Blue Highways: Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey

Unfolding the Map

Have you ever wanted to ride in a blimp?  Are you fascinated when you see pictures, film or movie representations of zeppelins?  Are you steampunk?  This post is all things airship, as Lakehurst was the scene of one of the most iconic moments in flight - the explosion and destruction of the Hindenburg.   While William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) tells a story about how the giant zeppelin may have gone down, I look a little further into these beautiful but fated modes of transportation and war.  To see where lighter-than-air travel died in flames, float over to the map.

Book Quote

"It isn't widely known in America that the descendents of Jolly Roger pirates put an end to dirigible flight.  So I heard at breakfast in a diner....

"The gist was this: a storm forced the Hindenburg into a holding pattern (that was a fact I could check out).  The airship, only a few hundred feet off the ground, circled central New Jersey for two hours.  Lakehurst, where it was trying to land, is on the edge of the Pines, and everyone knows Pineys don't tolerate anyone poking into their woods.  They figured the zeppelin was a government ship looking for their stills where they turn blueberries into whiskey, so they shot at the thing and opened leaks in the fabric.  By the time the Hindenburg started to tie up, there was enough free hydrogen to blow the ship to kingdom come, which it did....

"I stopped at Lakehurst Naval Air Station to look at the dirigible hangars, those thousand-foot-long, twenty-story buildings, where the Pineys allegedly did in the blimp.  Another era of flight ended here too: Lakehurst was the last place the Navy trained carrier pigeons."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 8

Old airship hangars at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. The original photo caption says they are the largest free-standing wooden arch structures in the world. Photo by the US Navy, and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey

When I was a kid I read a lot of science fiction.  One author I read, Michael Moorcock, put together a series of books that was based on an alternate historical timeline.  While I don't remember the first book very well, what I do remember was his fictional world where giant lighter-than-air ships were the norm, instead of the propeller or jet-propelled versions that we have.

I have always been fascinated by blimps as they hover or slowly move through the air.  I remember seeing my first one at a baseball game in Oakland.  In the night sky above me, the noise of the blimps propellers would occasionally attract my attention to where I would look up and see the advertisement blazing across its underside.  Blimps are non-rigid airships, though, and therefore smaller than the rigid airships, airships that have a frame inside the envelope, or skin, of the aircraft.  The large airships of yesteryear, like the Hindenburg, were rigid airships.

I learned as a kid that modern airships are kept aloft by helium, but that the older rigid airships like the Hindenburg were kept aloft by hydrogen.  Hydrogen is very combustible, and I was told that after the Hindenburg disaster hydrogen was banned in airships.  However, the day of the airship must have been very exciting, especially to see one of these giants of the air go by.  My father said that he once saw the Graf Zeppelin, the sister ship of the Hindenburg, float by over our hometown.  Since the Graf Zeppelin made regular trips between Germany and Brazil during its heyday, I assume that he saw it in 1929. He would have been about 5 years old, so he might have seen the zeppelin as it made an around the world trip.  One of the legs took it down the west coast of North America.  I can just imagine his wonder at seeing this giant airship racing by, high in the air, at the speed of 73 miles per hour (its top cruising speed).

Many countries, such as Germany, France, England, and the United States experimented with airships.  German airships were used in bombing raids over England and other countries in World War I, though their accuracy was not good.  Initially terrifying, and almost impervious to planes because regular bullets had little effect, they were effectively neutralized by incendiary bullets that set them alight.  It is also interesting that the first successful air raid launched from an aircraft carrier occurred in World War I when British Sopwith Camels bombed a German airship base.  Between the wars, the development was focused mainly on intercontinental travel.

I wonder what it might have looked like had air travel developed in in such a way, rather than propeller and jet-powered travel.  After all, the traveling airships of yesterday were conceived as ocean-liners of the air.  The Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin were outfitted with all kinds of creature comforts meant for long voyages.  A trans-Atlantic crossing on a zeppelin could take three days, certainly faster than an oceangoing ship and yet leisurely enough for such amenities.  For a little while, one of the airships had a piano on board.  Of course, such travel would not have been meant for the common person as one needed to be exceedingly wealthy to take one.  However, plane travel started very similarly, with high-end amenities and gradually becoming more affordable so that now, almost anyone can fly.  The amenities are now gone, however, replaced if you're lucky by a pack of peanuts and free soda.

I can imagine our airports, with zeppelins, dirigibles and blimps buzzing around, drifting slowly into the sunrise or the sunset.  In Albuquerque, we have the world's largest balloon gathering, Balloon Fiesta, every October and, on days when they have a mass ascension, there are often 500 balloons in the sky at once over the city.  If lighter-than-air flight had become the mode of air transportation, every day in every city would have been a balloon fiesta of sorts.

But, alas, the explosion of the Hindenburg ended the brief heyday of lighter-than-air travel.  Hydrogen, though cheap to make, is highly combustible.  Helium, a safe gas, is only available in small quantities and because of overuse may be unobtainable in the near future - in perhaps less than 40 years, helium may not be available at all.  Hydrogen is probably the best gas, though science has now made a solid called SEAgel, which supposedly can float in the air if infused with nitrogen, hydrogen, helium or other lighter-than-air gases.  Perhaps if a solid can be made to float, it can be used to lift a new generation of airships.

