September was already a dark month for New Yorkers. It started out with observances for the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Then the stock market went and crashed. This documentary short-film focuses on the memorials at the World Trade Center and at Wall Street.
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Billy Collins who served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, selected by the Librarian of Congress, has been called “The nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.” In the wake of 9/11, he was asked by USA TODAY to select a piece of his work that he believed had a message for those difficult times.
At that time, Collins wrote, “In the aftermath of the catastrophe of Sept. 11, which was nothing less than a psychic invasion of the United States, many people I know turned intuitively to poetry as a source of sanity and perhaps even consolation. Poetry has always accommodated loss and keening; it may be said to be the original grief counseling center. But American poets will have a hard time if they attempt a direct response to these events, because poetry by its nature moves us inward, not outward to the public and the collective.
Since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the media has tried to fill that hole, that vacuum, with talk and print, but unsuccessfully. Poetry will not fill that space either, but poetry creates its own space apart from such terrible emptiness. It’s not that poets should feel a responsibility to write about this calamity. All poetry stands in opposition to it. Pick a poem, any poem, from an anthology and you will see that it is speaking for life and therefore against the taking of it. A poem about mushrooms or about a walk with the dog is a more eloquent response to September 11th than a poem that announces that wholesale murder is a bad thing.”
Collins chose The Dead which at first appears to be a seemingly simple allegory for death. The Dead gives the first impression of being a light poem, but the poem’s final lines bridge the divide between humor and its much deeper meaning. Further, if you’ve been around long enough for someone you love to have died, you’ll appreciate its sentiment.
The Dead
The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
Billy Collins
The animated short film, The Dead, is from Billy Collins’ action poetry series, which he produced for the Sundance Channel. The poetry is by Collins, with animation provided by Juan Delcan of Spontaneous.
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The Dead: Action Poetry by Billy Collins
Animation by Juan Delcan
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On September 11th, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, Wofford College, a small liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, payed honor to Vernon Baker. Baker is the only living African-American to have been awarded the World War II Medal of Honor. Describing Vernon Baker as “the greatest hero you or I will ever meet in our lifetime,” Bernie Dunlap’s voice choked with emotion as the Wofford College President spoke about Vernon Baker in front of a standing-room-only crowd last Thursday at Leonard Auditorium in Wofford’s historic Old Main Buildig.
Dunlap presented Baker, the only living African-American recipient of the Medal of Honor for valor during World War II, with the college’s third annual Sandor Teszler Award for Moral Courage and Service to Humankind to a thunderous standing ovation during Wofford’s opening convocation ceremony. Dunlap and Wofford College Dean David Wood also presented Baker, 89, with an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree, and Spartanburg’s Mayor William Barnet followed by giving Baker a key to the city. “It is September 11, and we remember that this is a difficult and challenging world,” Barnet told the crowd. “But we will always remember our heroes, whether they admit they’re heroes or not, and today we honor one.”
Dunlap first learned of Baker’s story by watching an NBC documentary about Baker that was broadcast during last Winter’s Olympics and later reading Baker’s autobiography, Lasting Valor. Baker, has “endured decades of some of the worst this country offered to 20th century black America,” Dunlap said. Baker served in the Army as a lieutenant with the 370th Regiment. On April 5th and 6th, 1945, he destroyed four German machine gun nests near Viareggio, Italy, at Castle Aghinolfi, a German mountain strong point on the high ground. He killed nine enemy soldiers with a gun and hand grenades.
For his service, Baker also earned the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Cross in addition to the Medal of Honor. However, It took 52 years before those heroics were recognized. Baker, because he was an African-American, was not officially honored for his bravery until 1997 when he and six of his comrades finally received the Medal of Honor from then-President Bill Clinton. Of the group honored by Clinton, Vernon has the only honoree still living.
The Sandor Teszler Award, which was also given to Baker, carries with it a $10,000 gift and honors the late Sandor Teszler, a Jewish immigrant who came to the Carolinas after he and his family were nearly killed by the Nazis during World War II. Teszler, for whom Wofford’s college library is named, was a friend of the college and a textile businessman who was one of the first to desegregate textile mills in the Carolinas. Previous recipients of the Teszler Award have been Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2006, and Paul Farmer, Founding Director of the international charity organization Partners in Health, last year.
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Wofford College, in Spartanburg (SC), honored Joseph Vernon Baker, the only living African-American recipient of the Medal of Honor for valor during World War II. Wofford presented Baker with The Sandor Teszler Award for Moral Courage and Service to Humankind during the college’s opening convocation ceremonies on September 11, 2008.
The Sandor Teszler Award represents the highest ideals that the Wofford community embraces, and it carries with it a $10,000 award. Sandor Teszler was born in the old Austro-Hungarian empire, and during World War II Teszler, his wife and two sons were taken to a death camp on the Danube River, where the Nazi victims were systematically beaten to death. They were prepared for imminent death, but then they unexpectedly were rescued by an official from the Swiss Embassy. Immigrating to America and coming to the Carolinas, Sandor Teszler became a leader in the textile industry, soon becoming one of the very first to desegregate the textile mills. During the last decade of his life, Teszler graced the Wofford campus, “attending so many classes that the faculty, acknowledging a wisdom and experience greater than their own, honored themselves by making him a professor.”
