No Escaping (Book Thoughts: Escape From The World Trade Center, Leslie Haskin)

This year was the 10th Anniversary of the WTC attacks and I was nowhere near NYC on that day.  I was in Copenhagen in the morning, enroute to London. Yet somehow I felt the energy of that day. I somehow felt close to the city where it happened. Days before, people were telling us that on television the coverage has been non-stop. Curiously, I never had the urge to turn the television on at the boat. I have already seen what I needed to see about this whole thing. Or so I thought. After reading "Escape From The World Trade Center," by Leslie Haskin, I felt like I was not only reliving that day, I felt I was seeing more of it through the eyes of Leslie Haskin. She wrote in harrowing detail the ordeal she went through as she took the stairs from the 36th floor of her office in Tower One to the World Financial Center to take the ferry to Hoboken. Much of it is heart wrenching, and for me, an eye-opener. I have heard all the stories, and each one is more powerful than the next. Each one is more harrowing, and as she writes, NYC has 8 million stories that day. I have one, too, but it is colorless and mild compared to what Ms. Haskin went through. As she wrote, if you have ever been inside the WTC, you are still in it. I remember in the late 80s when I was working in the Downtown area how I would take the train everyday to the Twin Towers, so I have a lto fo affinity and affection for it. Closing my eyes right now, I could still see the concourse - Alexander's Department Store, the various stores inside, I remember there was a huge Sephora by the escalators going to the PATH. I remember taking teh train to WTC teh first day the station there opened, and thing, realizing that those grounds are now sacred. They are no burial grounds. On September 11th this year, they opened some kind of memorial. I haven't been there yet, but I will go and pay my respects one of these days.

BC29