Anyone feeling a little Nero?

Our own Roanoke City Council, represented at the press conference by Gwen and Nelson, have decided that the city should invest more in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Insert joke here.

Actually, this is not an idea that I am totally against. Back in NY, most of the public transit busses are now CNG powered. No real difference in ride or style - reliability runs about the same from what I could tell. I wonder if Valley Metro's next fleet upgrade might be to CNG power? Wouldn't be the worst idea.

That being said, this Greenhouse gas issue, as dubious as the science may be - is hardly important enough to make a huge difference in the lives of Roanoke's citizens.

But meanwhile, in another Roanoke....

Roanoke Rapids, NC - Six months before it is set to open, the Carolina Crossroads complex already is affecting the economy of Roanoke Rapids.

Construction on the nearly $22 million project is creating about 3,000 jobs. Once the complex is running, 3,100 jobs are expected.

Crews have completed the structure of the Randy Parton Theater, which will anchor the musical entertainment development, and are now working on exterior finishes and the interior.

The theater will reflect Parton's talent for design, from the layout of the 1,200-seat auditorium to lighting and sound to a mechanical stage, said Bill Corey, superintendent of the project for J.S. Clark Construction Co.

"Entertainers get on it, then come up to the stage level," he said.

Roanoke Rapids is financing construction of the Randy Parton Theater -- it's the first private project in North Carolina funded with taxpayer money. Parton will make lease payments to the city of about $500,000 a year until the theater is paid off.
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THAT my friends is something to crow about in a press conference. And yes, it is just off I-95, the coastal version of I-81, only with more bad drivers (and yes, it is possible).

They have the drive, the vision, and the intellegence to build such a thing. The imagination to realize its value to the community, and the bravery to go ahead with a bold plan.

But hey, were going to fight greenhouse gasses!

Is that a fiddle I hear?

just found this - 30 min unreleased footage from 500 yards away

Watch it, volume up.

one last thing

the final post on 9/11

(there was an image here, but Tripod decided it was being seen to much. Full shot of lower manhattan, towers burning. firetruck on brooklyn bridge heading towards the towers.)

That small truck on the bridge there. Thats Ladder 118, rushing towards the Twin Towers on 9/11. This is the last photo of Ladder 118 in action.

Not one FireFighter on 118 made it home. All hands down. Joseph Agnello, Vernon Cherry, Scott Davidson, Robert Regan, Leon Smith Jr. and Peter Vega.

6 mortal men, determined to do what they can.

If you remember one thing, one single thing about 9/11 - let it be this. Those mortal men, heading for the mouth of hell, and ascending as angels.

Monday September 11th, 2006

We are awake. Alive. Eyes wide open.
We remember everything.
With pride, honor, dignity, respect
We thank the selfless



2,752 total. 1/2 of which there are no remains for, just the dust that these brave rescuers inhaled endlessly for weeks, which is now killing them - like a 2nd attack.

not much to say, but much to see.

unimportant

They are just civil servants right? They have to work just the same as everyone else right? Thats what the general feeling around Roanoke seems to be. Sure, you know they have to fight fires, but who are they to be more important than anyone else?

Well, imagine this was the Wachovia Tower:



On fire, after an attack. People, by the dozens, breaking windows and throwing themselves out to escape the flames. Everyone heading for the emergency exits. 21 floors tall, parking capability of over 700 - probably talking about over 600 employees in the tower.

Now imagine the ground floors look something like this:

Everyone's trying to get out, except this guy.
Cops, Firefighers, EMS... they were all in those two buildings, just as they would be here.

343 FDNY Firefighters
23 NYPD Officers
37 Port Authority PD Officers


Maybe it's time we showed our appreciation for the work the Roanoke Fire/EMS and Police Departments do for us?

They might not be perfect, but damned if you'll find one single department anywhere that is.

They need our support, they need higher pay for the dangerous work they do, and they need better support from City Hall, and much less politics so they can do the job they are supposed to do.

Maybe it's time to start asking where DO our tax dollars go, if not to retain Roanoke's Bravest and Roanoke's Finest?

Tonight, 7pm at the City Market building.
Come show your support for those who keep us alive.

Show them your grateful.

