewed the site. Vendors sold their wares on the street, and there was a
photographer inspired, releasing the shutter of the camera with great joy. On the morning of September 11,
2001, years after I had moved back to the Midwest, the radio brought the breaking news as the first plane flew into the North
Tower. Several minutes later, the second plane flew into the South Tower.
As the buildings collapsed, we could only begin to grasp the fact that lives were perishing. We sensed that the world would
never be the same. I looked anew at the photographs I made 40 years ago. Today, the red exterior columns
of the towers captured on film seemed like ghosts haunting the site. The Twin Towers in both their
construction and destruction are cultural icons that will have meaning for each generation to follow.
You may still see a postcard of New York City on a news stand or a photograph taken before September 11 with the towers
standing tall. You may avert your eyes, or you may stare in sober silence. I tend to do the same when
looking at the photographs that I made with such abandon many years ago. Always, as with all photographs,
we know that their use and meaning will eventually go beyond anything we can now imagine.
Photographs are a reminder of the impermanence of all things.
Thank you. Many years passed, and Susan moved to New York shortly after the downing of the towers,
and now we go to that portion. [APPLAUSE]
Susan Fox: During the weeks prior and following the 10th anniversary of 9/11, there was a bombardment of news coverage,
stories, retellings and events, and I was struck how absent my community was in almost all the programs.
The coverage that immediately followed the events, the months of recovery afterward seemed to blend with the anniversary
coverage. There was, as there were after the events, a focus on the rescue workers, on the dead, on
the families of the dead, on the wars that seemingly arose from the attacks, and on al-Qaeda and the terrorists.
My community, in essence, was absent. This absence disturbs me deeply for that community was the bread
and butter of the financial district after 9/11 until this day. In an article published in the
New York Times on September 5, 2011, 9/11 books released into a sea of others-- I'm just going to wait.
Okay. >> Sorry. In an article published in the New York Times on September 5,
2011, entitled 9/11 Books Released into a Sea of Others, I was particularly taken with the responses of literary agents,
publishers and bookstore owners who commented that there wasn't anything new, nor anything compelling, or any new
compelling material available. Peter Osnos, the founder and editor of Public Affairs, an independent publisher, was
quoted as saying, "I don't think anybody wants to underestimate what the impact on our society was on 9/11.
Having said that, a cascade of books and articles and programs and so on is so extensive that it's kind of hard to single out
something that would truly break through and change the way we view the event. Although I would not be so
presumptuous as to say that this book would indeed change how the events were perceived, I will say that it is part of the story
that simply was never addressed in any substantial way, and that absence does indeed affect how this event is perceived and will
be perceived in the future. Without the tenacity and courage of the residents, the corporate workers and the shopkeepers,
that area of New York would have simply become a ghost town, even more so than it already was. My husband Chris and I moved
from Washington, DC, to New York in August of 2002. Not quite a year before the first anniversary.
Chris was beginning a new job and I would be teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia, commuting by train
three days a week. We were excited and anxious about the move. We realized it would be a
difficult one, but nevertheless were energized in the adventures that awaited us. What I didn't know and couldn't
know is how this move would affect my life for the next 10 years. What I found when I moved there
was a community in distress, a community in deep grieving On some level I was surprised at this, as I did not intuit what
the community was going through and perhaps, unconsciously, generalized their experience that kept me at a comfortable
distance from the everydayness of their world. It would take me a while to begin to separate out what I was
experiencing of what was simply the stress of beginning a new life in a new city and taking on a new job to the daily stresses
of living at Ground Zero, the home of our country's largest attack. But after several weeks of
living there, I would begin to see the subtle yet ever-present distinctions that took place in my neighborhood and were absent
elsewhere. Part of this realization I can contribute to my commutes in the morning, and I would take the
subway in front of St. Paul's Chapel, the home of the respite ministry which comforted, fed and took care of
thousands of rescue workers during the clean-up at Ground Zero to Penn Station on 34th Street, then catch the Amtrak to
Philadelphia's Penn Station, and then finally catch the subway to Temple University.
The trip would take three hours one way, and I would teach roughly six hours and take the three-hour train and subway
rides back home. Although the commute was grueling at times, it allowed me to see what I could not see
before. As the people living north of Ground Zero and the country went on with their everyday lives,
the people at Ground Zero suffered what seemed to be endless noise, contamination, threats and continuous
provocation from the machines at Ground Zero and the constant reconstruction of roads and infrastructure that was damaged
due to the attacks. This in addition to what trauma they may have experienced the days of the attacks and the
psychological and health effects that were ongoing to the everyday events that they would witness in their neighborhood.
