I’ve just been letting people know that my family and I
are ok. It’s been a crazy couple of days.

For people that don’t live in this area I’m sure the
events of the past couple of days are scarry. Living
here in almost the midst of the chaos has been
unbelievable. Everyone here knows or at least knows
someone else that knows or had family in the World Trade
Center. So far I only know one person that has a family
member that is missing.

There have been some amazing stories that really make
you feel good about people and some stories that make
you sick. I work with a guy who was supposed to go to
the World Trade Center Yesterday morning for an
interview, but because of things going on in our office
he had called to reschedule.

Another person I work with told me that his brother-in-
law was in the building across the street from the WTC
and was looking out the window and saw the 2nd plane
hit. He then was evacuated and when he got out to the
street an hour later saw horrible things that I won’t go
into. However, as he was leaving on the ferry the
captain all of a sudden made an abrubt turn and slammed
into an unoccupied dock. My friend’s brother-in-law
looked up and saw the tower collapsing and people
running and carrying wounded people. This Ferry captain
having seen this turned into the unused dock so he could
load wounded people. We are hearing a lot of heroic
stories that aren’t making the news.

Unfortunately, some of the stories aren’t so nice.
There have been some people in local Mosques in some of
the downtown areas that are celebrating. So far there
has not been any retaliations from other people.

Interestingly I was having a difficult morning when all
of this happened, but I forget why. You really realize
how insignificant your problems are when something like
this happens.

There is a hill near my Sister-in-laws house where you
can see NY, and the WTC was impossible to miss. Today
there was just a big smoke cloud. TV doesn’t even
capture what it really looks like.

I hope all of you are well. If you haven’t already
given, please consider giving blood. I live about 60
miles outside the city and all of our firefighters and
police are in the process of giving aid. I ran into a
firefighter this morning at the local 7 eleven and he
said that is the best thing people can do now.