Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: b…
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.