September 12, 2001

To catch you all up to date:

September 11, 2001 (thats 9-11 if you didn’t notice)

7:55 am - caught the NJT to Manhattan Penn. Station. 8:07 am - arrived in Manhatten ~8:20 am - caught “A” train subway to 59th Street. ~8:30 am - arrived at 59th Street Station (lower west corner of Central Park) 8:45 am - First plane crashes into WTC-2 (I was Rollerblading in Central Park) 8:55 am - Arrived at work. 9:00 am - Alerted by co-worker who was TeleCommuting that day of the events 9:03 am - World changed forever

It is now Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2:30 am and I just got home a little while ago. Hell of a day.

PS: anyone who knows of job openings for Web Developers/Web Video/Flash - that sort of thing please contact me. I’m currently looking to get the hell out of Dodge.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

[Note: writing is my therapy. I wrote this with my friends and family in mind as the audience. I feel better after composing this letter and I hope that my sharing it with you is in someway benifical in your own understading and coping with this tragedy.]

We all have persistent memories that are indelibly written in our minds. Sometimes it can be the most innocuous events that we can recall with vivid clarity; sometimes it is a moment of shock that we never forget. One commonality with most of these memories is that we are rarely aware, at the time, that these moments will be with us forever. They are either unnoticed or we are pre-occupied. Last night I had an experience that will be with me forever and I was acutely aware of it at the time.

As you all know I made it home last night. (I never thought I would be so happy to be in Newark.) My commute home last night - if you can call it that - was surreal in the extreme.

At about 1am I left the hospital and Rollerbladed to Central Park, my usual route.

There is an area of Central Park called “The Mall” that is my favorite area in all of New York. I go through there every day to and from work. It is a grove of Elm trees planted in four parallel rows with a wide paved path down the center. At one end is a small circular garden with statues of Christopher Columbus and Shakespeare and at the opposite end is a beautiful fountain next to a small lake. The elm trees form an almost complete canopy over the path which makes it a natural gathering area to hide from the summer sun. Nearby is a grandstand where they hold summer concerts.

One particular memory of The Mall was of a warm spring day. My niece and I were there RollerBlading and listening to a blues band playing. There were people everywhere but it wasn’t like a crowded, closed-in, feeling; it was more like a fun outdoor party. My thoughts of being around all these people - young and old, couples holding hands, children playing, people from all over the world - was that this is what civilization is really about.

Another memory of The Mall isn’t from a particular day but is a composite of my walks through there early in the mornings on my way to work. It’s cool and quite. There are usually a few people walking their dogs and a few joggers. It’s New York city before she has gotten up and had her typical double-espresso.

Tho these moments will be with me forever I know now that the first memory that will come to mind when I reflect on Central Park or New York will be from last night.

The Park was almost entirely empty. When I came to the Mall I stopped. Here, in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world during the biggest crises of its history, I was alone. I could see the lights from the surrounding buildings in the distance but the only sound I could here was the chirping of crickets; overhead the stars shown through breaks in the canopy of leaves; the breeze was cool.

I sat down.

Here I comfortably sat in this serenely beautiful, peaceful place and just a few miles south of me was hell on earth.

A crisis focuses the worlds attention and last night the axis of earth’s attention ran through the intersection of Chambers and Rector streets. It was as if I could feel the world’s focus like a ephemeral breeze blowing through me. I wished I could reflect the world’s anguish and shock back with my feelings of calmness and piece.

Personally I feel that I should have no pity for myself. I’ve lost nothing. People suffered through unspeakable horrors before meeting their end yesterday and it continues today. I watched TV. People lost loved-ones forever. I had to work late but recieved free food. Rescue workers got to pick up body parts and I got to Rollerblade down empty streets. Oh, it wasn’t all fun and games. We had to worry if we to were dead and just didn’t know it yet because we had inhaled some bio-chemical. No one drank from the faucet, that’s for sure. But as the horrors mounted those fears passed - at least for me. We focused on the events and prepared for a, hopeful, onslaught of survivors needing medical care. They never came. The trickle of survivors were handled by other hospitals closer to the scene. We did nothing.

