Just trying to do our jobs . . .
It started out like any other workday, Sept. 11, 2001.
My Tommy Cat wakes me up about a minute before the clock alarm would go off at 5:45 (uncanny how he does that). We start the morning routine: to the bathroom, then Tommy leads the way to the kitchen to be fed, I flip on Channel 3 news on the way. After feeding the cats (Lefty is now also mine after a neighbor abandoned him), I start the coffee, then go brush my teeth.
Coming back through the bedroom I hear Charlie and Diane on the television - what are they doing on so early? Did we lose power during the night? Are my clocks wrong? I hurry into the living room to check out what's happening. Oh, my God!
I sit with Tommy on my lap, sipping my coffee and watching the events unfold for about an hour, more aghast every minute. Seeing the second plane crash into the second tower told us all with no uncertainty that these were planned attacks. But why? Who? Then the Pentagon, too. Oh, my gosh, how much worse can it get?
When the first tower crashed, I bolted upright, put Tommy on the chair - I wanted to run and scream, but I was frozen, stunned. It was too terrible, unreal, unthinkable. Oh, dear God, this was too awful to comprehend.
My mind was reeling, my heart was pounding as I hurriedly dressed for work. I was already later than usual and wondered what would lie ahead for us at the Ojai Valley News, where I work mainly as an editorial assistant. What changes would we have to make to the Wednesday edition we would be putting together that day?
Driving into Ojai from Meiners Oaks, I wondered if everyone knew yet. Some people don't get up and watch the news first thing in the morning. I was grateful that when I got to work Jodie Miller, our business manager, would already be there. She gets in around 7 a.m. every day, and she's a newshound, so she would know. I didn't think I could possibly try to explain it to anyone. Thinking about the office, I suddenly remembered that we had two co-workers who were on vacation on the East Coast - Cheryl Anne Gilman was in Boston visiting her first grandchild (oh God, she wasn't flying back today was she?!), and Phil Wikel and 4-year-old son Dylan were in South Carolina visiting Phil's family. After greeting Jodie when I arrived at the office, this was one of the first things I mentioned. Yeh, she'd thought about that, too. She checked their schedules; luckily, neither was flying back today. But she would call them just to be sure they were OK. I was so grateful that I knew my three adult children (all in their 30s now) and my five grandchildren were all in California, out of harm's way (at least, physically).
We don't have cable television at the office, but we did get a radio news station tuned in. We began slowly, tentatively trying to figure out how to approach this painful day, with the national news changing by the minute. Bret, Lenny and Chris were making calls - to the Red Cross, to the Office of Emergency Services, to the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation - rearranging story priorities and front-page layout. Tension hung heavy in the air. It was hard to concentrate. I don't remember eating lunch that day; I suppose I ate something at my desk.
I remember getting the somber call from Gloria Melendez (or was that the next day?). They had to cancel the Mexican Fiesta scheduled for Sunday; they couldn't possibly have a party now. They would have to find other ways to raise the scholarship funds. Then there was the call from George Walczak, director of the Ojai Film Festival. They couldn't possibly go ahead with the free screening of "The Planet of the Apes" now; it was scheduled for Friday evening at Libbey Bowl - they would hold a community vigil instead.
Somehow we trudged through the day; we got another edition ready for the press. That was our job and we did it. We were lucky - so many others didn't get to do their jobs on that nightmarish day.
The drive home was eery and muted. It seemed like everyone was moving in slow motion, there was no music from car radios, everyone waited an extra second or two at stop signs. We were all in pain, all overwhelmed.
Back at home, I had to watch the news on television, of course, I just had to know as much as I could, no matter how painful. I called my youngest son, Michael Talmage and his wife, Janice, in Ventura, first. They're my "local call." They were doing OK - I love you, I love you, too. They said my daughter (my oldest), Lorie Madrid, and her family were off camping. I called their home in Oxnard anyway and said I love you on the message machine. (She called me the next day. They had been frolicking by the lake when fellow campers came up to them and told them they had to listen to the news on their radio. They did. The frolicking was over. They packed up camp and headed home.)
Then my middle son, David Talmage and his wife, Toni, called me from Clovis. They knew I would need to hear David's voice, he is a captain with the Fresno Fire Department. What an agonizing day it had been for him and all firefighters and police. But he told me they were all just doing their jobs - jobs in which they took great pride - important jobs they felt good about doing, helping people and doing the best they could. Yes, I knew that, but but do you know how much I love you? Yes, Mom, I know. I love you, too. We'll be OK I love you, I love you, too.
Then I finally cried, and cried - and prayed for everyone and for strength to carry on in the grim days ahead. And I cried again; I don't know if I can ever cry enough.

