There’s only one subject for today

Heather Ordover, someone I admire and have come to care about through her podcasts, was there eleven years ago; she writes about it here. There are also heart-wrenching accounts from her students.

I wasn’t there. I was at work a few minutes from home here in Connecticut. But I had loved ones in New York. More, I love New York. To this day my heart stands still for a moment when a plane flies low. I remember. I always will.

Reposting what I put up this time last year – a timeline:

From recordings from that day:

We’ve asked everyone to leave lower Manhattan if they can on their own

We want you to say a prayer for everybody in there right now – really, pray as hard as you can for all these people

It is raining paper and ashes and debris …

It appears from here it could be deliberate

Manhattan dispatch, what exactly is going on, Kate? We are unable – we are unable to make any kind of communication – -

Mayor Giuliani: The city is now closed. The airspace around the city is closed. There are a large number of firefighters and police officers who are … in harm’s way. And we don’t know how many we’ve lost.

Six a.m.: President Bush is preparing for his morning jog at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Longbow Key, Florida, where he is staying. A van of men of Middle-eastern descent try to enter the resort, claiming they are to have a poolside interview with the President. They are turned away for not having an appointment.

7:45 a.m.: Atta and Al Amari and three other hijackers board American Airlines Flight 11. It is bound from Boston to Los Angeles. Flight 11 carries 81 passengers, nine flight attendants, two pilots.

7:59 a.m: Flight 11 takes off

8:01 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 boards in Newark, New Jersey. It’s scheduled to fly to San Francisco but sits on the tarmac, delayed.

8:13 a.m.: Flight 11’s pilots and flight controllers have their last conversation. Pilots respond when told to turn right, but fail to climb when commanded to moments later.

8:14 a.m.: Flight 175 takes off from Boston. It is bound for L.A. On board are 56 passengers, 7 flight attendants, two pilots, and five hijackers.

8:19 a.m.: Flight 11 veers dramatically off course. Boston flight control assumes the plane has been hijacked; however, they wait five minutes before notifying other flight control centers, and they wait another twenty minutes before contacting NORAD.

8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 departs Dullus International Airport in DC bound for Los Angeles. On board are 58 passengers, five flight attendants, two pilots, and five hijackers.

8:21 a.m.: Flight attendant Amy Sweeney calls American Airlines ground manager Michael Woodward. She tells him calmly, quote, “Listen to me, very carefully – I’m on Flight 11, we’ve been hijacked. Two flight attendants have been stabbed and a first class passenger has had his throat slashed.” She relays the hijackers’ seat numbers – in minutes, staff have their names, phone numbers, addresses, and credit card information. Amy Sweeney stays on the line till the end.

8:41 a.m.: Through an open mike in the cockpit of 175, flight controllers hear loud voices telling everyone to stay in their seats.

8:42 a.m.: After a forty-minute delay, United Flight 93 takes off from Newark Airport. On board are 38 passengers, five flight attendants, two pilots, and four hijackers.

At the same time, Flight 175 veers off course over the state of New Jersey.

8:43 a.m.: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is in the Pentagon, speaking on terrorism. He says, “Let me tell you – I’ve been around the block a few times; there will be another event.”

8:44 a.m.: Amy Sweeney, the flight attendant on board Flight 11 who’s been speaking on an airphone with American Airlines personnel, is asked if she can recognize where she is. She answers, “I see water. I see the buildings. I see buildings – oh my God, pray for us.”

8:44 a.m.: Peter Hanson, aboard Flight 175, calls his father and says, “Oh my God – they just stabbed the airline hostess. I think the airline is being hijacked.” Although his cell phone cuts out twice, he is able to report to his father that flight attendants were being stabbed in order to force the pilots to unlock the cockpit door.

8:45 a.m.: Two F-15’s are ordered to scramble from Otis International Guard Base in Massachusetts, to try and find Flight 11. One minute later, at 8:46, Flight 11 slams into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. A French film crew working on a documentary about New York City firefighters manages to catch the crash on film.

American Flight 11 impacted the North Tower at 8:46 and 40 seconds.

8:48 a.m.: Flight 77 suddenly changes course near southeastern Kentucky and heads back towards Washington. The hijackers tell the passengers to call their families and say goodbye, because they are all going to die.

8:50 a.m.: A mechanic who routinely gets calls from attendants about broken items at United’s maintenance center in San Francisco receives a call from a female flight attendant on Flight 175. She says “Oh my God – the crew’s been killed – a flight attendant’s been stabbed – We’ve been hijacked.” Then the line went dead.

9:00 a.m.: President Bush, on his way to read to children at Booker Elementary School in Florida, is told of the crash into the World Trade Center.

9:01 a.m.: United Airlines warns all of its aircraft of the potential for cockpit intrusion and orders cockpit doors to be barricaded. However, United does not mention the hijackings. Flight 93, still on course, acknowledges the message.

9:03 a.m.: As the world watches, Flight 175 smashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 and three seconds.

9:05 a.m.: While waiting to speak to the group of second-graders, President Bush is told of the second WTC hit.

9:16 a.m.: The FCC notifies NORAD that Flight 93 may have been hijacked. It is thought that one of the hijackers was in the cockpit prior to takeoff. On the flight recorder, the pilots make mention of a guest who is a colleague; it is common for a guest pilot to ride in the cockpit’s jumper seat.

9:17 a.m.: All New York City area airports are shut down and all bridges and tunnels in New York are closed.

9:24 a.m.: The FAA informs NORAD that Flight 77 may have been hijacked, and appears to be headed toward Washington DC.

9:27 a.m.: Flight 93 checks in with Cleveland Ground Control and utters “Good morning’. A few minutes later, three men on board stand up, put red bandannas around their heads, and break into the cockpit. One grabbed the cockpit mike, unaware that ground control could hear his every word. He claims that there is a bomb on board, and that he is a pilot, and the plane must return to New Jersey.

9:26 a.m.: All airline departures in the United States are banned.

9:29 a.m.: President Bush speaks privately with National Security Advisor Rice. He leaves the school immediately. He makes a quick comment to reporters calling the crashes an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

9:31 a.m.: Three F-16’s leave Langley Air Force Base to intercept Flight 77. At about the same time, hijackers aboard Flight 77 tell passengers the plane is going to hit the White House.

9:32 a.m.: The New York Stock Exchange closes.

9:33 a.m.: Flight 77 is spotted flying over the Capitol Beltway at about 7000 feet. Suddenly, the plane makes a sharp turn and begins dropping towards the Pentagon. The plane is soon lost by radar.

9:34 a.m.: Aboard Flight 93, Tom Burnett phones his wife to tell him of the hijacking. She tells him of the planes flown into the WTC. He responds, “Oh my God – this is a suicide mission.”

9:40 a.m.: The FAA orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down.

A large jet aircraft, perhaps the size of a passenger plane, came very low, clipping off light poles as it approached the Pentagon, it slammed into the side of the Pentagon, and it drove itself from the outer ring all the way to the inner ring.

9:41 a.m: Flight 77 slams into the Pentagon. President Bush gives the order to shoot down any plane refusing to turn away from Wash DC.

9:48 am: Tom Burnett calls his wife again from Flight 93 and tells her “don’t worry – we took a vote, and we all decided – we’re going to try to do something.”

9:49 am: the White House is evacuated.

9:58 am: Todd Beamer, aboard Flight 93, puts down the airphone he’d been using to speak with an operator for the last few minutes. The operator stays on the line and hears Todd say to a nearby passenger, “Are you ready? Let’s roll.”

It is not there any more.

Peter Jennings: The whole side has collapsed?
The whole building has collapsed.
The whole building has collapsed?

David Letterman: The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead, they weren’t doing anything wrong, they were living their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do … As I understand it, and my understanding is vague at best, another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings, and we’re told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor. Religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any Goddamn sense?

Tom Hanks: We’re going to try and do something. That was the message sent by some very American heroes with names like Sandra Bradshaw, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, and Thomas Bennett. They found themselves aboard the hijacked flight 93 that went down in Somerset County Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. They witnessed the brutality onboard, and somehow summoned the strength to warn us and take action. United they stood, and likely saved our world from an even darker day of perhaps even more unthinkable horror.
Now, since that day, millions of us everywhere of all ages, races, creeds, have asked ourselves, What are we to do? In their heroic undying spirit, we all feel the need to do something, however small and symbolic, to honor these remarkable heroes among us. Those who have fallen, and those still standing,united. Those of us here tonight are not heroes. We are not healers, nor protectors of this great nation. We appear tonight as a simple show of unity to honor the real heroes and to do whatever we can to ensure that all their families are supported by our larger American family. This is a moment to pause, and reflect, and to heal, and to rededicate ourselves to the American spirit, of one nation, indivisible.