No, I lost nothing at all. In fact I gained something. Now, when I see New York, that wonderful cynosure of civilization, I won’t just see glitz and glamour but I’ll also see gore and horror. The irony of it is that I feel fortunate to see it at all.

Dan 9.12.2001

January 10, 2000

Here are a few thoughts from my sojourn in Italy and trip to Paris

Many people think a state of anarchy would be an uncivilized, an every man for himself blood fest. Not true. Italy is an anarchy and they get along just fine. Oh, they do have a government but it’s has been exiled in Rome. As Lord Byron said, “There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them.” You see Italy is really three countries: the North - which is very industrial and efficient, by Italian standards; the South which is agrarian, apathetic and unorganized and Rome (Roma) which doesn’t want to have anything to do with either.

(Things I miss about the United States: Britan has fish and chips, France has cheese and baguettes, Italy has cappuccino and cornetto - croissant - but only in America have I found penut butter and jelly. The day after arriving in Cary I had my legendary PnJ with chocolate-chip cookies for breakfast, lunch and dinner and then breakfast the next morn. I have since cut back to only two meals of PnJ a day.)

In America we have a two and a half party system - Republicans, Democrats and everyone else. In Italy they have fifty-plus parties and none of them have anything near a majority. Since WWII they have had 57 changes in leadership - the most in Europe. At present they don’t even have a real leader. (It is too complicated to explain and I don’t think even the politicians understand what is going on though that seems to be the case with politicians world wide.) [Pre-press note: Italy elected a new president a few days ago. He promised reform in the election process and to strengthen the economy. Translation: Nothing is going to change except that the economy will continue to head south.]

“How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” -Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), French general, president. Quoted in: Newsweek (New York, 1 Oct. 1962).

[Things I'll miss about Europe: public transportation is fast, convenient and affordable.]

Italians are nuts about steps. I have never seen such elaborate steps leading up to so many overwhelmingly ordinary buildings. I think the reason they have such elaborate steps is this: they start out with grand plans for a stupendous building, they get about as far as the steps and realize it was a lot harder than they planned and finish up with some generic design. Either that or they run out of money and have to skimp on the rest of the building, probably a combination of the two. In fact Italy probably has more incomplete buildings than any other country in the West. Come to think of it I have not seen a new building since I’ve been here. New means that the crubling walls have been reinforced and painted. Here in America I think there is a law that you have to finish what you start or is that just a way of life. Whatever it is we should try to bottle it and export it to the rest of the world. The only thing America doesn’t finish is wars. If we did finish our wars then there would be more than double the current number of states and the countries of Western Europe would be called Ameropa.

“As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and . . . Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.” -Mark Twain

(I miss speed and space. In America everything happens much faster and on a much grander scale.)

In Rome (Roma) there is a square - it’s really a rectangle as are all the other “squares” - called “Campo De’ Fiori” or in English “Field of Flowers”. What this square is known for, other than flowers, is a statue of Giordano Bruno. Gio, as his friends called him, was a freethinker. More specifically, he was a freethinker during the late 16th century, long before freethinking had come into fashion. In fact he was so far ahead of his time that a group of men collectively know as “The Inquisition” decided to put him out of his. (Read it again and it will make since.) In keeping with the sentiment that “Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers” there is a statue of him on the very spot where he was burned to death all those years ago. Considering the nature of Gio’s demise and the Italian infatuation with fountians perhaps a more apposite monument could have been built.

[Walking. European cities are designed so that you can walk to just about everything you need. In l'Aquila I could by groceries, shoes, clothes, a cell phone and catch a movie all within a five minute walk from my apartment.]

One of the most heavenly sounds I have ever heard is that of the pipe organ being played in a cathedral. It is majestic, sublime . . . dare I say? yes I will, rapturous. Last year, during my cathedral tour in France, I was fortunate enough to be in Chartres when they played the organ. Words are insufficient to capture the moment. While I was in Rome one of the many cathedrals I visited was “St. Maria degli Angeli”. Inside is a pipe organ that is roughly three stories tall, very big as organs go. I noticed two men going inside it and thought, “Oh, glorious. I’ll get to hear it played.” As it turned out they were not organists, they were tuners. To be in a cathedral with granite floors, granite walls and a granite ceiling while the organ is being tuned is . . . well, enough to make one more appreciative of the melodious sounds of a catfight. It is the kind of sound that would be the perfect accompaniment to Roseanne Barr’s rendention of the American national anthem.

