"[This book] embodies the Buddhist wisdom about change, life, and the
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June 4, 2007

SIGHTS FOR CLEAR EYES

This week New York Times writer Jim Dwyer, co-author of the classic September 11 chronicle, 102 Minutes, wrote one of the most clear-eyed essays in recent memory to effectively refute one of the predominant 9/11 conspiracy theories--the "mystery" surrounding the collapse of Building 7 in the late afternoon on September 11.

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DWYER & FLYNN'S 102 MINUTES (now out in paperback)

Wrote Dwyer, in his "About New York" column in the Times: “[T]he collapse of No. 7 became a focal point for people who suspected that the federal government had a malevolent hand in the Sept. 11 attack, particularly since the building’s tenants included the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense and the Secret Service, along with the city’s Office of Emergency Management."

Yet as Dwyer points out, many eyewitnesses, including firefighters he interviewed for the Times and for his book, had ample evidence to counter opinions from detractors such as ex-gabshow-host Rosie O'Donnell, who argued that the building, in her words, "got hit by nothing--47 floors and dropped, 5:30 [p.m.] into itself.... I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel....[I]t is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved."

According to Dwyer: “First, in oral histories, firefighters and commanders described retreating from No. 7 because of the expected collapse. Second, photographs taken from a police helicopter show that a large chunk of the bottom of the building had been destroyed by debris from the north tower; a comprehensive study by Popular Mechanics magazine concluded that along the bottom 10 floors, a quarter of the south face was knocked away.

"The pictures make clear that 7 World Trade Center was hit not, as Ms. O’Donnell said, 'by nothing,' but by tons of falling debris. And although steel does not melt until it reaches 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, federal investigators say that it loses most of its strength at around 1,800 degrees — a temperature reached in ordinary building fires. A federal scientific investigation into the collapse of No. 7 is scheduled to be released this fall.”

[For a related post, Click HERE.]

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Also this week, Helen Schulman published her new novel, A Day at the Beach, which focuses on a 24-hour period on "that day of the planes," as DeLillo would say. Sarah Towers praised it mightily in Sunday's NYTBR:

"Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11. Schulman’s triumph here is that she breaks our hearts with three who lived…. Schulman desacralizes 9/11, turning it into a literary device and using it to infiltrate the inner lives of Gerhard and Suzannah."

Finally, this week marks the 25th Anniversary of the opening of Vancouver's PhotoTherapy Centre. (The use of all kinds of imagery to help therapists help trauma victims is described on pages 267-270 of Watching the World Change; The PhotoTherapy Centre, founded by Judy Weiser, is described on page 392.)

As Weiser writes in a recent e-mail: "The PhotoTherapy Centre educates and provides training and consulting about the many uses of ordinary snapshots and family photos to assist in both therapy process and personal healing work….. The [Centre is also the] publisher for the book PhotoTherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums."

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[For interested parties: a year from now there will be a conclave addressing this very subject. THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PHOTOTHERAPY AND THERAPEUTIC PHOTOGRAPHY is scheduled for June 16 to 18, 2008, in, of all places--Turku, Finland, natch.]

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