Remembering 911 – an unexpected gift to America

Related articles

• 9/11: A Tribute – Eleven Years On (onextrapixel.com)
• Bugler to play in remembrance of Sept. 11 (starexponent.com)
• Victims, not politicians, will be the focus of this year’s 9/11 memorials (timesofisrael.com)
• Remembering 9/11 Heroes Abe Zelmanowitz and Daniel Lewin (menorahblog.typepad.com)
• Sept. 11 commemoration schedule (rep-am.com)

 

Jeopardy tryouts – part two

I didn’t hear much laughter out in the “Pre-event” area, as the Sheraton floorplan calls it, as the Jeopardy coordinators scored the tests, but I hopefully my stupidity got a chuckle, anyway. They could not, we had been informed, tell us how we did. I kind of expected that, as that’s the reason I took screencaps of the online test – you don’t find out there either, and I wanted to a) remember more than the fraction of questions I knew I’d be able to think of after and b) check my answers. (My instinct is that this policy is so that they can feel free to cast someone who didn’t test as well but who had a great TV personality instead of someone who aced the test but was a stick in the mud.) Apparently, they did testing at Princeton, and had some fear of losing their lives, or at least a couple of limbs, when they announced they couldn’t give out scores – I guess it makes sense that Ivy League students are pretty serious about grades!

The pen again – isn’t it purty?

In the next phase, Maggie and Robert had us practice “ringing in” using our Jeopardy! pens, with the bright orange clicker button. (If they really loved us they’d make pens the size of the signalling device – which is actually rather smaller, I think than the 1.5 inch diameter I’d seen somewhere – more like 1″.) Here’s where my practice while watching the show started to pay off. A question would appear on the screen, and there would be three dots on each side of the rectangle. They would be dark as Sarah was, again, reading the question, and then as soon as she finished they would light up: the signal that it was time to ring in. In the real thing – and the mock game – ringing in too early would lock you out for half a second. If someone got a question wrong, the lights would light again and it would again be safe to ring in. After we played with our pens for a second, we went through a few rounds of sticking up our hands and waiting to be called on. I believe there were eighteen questions, and twenty of us; I know Melissa wasn’t called on. I was – and have no recollection of the moment. I know I perked up a little – bizarrely – that there was a basketball category, but it turned out to be one of those “literal” categories in which “A form of energy associated with the motion of atoms or molecules” meant “What is the Heat?” Again, no application for any of the studying.

Then came the scary part. (Not as scary as the headshot, but scary.) We would be called up in groups of three to the front of the room, each given a buzzer, and would as closely as possible replicate actual game play. Six familiar columns appeared on the screen (with only three questions per category), we were reminded how to proceed – answers in the form of a question (in the first round, forgetting that would on the show result in “Alex giving you the stinkeye offscreen”, but reminders would be given; in Double Jeopardy forgetting simply resulted of course in a wrong answer), wait for the moment to ring in, don’t answer till called on, then sing out the category and dollar amount where you wanted to go next. Don’t, Maggie cautioned, take shortcuts here; “Crossword Clues D” could be called “Crossword” if desired – they would know which category you meant – but it would be risking forgetting the important part of the category: this is when you might forget the “D” in quotes and yell “What is Cuyahoga!” and wonder why everyone was groaning. (Funnily enough this is exactly what a former champion advises players to do – leave out that important part, so as to trip up the other two in just that way. Just, of course, don’t forget it yourself.) So: three at a time, run through several questions, then one by one introduce yourself and tell us something about you, and chat with Maggie and Robert.

I was in, I think, the third group called up; the other two beat me by few seconds, and someone queried where I was, so just said “Sorry! Short legs!” and chugged on up. (“And from the back of the room!” Maggie laughed.) And so it began. And I started to get scared, because question after question went by and I had no idea how to take any of them. About five questions in I rang in more to prove I was still alive than anything else – and they called me. Of course. I wound up having to try to come up with the president of eBay. I should have known it … and … didn’t. I floundered, one of them prompted “Who is – ?” Which didn’t help; I repeated it and then just said “Margaret Thatcher”, and … oh well. I’ll never forget Meg Whitman now. Happily, I kind of hit my stride a few seconds later, and rang in – and correctly answered – a few more … and almost fell over when a category came up on the screen called “Prisoners in the Tower of London”. Shut. Up. I was dying to get in there. Someone called for the $200 question, and I blanked – I should have gotten Thomas More, God knows, and dang it I knew I should have read Wolf Hall, and then I finally had my chance. I got something right (no idea what) and said – just as Maggie called out “Last question!” – “Tower of London for six, please” – and the second the answer appeared on the screen I smiled. No, it wasn’t Rudolph Hess – but it was William Wallace, and I rang in, and got it right, and that was that.

I wish I could remember the other questions. No idea. I do remember getting one and Maggie saying “I had a feeling that one was up your alley” – which was funny, ’cause how would she know where my alley was? She was right, though. She’s goooood.

Somewhere out there I had read that the buzzer – officially called the signaling device – was problematic; it was either too sensitive or took a solid thwack of the thumb to register. I didn’t notice either; I was comfortable. The whole procedure came weirdly naturally.

Then came the mini interviews. I was shockingly un-nervous. The first person (in the returning champion position) was the girl who had been interrogated by the strange random lady in the hall; she was great. Next was my fellow Connecticut-er (why can’t I remember names?), and he did very well too – he’s an artist, and went to the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts (*envy*). Then there was me. I tried to project, introduced myself as an office manager from CT – and mentioned that they had called up the two Connecticuties in the same group. I have no idea where that came from. Yes, I am embarrassed. Hey, we don’t have a good name, and we were cute as hell. A lot of the questions were coming straight from the Five-Things-About-Me sheets, I could tell, and I waited to be asked about locking my finger in the car door or the teddy bears I make or why my family laughed in the cemetery, but they started out with what I like to do. I said I love to read, and write – and, as I put in my notes, I was talking to a friend once and a phrase struck me that fit so well I’ve used it ever since: “I put the ‘dent’ in ‘sedentary’.” And everyone laughed. That’s a good feeling, that is. They asked what I write, and this blog didn’t even come to mind, although I’ve probably logged more words here than in any manuscript, but I talked a little about the book – and, shockingly, I did not stumble over it. (Once in a job interview the writing came up and I blithered on something along the lines of “It’s a fantasy novel – an adult fantasy – not THAT kind of fantasy, but just you know oh dear”. Yeah. Somehow I didn’t get that job.) As far as I remember, I spoke up, I spoke clearly, I answered in relatively complete sentences, and I was coherent. And I made them laugh – on purpose. And before that I correctly answered several questions, ringing in properly and beating out the other two. It wasn’t bad at all. *deep sigh of relief*

The one question everyone was asked was “What will you do with your Jeopardy money?”, and I had variations on the theme going through my head – get rid of the mortgage, buy a sword, help put my nieces through college, go back myself, take my mother to Newfoundland, etc. Of course they all went out of my head. Some of the answers were excellent – especially the ones who wanted to do something for someone close to them; some weren’t so hot, like … I’m not sure it was too wise to exclaim that you were taking the money to the casino to blow it all; the next day on “So You Think You Can Dance” Nigel noted to one girl that it might not be the best idea to list as your claim to fame that you can fart with your neck, and I put the casino thing in the same bin. But that’s me. What I ended up blurting out was “Travel! Oh, everywhere – England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales” … I should have said “England for Shakespeare and Tolkien and Sayers, Ireland and Scotland to do some genealogical investigation, and Wales for Doctor Who” … Oh well.

And then I sat down. My part was over. Five weeks of intermittent studying on everything I could think of, and a whole lot of nerves, and it was over. I sat and watched the rest of the group go up – and every single one was a contender – and could just enjoy it like a series of mini-episodes (it was hard not to yell out answers – that’s going to be the challenge if it ever goes farther, I think, though the concentration was solid enough in the mock game that maybe it won’t be).

The numbers bear repeating. Maggie told us some statistics which, even if this is the end of this trip, kind of create a warm glow:

- 100,000 people took the online test.

- 1-2000 people were called for auditions.

- Of those, some 400 will be called to Hollywood.

I feel like Nigel Lythgoe sent me to Vegas and I made it through the week. Now I just wait for him or Adam Shankman or Lil C to show up at my house and tell me yes or no…

Wait – for eighteen months. It’s gonna be hard to get through that kind of time period with so many digits crossed.

And that’s it – that’s my big event. Quite possibly the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me, whatever happens next (or doesn’t). I highly recommend the experience – wait! No I don’t! All you smart people who would be competing with me for a place, don’t do it. It was horrid. Really. Trust me.

And now – back to real life …

Real life with quite a bit of studying, that is.

 

Jeopardy tryouts – part one

It was around 2:30 last Tuesday (last Tuesday! It’s been a week!) that I couldn’t stand it anymore and just went to find Conference Room K, where it all was happening.

We didn’t get juice

A very short elevator ride brought me to the Lower Level, and I saw the sign for the show and smiled. Since there were only a couple of people there I went looking for a ladies’ room to freshen up, as they say. I started a circuit around the central elevator block, and was impressed by the elegance of the place. This was not a conference area for the likes of the meetings I’ve been to – this was CEO and VIP territory, and quite nice too. In fact, when I looped back around to “our” area again to find a small crowd had formed, there was apparently a bit of a question going forward about who all this riff-raff was, because the woman whom I shortly found out was Maggie (Maggie Speak, the main contestant coordinator for the show) (what a great job) was explaining that yes, we’d all be out of the way shortly, and we were a motley crew (almost typed crue) but very smart! When the investigating officer was gone, she said to the group at large that there was one very expensive, very exclusive hotel they occasionally used for tryouts, and how much she loved having all of these expensively-suited folk about, and then her lot sitting on the floor filling out applications. Hee.

