9/11 Flashback, a 2014 Repost

The essay below was published in 2004. My 9/11 post for 2014 has been published at BlogHer.com at this link.

The following article was originally posted at AuthorsDen.com in 2004. I wrote about 9/11 in 2011 on the 10-year anniversary as well, a whole seven  (7) years after my first reflection, and now 10 years since I wrote my first reflective piece about 9/11, here I am again contemplating another that should be up tomorrow. I decided to repost the first piece here at Whose Shoes Are These Anyway in preparation for reflecting on tomorrow's post. 

September 11, 2004

"September 11 Photo Montage" by UpstateNYer -
Own work; derivative work of the following:
File:WTC smoking on 9-11.jpeg by Michael 
Foran on FlickrFile:DN-SD-03-11451.JPEG
by the United State NavyFile:UA Flight 175 
hits WTC south tower 9-11 edit.jpeg by
TheMachineStops on FlickrFile:WTC-Fireman
 requests 10 more colleagesa.jpg by the
US GovernmentFile:Flight93Engine.jpg by
the US GovernmentFile:Video2 flight77 
pentagon.png by the United States Department
of Defense. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons.

I don't keep track of days well, and I was out late last night tending to business in Woodbury, NJ, almost two hours from my home in Scotch Plains, something that had to be done. Slept in this morning. If I hadn’t been checking out the work of fellow writers today on the Web, I wouldn't even know it was 9/11. My brother just missed death that day. He was pissed at his bosses and told them he wasn't coming in; otherwise, he'd have been under The Towers when the planes hit.

I'd come in from doing what I do on most days to see hell on the news; I’d been chauffeuring a kid and had crazy phone messages on my voice mail. “Nordette, turn on the news. They say the people have flown a plane into those World Towers in New York. I can’t reach Ben.” That was my mother, who’d confused TV news before. So I frowned at the phone.

Next message. “Nordette, call Mom. I can’t get through. Tell her I didn’t go to work today. Remember the damned Macy people pissed me off yesterday and I called in. Tell her I’m okay. I wasn’t at The Towers.” That was my brother. He’d told me the night before he wasn’t going in. He’d been working lots of overtime and had been asked to check up on a security issue that a staff person could handle. But something must be going on. My brother didn’t mix up the news.

The first CNN image I saw remains embedded in my brain, a plane crushing a glass and concrete titan, driving through it like the tower was a block of cheap sheetrock ... then a burgeoning inferno. I remember thinking accident, but a second plane! I remember thinking war. I recall the gray cloud billowing downward, people bursting through it, fleeing toward the cameras, naked fear on dusty faces, and the first tower crumbling. Sometime later the second would also.

Make Me Rainbows: I do love Ella Fitzgerald

I am on an Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie kick right now with frequent turns back to Nancy Wilson. Here's Ella singing "Make Me Rainbows" with the Count Basie Orchestra. There's something about listening to this music that makes me feel my parents, now both deceased, are still very near. Also, a love for this kind of music is one of the things my brother and I shared. He died last year.

I mention these deaths, but I'm not particularly sad today. I'm in a reflective mood.

Following "Make Me Rainbows," Ella sings "After You've Gone." It's part of a live concert at the Montreaux Jazz Festival recorded in 1979. As I said on Facebook, few singers today have so much fun with manipulating their voices skillfully and playing with notes as singers of Ella's era did. However, I truly enjoyed Candice Glover's performance of "Lovesong" on American Idol a few nights ago. She wasn't as jazzy as Ella, but if she wanted to be over time, I think she could be.

"Am I the Same Girl" doing the "Soulful Strut"? (videos)

I'm having an attack of "Am I the Same Girl" fixation tonight, listening to its different versions again. This fit comes around every eight or nine years, I'm starting to think, and I have loved almost every version of this song, including its incarnations as the instrumental "Soulful Strut" by Young Holt Limited in 1968-69 (according to Wikipedia session musicians actually were the ones playing on that cut) and a remake by Grover Washington in 1996 that I bought as soon as I heard it.

The song was written by Eugene Record (of the Chi-lites) and Sonny Sanders, according to Wikipedia and recorded first by Barbara Acklin, whose version I've included among the videos below. I can't remember which one I heard first, her version when I was eight years old or Young Holt Limited's instrumental. If Wikipedia is correct about Acklin's voice being stripped out of the release, I must have heard the Young Holt cut. Their version is the one I've posted first.



Next is Barbara Acklin's 1968 version of "Am I the Same Girl." I think I remember hearing this version on the radio back then, but it may have been Dusty Springfield's version I recall.



Here's Dusty Springfield's version, which also came out when I was eight or nine. I suppose it's not surprising that I recall this song so much since about three versions came out at the same time. I associate the older versions that came out in 1968-69 with visiting California in the summer and the later versions with my marriage during the 1990s, which was probably when the lyrics became more meaningful to me.



Swing Out Sister's remake, 1992. I bought this one, too, but maybe five or six years after its release. I like their additional lyrics near the end.



And Grover Washington's rendition, which I purchased as soon as I heard it.



This is what happens when I stay up way past my bedtime.