Hell hath no cacophony like an organ tuned.

What could be more simple than a traffic light - green means go, red means stop and yellow means decision time. The Italians interpretation of traffic signals is just slightly different than ours: green means go slowely and stop in the middle of the intersection; red is a suggestion to stop unless you are in a big hurry and yellow is just a different shade of green. Crosswalks also have a different meaning. The translation of the Italian word for crosswalk is “runway”, as in run-way-fast if your going to cross - “pedestrian” translates as “target”. If you want to get run over a crosswalk is the place to go. Much safer is a major intersection where the traffic is moving much slower.

(Communications. I lived in a house with no Internet, not even a phone and you have to pay for every minute your one the phone. No fixed price for local calls.)

In the U.S. “parking space” means “a place to park” in Italy it means “the place where you are parking”. They just make up parking spaces as the need arises - cathedral steps, sidewalks (where they exist), intersections (see above), crosswalks, ect.

The Roman Forum: you know those landscaping shops that have fountains, benches and statues for sell? Image one on a Sams Club scale. Now set off a real big bomb in the middle, maybe a few of them. That is what the Roman Forum looks like.

[Coffee breaks. In Italy everything is an excuse to take a break and have a coffee and pastry. All of the shops close from about 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. so that they can have a long lunch and a coffee, maybe even a nap.]

I believe this nation should commit itself to the goal of sending a soccer team to Europe and beating the shit out of them before this decade is out. There is no point in letting our children play such an inferior sport to the more traditional - football, basketball, hockey . . . and baseball (that hurt to say) if we aren’t going to beat the rest of the world at it.

(More than anything else I miss “The Big Show”. I can’t wait for them to go international so that they will have “Sports Center” in Britain and finally learn how to spell words that end with “er”.)

“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers- and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.” -Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist. America, “Utopia Achieved” (1986; tr. 1988).

For you American males: do you realize that when you catch the gaze of another male you tacitly acknowledge him by noding your head? I don’t know why or even what this acknowledgement represents but it is ubiquitous, in America anyway. Europeans don’t do it, not that I ever noticed. It first occured to me during my stay in Swansea, Wales. That habitual yet subconscious act became a conscious avoidance because the European male would have no idea what I was doing.

While at the Louvre Franca and I saw the “Mona Lisa”. Franca looked at it for a second and then asked me what I thought of it. “Nice floor”, I replied. I know enough about art to know what I like and don’t like. What I don’t like most is portrait paintings followed closely by landscapes. That takes care of a large portion of the Louvre. It took us about 30 seconds to cover the Rembrandt exhibition - walked in looked at the room and walked right back out. Fortunately the Louvre has lots of sculptures - Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, et al. - to occupy an afternoons perusing.

One last thing. For those of you who have not been to Cary, North Carolina let me describe the city this way: it is like a golf course with roads, malls and subdivisions. Every city street is lined with flowers and trees; the grass is cut; bushes pruned. If you can imagine a “pristine” city you can imagine Cary. To move from an average American city to Cary takes some getting used to; to move from a city that has streets that would be considered narrow allies, with almost no grass anywhere and where most of the buildings are more than 200 years old is a culture shock, big time.

Ciao . . . some habbits die hard, dan

Most every American who has not been to Europe thinks the United States is the greatest nation on earth. Those who have been to Europe know that the United States is the greatest. -Dan Osborn

June 19, 1999

A funny thing happened yesterday while eating lunch at McDonalds with Franca - though it wasn’t funny at the time. First I must give you a bit of background.