I fell into a line which led – to my horror – to Robert, the gentleman wielding the Polaroid camera. It wasn’t Robert I dreaded – he was lovely; it was the camera. I kept telling myself Don’t smile – don’t smile! I photograph very badly, and when I laugh it’s even worse. There’s only been one picture I’ve liked in the past few years, and that was (weirdly) a driver’s license picture for which I did not smile; in the next one I looked like I’d been hit on the head with a bottle. I wasn’t planning on looking grim or anything; I just wanted to project whatever good things I could manage without looking like that bad driver’s license. Oh well. Robert is tall, and funny, and made some comment as I moved into place, and I laughed; then he scrunched down to get down to my eye level to take the thing, his knees bending almost 90 degrees – and I couldn’t help it. I laughed as the &*$! flash went off. The results were dreadful, as expected. I avoided looking at that thing as much as possible. *sigh*

I realized then that there was paperwork to be done, and grabbed a page – and a Jeopardy pen! – from the table, and wandered further down the hall to a counter to fill out the application. It was kind of funny – one question on the application was whether the applicant had been in touch with any Jeopardy contestants, and I marked “no” – and then second-guessed myself: after all, I exchanged comments on the blog of a gentleman who went through the tryouts: Oh. Tryouts. OK. I don’t think being on Ken Jennings’ Tuesday Trivia mailing list would count, so I needn’t worry about perjury.

Something odd happened around then; a woman appeared out of nowhere (which just means I didn’t notice where she came from) and accosted an older woman who was standing near me, off apart from the rest of the group.

“What are you all waiting for?”
“We’re going to play Jeopardy.”
“Why are you going to do that?”
“We’re trying out for the show.”

And it kept on – why? Why? It was a weird exchange – the woman shooting off questions in a strange flat tone, more like a small child wanting to know “why” than an adult of any sort of authority wanting to know what this motley crew was doing there. Then she abruptly said something like “I see the person I need to speak to”, and walked away. By now I had moved over a little; in one of those peculiar impulses psychologists like to study most of the group had formed a rough circle in the space by the table, and I had joined the herd. This interloper walked past me, on the near side of the ring, crossed the empty space of the middle, and beelined for a girl on the other side. I didn’t catch what she said to her, but the girl – whose name I really should remember – but it ended with “Good luck getting on Jeopardy” in that same flat tone, and then the interloper left, leaving her victim standing there looking completely what-the-*&$!-was-that baffled.

A few stragglers were photographed and wrangled into place, and then we were shown into Conference Room K. I was near the back of the pack, and so snagged a seat near the back of the room, which was fine with me. At the front of the room were two tables, the one on the left being where the coordinators sat (when they sat). In between was a projection screen. There was a moment of surreality – it’s happening! Now! – and then Maggie and Robert began talking, giving pointers and guidelines for how the next couple of hours were going to go. Be enthusiastic – don’t be quiet! – use a big voice, and, most importantly, enjoy yourself!

Robert asked who watched Jeopardy every night, and I think every hand went up – to which he replied with a chuckle that there were some liars in the room. Well, really, though – I had actually stopped watching because another station started airing M*A*S*H with scenes included that have hitherto always been cut when I’ve seen the show in syndication, and that’s been too much fun to pass up. Since that first email arrived, though, I think I missed two nights. Srsly. (For one thing, I was practicing. Wait till Alex finishes reading the question – and – cue rapid-fire pretend ringing-in. Answer in the form of a question. It was all surprisingly difficult to coordinate in the beginning – I was used to just sitting there blurting out the answers as soon as I knew them, and never in the form of questions. I was a mess those first few nights I tried it, and gained a huge amount of sympathy for all those folks who can’t get their act together on the show. But you know? It helped.)

Then he said that Jeopardy is the number two game show – what’s number one? Wheel of Fortune. How many people watch Wheel? I don’t think a single hand went up, and he laughed at us again – “Look at all the Jeopardy snobs!” I guess so.

Next question: who thought the online test was a piece of cake? My hand stayed firmly down. Cake? No. Soufflé, maybe. Baklava. Something tricky to make. Cake? I can do cake. That was not cake.

And then he asked “Okay, how many of you were surprised to get the email?” Surprised? Shocked. I don’t know if I said it in the original post, but when I opened it both hands clapped over my mouth, and I literally couldn’t talk – or breathe – for a minute. I scared my mother. Yeah. I was a little surprised. I was happy to see most of the hands in the room go up.

“How many of you yell out the answers when you’re watching the show?” Everyone, I think – and, of course, we were gently reminded that wasn’t going to fly then and there.

We went around the room, introducing ourselves – I have no idea what I said. I only remember that I said I was from Connecticut, and Maggie said “Connekt-i-cut – that’s how I have to remember it!” I was a little surprised that while the vast majority of the twenty of us in the group were from New York, there were only two of us from CT – the other one a young man on the other side of the room – and one from Pennsylvania (if her name wasn’t Melissa I will be deeply ashamed of myself, because she was sitting right next to me – my memory is not Jeopardy calibre!) – and two ladies from Florida and one from Washington state! One gentleman (whose name I really, really should remember) was the father of the winner of 2007′s teen tournament (*search* Meryl Federman). At least a couple, including the man who sat behind me (Craig? Curse my spotty memory!) had tried out before – I believe my seat-neighbor had done it a couple of times. And something that was lovely about that was that Maggie remembered everyone who had been by before. She knew Meryl’s dad, and chatted with him very warmly; she remembered Craig (better than I do, since I’m not sure his name was Craig) and chatted with him; when one woman was called up for the mock game she said “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” When the woman said yes – a few years before, iirc – Maggie apologized for not having picked her out before, and reminisced with her as well. Now, I grant, by that point she had the applications in front of her, but for the rest of the returnees it was purely her. Did I mention she’s kind of awesome?

The first part of the process was the dreaded written test. There was a video first, stressing the important points – don’t answer in the form of a question, spelling doesn’t count as long as it’s comprehensible, last names are fine unless it’s a President Roosevelt sort of situation, and so on. And there was a little clip of Alex reiterating what Maggie said, and what everyone I’d talked to in the month prior had said – don’t stress, just have fun! Our coordinators added to this that there was a lot of leeway given. When in doubt, they said, guess; you might not want to do this on the show, but in the test there’s no penalty for a wrong answer, so take a shot – if nothing else we’d give them something to laugh about while scoring the tests. Did I say a good bit of leeway? Don’t worry, they said: if you skip a line at some point, because they would adapt to the answer to #21 being put in the slot for #22. I didn’t have to worry about that one, because I at least took a wild flailing guess on each question (and got one right I never expected to. I’m still amazed.) Questions were going to appear on the screen at the front of the room, and be read by Sarah from the Clue Crew (which, I think it was generally agreed, has the best job in the world).

I had read that where with the online test you had 15 seconds, with the written test each question only allowed eight – alarming! But in truth it wasn’t too bad. It seemed to be a consensus that it actually felt like you had more time. Either the atmosphere was more relaxed – as the coordinators certainly tried to make it, plus any time you don’t have a little timer ticking off the seconds it’s going to be less stressful – or it was simply that it’s faster and more intuitive to write than to type, but it just seemed easier to put the answers in the correct spaces when it was pen (Jeopardy pen!) on paper. Too, it was wonderful to be able to take a (literal) couple of seconds here and there and go back and reconsider answers I wasn’t sure about. There were a couple of questions that made me smile and write very quickly – and I’d love to say which ones but we all promised not to reveal the questions on the written test since it’s the one used universally – and with four or five seconds left it was possible to go back and say “Oh! Wait!” Not, unfortunately, that that happened with too many; I can only remember about twenty of the fifty questions, and several of those were the ones I was pretty sure I was getting wrong (remembered because I kept going back over them). The happy thing about that is there were two I was pretty sure I had wrong, and in fact I was right; there was one I knew I had right, realized I had wrong, and then re-realized I was actually right. (To try to explain that mess of a sentence, it was a little bit as if I wrote down ” X-Men – Origin of Wolverine” and then two days later realized in horror it should have been “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” – and then realized that the actual answer was only the character name, and, happily seeing that at the time, I had crossed out the “X-Men – Origin of” part anyway leaving just “Wolverine” which was, in the end, correct.)(Which is not what the answer was.)

It was fun. I like tests. Sue me. And I think I did all right on this one; I feel like I did better on it than on the online test, and if the online test got me that far, well then – ! Also, I kept in mind what they had said about laughing while they graded, and went for humor when intelligence failed; let’s say one of the questions was about a desert (which it wasn’t), and I couldn’t for the life of me think of what they wanted – so I just said “the hot one”. Hey, partial credit, maybe. I could feel the cogs turning on a couple, and was pleased with what I did get right, and couldn’t entirely blame myself for getting wrong most of what I missed … I should have spent more time on geography, I can tell you that, especially since as it turns out not a single other thing I studied in the five weeks leading up to June 5 turned out to be relevant. Not one. Almost, but not quite.

