December 10, 2006

Suzanne O., of California, writes in an e-mail...

I'm not quite sure how to put this...

I was visiting from LA.

I am a New Yorker - it's my true home.

I was there.

I am glad I was.

So you have my congratulations and my grateful thanks.

Amber, from Georgia, writes...

Hey there. i was actually writing you to say, That I was in school that day, and I was celebrating my birthday. I turned 14 that year. I have family in new york, thank goodness they were not hurt.

I have condoliences for the familys that lost their loved ones that day. I will never forget that day, and now everytime I tell someone when my birthday is, they
look at me and say, "Are u a 911 baby?" and I just kinda laugh it off.

Main point of this email is that people need to pay for what they did NOW, not 10 or 20 years down the road. Like I always say "If you take a life, then your
life should be taken"

I had to share that story, I thought it was a good story.

Thanks to all the firefighters, and policemen and brave patriots that helped out on the 9/11 attack. Thanks for keeping us safe.

Adam, a Minnesota reader, says on his blog:

Ah, fate is forcing me to put down Watching the World Change, at least for the moment. My library time is over, and I must relinquist to the next reader, who has placed a hold. Worry not: I shall request it again immediately and continue this harrowing path. . . .

It means something to read that [the author] cried. What I earlier felt -- the sorrow that must be performed -- is in him too. To extend his thesis (that we mediate crises through controllable snapshots), I'd say that we also perform our reactions, to mediate our crises. As watching the effigy is now equivalent to watching the event, so it seems natural that we must act as if it were occurring before our eyes. That's why the image of the Falling Man still makes me tear; that's what makes David Friend seem so close to me as he watches the tragedy played out as a music video on a grieving father's computer screen.

Dear Friend, thank you for performing your reaction so explicitly. It wipes away worries of ambiguity and false distance. My earlier-voiced concerns -- about the dearth of photographs and the pornographic aspect of the photos -- have also been addressed as I've continued to read. I admit ignorance regarding the number of 9/11 photo books in circulation. Perhaps I was purposely ignorant, or perhaps this is my first 9/11 through sheer chance. Regardless, it's only logical that this book is not a place to compile endless photography but to instead devote words to the effect these have had and will continue to have.