Some people believe that the industrialized nations of Western Europe and America are taking advantage of the third world nations by loaning them money and making them pay it back. They would like for the well-to-do nations to forgive the debt and let them start over. In fact Italy has done just that. It forgave all the debts that third world countries owe to it. Why they did so I’m uncertain. It could have been out of kindness but I suspect that there were other reasons - aren’t there always? Here in Britain they decided to have a march through the banking area. While Franca was in the library I went on a photo expedition. I was unaware of this march until I arrived in the banking district. While a bunch of drug-takin’, job-needin’, welfare-livin’, uneducated, tattooed, middle-class wana-bees were blocking traffic and being a general nuisance to the eyes, ears and noses of decent workin’ people I was taking pictures of the splendid architecture of the area - pictures will be coming soon.

So, I went back to the library to collect Franca for lunch. Off we went to McDonalds. While we were downstairs looking at the pictures I had taken earlier we heard some banging and crashing coming from upstairs. One of the employees came over and told us to put the computer away and come with them into the back. “What’s going on,” I asked? “You know about the riot, right?” “You mean the march?” “It was a march. Now it’s a riot and their coming in.” Into the back we went. All of the employees took off their uniforms so that they wouldn’t be identified and therefore singled out in case there was violence. In the end all the rioters did was crash in the front windows, destroy the computers and cash registers - though they didn’t get any money - and make a mess. I told one of the cops that they should give the rioters a tear-gas enema. That elicited a chuckle and a nod.

That was our adventure of the day. Hopefully today will be a little quieter. Tomorrow we are going to the Science Museum which is rated as one of the best in the world and Friday after next we are going to see the “Power of Myth” show. It is put on by Lucas Arts and covers the mythological influences of the Arthurian legends, Wagner, etc in the Star Wars movies. It is only showing in Europe and it is just luck that I happen to be here in London while it is showing.

Hopefully I will be on American soil sometime the 3rd of July.

Ciao, dan

June 17, 1999

I had very high expectations of “The Matrix” so I was destined to be disappointed. I guess it was about 70% the movie I hoped it would be. One major area where the movie fell apart was with the motivation, which is common with SciFi. Why should the computers keep us around? Heat was the reason they gave in the movie but that is totally implausible. There are many other animals that would make a far greater power supply and not cost nearly as much overhead and most importantly be no threat to rebel. Basically, you don’t keep the most dangerous animal on earth alive just to harness its power. Also, what is the point of having a Matrix? Why not just leave the humans in a sort of coma all their lives?

It would be cheap of me to criticize without having a solution. Simple, the computers have in inferiority complex - don’t they always? They can do everything mankind can do a thousand-fold better but for one thing: that ineffable quality that makes mankind what it is - the ability to leap beyond logic. (We like to think that we can leap beyond logic but maybe it is more like falling so short as to come up with novel solutions to problems.) So, the reason the computers are keeping us around is to define that quality that we have and they lack. Perhaps they hope to produce a human that they can somehow join with, add to their matrix, to give them that missing component. This would explain why they keep humans around and why there is a messiah.

Btw, Franca liked it and would like to see it again just to get everything. One thing that she commented on, that I certainly agree with her about, is that the enunciation of the characters was, for the most part, perfect. It is hard for her to keep up sometimes with movies because of the language. Many actors don’t pay close attention to how they say their lines and the directors let it slip. I think it is attributable to the directors that they pay close attention to details.

Ciao for now, dan

June 11, 1999

Friends, family, countrymen . . .

Sometime around 9am Saturday the twelfth of June - tomorrow in now-time - Franca and I will walk out the front door of house sixty nine. It isn’t odd that we will be the lasts ones out. We are staying until the last day the dorms are open so that we may spend as much time together as possible. It is however odd that I should be the last one out for if you recall back in February I was planning to cut my stay in Swansea short and travel around Europe. I would say something about ‘the best laid plans’ but for fear of the obvious pun.