They collected the tests, the 5-things-about-me sections of the email, the dread photos, and the applications, and I wonder if it counts in their consideration whether people listened and put them in the order they asked for, and then took the packets off back outside to grade the tests. We were, they said, allowed to talk about the test, but not to disclose the questions to anyone outside the room – though, they said, the questions from the online test were free for discussion anytime. I had taken screencaps of the online test to check my answers after the fact, but didn’t want to put them up anywhere just in case. So the three of us in the back of our group went over some of the questions, and yes I am indeed a geographical moron. Just sayin’. Still and all, there was the story someone had told me about an aunt who tried out who aced the test as well as the mock game, and never got on the actual show because, it was thought, she would just dominate too thoroughly. Which would be boring. Me? I’ll be making crap up in the geography categories – I won’t be boring. Promise.

To be continued …

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The Jeopardy saga – bookend edition

I admit it – after having studied intermittently full-tilt for the past five weeks, I’ve vegetated since I got home from New York. I hadn’t been reading nearly as much for pleasure (by which I mean “for Netgalley”) in the last month +, and started making up for a little lost time. So, finally, here we go. This is – for benefit of my own lapse-prone memory – the account of the New York journey apart from the audition – what we did before and after. The during will be the next post, for the benefit of anyone who couldn’t care less where we ate. : ) For details of the actual tryout, please skip to the next posts…

I can’t believe it’s been a week.

On Monday afternoon I tried (and failed) to finish the Eyewitness Guide to London I’d begun, and got as far as the Tower of London – where there was a fascinating little note that Rudolph Hess had been held there in 1941, which led me to looking into the whole story. I did finish working my way through the presidents, trying to fix the order in my mind along with VP’s (a shocking number of vice presidents died in office) and college affiliations and suchlike. I had thought a lot about how to fill out the email they sent me:

IF YOU BECOME A CONTESTANT ON “JEOPARDY!” WE NEED TO KNOW SOME INTERESTING BITS OF INFORMATION ABOUT YOU TO BE USED DURING OUR ON-CAMERA INTERVIEW WITH ALEX TREBEK.
PLEASE LIST 5 BRIEF BITS ABOUT YOURSELF BELOW. THEY ONLY NEED TO BE ONE-LINERS.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR JOB, HOBBIES, EMBARRASSING MOMENTS, CLAIMS TO FAME, (AWARDS, HONORS, ETC.) YOUR WILDEST AMBITION OR SOME UNUSUAL THINGS YOU COLLECT.

Oh. Kay. I’m not that interesting (don’t tell them I said that). It might be entertaining to come out with the fact that I didn’t finish high school, but I decided not to go there. I believe the five things I wound up with were, in some order or other:

1) Most embarrassing moment? That would be the time I locked my finger in the car door.

2) I make hand-stitched teddy bears

3) When my family gets together, we laugh – even at the cemetery

4) My favorite occupations are reading and writing – I put the “dent” in “sendentary”

5) I once flew across the country to attend a wedding at which I’d never met the bride, groom, or any of the guests, including the ones I stayed with for several days.

Of course I’ve been thinking of all sorts of alternatives – like “three of the greatest moments of my life were being thrown by a pony, run away with on a horse, and growled at by a wolf”, and “My uncle smuggled a Shetland pony on the ferry as a Christmas present for my cousins”, and “I have more books in my home than some town libraries”, and “I’ve worried my parents by always acing ‘Potent Potables’ since I was about ten”. Next time. (I thought of putting that last one down when the bunch of us went out for Mother’s Day, and an hour later it was as thoroughly gone from my mind as if I’d been hypnotized. I just remembered it. *sigh*)

I printed as neatly as I could, and then suddenly read:

PLEASE PRINT, COMPLETE, AND BRING WITH YOU TO THE TRYOUT

*&$! I had printed it a few times, which was good; I put together a full copy of the email, and then it struck me that I didn’t really want to fold it all up. The only thing I could find was a manila folder (which was marked “Children”, from when I was in art school and used to keep a photo morgue, yes I’m old), which seemed like a good idea at the time.

That night I did all sorts of silly things to get ready: painted one pinky nail a la Drop Dead Diva (not Ironic Taffy, though); tucked a few totems into my pocketbook (the horn belonging to a Boromir action figure, the Star Trek badge my nieces gave me, my sonic screwdriver (which doubles as a pen, so at least it’s practical!) … I know, shush. None of it weighed much of anything, and a little outbreak of superstition never hurts unless there’s fire involved). I finished making notes on the presidents, still stunned at how many vice presidents died in office. I made sure I had the “five things about you” etc. in its folder somewhere I couldn’t lose it. And then I crashed. Surprisingly, I slept pretty well.

I had made 11:30 reservations at Serendipity 3 in NYC, famous from the movie with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale (named “3″ not because it’s the third location but because there were three partners in the founding of it), so my sister, the Kid, and I took the train that would pretty much get us there with plenty of time to spare. Which we did. I feel I need to mention the graffiti we passed about halfway to NY: “WE ARE ALL LOSERS”, repeated in variations over the next mile or so. Thanks for that, whoever you are – I owe you a smack. It was on the train and in Grand Central that I realized how dumb that folder was. Never thought to take a tote bag or anything, so I was in constant fret-mode about losing it, getting it wet, bending it, or discovering that one or all of the pages had dropped out of one of the three open sides … Doofus. At Grand Central Station, gawked at the ceiling again (it never gets old), queued up for a cab like good little law-abiders (unlike that other time), and off to lunch. It’s also always amazing how the cab drivers all, every one, go about ten miles an hour with periodic bursts of about 80. Still, knock on wood, none of the cabs I’ve been in have ever quite hit anyone or anything. We queued up again at the restaurant – which looked tiny, like a lot of places in the city: about a twenty-foot-wide-or-so store front. There was a decent line before they opened (late) at about 11:40 or so, and I was a bit glad of the reservations even though we were at the front.

The space widened out at the back (don’t we all) to a really lovely – charming, even – room hung with dozens of Tiffany lampshades, along with memorabilia of all sorts and kinds and mirrors and a marionette which I believe was Andy Warhol. The menus were huge – in terms of having a lot of options, and also because they looked like open newspapers while being read. The three of us wound up ordering the same thing, which was a “young chicken sandwich” and iced tea … Well. The teas came in goblets that needed a bit of heft to raise, and the sandwiches – sort of open-faced, whether that was intentional or not … The chickens might have been young when butchered, but by the time they hit our table they were a bit old – parts reminded me of Mom’s chicken when it’d been a bit overdone and then reheated. (Sorry Mom.) Still, there was the famous frozen hot chocolate to look forward to, right? Um. Well. It was nice, of course – it was chocolate … but it was basically a chocolate Italian ice, and got watery very quickly. Oh well. They sold the perfume in the little shop in front (as the Doctor said, “I like a little shop!”), so I finally got my hands on it – along with a bag to make sure I didn’t lose that stupid folder with the Jeopardy email anywhere.

We had plenty of time afterward – I think we walked out of there at about 12:45, and that was even with somewhat slow service, and the audition was at 3:00 – so we wandered a little. About a block away I suddenly noticed what we were passing: Dylan’s Candy Bar! I think there was a Food Network thingy on this place a while back: three floors of candy, including a dazzling array of by-the-pound self-serve bins. (As it turns out, their chocolate was almost as disappointing as Serendipity’s, but oh well. C’est la guerre.) It was a bright, fun place, and worth the visit, if not the money spent – still, I found something cute for my graduating niece, and took a cute picture (“Kid! Go stand next to the bunny and I’ll take your picture!” “What bunny?”).

It’s blurry, but I felt silly taking the picture so there’s just the one.

After Dylan’s we pretty much decided to hop in another cab and just go to the Sheraton and figure out what we wanted to do from there. At which point the Kid needed the ladies’ room – that huge iced tea + the frozen hot chocolate – so into the Sheraton we went – and wound up basically just hanging out in the bar for about forty-five minutes. No one really felt like wandering further, and the only shopping nearby that I could see was beyond our means, so … The plan was that when I went off to the testing, the two of them were going to the Met (which a little bit of me envied), and so they did – by way of part of Central Park, in which they stumbled onto the filming of a scene from the remake of Walter Mitty (which worries me – why would you remake a movie – which was based on a book – and change the whole story?): they might wind up in the background! (Wait – that means we have to watch it. Darn.) I wasn’t – quite – hyperventilating; it was more a bouncy let’s-get-this-show-on-the-road nervous than I-need-a-paper-bag-to-breath-into, fortunately.

The Event itself I will post separately – this is the part of less interest to anyone but me, I daresay.

After we were let go, around 5:30, I made my way back to the lobby and found my sister and niece waiting. I gave them a quick recap, and they filled me in on their adventures – they had, as planned, headed for the Met, and went sort of by way of Central Park. They had approached one of the many horse-drawn carriages just out of curiosity – and come to find out a trip from the end of the Park down to the Met would cost about $150. They found a cab.