- Linda Love Griffin, Ojai

Sept. 10, 2001
I was on a week-long motorcycle camping trip of California during September. I was heading down the coast from Eureka and took a photo of me and my Gold Wing in a drive-through tree in Leggett on Sept. 10 (I have since named that photo "The Day Before"). After setting up camp I called my sister in Vacaville and said I should arrive sometime tomorrow.
That was our biggest "concern"; what time I would arrive at her place on Sept. 11.
As I popped out of my tent the next morning at around 6 a.m. there was in erie feeling in the campground. I walked to a motorhome two campsites over and asked what was happening. They invited me in to see their satellite television and I saw one of the towers in flames. Then I saw the second jet hit. I felt terrible. When I would arrive at my sister's today just didn't matter anymore.
During the ride to Vacaville I felt very numb and that night my sis tried to show me around town, but understandably almost all the businesses were closed. So my sister and I went back to her place and prayed for the families.
What amazed me the most about the attack was the terrorists' planning. We have spent so much money and time in protecting our country from missile attacks from abroad and here it was done all from within. This group used OUR flight teachers, OUR jets, OUR fuel, OUR airports, OUR passengers and OUR packed buildings to accomplish this. We provided them with all the tools they needed for the attack, and that's what's the saddest.

- Roy Hooper, Ojai

Twin Towers so tall they interfered with TV
As a 7-year-old child in "upstate" New York I looked forward, with great anticipation, to the week I would spend with my grandparents in Yonkers. It was a slice of old summertime Americana wherein my grandfather would invariably take my brother and I to a Mets game, or maybe the Empire State Building, and once, if memory serves, we were even treated to a double-header at Shea Stadium where I first heard the word "mezzanine" and where, across the street, stood a metal sculpture of the world.
Angelo's pizza was just down the street and never failed to create the best pie that side of Manhattan. It was New York pizza which now might be seen as a stripped down, back-to-basics variety; a delight that required no frills or Wolfgang Puckish additives for its divine taste, only the magic inherent in a New York pizzeria. The big decision was whether or not to get a "Sicilian."
My brother's favorite pastime during these trips was, being out of the reach of our folks, to take every opportunity he could to scare the living hell out of me. I lost a lot of sleep at Nana and Grandpa's because I truly believed that Godzilla was going to come and get me. I found refuge from this form of brotherly love by hanging out on "the stoop," or playing, with a neighborhood kid named Gerard Petit, which he pronounced "Gelard." His favorite baseball team was the "New Lork Lankees" and his love for them was surpassed only by his love for the "Gleen Bay Plackers." He and I would spend a good part of Saturday morning glued to the cartoons that most every other kid in 1973 would be watching. The "Super Friends" made us believe that anything was possible and we'd often daydream about hanging out with them in the "Hall of Justice." Looking back now I feel just a little uneasy when I think about how we complained that the "Twin Towers" cast a shadow on the television; they were so tall that they interfered with the transmission of the signal. This imprint or impression was like so many you now see in graphics of remembrance, appearing as ghosts, reminding us of a very recent past.
Gerard was a good little soul and I regret not having kept in touch with him after moving west. I'm sure he went on to do good things. Maybe he's building a real hall of justice and maybe we'll all be invited to its grand opening.
Nana and Grandpa both passed on several years ago. I'm sure Sept. 11 would have broken Nana's heart and I'm equally sure that Grandpa would've been one of the first to lend a hand afterwards.
My brother is in North Carolina now. I was there with him and the rest of my family when the attacks took place. There was no better place to be at that moment because, apparently, the promised Godzilla had finally come. But we had distance and each other to keep us safe.

- Philip Scott Wikel, Ventura

You don't want to know

After staying two nights in New York City, we departed by plane on Sept. 9 to join a Cross-Culture Tour group in Germany for a tour of former East German cities, which included Berlin, Leipzig, Weimar, Eisenach, and Dresden.
We arrived at our hotel in former East Berlin on Sept. 10 and settled in. The next day, after an excursion with the group, the two of us were walking back to the hotel and noticed armed guards and blocked streets around the American Embassy, which was approximately a block from our hotel. When we met two ladies from our group, we asked them how they were doing. Their response was, "You don't want to know." From their demeanor and other conversation, we knew something very serious must have happened in the states. We immediately went to our hotel room and began watching CNN.
Various emotions come to the fore, one being a sense of uneasiness, being in a foreign country and not knowing how the populace of that country views our country. It was with gratitude and pleasant surprise when that same evening we saw banners expressing sympathy, and candles and flowers banked at the blocked intersections near the embassy and at other places throughout Berlin, as well as other cities we visited later in the tour.

