Month Nine: Memorial Days
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Lloyd Harbor
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Hunting and gathering
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Morning catch
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| In memoriam |
The city pauses in the last week of May, to observe public and private memorials.
On Memorial Day, I wake up early, on Long Island, and collect mussels with my Grandparents.
Back in the city, Memorial Bloomberg drops a wreath into the Hudson, but out here there are memorials enough: a copy of Here is New York, which I’ve never read before,
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| Porch table |
a small, forgotten headstone in the myrtle,
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| H.T. |
and an accidental still-life.
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| Shore leave |
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| Memorial Day BBQ at Nancy Whiskey |
It’s Fleet Week, and at a local pub I sit down next to an NYPD officer and three sailors from the USS Boone.
They are talking, and after a while the officer says, “I want you all to see this,” unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a tattoo over his heart: an eagle rampant in front of an image of twin towers, with FDNY and NYPD written below. “I went in and designed it myself. I lost friends on both sides. We’re so far removed from the anger of the world, and we thought we were free and unpenetrable.”
The Navy men reply, “God Bless America.”
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Love from England
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Fallen flag
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| Heart |
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| Diner in Croton-on-Hudson, NY |
Some memorials are new, some have the patina of age.
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| Tommy |
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| Missing: pair 110 story office buildings |
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| Two towers |
A new, eerie reminder begins circulating via email: three folds in a $20 bill create the apparent image of two burning towers.
A friend warns me: “Don’t go showing that to any police officers.”
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The cutting ceremony
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| Assembled workers |
The night after Memorial Day is the last official shift on the site. A symbolic final beam is cut down by union workers working in turn, then laid on a truck and draped in black cloth and an American flag.
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After the ceremony
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Floodlights
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News 4
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| USS Iwojima |
Two hours later, the site is empty.
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Gone
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| Setting up shop |
The beam is driven out the following morning, May 30, the original Memorial Day established by Abraham Lincoln.
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| Marching down |
Sailors from the USS Iwojima join with union workers to escort the beam out of the site.
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| Shirts |
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Waiting by the Tribeca Bridge
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We wait on West Street.
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Honor guard
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West Street
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| Keep it up |
Preceeded by a flight of 5 helicopters and an ambulance carrying an empty stretcher, the beam moves up West Street to Canal Street, saluted all the way.
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Stretcher and beam
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| The last beam leaves Manhattan |
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| Gathered crowd |
At Canal Street, it turns toward the Brooklyn Bridge, crossing Manhattan and away to a hangar at JFK.
