ONE OF THOSE LASTING IMPACTS
(…on our national consciousness)

This was the thirteenth year of our commemorating the attacks on our homeland in 2001. Attacks which remain vividly etched in our minds, as a still raw emotional wound even after more than a decade has passed.

Symbolic of our country’s resilience and strength of purpose to overcome the effects of that wound, a new tower has risen on the same ground (now hallowed) to replace the two that were destroyed on that day. It’s complex of reflecting pools, museum of relics, and twin great blue beams of light reaching far out into nightly skies, are a grand memorial of that event…one of those lasting impacts on our national consciousness.

There have been others in our history, of course, but their impacts upon us then, have now been dimmed by the passage of time, and, almost just become – ancient history -. We speak here of Lincoln’s assassination, Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, and Dr. King’s assassination…each having their moment of emotional intensity and impact upon our psyches…but now…faded and recalled only by monuments of one kind or another for these. Monuments that have slowly become iconic symbols, to be swarmed over annually by hordes of visitors, tourists, and school groups on field trips, taking smiling photographs of themselves as proof of their visitations, and that the memory of them endures.

Time heals all wounds, they say, but since we Americans have such short-lived historical memory attention spans, we set up such monuments…just so we won’t forget about them…and have some recollection of those impacts. Such are our American ways.

Well, here attached are two of my own personal graphic “monuments” about the events of 9/11. They may not compare with the grandeur of what they’ve done in New York, or in that field in Pennsylvania, but I like to think they modestly express what all of us felt at the time.

CENTURION

ANNEX 1 – Issue No. 71 – Sep 2014

This is a painting dashed off just a few weeks after 9/11. The impact of the image of that lone remnant of the façade of one of those towers, standing tall amidst the rubble and chaos, with figures of heroic NYFD personnel rushing towards it was overwhelming.

TITLED : THE PHOENIX

When finished and framed, it was sent to then Mayor Giuliani of New York, for which received a nice thank you note from him. Where it might be today is unknown. If someone has seen it somewhere, in a firehouse, or museum, or wherever, it would be nice to know what happened to it.

ANNEX II.

This was a cartoon annex to one of the early issues about 9/11. As we all know, retribution did finally catch up with him.

A Taliban in black turban, is yelling at Osama bin Laden, saying:

“You idiot! That’s no wounded lion, that’s one humongously pissed off anaconda!”