LHM alludes to a conspiracy theory about why the Hindenburg crashed.  In this version, told to him by a person in Lakewood, New Jersey, backwoods folk shot at the Hindenburg as it circled over the Pine Barrens, causing extensive leaks and an eventual explosion.  However, this doesn't really stand up.  Other explanations included the combustibility of the hydrogen lift of the zeppelin, lightning, since there were lightning storms in the area, and sabotage from within.  But the most interesting explanation I've read is that the skin of the Hindenburg itself was the cause of the fire.  Made up of elements like cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, and flecks of aluminum, the skin of the zeppelin was highly flammable in its own right.  A spark could have set them off, and then the hydrogen became an additional fuel, feeding the flames.  Hydrogen itself burns with no flame, and would have probably exploded but the Hindenburg caught file in the tail and burned in all directions.

Regardless, the footage of the Hindenburg, crashing to earth in flames and leaving a smoldering skeleton and 36 deaths in its wake at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, captures one of the most iconic moments in history, and signals the end of the days of the giant airships.  Yet somehow, I wish that these giants, majestic, beautiful and comfortable, had survived to be more than simply mere curiosities circling over our stadiums.

Musical Interlude

I just found this song, Airships, by Hamburg-based VNV Nation.  It is a lovely electronica ode to these beautiful flying machines.

Movie Interlude

A first, Littourati.  I had to put in this scene from The Rocketeer, where a zeppelin makes a brief, but memorable, appeareance.

If you want to know more about Lakehurst Naval Air Station

Hangar No. 1, Lakehurst
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst
Navy Lakehurst Historical Society
Ocean County Historical Society
Wikipedia: Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst
Wikipedia:  Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station

Next up: Somewhere on the Wading River, New Jersey

Blue Highways: Lakewood, New Jersey

Unfolding the Map

Travel, people!  Go to places that you've never been and even never thought of going!  That's the overwhelming message of this post.  As William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) eats in a diner and waitress tells him not to go someplace, don't listen.  I'm telling you to go wherever you want and don't let anyone persuade you not to go.  You'll thank me later.

Book Quote

"When I paid the waitress, she filled with motherly counsel.  'Look, you're a nice boy.  Go to the shore.  Go to Atlantic City.  But for godsakes don't go to no middle.  The Pineys breed like flies in there.  Live like animals.'

"I'd heard those words across the country.  It was almost an axiom that anyone who lived off a main highway was an animal that bred like a fly...."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 8

I couldn't find a real exciting picture except for these storefronts in Lakewood, New Jersey. Photo by Kevin Knipe and hosted at City Data. Click on photo to go to host page.

Lakewood, New Jersey

When I was a little kid, I guess I was typical.  Whenever my mother or father told me I couldn't do something, it just made we want to do it more.  "No, Michael, you can't jump off the roof."  "No Michael, I won't let you walk down to the ocean by yourself."  "No, Michael, you are too young to go hunting with your dad."

Each time I heard "No" or was told "You can't..." I immediately didn't hear the rest.  I didn't hear the reason why I couldn't do something, which usually (though not always) made perfect, reasonable sense.  I blocked it out as my affronted brain feverishly tried to work out a way that I could do it, and would do it.

Luckily, I grew up.  Luckily, my frontal lobes finally developed, giving me (usually) a healthy sense of caution.  While I am not always risk averse, and like a good adventure, I'm not foolhardy either.

But when faced with a situation, especially when I'm traveling, where I'm discouraged to go somewhere or try something new, I still get like that young, past self of mine:  I start trying to figure out a way that I can do it.

I've heard it a lot in my life.  "Why would you want to go there?"  Or, even better:  "Don't go there, it's (place appropriate adjective here) and not worth your time."

I usually don't take heed.  There have been very few places that I've gone that I haven't found something, or some reason, to have made it worth my while to go.

Like LHM's waitress, most people measure the worth of a place by comparing it to what they know.  If it matches somewhat, with maybe a few differences, they are happy.  It is this mentality that leads people to always choose Applebees just off the interstate regardless of what culinary delights might be just five minutes drive into downtown.  We know what we like, and we stay with it.  As I write this post, I am eagerly awaiting a global music festival in Albuquerque, Globalquerque, which starts tonight and is one of the best things about this city.  It brings the world to our little corner of the desert.  Yet most people in Albuquerque don't know about it, and many of those wouldn't go because they aren't willing to open themselves up to something new.  Their rationale is, quite possibly, "I won't like it, and so I won't try it."  That's not me.

If I had that mentality, I would have never gone to Bangladesh.  I wouldn't have had the thrill of being scared half to death by a crash and a pair of gleaming eyes in a tree as I went from a hut to the outhouse very early one morning, only to realize that it was a giant fruit bat.  I would have never experienced the countryside, in the space of two weeks, fill up with water as the monsoon unleashed its fury.