But not, however, before they almost stumbled into a movie shoot. Apparently the wonderful brains of Hollywood are remaking The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; according to imdb it will star Ben Stiller (which kind of worries me, but then again: Night at the Museum) and Sean Penn is rumored to be co-starring – and, somewhere in the background of a scene shot in Central Park may be two familiar faces. I wouldn’t normally plan to see it – thinking of what they did to Meet John Doe, not that I’ll ever watch that remake either – but now we kind of have to. (What is a movie starring Danny Kaye based on a book by James Thurber, Alex?)

We all kind of looked at each other, sitting there in the Sheraton lobby, and couldn’t quite make up our minds what to do. Home, or …? Finally we just decided to head to Grand Central, and explore the areas we’d never explored before … which, when it came to it, wound up not happening. We were all pooped, and picked a train and got on it. (Come to find out it was a Peak train – and the round trip tickets we held were Off-peak. That never happened before – it was $5 more a ticket, for pete’s sake. Oh well.

Shortly after the train started off, we heard an announcement – presumably to someone who could do something about it – that someone had locked themselves in the bathroom. I hope it wasn’t the bathroom that was right near us, because the three of us, at least, burst out laughing. And then my niece tweeted it. Sorry, person who was already embarrassed …

Two interesting things seen through the train windows: in Harlem, as, I believe, we were just pulling into from the station, I saw a man leaning on his hands against the grate of a closed tobacco shop. He was right below me, motionless, his head down; he was an older man with graying hair, and he had me a little worried. Then, coming from the street so that she emerged from directly below the train, a woman approached him. I thought for a second that she had the same thought that I did – that there was something terribly wrong, and being in a position where she could talk to him she was about to. She went to him and touched his arm, and he jumped a little, and turned, and his face lit up – and he put his arms around her neck and hugged her. Holding hands, they went a few feet away from the store to the street corner, and stopped, and he put his hands up under her hair – the train was coming in now, and the outskirts of the platform were starting to encroach – and he kissed her. And when the platform finally blocked my view he was still kissing her. I felt like a voyeur – well, I was; they had no idea anyone was watching that, though it was on a public street corner – but I was strangely moved by it – it was kind of wonderful.

The other thing? A little ways into Connecticut there was a rainbow. I’ll take that as a sign, thanks.

It was a lot brighter in person…

As we were walking back to the parking garage, across the street from the station, all of a sudden I heard “Hope I see you on Jeopardy!” Wha -?? I turned to see a car pulled up – and my fellow Connecticut tryer-outer whose name I really should remember. I yelled back “You too!” and just marveled at the fact that he – who lived in a completely different town – should have happened to take the exact same train we decided on spontaneously. Fun

I cannot wait to see familiar faces on the show. Can’t wait.

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Jeopardy tryouts: been there, done it, and got the pen to prove it

Well, I’m back. The Jeopardy “audition” (I have to use quotes there because with an actor as a friend it makes me giggle to use the word in relation to me) was this afternoon – and it was a huge amount of fun. You know I’m going to write this up in detail – this blog being, on occasion, a stand-in for my memory – but I’m pooped, so: the short version. My sister and niece and I took the train into NYC, had lunch at Serendipity 3 (which I knew about from the movie), and then went to the Sheraton where the tryouts were being held; they two went off and might have wound up in the background of a movie shoot while I went down to Conference Room K for the test etc.

It was a great experience. The three from the show – Maggie and two gentlemen whose names completely escape me, to my shame (Robert??) – were tremendous, and if I did well enough I could now get a call or email any time in the next 18 months to fly to California. Or not. But Maggie said something which kind of put it all into a different perspective: about 100,000 people took the online test. They called about 1-2000 of those people for the tryouts. As I was processing those numbers, she quoted one woman who recently said “Finally I’m one of the 1%!” “Occupy Jeopardy!” Also, I believe Maggie said they need about 400 contestants a season; figure 365 days minus 104 weekend days = 261 weekdays on which shows will air, times two new contestants per show, minus several weeks of tournaments of various sorts … Yeah, that’s about right. Wow. Those are frighteningly decent odds. Abruptly, as long as I didn’t blow it today – and I don’t think I did – I am more likely to be on Jeopardy! than to be hit by lightning, which wasn’t true a month ago.

Wow.

I guess I really do need to keep studying.Not that a single thing I’ve swotted up on in the past five weeks was in any way relevant – still.

More ASAP.

ETA: I just checked one of the handful of questions I was pretty sure I had wrong on the written test – and I was right! Woot!

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Mallory’s Oracle – Carol O’Connell

Mallory’s Oracle was great fun. Everything about it was appealing – from the unique main character (unique in my experience, though I’ve seen comparisons to Dexter) to the setting to the trappings of the case to the writing.

Kathleen Mallory puts a different spin on “sociopath”. I’m used to thinking of the label as only applying to the ones who go out and kill dozens (and applying to men) (like my former boss), and I suppose there is the seed of the idea that, left to the tender mercies of the city or the foster program, Mallory might have become famous as a rare female serial killer. However, she was not left to any such fate, and while she is far from civilized she is a fierce proponent of the law – when it suits her – as she learned from her foster father, Lt. Markowitz. I’d be curious to read her point of view. As it is, the image of her gained through others’ eyes is fascinating – a network has been formed to keep an eye on her, both for her own sake and the rest of the world’s. She is beloved – but her leash is kept rather short, as those who care for her never lose sight of the fact that her morality is a thin veneer. What’s rather wonderful about her is that, brilliant as she is – and her IQ is substantial – most of her experience as an officer has been in front of a computer. There she has no equal. On a crime scene, though, or working surveillance or questioning witnesses, her inexperience gangs up with her lack of socialization and sets her back rather than moving her forward. She screws up. She’ll never admit it, ever, but she does.

All of the characters are wonderful. Louis Markowitz, dead as the novel begins, and his wife Helen, dead several years before, are as much of a presence as Kathy’s putative partner Riker. The department lieutenant, Coffey, taking over Louis’s office and position, is not welcome by the department, but is not the idiot his new crew assume he is, or perhaps want to believe he is. The inhabitants of the apartment building where Mallory works during her bereavement leave are bizarre flesh and blood – one of the benefits to setting a series in New York has to be the ability to fill the stories with absolutely anyone. Best of all is Charles Butler, the odd and odd-looking friend of the family, some fifteen years older than Mallory and caught in a consciously hopeless love for her. He’s another genius, with major flaws and blind spots, and he is rapidly becoming one of my favorite fictional people.

There is an obvious, though not obtrusive, illustration in the cast of characters of nature versus nurture. Louis’s affectionate but entirely serious epithet for the Kathy he arrested trying (probably successfully) to break into a Jaguar was “baby sociopath”. (Actually, that’s becoming a flaw in the series; “baby sociopath”, “baby felon”; “baby whore”…) She is barely socialized, barely comprehending of the whys and wherefores of thou shalt nots, and the question is left open of what she would have become had Markowitz not accidentally adopted her. Or even if it had happened later. In the cast of victims and suspects of Mallory’s Oracle, there are many damaged people, and the most damaged of them lacked what Mallory chanced onto: love.

The setting is New York, NY, and it’s terrific. Rent-control and little oases of green and breathtaking architecture, and blocks that are a whole different sort of breath-taking, with “rats dancing on garbage pail lids” and crack whores, it’s NYC, and all-inclusive. I admit to being partial to books set in places I know even a little, and though the commercials made it a cliché I do love New York.

I never expected the thread of the story about Charles’s cousin Max Candle and his glorious days of illusion accompanied by his wife, Edith, famous in her own right as a medium. I was surprised by the magic and mediums – and, for once, it was a pleasant surprise. It all tied in together nicely. Detectives strive to solve mysteries, and here was a whole world of mystery not quite amenable to their investigation. It’s all fascinating to me, and well used.

I was surprised by the writing. I read one book somewhere in the middle of the series long ago, Stone Angel, put Carol O’Connell on my List, and collected the books as I found them, but was never impelled to read them until now, anticipating the receipt of the latest Kathy Mallory (Chalk Girl) as an LTER. So I had forgotten why I enjoyed it so much. I think the only thing I disliked in this read was the dogs; abused to a horrific degree, they are mentioned without much explanation or any resolution – including one family pet which launched an unprovoked attack.

There is a sense of humor about this book, sometimes wry and sometimes whimsical, never the main object of the text. And alongside the unexpected humor is an unanticipated poetry. Again, it is never the point of the writing, but instead phrases are scattered as grace notes, like a support pillars shaped into acanthus-crowned Corinthian columns instead of plain unadorned square props. I noticed dance referenced often, literally and descriptively: Max danced, and well; one of the victim family member/suspects was a dancer; light danced, and so did rats. Magic and poetry and dance – alongside blood and age and terror, it was unexpected and surprisingly beautiful. It’s not, apparently, to everyone’s taste; I enjoyed it. I will be working through the rest of the series to better review Chalk Girl, and I plan on enjoying this.

 

There’s really only one topic for today …

From recordings from that day:

We’ve asked everyone to leave lower Manhattan if they can on their own

We want you to say a prayer for everybody in there right now – really, pray as hard as you can for all these people …

It is raining paper and ashes and debris …

It appears from here it could be deliberate …

Manhattan dispatch, what exactly is going on, Kate? We are unable – we are unable to make any kind of communication – -

Mayor Giuliani: The city is now closed. The airspace around the city is closed. There are a large number of firefighters and police officers who are … in harm’s way. And we don’t know how many we’ve lost.