NY Daily News Editorial on 9/10/01

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com September 10, 2001 - The world we lost forever

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

Five years ago today, Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, recorded by the chronicles as the final day in the life of a world that used to be and is no more:

On the eve of mayoral primaries, after eight years of Rudy Giuliani, a long-shot outsider named Michael Bloomberg appears to be picking up momentum with voters. The Yankees announce a new sports channel called YES. Israel is readying for another no doubt pointless round of truce talks with PLO chief Yasser Arafat. Education-minded President Bush is heading to Florida to read to schoolkids.

Five years ago today: We are not being searched in the subways. We are unalarmed by the sight of valises left on streetcorners. We are not asked to remove our shoes at airport security gates.

Our young men and women are not being blown up daily by roadside bombs in a land far away.

And 2,749 people who work at the World Trade Center or plan to be on airplanes in the morning go safely to their beds, for the last time.

Today, Sept. 10, 2006, these five years along, we remember that world that used to be as a dim and distant place. We were comfortable in that world, most of us; we were confident. "The morning coffee was still cooling," the Daily News wrote two days later, "when our grandest illusion was shattered."

TRIPLE ATTACKS ROCK THE NATION

DEBRIS AND DEATH ENVELOP DOWNTOWN

U.S. SET TO STRIKE BACK

"One day," said The News, "we will think back on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and remember in crystal detail what we were doing when the first plane crashed into the north tower at 8:45 a.m.

"And we will be amazed that we didn't think it possible before."

Now we are not so naive. Now the unthinkable is always with us, every moment of our lives. We have learned bitterly that pure malevolence roams much of the planet. And for that, we are a wiser and tougher people - and a people both unified and fractured.

Our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, they have gone to war now, to an epic clash of civilizations, to a battleground upon which is fought the future. Bravely they go, in the service of the higher ideal, volunteers all. We hail them. We mourn them.

But we have been humbled, and we know that. From an initially jubilant moment of payback in Afghanistan, we are increasingly grieved by one misstep and bumble and embarrassment after another. Our leaders too often frustrate us. Osama Bin Laden is still at large. There is no "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, far from peacefully settled. The sacred Ground Zero remains a wretched hole, with signs of progress only beginning there. It cannot be said that these have always been the most chest-thumpingly proud five years America has ever known.

It is true that, five years on, there has not been another attack on U.S. soil, and this is not entirely blind luck. Official vigilance has kept the wolves away. The NYPD in particular has done a terrific job. Still, Congress serves up anti-terror funding like so much pork. Video cameras are few and far between in the subways. Our ports are dangerously unpoliced. Border security is a national joke.

And we squander our energies in noisy debates over civil liberties, both those of enemy combatants and those of Americans. Some recoil more at the very idea of offending a captive terrorist's dignity - how perfectly awful of us - than at the prospect of an American city in a heap of smoking cinders. And, minds buried in the olden times before there was popularly known to be such a thing as Islamofascism, before it was understood that medieval barbarians intend to remake all the world as their own golden caliphate, some refuse to recognize that intrusions upon their own personal rights have, in fact, been quite minimal - and that, if and when the gangsters do succeed in striking again, government intrusions will become all the sterner.

If and when. If and when. It was only a few weeks ago that a fleet of bomb-laden jets might well have flown in from Britain.

One day, perhaps, we will look back upon a second 9/11 and remember in crystal detail what we were doing.

And we will be amazed that we allowed it to happen - for we knew full well what kind of new world it was that we were living in, after the old world was stolen from us, the world that still existed five years ago today.

14 dirty words (or 1 word 14 times)

thats the offensive number of times the offensive word FUCK was used by FDNY and the NYPD during the REAL TIME events of 9/11.

Those who have a problem with seeing people in the face of extreme situations using harsh language like that have obviously nothing better to do than sit and bemoan the fact they had to hear something they did not want to hear.

Pardon me, I did not ask to SEE the attacks on 9/11. I did not ask to hear the dead silence of an entire city save only for the sounds of the sirens.

It offended me deeply that someone else decided that I must live through these events, by causing these events.

But the truth of the matter is - when faced with the vast destruction and endless roll of names - there really is only one word.

Fuck.

So to the American Family Association, and those quasi-religious nutballs who I hear talking about the coarse language and images from 9/11 - and how they don't feel the need to be exposed to such things.. Well - not like they are going to be reading my blog anyway..

Fuck off.