- Richard and Beverly Beall
Oak View

Four weeks

We ride the subway as far as it will take us. When we get off in the Financial District, the air smells like smoke, even now, four weeks later. The first thing I notice, after all the police and army reserve uniforms, is how washed-out everything looks. Dust is everywhere and it drains the color from the buildings, the sky, the people. Trucks are everywhere, too - imposing big rigs and donated tow trucks waiting somberly in line for their turn to enter the restricted zone. Every few minutes another kind of truck comes through, one that hoses down the streets with water. "It's to keep the dust down," my mom explains, but it just makes everything wet and muddy traces of footprints trail off though the streets.
A chain-link fence and a few policemen are all that keep the tourist-mourners like myself out of the restricted area. I press my face between the wilting roses intertwined with the chain-link to catch a glimpse of what is on the other side. The fence is dull and cold on my cheek; it reminds me the scene is real. It is hard to remember that this is an actual, tangible place and that I'm here, not looking at a black-and-white magazine photo. There's nothing on the other side of the fence except charred remains and emptiness. It's better on this side with the cards, flowers, and people.
A block away, I see a missing poster. I only notice it because it's still dry. It has rained since Sept. 11 and the other posters schoolchildren have hung run with distorted rivers of red, white and blue, the thank-yous literally dripping off them. The missing poster is worse than any film clip or interview I've seen on TV. Someone cared about this lost person enough to come out and hang this poster, even now, at this impossibly late date. I'm still thinking about this when a boy walks by carrying a boombox playing the song, "God Bless America." As he passes by, the sound envelops me and then gradually recedes as he moves down the street.

- Sarah Mirk
October 2001
Nordhoff High School Junior

A brief moment of happiness

I got up early that morning to feed my animals.
A friend called me and told me to turn on the television. I watched in horror the events that unfolded in New York.
As information came out about the planes and their departure/destination I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I just knew that I had lost two dear friends who live in Ojai on the flight that left at 9 a.m. from Boston to Los Angeles.
They visit their children every year in Massachusetts, and return home each year on the second Tuesday in September on the 9 a.m. flight out of Boston - in 200l that was Tuesday, Sept. 11. Reluctantly, I called their daughter in Massachusetts. She told me that her parents had taken the 9 a.m. flight from Boston to Los Angeles, but because they needed to get back a day early, they changed their flight from Tuesday to Monday, Sept. 10.
That news was the only happiness, however brief it may have been, that I felt on Sept. 11, 2001.

- Nancy Nordstrom
Ojai

I was going to be happy, and this was a selfish position

I wasn't going to write anything for this edition. There's been so much talk and coverage of everything to do with Sept.11, I didn't feel I could say anything that hadn't already been said by people wiser and more articulate than I. But I've had some experiences in the past few weeks that have changed my mind.
I've grown up in a family with a highly developed social conscience. My three siblings and I were raised in the be the change you want to see in the world style, and it seems to have worked with my siblings. I, however, saw the pain this attitude could cause, and decided that it just wasn't worth it - other people could save the world. I was going to be happy. And if that was a selfish position - and I had the more than sneaking suspicion it was - so be it.
When the Sept. 11th attacks happened, my world, along with every other American's, was rocked. Terrorism and war were no longer almost abstract problems other countries - almost abstract themselves - had. This was in our front yard, our living room. Still, after attending a memorial and shedding some tears for the victims and their families, and commenting on how horrible and tragic it was whenever the topic came up in conversation, I took the "the best way to fight this is to continue with your life as normally as possible" advice to heart, and got on with mine.
After the first few days I avoided, as much as I could, all the media attention, flipping the channel or not reading the newspaper when the show or article had something to do with the attacks.
This avoiding-by-ignoring had been going on for almost a year when I started reading a book called "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang. It documented the almost forgotten holocaust of that region of China by the Japanese in 1937. I will not describe the atrocities covered in that book. I still cannot comprehend them well enough, but reading about the evil humans can do to each other, something I'd avoided as best I could for so long, weakened my resolve not to let anything in.
Nevertheless, I was keeping my mostly subconscious "I don't have to be affected" motto intact, I thought, until late one night my sister Claire came home from a friend's house. Both of us being night owls, we got to talking. The conversation wound from people who had more money and fewer responsibilities than us, to what our responsibilities were, both in our family and in the world. Claire took the position that, yes, maybe humans and the world were horrible, but by just accepting that, we were just as much to blame as everybody else. I was arguing, with myself as much as her, that you can't change the world and trying to would just make one more unhappy person on a planet full of them. Even as I argued this, I was forced to recognize it wasn't true - not really. The world has changed a lot, and just because we still have a very, very long way to go, that doesn't mean we should just give up. No matter how much it hurts to open up and care enough to help, the world will never be any better unless more of us do so.
So now I'm starting to get out there to try to do my part. Whether I end up discovering a cure for cancer or picking up trash on the side of the road, I will know I'm trying. And if you let yourself try, that's a triumph in itself. Every little bit helps.