This portion that I'm reading is my first day commuting to Philadelphia and after I returned back to New York.
Once we arrived in New York, I realized the woman on the train re-invoked the emotions I experienced and suppressed that
morning. Even though the subway trip home was uneventful, I was filled with a nervous energy
incongruously accompanied by the gentle sadness that hung over the subway car. I exited the station in front
of St. Paul's, and as I walked up the subway stairs, there was chaos in the street. A naked man was running
from the sidewalk-- Excuse me, from the sidewalk, into the street and back again. He was being chased.
He appeared to be trying to tear down the tables that sold tragedy and cheap artifacts right in front of St. Paul's,
in front of the displays of mourning. The tourists stands sold mementos of 9/11, photos,
paintings, crystals with the images of the Towers etched in their centers. A CD on the computer played
films of the planes crashing into the towers over and over and over again as the music of Enya accompanied the images of
destruction. Shirts with the imprints I Love New York, NYPD and FDNY were sold as well.
Most of the sellers were African. They were chasing the naked man, trying to restrain him.
Was it the selling of these cheap tourist items that had provoked his outrage? Was he mentally ill or on drugs,
responding to something we did not see? Whatever the case, he showed us how we still were unsettled,
perhaps externalizing our own anguish. This man lost something, whether it was a loved one or his mind,
at that moment we were certain it was his self-control. I think of him frequently, wonder what has become of him,
of his distress. I wonder if he was or ever have been comforted. He remains a question roaming
inside my head like so many others for which I have no answers. The tables, tourists, the
mourning artifacts, the whole marking absence, these were the things I would see every day as I made my way to work and back,
these were the events. My initial trembling would remain for the next several months.
I needed all my resources and reserves to continue with the transition I would have to make in the next year.
What I had that my community did not was the power of distance from that tragic day. Although I lived in Washington,
DC, and our city was attacked as well, I was distanced from it, I was removed from the event itself.
I did not see the attack, I did not know anyone who had seen the attack and I did not know anyone who had died in the attack.
For the residents in my neighborhood, that day proved to be the most horrific beginning of a new world, not only in the
large sense that we as Americans experienced it, but in the fullness of the every day sense. They lost their homes,
businesses, their neighborhood and all sense of stability. I began to feel the difference day after day as I left the
financial district and walked to the village or Midtown, and even more so when I left New York. People carried themselves
differently, had different conversations, had smiles on their faces that seemed to come with ease.
Their entire comportment showed a different sense of being than those who lived and worked in my community.
And it was these subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle distinctions that would affect me daily until I realized I
needed to take some form of action, not only for myself but also my community. All of the residents that I
spoke with were displaced from their homes from a period of time. The shortest was for those who
lived northeast and west of Ground Zero, and that consisted usually of two weeks to three months.
The residents, however, south of Ground Zero were displaced for 16 months to a year and a half. All of the residents and
businesses had to contend with the infamous dust and debris inside their homes, inside their closets, inside closed boxes.
As Kenny, one of my interviewees, told me, "You do not have to tell dust where it goes, it finds its way by
itself." The residents and business south of Ground Zero were essentially destroyed.
Only the infrastructure was intact, which is amazing in and of itself given the proximity of their homes to the towers,
especially the South Tower. The majority of their possessions, however, were unsalvageable.
Foreign objects were found in their homes by the force of the collapse such as car engines, computers, a Raggedy Ann doll,
a bag of shoes and, of course, thousands and thousands of corporate papers. The residents from 125 Cedar
Street, 114 Liberty Street, as well as the building where my future apartment was housed, 120 Greenwich Street all contained
human remains. My street alone, which is Greenwich and Albany and Washington, there were over 250
body parts that were collected from the hundreds of jumpers or from the simple force of the collapse of the towers.