Six a.m.: President Bush is preparing for his morning jog at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Longbow Key, Florida, where he is staying. A van of men of Middle-eastern descent try to enter the resort, claiming they are to have a poolside interview with the President. They are turned away for not having an appointment.

7:45 a.m.: Atta and Al Amari and three other hijackers board American Airlines Flight 11. It is bound from Boston to Los Angeles. Flight 11 carries 81 passengers, nine flight attendants, two pilots.

7:59 a.m: Flight 11 takes off

8:01 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 boards in Newark, New Jersey. It’s scheduled to fly to San Francisco but sits on the tarmac, delayed.

8:13 a.m.: Flight 11’s pilots and flight controllers have their last conversation. Pilots respond when told to turn right, but fail to climb when commanded to moments later.

8:14 a.m.: Flight 175 takes off from Boston. It is bound for L.A. On board are 56 passengers, 7 flight attendants, two pilots, and five hijackers.

8:19 a.m.: Flight 11 veers dramatically off course. Boston flight control assumes the plane has been hijacked; however, they wait five minutes before notifying other flight control centers, and they wait another twenty minutes before contacting NORAD.

8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 departs Dullus International Airport in DC bound for Los Angeles. On board are 58 passengers, five flight attendants, two pilots, and five hijackers.

8:21 a.m.: Flight attendant Amy Sweeney calls American Airlines ground manager Michael Woodward. She tells him calmly, quote, “Listen to me, very carefully – I’m on Flight 11, we’ve been hijacked. Two flight attendants have been stabbed and a first class passenger has had his throat slashed.” She relays the hijackers’ seat numbers – in minutes, staff have their names, phone numbers, addresses, and credit card information. Amy Sweeney stays on the line till the end.

8:41 a.m.: Through an open mike in the cockpit of 175, flight controllers hear loud voices telling everyone to stay in their seats.

8:42 a.m.: After a forty-minute delay, United Flight 93 takes off from Newark Airport. On board are 38 passengers, five flight attendants, two pilots, and four hijackers.

At the same time, Flight 175 veers off course over the state of New Jersey.

8:43 a.m.: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is in the Pentagon, speaking on terrorism. He says, “Let me tell you – I’ve been around the block a few times; there will be another event.”

8:44 a.m.: Amy Sweeney, the flight attendant on board Flight 11 who’s been speaking on an airphone with American Airlines personnel, is asked if she can recognize where she is. She answers, “I see water. I see the buildings. I see buildings – oh my God, pray for us.”

8:44 a.m.: Peter Hanson, aboard Flight 175, calls his father and says, “Oh my God – they just stabbed the airline hostess. I think the airline is being hijacked.” Although his cell phone cuts out twice, he is able to report to his father that flight attendants were being stabbed in order to force the pilots to unlock the cockpit door.

8:45 a.m.: Two F-15’s are ordered to scramble from Otis International Guard Base in Massachusetts, to try and find Flight 11. One minute later, at 8:46, Flight 11 slams into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. A French film crew working on a documentary about New York City firefighters manages to catch the crash on film.

American Flight 11 impacted the North Tower at 8:46 and 40 seconds.

8:48 a.m.: Flight 77 suddenly changes course near southeastern Kentucky and heads back towards Washington. The hijackers tell the passengers to call their families and say goodbye, because they are all going to die.

8:50 a.m.: A mechanic who routinely gets calls from attendants about broken items at United’s maintenance center in San Francisco receives a call from a female flight attendant on Flight 175. She says “Oh my God – the crew’s been killed – a flight attendant’s been stabbed – We’ve been hijacked.” Then the line went dead.

9:00 a.m.: President Bush, on his way to read to children at Booker Elementary School in Florida, is told of the crash into the World Trade Center.

9:01 a.m.: United Airlines warns all of its aircraft of the potential for cockpit intrusion and orders cockpit doors to be barricaded. However, United does not mention the hijackings. Flight 93, still on course, acknowledges the message.

9:03 a.m.: As the world watches, Flight 175 smashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 and three seconds.

9:05 a.m.: While waiting to speak to the group of second-graders, President Bush is told of the second WTC hit.

9:16 a.m.: The FCC notifies NORAD that Flight 93 may have been hijacked. It is thought that one of the hijackers was in the cockpit prior to takeoff. On the flight recorder, the pilots make mention of a guest who is a colleague; it is common for a guest pilot to ride in the cockpit’s jumper seat.

9:17 a.m.: All New York City area airports are shut down and all bridges and tunnels in New York are closed.

9:24 a.m.: The FAA informs NORAD that Flight 77 may have been hijacked, and appears to be headed toward Washington DC.

9:27 a.m.: Flight 93 checks in with Cleveland Ground Control and utters “Good morning’. A few minutes later, three men on board stand up, put red bandannas around their heads, and break into the cockpit. One grabbed the cockpit mike, unaware that ground control could hear his every word. He claims that there is a bomb on board, and that he is a pilot, and the plane must return to New Jersey.

9:26 a.m.: All airline departures in the United States are banned.

9:29 a.m.: President Bush speaks privately with National Security Advisor Rice. He leaves the school immediately. He makes a quick comment to reporters calling the crashes an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

9:31 a.m.: Three F-16’s leave Langley Air Force Base to intercept Flight 77. At about the same time, hijackers aboard Flight 77 tell passengers the plane is going to hit the White House.

9:32 a.m.: The New York Stock Exchange closes.

9:33 a.m.: Flight 77 is spotted flying over the Capitol Beltway at about 7000 feet. Suddenly, the plane makes a sharp turn and begins dropping towards the Pentagon. The plane is soon lost by radar.

9:34 a.m.: Aboard Flight 93, Tom Burnett phones his wife to tell him of the hijacking. She tells him of the planes flown into the WTC. He responds, “Oh my God – this is a suicide mission.”

9:40 a.m.: The FAA orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down.

A large jet aircraft, perhaps the size of a passenger plane, came very low, clipping off light poles as it approached the Pentagon, it slammed into the side of the Pentagon, and it drove itself from the outer ring all the way to the inner ring.

9:41 a.m: Flight 77 slams into the Pentagon. President Bush gives the order to shoot down any plane refusing to turn away from Wash DC.

9:48 am: Tom Burnett calls his wife again from Flight 93 and tells her “don’t worry – we took a vote, and we all decided – we’re going to try to do something.”

9:49 am: the White House is evacuated.

9:58 am: Todd Beamer, aboard Flight 93, puts down the airphone he’d been using to speak with an operator for the last few minutes. The operator stays on the line and hears Todd say to a nearby passenger, “Are you ready? Let’s roll.”

It is not there any more.

Peter Jennings: The whole side has collapsed?
The whole building has collapsed.
The whole building has collapsed?

David Letterman: The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead, they weren’t doing anything wrong, they were living their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do … As I understand it, and my understanding is vague at best, another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings, and we’re told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor. Religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any Goddamn sense?

Tom Hanks: We’re going to try and do something. That was the message sent by some very American heroes with names like Sandra Bradshaw, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, and Thomas Bennett. They found themselves aboard the hijacked flight 93 that went down in Somerset County Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. They witnessed the brutality onboard, and somehow summoned the strength to warn us and take action. United they stood, and likely saved our world from an even darker day of perhaps even more unthinkable horror.
Now, since that day, millions of us everywhere of all ages, races, creeds, have asked ourselves, What are we to do? In their heroic undying spirit, we all feel the need to do something, however small and symbolic, to honor these remarkable heroes among us. Those who have fallen, and those still standing,united. Those of us here tonight are not heroes. We are not healers, nor protectors of this great nation. We appear tonight as a simple show of unity to honor the real heroes and to do whatever we can to ensure that all their families are supported by our larger American family. This is a moment to pause, and reflect, and to heal, and to rededicate ourselves to the American spirit, of one nation, indivisible.

Remembering 911 – an unexpected gift to America

 

The Age of Innocence

You just never know what you’ll get with this blog.  (Neither do I.)  Last time, the Chillis; now:

I finished The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton) recently.  It’s a library-sale book I’ve had about for a while, on the “no, really, I’m going to stop reading so much fluff and elevate my average” shelf.  Dickens (of whom I’ve read too little) is there, and Twain (of whom I … don’t think I’ve read anything), and Don Quixote and, yes, the Russians – Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.  Yes, well, one day.  I happened to pick up Innocence, literally in passing, and within a couple of pages was thinking “Where have you been all my life?” 

OK, it wasn’t so much love at first sight – but it was surprised delight.  My expectations?  Stuffy, I guess; stiff; something you’d be forced to read in high school.  Something a Merchant Ivory film would be made from (though the adaptation was actually directed by Martin Scorsese).  And while the second two are true, the first two very much are not.  It was beautifully written, with engaging characters, and it was … I was going to say “funny”, but while I think I did laugh out loud a couple of times, part of that was surprise.  Its main goal was not to be funny; it was witty. It was kind of wonderful.  I have more Whartons, and they have moved up on my to-read list. 
 
