Thanks for Steve Perry’s honest assessment of the post 9/11 prettification. If the experience is edited down to the fiery explosions, a few brave men raising a flag, and a sweetly stoic wife, you’ve got a Bruce Willis movie. The horror that is the reality is, I suppose, depressing and therefore un-American. I worked across the street from the WTC and after we evacuated our building I looked up from the street and saw people plunging from the towers, some of them flailing arms and legs wildly as if something, someone could stop their fall. My colleague looked away and asked, “How can you watch?” But how could I not? I think I said something like, “This is what is happening.” I was thinking, this is it. This is the truth, and it’s terrible. Of course, my colleague and I eventually did turn our backs, literally, to flee up the West Side Highway. But it sometimes seems to me that as a country we want to turn our backs to everything that doesn’t suit our group psyche.
Wendy Brandes
New York City
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