The residents and businesses south of Ground Zero were in charge of cleaning up their apartments and buildings by
themselves. The residents at 125 Cedar Street dug themselves out and removed their belongings for
over one year before the government came in and pronounced their homes dangerous and a health hazard because bone
fragments were found in a nearby building. After throwing the residents out, the Department of
Environmental Protection decided to finish the job. At this point, the majority of the work had been done and the
residents had removed most of the debris, but as a consequence, many of their belongings were thrown out
without their permission. Throughout the whole experience of cleaning out the debris, all of the residents and many of the
businesses had items stolen from their homes or work places. Many of the residents at 125 Cedar Street were artists and
everything from their artwork, ladders, radios, alcohol and tools were taken by those who were allowed in the area, mainly
the National Guard, the police officers and the firemen. The majority of the businesses' corporate workers' offices were
also looted. This was left out of the media coverage as well as the thievery that took place at Ground Zero
during the rescue efforts. Anon, one of my interviewees and volunteer workers at Ground Zero, chose to remain anonymous
for fear of reprisal from the firemen she witnessed taking possessions of the dead. The last straw was when a
woman's ring, which was quite expensive and clearly a family heirloom, was taken as booty by a fireman and shown to her on
Mother's Day 2002. That was her last day of working on the pile. Anon felt relief when William
Langewiesche published American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center which exposed much of the theft that took place at
Ground Zero. Many of the buildings in lower Manhattan were still contaminated, and nearly eight
months after the attack, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to launch a comprehensive inspection and
clean-up to ensure toxins did not contaminate apartments near Ground Zero. The Department of Environmental
Protection, the DEP, carried out the inspection and clean-up. This comprehensive inspection included only one contaminate:
asbestos. The Deutsche Bank, which actually on the cover which stands here, was finally fully
taken down in January of this year. The Deutsche Bank was taken over, eventually, by the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation in 2006, and LMDC was created by Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani in order to
begin the process of redevelopment in lower Manhattan. The Deutsche Bank and their
insurers were battling in court over the integrity of the building, whether it could be repaired or whether it could not
be. Because it would have continued to be in the courts for an extremely long time, the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation purchased the building from the Deutsche Bank and all of the legal documents
and terms of that transaction are sealed. If you remember the image of the South Tower collapsing, the top
portion of the tower collapsed and it fell south. It went over the Deutsche Bank and hit 120 Greenwich Street,
where I live, damaging much of the north facade of the building. And, of course, the Deutsche
Bank was, I think 16 floors, there were gashes 16 floors wide in that building. So the South Tower, things south
actually were damaged more with the exception of the community college north of Ground Zero when the North Tower fell was
also heavily damaged as well as World Trade Center 7.
The Louis Berger Group was hired by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the LMDC, in order to conduct an
environmental study of the building that was independent of the Deutsche Bank's and its insurers' inspections.
What was found was lead, mercury, asbestos and dioxins, some of the most toxic chemicals to human beings and the most
threatening. Yet over 120 toxins were found. Measurements of the first four toxins, lead, mercury, asbestos
and dioxins, were found on every floor of the Deutsche Bank.
And in some cases, on some floors was found 1000 times the amount that was acceptable for human contact.
This extensive testing was not done in any of the residential properties nor any of the businesses, with the exception
of those who could afford it on 114 Liberty Street. This book is dedicated to three of my interviewees who so
unfortunately passed away before this book was published. Andy Jurinko, who lived at 125 Cedar Street who was an artist,
died of pancreatic cancer on Valentine's Day of this year. Leonard Rosenfeld, also a painter who lived on Broadway,
east of the World Trade Center, also a painter who witnessed the jumpers from his apartment, and also when he went to the street
to have a better look he painted paintings of angels in dedication to those jumpers. He died December 2009.
And Giovanni Natalucci, who owned Giovanni's Italian Restaurant, and lived and worked in the area for over 20 years,
died in 2004. The book is also dedicated to Jennifer Wong, a former student of mine from Binghamton
University who died in the attacks on the 95th floor of the South Tower.
For many Americans, the disappearance of the World Trade Center Twin Towers is symbolic, an act of aggression hurling the
United States into a war we'll be fighting for the duration of our lives. For those living in Greenwich
Village, SoHo and as far north as Midtown, the towers loomed at the bottom of the island as a navigational tool, a man made
compass. For the residents of the financial district in Battery Park City, a more intimate
transformation of their lives would begin. They would have to summon the strength to rebuild their lives
without their homes, their neighborhood and their security. For those residents, it would not only be about the absence of
the Twin Towers but the other five World Trade Center buildings as well. The grief over the changed
landscape is not simply a feeling of loss but a complex emotion tied to their every day lives, to their conscious and
unconscious thoughts, the memories that sometimes flood their minds as they walk past a once familiar, now unfamiliar,
landscape. On September 11, 2001, their homes, neighborhood and their way of life were transformed,
and for the duration of the next decade their neighborhood would move from a war zone, and international crime scene of the
largest terrorist attack in history to a 10-month rescue effort and finally to a construction site where
thousands of tourists flock daily. The residents have and are continuing to endure this
transformation, always with the realization that their neighborhood may once again be a target.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]