I went it to it unspoiled; I’ve never seen the movie (though I plan to now, soon), and if I’ve ever read a synopsis of book or movie the synapses didn’t retain it.  So there was a certain amount of suspense maintained throughout.  The story is told entirely from the point of view of Newland Archer, a young man of good family in 1870′s New York who has just become engaged to a sweet young thing called May Welland.  They plan to announce it soon, and events are spurred by the arrival of the Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, not quite considered a black sheep but certainly grey.  Her mother was a bit wild and unconventional, so no one really blames Ellen; her marriage to a Polish count (much older than she) was arranged, and while it would have made her New York kin more comfortable if she had simply disappeared quietly into her husband’s wealthy lifestyle – but she didn’t; the rumors are that she ran off with her husband’s secretary and has now fled to the bosom of her American family.  Newland meets her right around the time his engagement is announced, and, predictably given her beauty and exoticism and his bent for questioning the stolidity of the New York Society existence, falls for her, and she for him.  From this basic structure hangs Ellen’s apparently genuine wish not to hurt May, the honey-like consistency of their society, and the advice Newland as a lawyer acting on behalf of his family gives Ellen before he acknowledges his feelings for her, and before he knows more of the reality of the situation: do not divorce your husband.  The family’s attitude is basically: leave the man, all right; come here and dress incorrectly and cause ripples, if you must; but Divorce?  Heavens no. 

The suspense, of course, lay in what, exactly, was going to become of Newland and Ellen.  There is always danger in a story about extramarital love, no matter whether it’s a period piece or a sci fi novel, but in this setting in particular the tension is heightened: if they choose to act on their love, and Newland leaves May and Ellen  gets her divorce the repercussions will be harsh, for the two of them, and Newland’s family, and for May and her family.  What Will They Do??  And what they wind up doing was nothing I saw coming.  I don’t think I liked it – that’s one reason novels of this time period don’t attract me more, I think, is that this type of ending was in fashion then – but I did understand it, and under the circumstances it made sense. 

One very interesting thing about Newland’s point of view is his outlook on the implementation of the double standard in marriage.  The prospective husband is not expected to go to his wedding night ignorant as to what he is supposed to do when he got there; in fact, quite the opposite.  While the bride is to be a blank slate, he is supposed to garner information and experience from discreet sources, about which his wife (and mother) must never know (or must pretend they don’t know), and it is with this experience that he must instruct her.  He thinks of May in all her hard innocence and ignorance, and is swamped by the responsibility of it, and, in a very modern way, by the flaws inherent in a system which demands that a husband is also, in many ways, a father to his spouse. 

And people wonder why feminism happened. 

Newland Archer is the kind of character I don’t want to like, and like despite that.   I didn’t remember Daniel Day Lewis had the movie role, and in my head Newland looked just like the wastrel son in Berkeley Square, Lord Hugh.  It should be interesting to replace him with Daniel Day Lewis.  Not to start floundering in the High School English Class mire, Newland embodies the future, or at least a yearning for the future, and change, and radical new ideas – but, slowly, step by step so that he hardly notices it, he is sucked back into the tar pit of the norm and Society’s mores.  He might not have struggled very hard if he did notice; he seems to be a great deal more idea than action. 

May is … a piece of work.  I’m looking forward to seeing how the character is handled onscreen, because her brand of so-thoughtful cruelty is, I think, unique in my experience.  She’s all surface, no depth – but the surface is so hard and shiny, so much what is expected, that no one but Newland (and through him the reader) might ever suspect the soullessness underneath.  There is an outer appearance of all obedience and pliancy, but the hollow inner core is all an unyielding adherence to The Way Things Are, against which attempts to introduce new thoughts and ways bend and break or are deflected.  She’s utterly capable of listening to a madcap plan from Newland, and saying “Yes, dear” – or of sensing the tendency in Newland to do something new and different – and finding soft and subtle ways to make the new and different thing completely impossible.  (“But dear, weren’t you going to Washington?”)  One more simile, because I can’t resist the similes: she’s a spider, slowly, inexorably stilling his struggles and wrapping his spirit in the silken stodginess of daily life in New York’s upper crust; as time passes and the silk accretes the plans and ideas die away, until all that remains is just another one of the set. 

Ellen is a conundrum.  She and May are two facets to the Innocence of the title, and, surprisingly, depending on your definition, of the two Ellen may be the more innocent.  She is also in many ways the strongest of the three of them.  May is hard, but I don’t think she’s strong; she’s passive for the most part, until she needs to bring things back to her straight and narrow.  Newland … not strong.  Every chance he has to break from the stolidity he fears so much just … fizzles.  But Ellen – Ellen lived through unnamed horrors in her marriage, and instead of crumpling under whatever abuses there were she broke free, and back in New York proceeds to do much as she pleases, whether the family likes it or not, all the while sweetly interacting with the family in a genuine gratitude and affection, oblivious to their censure. 

One thing I take note of, whether it’s noteworthy or not (probably not), is the switch of hair color for May and Ellen in the film.  In the book, May is blonde and Ellen has “sable” hair; in the movie, May is brunette Winona Ryder, and Ellen is fair Michelle Pfeiffer.  I can see Pfeiffer doing damaged but honest, and Ryder doing outwardly sweet and inwardly acid.  I can’t help but wonder if it was a deliberate choice, a commentary of sorts, not to put the ladies in wigs.  As I said, I’m really looking forward to seeing how the book was adapted; it’s surprisingly rare that I see a film based on a book I’ve read but am not emotionally involved with.  I think I can be pretty objective here.

 

Steven R. Boyett – Ariel

It took me a while, but I finally finished Ariel, by Steven R. Boyett.   

As the story begins, six years ago the world underwent a Change.  At least, no one’s said anything about the world outside the US, but since no one seems to have come along and tried to colonize the country from a stronger base the presumption is that it was a global thing.  At 4:30 one afternoon, everything mechanical stopped working, from battery-operated watches to cars to telephones to guns.  And for various reasons lots of people have died. 

The story is told in the first person by Pete Garey, 20 (21?) years old and on his own since the Change occurred.  Over a year ago Pete found a very young unicorn with a broken leg – and the book almost lost me right there when in a flashback the pretty little thing looked up at him and said, in a little girl voice, “Bwoke”.  Repeatedly.  What with one thing and another, Pete was – and is as of the time of the book – able to touch the unicorn, being still a virgin, and he helped her to heal.  He named her Ariel, and they have become partners over the last couple of years, traveling and surviving together.  They are, in fact, Familiars, which is pretty much what the common Fantasy usage is (as opposed to Buddies, which happens when a human bonds with an animal to gain control over it).  They wander the southeast without much of a goal beyond survival, until the day they discover that there is an evil sorcerer in New York City who wants her horn.  Not her, necessarily – her horn.

I don’t know.  It’s a neat idea – suddenly the laws of nature change, and nothing mechanical works but magic does, but … shouldn’t that mean the wheel wouldn’t work?  I mean, guns don’t fire.  Wind-up wristwatches work, but guns won’t fire.  Guns have been around for hundreds of years, and aren’t all that mechanical; my understanding is that it’s more of a physics thing than anything else, especially with old weapons; there’s no reason a revolver shouldn’t work even if technology has been obliterated.  The explanation given is that Boyett hated guns, and didn’t want them in his book, and so discarded logic in favor of the explanation “It’s magic.  Just because.  Shut up.”  Also, Boyett was 19 when he wrote the book, which actually explains a great deal.  

Something I find fascinating is that the edition I have certainly doesn’t show Ariel on the cover – it comes across as a gritty urban post-apocalyptic fantasy: crumbling edifices, fire, random hub caps, and a sword.  It was, I think, a good idea not to put the glowy white unicorn on the cover.  That way lies Children’s Book, which this certainly isn’t.  It is, however something of a coming-of-age story, along with the post-apocalypse semi-urban fantasy tale, and a Quest too.  It’s actually strangely off-putting to have a unicorn in this setting – I’m too conditioned to expect certain things when a unicorn is involved, and none of those things are present.  Ariel curses like a sailor – or rather like Pete, from whom she learned to talk … but she loves peppermint candies. 

I … just don’t know.  Pete’s all right; he’s self-absorbed, except when he’s absorbed in Ariel – but if spoilers are not alarming see below for more on his self-absorption.  Ariel is all right; she can be kind of bitch, which is actually funny in a unicorn.  And she knows things she has no business knowing, but has no idea about other things; she doesn’t know what a lighthouse is when she sees it, but she can always tell you what time it is, in the same sort of answer a person with a watch would: “It’s five till ten.”  She doesn’t know what Chesapeake Bay is, but she’s able to identify a saddle on something else’s back and can give accurate and detailed information on dragon physiology and how to kill one.  A factor in my lack of fondness for Ariel is, I think, that Pete spends so much time telling me how wonderful she is, but I don’t really see it in her actions and words.  He tells me I should like her, but I’m given no reason to decide to like her.  And the punning is as much fun as a hair shirt.  In his afterword (so charmingly called “Taking a dump in Lothlórien” – which, by the way, he accents incorrectly), Boyett talks about how the book evenly divides people into two camps: those who loved the book and whose lives it changed, and those who flung the book against a wall and wrote him hate mail.  There is, he claims, no one who falls in the middle area.  I hate to break it to him, but yes, there is.  *raises hand*  I did not love the book.  I don’t think it would have changed my life even if I’d read it in my formative years.  But I didn’t fling it, and the urge to write a nasty email died quickly.  I hated the ending, but I didn’t care all that much; I’m not sorry I read it, but I simply won’t ever reread this one.