Franca and I have just returned from a short two day excursion to see the Roman Ruins of Bath England and then a very short trip - one and a half hours - to see Salisbury Cathedral. Bath was a resort city back when the Romans ruled southern England. I’m sure everyone knows about the Romans predilection for baths. Actually the Romans had a predilection for laziness. They were however masters at getting other people to do work for them. You can imagine that the Romans in England were a little put off by the weather. (I should tell you that the contemporary Romans - Italians - are still put off by the weather here in Briton.) When they discovered hot springs, or more likely discovered that the Celts had discovered hot springs, they evicted/plundered the area and built a bathhouse over the spring just like back home. When the Romans vacated the area the bathhouse fell into such disrepair as to become completely covered by earth. It wasn’t until sometime in the 1800s - I think - that they were rediscovered. Since then the city has adopted ancient Roman architecture for most of the city. Consequently a certain Italian filly I’m aquatinted with could almost picture herself back at home. She said that Bath most closely resembles Venice.

The main purpose in going to Salisbury was to see the cathedral and Stonehenge. Unfortunately, do to a miscalculation in bus schedules we only had an hour and a half to visit Salisbury. That was just enough time to take a rush tour of the cathedral but not nearly enough time to make it out to Stonehenge and back. Franca and I plan to take a day trip in the next few weeks to come back and see that most popular Druid clock.

“So, what’s up now?” you ask? I’ll tell you. On Saturday Franca and I will be going to London where we will be for about two weeks. She is doing her final thesis on the Irish Revolution and the House of Parliament in London has many books and documents that she needs to study. I will spend most of the days wandering around, writing, programming, taking photos and keeping my eyes open for job opportunities but I don’t have very high expectations. We will have four of five days before Franca flies back to Italy so we would like to go to Edinburgh. Afterward I will probably be headed back to the States - Oklahoma to be exact - around the 4-6th of July.

For the next few weeks in London I will have to visit cyber-cafés to do email. I don’t know how regular I will be so please be patient, or don’t be - it’s up to you.

The next email contains a few pictures I took in Bath. I hope you like them.

Love and happiness to all, Dan

Btw, even if there the Romans hadn’t left ruins of their bathing facilities Bath would still be appositely named do to the taste of its tap water.

March 11, 1999

Hi there,

I just returned from a four-day excursion to London. If you have been good, i.e. sending me emails, then you will get a post card, eventually.

I could tell you all about it but that would ruin the fun of seeing and reading about it on my webpage - I promise to work hard and try to finish it this week. Fortunately Franca has lots of essays to write so maybe I won’t be too distracted. Unfortunately, for both of us, just one stray pheromone from her is enough to send me into a frenzy of Caligulean proportions.

I should mention that it very entertaining to go for a few weeks without checking the news and then come to find out that the U.S. is at war. Oh well, it is probably spring cleaning time at the Pentagon. Most people just have a garage sale but the U.S. takes the Homer Simpson approach by throwing it over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard. The only difference is that instead of garbage it’s bombs and instead of a fence it’s the Atlantic Ocean.

I hope everyone enjoyed the most recent Christianized pagan holiday.

Best wishes for love and happiness to all, idano

February 12, 1999

Hello all,

For those of you who are not up to speed on the weather in Wales we have had some snow, about 6 inches worth. This is a once a decade type snow storm here. They usually only get a few inches every other year. (True to form the forecasters missed it again.) The Student Village, where I live, was a madhouse. Of course many of the British students have never seen this much snow but many of the Greeks seem to have never seen snow at all. Imagine groups of 50 - 100 students engaged in snowball fights. These groups would then start fighting each other until someone realized that it was a lot easier to hit their roommate ten-feet away than someone they don’t know fifty-feet away. A pitched snowball fight would quickly turn into a mêlée. For about two hours in the evening Hendrefoilan Student Village resembled Kossovo. While there were a few students using the snow to build most used it in a playful, yet inherently violent manner. As Arnold said in ‘Terminator 2′, “It’s in [our] nature to destroy each other.” Major bummer isn’t it?

The next day I went with my housemate Franca, and two of her friends who are visiting this week, on a hike. About halfway there the bus got stuck so we had to walk about four miles to the coast - under tree covered paths as the snow melted off. We then walked about three miles along the coast, where I had the experience of walking on a snow-covered beach, and then a couple miles back to the road where we caught a bus back to the village.

idano

January 21, 1999

Hello all,

Yesterday was the best birthday of my life. I got up at 11am - early for me. I had a PnJ sandwich and mocha for breakfast - thank you Margaret. I made it down to Tracy’s by noon. She wouldn’t tell me what her plans were for the day only that she hoped there would be good weather so that we could go for a walk. I asked her if partly cloudy with a 10k breeze from the west and 8 degrees Celsius would be suitable. She affirmed but said it was unlikely this time of year. I told her that I had a few favors I could cash in and would see what I could do. Guess what the weather was? Exactly what I had ordered. (I rule!)