- Harmony Wade-Hak
OVYF writing intern

Getting us through it

I flew into New York City on the Friday before Sept. 11, 2001. As the jet came in to land at JFK, our pilot banked to give us a view of lower Manhattan, and the two towers of the World Trade Center glinting in the clear autumn sunlight. I remember thinking this surely symbolizes the heartbeat of America. Apparently others were thinking the same thing, though not with the same sense of life as I.
Although I enjoy our quiet Ojai Valley, I grew up in London and have always needed a "big city fix" once in a while. The trip to New York was my daughter Jenny's gift to me for my upcoming 60th birthday, inviting me along on one of her business trips. Over the weekend we shopped, gallery hopped, watched Venus and Serena play each other in the finals of the U.S. Open, ate at outrageously expensive restaurants and thoroughly enjoyed the noise, smells and frantic pace of NYC. Monday the 10th was hot and humid with sporadic thundery deluges and we dashed in and out of the galleries and shops of SoHo. We saw the former home of Cary Grant (a must on my list) and spent an hour in Dean and DeLucca's choosing exotic spices for gifts. My feet hurt and we stopped to buy comfy Eccos. These are the details you remember when time stops, as it did the next day.
Jenny had some business calls to make on the morning of the 11th, and since it was to be my last day I thought I would go downtown on the subway to see the World Trade Center, Wall Street, etc. I had a coffee and a bagel in a coffee shop, then realized I'd forgotten my camera. I went back to our hotel room, and as I opened the door, Jenny grabbed my arm and pulled me to the TV to show me the "accident" that had just happened to one of the towers of the World Trade Center. As we stood watching, the second tower seemed to burst into flames, and it wasn't until they re-ran the tape that the hideous truth dawned on us all. Jenny and I sat hugging on the bed, talking with my husband, Spence (barely awake in Ojai), on the phone. Then came news of the attack on the Pentagon and the fourth airplane crash in Pennsylvania, and chilling rumors of other planes.
We were not in danger, our hotel was as far away from the WTC as Ojai's East End is from the Arbolada. On the street, there was no traffic except for emergency vehicles. People were gathered around parked cars, listening to radios echoing loudly in the unusually quiet midtown Manhattan canyons, and there was a buzz of anxiety. I had to be stalwart, I was the "mom" after all. But I felt a gnawing sense of desperation about our world that seemed to be being demolished around us.
That afternoon, I walked the five blocks to Central Park. People were walking slower than the previous day. Strangers made eye contact, giving a nod of recognition to fellow humans, as if acknowledging that we'd all been touched by the evil of that day. I stopped in St. Thomas Episcopal Cathedral and sat with others, trying to pray. In Central Park, some people sat quietly holding each other. Others were on cell phones, either trying to find someone or else assuring someone that they were OK. Some German tourists with luggage wondered aloud what they should do, and a stranger lent them a cell phone so they could try to find a room somewhere. When I returned to our hotel room, there was an astonishingly poignant notice under the door: "Due to today's tragic events, we are unable to provide turn-down service this evening. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you." Under the circumstances, my daughter and I managed to turn down our own beds.
It was a strange and amazing atmosphere in New York for two days. On Wednesday, everything was closed, the weather was glorious, and people took their families to Central Park for picnics and frisbee. The atmosphere was not festive, but quiet, rather like an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon, before Sunday became a day for errands, shopping and getting ready for work tomorrow. It was as if people felt the need to be quietly with their friends and families - connected to others. Jenny and I rented bicycles and biked around Central Park. Only the fighter jets streaking overhead belied the peaceful scene.
By Thursday, shops, museums and theaters re-opened, although the airports were still closed and no rental cars were available. It felt odd to be going to a show, but we saw Valerie Harper in a funny show, "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife." After the performance, Ms. Harper stepped forward and thanked the audience for coming out tonight and being prepared to laugh. "We will get through this!" she exclaimed to a cheering audience.
On Saturday, after hours of phone calls, a bus ride to New Jersey, a rental car drive to Philadelphia, then a plane to Atlanta, we made it back to California. LAX never looked so good to me. And Ojai. How peaceful and safe (and I must say, unreal) it seemed. For weeks I didn't want to go out of the Ojai Valley again, even postponing a trip to London later in September. I wept at Theater 150's production of "Human Chain" and it brought back some of the reality. I wanted to feel it again, not wallowing in the tragedy, but feeling connected to the world.
Has America got through this? Our world has not been "demolished," but a year later, we are no longer oblivious to how the rest of the world views us. We are inextricably connected with the world and we cannot be complacent about our role. As the world's most powerful nation, we know we will be targeted again by those who regard us with both envy and contempt. But the innate strength and optimism of Americans is "getting us through" despite all that, and as we settle back into our comfortable lives in Ojai, we can take some pride in that.

- Linda Silver
Ojai