****SPOILERS FOLLOW (not plot, but details of setting)****

Alternate cover, with unicorn

I might have missed something, but I’m trying to work out what happened to the populace.  Because Pete and Ariel can walk for days, on or off roads, and never meet anyone, and when they do it’s nearly always just a handful of people.  There were over 238 million people in the US in 1985.  There were over eleven million people in Florida, where Pete and Ariel start out the book, where Pete grew up.  Yes, lots of people have to have died in the cataclysm.  Obviously, if you were in a plane when the Change happened you were … in trouble (my first instinct being to say “screwed”).  Hospitals obviously would be in peril; with generators useless as well as everything else, life support would be almost immediately ended.  There were apparently a huge number of suicides, which is understandable, and looting and murder and general lawlessness is rampant, which is (unfortunately) human.  Oh, and if you were driving along a highway and were caught in the middle of nowhere, that would be a problem.  Would there have been crashes on highways if every vehicle there was just … stopped, and if so would they have been bad enough for fatalities?  Would forward motion keep people moving for a few minutes?  Why wouldn’t brakes work – isn’t that a simple matter of depression of the brake pedal applying the brake shoe to the wheel and slowing it, power brakes being only to make the process easier?  (What about elevator brakes?)  And what about everyone else?  I suppose people stuck far away from home – as I said, stuck with a useless car in the middle of nowhere, or at work in the middle of nowhere – could lead to starvation, death from exposure (though probably not in Florida), or various other sorts of accidents.  Cities have emptied, except for the dangerous and nasty.  The first thing Pete runs into the day of the Change is intruders in his house – was one of those supposed to be his brother?  If so, why?  Did the Change affect some people’s minds?  The neighbor who was a policeman seems to have gone mad – oh, and the cannibal Pete has to kill right at the beginning of the book.  The loss of plumbing (did they?  Lose plumbing?) and sanitation doesn’t seem to have cost lives; the moment the Change hit the air and water cleared of all pollution, with an improbably immediacy – although Boyett never says if it’s a self-cleaning system, as in whether it would matter if a clutch of survivors used a river as their latrine.  Rampant disease is never mentioned.  So …?

Oh, right – there was apparently an immediate influx of magical beasts, many of which will happily eat human.  So that might account for a decent number of people, especially in the first few unprepared days – but … Where the heck did they come from?  Did they all spring into being at the same time, the moment of the Change?  Or did they always exist, and were released or emerged from hiding all at once …?  This is one of the problems with a very young writer and an equally young narrator; neither knows everything, so there are many unanswered questions.

More: why hasn’t Pete ever tried to find his family?  He said that his mother worked a few hours away by car; why not leave some kind of message at the house – just in case his brother wasn’t the one who killed the girl, and hasn’t been killed himself – and set off toward where she would have been, even if it was a few hours’ walk, or a day’s, or more?  It’s stated she works in Miami, but not where the family lives, so it’s all speculation (though they apparently live very much in the boonies, as it’s several hours’ walk from the high school home.   I could walk to our high school in under an hour.  Say she worked two hours away, which is an idiotic commute, but just say; that would be say 100 miles.  Cut it down to “as the crow flies” – or as the boy walks – and call it 60 miles, though it could be a lot less.  So it might take him about a day and a half; he wasn’t in shape yet, so two days.  Big whoop.  He wandered all up the whole East Coast, for heaven’s sake – a few dozen miles to find his own mother shouldn’t be too much to contemplate.  He might never have found her – but he’s spent the last five years wandering aimlessly anyway.  I would have thought if he gave half a damn about his mother he would make some effort to go and see if he could trace her.  I’d imagine she would look for her children.  And what about all of his other friends, and extended family if any?  His brother?  And what about the family of the girl he saw killed?  They can just wonder for the rest of eternity?  

****SPOILERS FOLLOW (this time I mean it)****

One effect of Pete’s self-centeredness, I suppose, is that he seems to be genuinely confused about why Ariel grows bitchier when a girl insists on joining their traveling party.  “Look, I’m sorry if I’m coming on too strong,[" she says.  "]But you try reading fantasy books all your life – have a Bradbury dream walk by your bus bench on a hot day, with everything you’ve ever wanted tied up in a neat bundle – and see if you wouldn’t do almost anything to have it.”  (Did Bradbury write about unicorns?)  Many times it is said, and several times demonstrated, that someone who is not a virgin cannot touch Ariel.  She can be seen, and is happy enough to travel with, those “not pure” (except for the girl, Shaughnessy – she never liked her), but non-virgins simply cannot touch her.  They have traveled alone together for going on two years, and when a girl joins them – because she is irresistibly drawn to the unicorn, though not a virgin - Ariel puts two and two together: 20-year-old male, 20-something girl, alone.  Compatibility in anything beyond gender becomes irrelevant; one boy (any) + one girl (any) = headache for unicorn.  A few things are said about a unicorn’s ability to see the possibilities ahead, the possible branches a path can take.  It doesn’t take that ability to be able to see the possibilities of a young man (especially one who has been having erotic dreams) remaining in close proximity to a nubile and willing (human) female.  (And really, I didn’t need that deep an insight into the erotic awakening of Pete Garey.  Thanks, though.)

The book was originally published in 1983, when the world was a very different place, and Boyett added a prefacing author’s note for the reprint.  In it, he vaguely explains that there is something that no longer exists which did in the ’83, and since the book takes place in an undetermined future what isn’t there now shouldn’t be there then.  But he made the decision to retain as part of the story what was once and is no longer there, part of the reasoning for which was that if it was removed it would be obvious.  And I promise you that’s almost the way he says it in the prologue, only over several pages. 

What he meant – obviously – was the World Trade Center, and I have no idea why he thought he had to dance around it in the preface; NYC + something no longer there which was hard to miss in the 80′s = the Twin Towers.  I knew that the minute he started the tap dance; why he couldn’t specifically say “I decided to keep the World Trade Center in my book for the following reasons” I can’t fathom. 

And … I wish he hadn’t kept it in.  I get that it’s the future of 1983, and not the future of 2011, but … this is the tenth anniversary year.  I didn’t see it coming when I opened the book, and though the prologue warned me it still hurt.  I see that it would have been a nightmare to revamp the climactic battle scenes sans Twin Towers – but couldn’t he at least have changed the lame Middle-earth reference from when Pete first sees the towers?  “Tolkien would have loved it”?  Why?  JRRT was NOT a huge fan of skyscrapers (not that there were so many when and where he lived, but I think it’s a safe statement given what I know about his personality), and his Two Towers were worlds apart, not side by side.  Speaking of Tolkien … There were a couple of shout-outs to JRRT, and they both made my eyebrows crinkle (not to mention what was spewed out in the afterword, and the spelling thereof).  I wonder if Boyett ever read him more than once, or if Pete is supposed to have.  He (pick one) doesn’t seem to have a clue about what was in the books. 

Another thing that bothered me about the book … Ariel and Pete are captured by the Big Bad.  Pete escapes, though Ariel cannot (and even if she got away, they were on the 86th floor, and her leg was all-but-broken – that’s a lot of stairs.  So, Pete gets away, and next thing he knows has fallen in with a group who plan to try to battle the Big Bad, and he can help them and they him and so they take him back to their base.  In Washington DC.  He … leaves not only the area where Ariel is held, but the city.  State.  Region.  I hated that Boyett sent his hero some 225 miles south of where his best friend was suffering in captivity.  I looked it up; the travel time by car is about 4 hours, give or take about an hour for traffic.  On horseback it would be about 40 – 50 miles per day, and so at least five days.  Five there, time for planning, five back again – and all the while Ariel wondering if he would ever come back for her …

Poor thing.  She got shafted right, left, and center from the second they reached New York.  I absolutely hated the ending.  The little bastard just couldn’t keep his pants on for one more night – sacrificed his bond with his best friend, his familiar, who loved him for some unknown reason and whom he supposedly loved more than anything, so that he could shag the first girl he was exposed to for more than ten minutes.  I never liked the Shaughnessy bimbo anyway (which is interesting considering the narrative is from Pete’s point of view), but this … She supposedly loved Ariel too, just for being what she was – and she took the first real opportunity that offered to hurt her more deeply than the big bad wizard could have dreamed of.  Which is bad enough.  Pete … what Pete did was so very much more hurtful.  If he had done it in a different manner it might have been … no, not all right, but better.  This was awful.

No, I won’t be reading this book again.  I’m still not flinging it, but … Anyone want it?

This poster has nothing to do with the book, apparently, even though it's pretty perfect for the end. The link will take you to a site that explains it ... But that's totally Ariel, right down to Central Park.