Anyway, we walked along the beach down to the marina and then made our way up to the Quadrant. The Swansea Theater is located there and she had reserved tickets to see a Pantomime of Cinderella.

(For my American friends who are unfamiliar with pantomimes: they are children’s plays but they have a great deal of adult humor and the main female role is played by a man - in this case it was Cindy’s sisters who were played by men. Cindy was played by a buxom blond named Melinda Messenger. She uttered but few lines but played her role to the uttermost. I can only say that I was titillated by the seat I had on the railing of the upper balcony because the view was utterly astonishing. It was as if I were standing atop the peak of some majestic mountain gazing into the ample valley below. (I’m done now. I’m sure you get the point now, or points as the case may be.) There is lots of audience participation during the show. For instance when someone on the stage says, “Oh yes it is.” Then the whole audience says, “Oh no it isn’t.” They do this in every play at least a few times. They also have lines for the adults to laugh at. For instance someone refereed to Cindy as, “a peasant girl with no obvious means of support.” Or, at the Prince’s ball one of the sisters said, while fanning herself, “Are your balls always this hot and sweaty?” Remember this is a show for children though I would estimate that at least half the audience was over 65.)

After the pantomime Tracy took me to dinner at a Mexican food restaurant - there are no Olive Gardens in the UK. I had a chicken enchilada and nachos. We walked back to her place where she gave me my presents: two books of poetry and to assuage my yearnings for absence of my favorite aforementioned restaurant she gave me a bottle of virgin olive oil and a jar of olives - which I’m eating right now. (God I miss the salt-sour taste of olives - and don’t go getting Freudian on me here.) To top it all off she had wine and black-cherry cheesecake for me.

Love to all, dano

December 1, 1998

Dear Everyone,

Just a short note to let everyone know that I’m back in Swansea after a whirlwind tour of Paris and the surrounding cathedrals. My impression of Paris is, in a word, indescribable. The only way to express the beauty and grandeur of Paris is to compare it to the only other national capital I have visited - Washington D.C. D.C. is in comparison a dung-heap, and that is being kind.

My new camera was awaiting me at the hotel. After a long and distressing battle with FedEx they came through for me. I took about 400 pictures. Some of them will be available in a week or so on my webpage.

I made many wonderful new friends on the trip. I also got the most bang-for-my-buck on the trip by not sleeping, much. Lets just say I slept for nine uninterrupted hours upon returning to my dorm room, something I cannot remember ever happening before.

I will have more to say in a few days.

Ciao for now, idano

November 30, 1998

What you will discover in this letter: Sleeping and Paris do not mix, what the cathedral builders forgot, how the French give new meaning to ‘going in circles’,

My new digital camera was waiting for me when I checked into the hotel in Paris. (It’s a long story; don’t ask why it was delivered to the hotel.) Once I got settled into my room I took off with a friend of mine. We had the rest of the afternoon and evening to spend wondering along the streets of Paris. We didn’t have any particular goal in mind. It was during this little stroll that I sent an email to everyone from the cyber-café. While meandering our way back toward the hotel we ran across a small cathedral - relative to the others we would in the coming days. Inside the cathedral they were preparing for a Mozart concerto. Emily - my friend - and I managed to get half price tickets and seats right next to the choir to hear Mozart’s 21st concerto and Mass K.317. So there I was, first night in Paris unexpectedly sitting in a cathedral about to hear a splendid concerto. Serendipity truly is the best lead dog.

After the concert I walked Emily back to the hotel and then went to the lobby to sit with my camera for the next four hours learning how everything worked. After that I spent the next four hours walking around the Seine taking pictures. If you every visit Paris I highly recommend taking a late night stroll. The city is beautiful under any conditions but particularly at night.