Wofford College is one of only a handful of colleges and universities in the United States that were founded prior to the Civil War, which still operates and remains on its original campus. The Wofford campus has been designated a National Historic District, and five of its six original college buildings are still in use today. Wofford has become known in the wider academic world as a true “Phoenix rising from the ashes.” The college was devastated by the loss of almost its entire endowment as a result of the Civil War. However, despite its meager financial resources, Wofford proudly struggled through the next twelve decades to provide an academically challenging education to its small student body. One illustration of the sterling academic quality maintained by the college is the fact that forty-two Wofford College alumni have gone on to serve as college and university presidents.
The commemoration of Joseph Vernon Baker and the courage exemplified in his life carries a special confluence with a certain aspect of Wofford’s own history. Founded in 1854, for over a century Wofford was a small private liberal arts college that was segregated, attracting almost all of its white students from the Old South. In 1962 and 1963, public colleges and universities throughout the region had begun to desegregate, almost always forced to do so at the direction of federal court orders and accompanied by significant resistance and often violence. In the face of strong and heated public sentiments against desegregation, as well as by anticipated bitterness concerning the college’s plans for integration and withdrawal of financial support for the college on the part of some of its alumni, supporters and friends, Wofford’s officers were undaunted and forged ahead, quietly beginning to make plans for desegregation. In the fall semester of 1964, the college opened its doors with an admissions policy that was equally applicable and nondiscriminatory to all students who might wish to apply, regardless of their race or creed. Steadfastly committed to its decision to make a stand for human equality, Wofford thus became one of the very first private colleges in the Old South to peacefully integrate.
Vernon Baker is now 89 years-old and lives in St. Maries, Idaho. Mr. Baker had earned the Medal of Honor 52 years before he and six of his military comrades actually received the award in 1997 from then-President Bill Clinton at a special White House ceremony. Mr. Baker was the only one who was still living to accept the Medal of Honor in person, the military’s highest award for bravery in battle. “They helped America to become more worthy of them and more true to its ideals,” Clinton said at the White House observance.
Vernon Baker, who had served as a lieutenant with the 370th Infantry Regiment, was cited for his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life” for his actions on April 5 and 6th, 1945, when he destroyed four German machine gun nests near Viareggio, Italy, at Castle Aghinolfi, a critical German high-ground mountain defense post. He killed nine enemy soldiers with a gun and hand grenades. Mr. Baker also was awarded the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroic actions in Italy.
In the January 14th, 1997 edition of The New York Times, James Bennett wrote a moving article about the White House ceremony, which came a half-century after most of them had died in combat. On January 13th, 1997, seven soldiers finally were awarded the Medals of Honor that they deserved, but which had been denied after World War II because they were African-Americans. Of the seven men, Joseph Vernon Baker was the only one of the decorated soldiers who was still alive.
Their abilities and courageous actions in combat had been routinely derided by white officers. The very soldiers who were finally honored on that day had been forced to fight in segregated units, protecting the very freedoms that they did not fully share.
”History has been made whole today,” Mr. Clinton declared, while standing in the East Room of the White House in front of Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington, ”and our nation is bestowing honor on those who have long deserved it.”
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Technorati: African-American, African-American soldiers, Black, Black soldiers, WWII soldiers, soldiers, Bill Clinton, Clinton, 9/11, culture, cultural, cultural issues, documentary, film, German soldiers, Germans, Germany, holocaust, death camps, concentration camps, integration, segregation, prejudice, racism, Italy, Medal of Honor, WWII Medal of Honor, multimedia, Nazis, news, photographs, photography, education, higher education, colleges, Sandor Teszler, South Carolina, Spartanburg, Vernon Baker, video, wars, World War II, WWII, Wofford College, social issues, society, world
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“The Prayer for America” Memorial, Yankee Stadium (11/23/2001)
Father Mychal Judge was a Franciscan priest who served everyone that he encountered with the passion and spirit of St Francis. Those who knew Mychal Judge have described him as carefree, open-eyed, laughing and humble. Some of his greatest friends were alcoholics whom he had saved from street corners, a mother who lost her daughter on TWA Flight 800 and a disabled former policeman whom he wheeled across an embattled Northern Ireland in an attempt to persuade the people there of God’s healing power of forgiveness.
Mychal Judge was also the dedicated official Chaplain for the New York Fire Department. He rushed to be with the FDNY firefighters at the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy, and as he was kneeling to give Last Rites to a fireman who had just perished there, Mychal was struck by falling debris from the burning towers and killed.
Father Judge was gay, which he knew would have caused him to be barred from the priesthood under the current Pope. He kept knowledge about his sexual orientation closely guarded, because he was acutely aware that it could become an obstacle to his work with some of the beloved firemen to whom his ministry was so dedicated.
In addition, many people have a special remembrance of Father Judge for his labors with and on behalf of persons who were suffering with AIDS during the early years of the crisis. Beginning in the early 1980s, when HIV really began to emerge with its fury of terror, Father Judge was one of the first persons to courageously devote himself to caring for those who were stricken, mostly alone, isolated from society and totally abandoned by their families. His steadfast kindness continues to stand as a role model for us all.
As part of this 9/11 memorial article, it is very worthwhile to remember the touching documentary about the life of Father Judge, Saint of 9/11. I am pleased to present the full version of this documentary here for you to view.
Technorati: 9/11, World Trade Center, World Trade Center tragedy, Twin Towers, 9/11 anniversary, New York, Manhattan, New York City, NYC, Father Mychal Judge, Mychal Judge, Saint of 9/11, Saint of 9/11 documentary, film, documentary, music, video, music video, art, culture, cultural, social life, society, politics, war, Iraq war, photographs, photography, news, world news
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