I would have never gone to El Salvador and experienced the kindness of most of the people and also the fear that pervades the capital as dangerous drug gangs roam the streets.

I would have never gone to Northern Ireland as an observer during the parading season, where Protestant Irish groups parade with huge drums, desperately holding on to a tradition based on subjugating Catholic Irish groups because it's the only tradition they have.  I would have never seen the might of the British police and military apparatus, supposedly protecting the Nationalist communities from encroachment by more radical Protestant marchers but whose intentions were not trusted by anyone.

I would have never gone to Milwaukee to do volunteer service, lived in the inner-city, lived in Texas (you can't imagine how many "why would you want to move there?" questions I got then), lived in New Orleans, or visited half of the places that I've gone to.

Yet each place I've been, even if others think I'm nuts for going, has given me something precious.  Bangladesh was my first true immersion into a developing country, and the curiosity and generosity of its people, as well as the sheer mass of people, gave me an appreciation for where I live and where I am from as well as an overwhelming admiration for those who somehow, some way eke out a living in very, very difficult circumstances.  El Salvador gave me a respect for a people who, politically, were starting to come out from under the heel of decades of paternalistic and autocratic governments as well as many memories of trying to learn how to communicate with people with less than adequate Spanish.  Northern Ireland, even in the midst of hopeless division, showed me that even the hardest cases can have deep cracks that will one day open and that where hope seems small, it might only be the tip of the iceberg.  It too had fundamentally good people who were trying to find a way out of a decades-long nightmare.  Had jobs not called, I might have made Milwaukee my home base.  I came to love Texas.  I still see New Orleans as a spiritual home.

I'm not trying to elevate myself over everyone else in this post.  I don't think of myself as superior simply because I'm open to trying new things or going places that others say I shouldn't or would never think of going themselves.  However, I believe that those who isolate themselves into certain routines, that play it safe, that always stay with what they know probably have a narrower world view than others.  There is a cartoon that I found that, while a bit over the top, captures this spirit.  It shows an obvious racist Klansman-type with home decorations consisting of various fascist symbols.  Someone hands him a ticket for an around the world trip.  It shows him meeting new people of all ethnicities and doing new things in various countries.  Finally, when he comes back, his extremist decor is replaced by mementos from his trip, and he is placing a picture of himself with some African kids in the center of his bookcase.  I believe that challenging oneself to do things, even a small thing like trying a new restaurant or tasting a new type of food, expands our horizons.  I believe that travel, especially going to places that in some ways challenge us, opens our minds and helps us appreciate not only the places we go and people we meet, but also ourselves and where we live.  It gives us perspective.

I always take inspiration from my grandmother, who was a self-described "backwoods bunny."  Yet well into her fifties and sixties she made two trips of a lifetime to Europe to visit family that she had found in Austria.  She hated to fly, but she did.  Her photos and stories of Austria inspired me to travel there too.  I waited until I was in my thirties, but I did, and once I did there was no stopping me.  I'm a better person for it.  As my wife told an audience she was speaking to recently, "I like who I am when I travel."  I'll go her one further.  I especially like who I am when I travel to places I never thought I'd go.

Musical Interlude

I had a song for this, but I couldn't find it.  Oh well.  Terri Hendrix singing "Take me places I've never been before" will do.

If you want to know more about Lakewood

Township of Lakewood
Wikipedia: Lakewood

Next up: Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey

Blue Highways: Staten Island, New York

Unfolding the Map

I've never been to Staten Island except for a quick stop at the ferry slip after a ride across the water from Manhattan.  In this post, I make a quick stop to reflect while William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) gets lost a little in the Staten Island neighborhoods.   I devote this post to a friend who lived for a time in Staten Island, had a tragedy there, and who has overcome that and other obstacles on her way to happiness and achievement.  If life is a journey, hers is now traversing some good roads.  To see where Staten Island is located, ferry yourself to the map.

Book Quote

"The lanes descended and shot me across Staten Island; just before it was too late, I pulled out of the oppression of traffic and drove down Richmond Avenue to find the bridge across the Arthur Kill into Perth Amboy, the city (if you follow your nose) that gets to you before you get to it.  I don't know how I lost my way on a thoroughfare as big as Richmond, but I did.  I could smell Perth Amboy, but I coudn't find it.  Instead, I found Great Kills, Eltingville, Huguenot Park, Princess Bay, and Tottenville."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

One of the most well-known symbols of Staten Island, and of New York, the Staten Island Ferry. Photo by Norbert Nagel and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Staten Island, New York

I have a friend who once lived on Staten Island.

She's a petite, just-about-to-turn-30-if-she-already-hasn't, somewhat quirky, redhead who has a ready laugh and an endearing mixture of little girl and adult thrown together.

She and I weren't always very close.  We met each other when I was in graduate school, studying for my PhD in New Orleans, and she was assigned to share an office with me.  To say that our relationship was strained was putting it mildly.  I was in my late 30s at the time, she was in her early 20s, and it was like we were from two different worlds.  While we had moments of very good sharing and a realization that we were probably more alike than not, we also had moments of anger, frustration and misunderstanding that occasionally made for a tense office situation.  She was working out her early 20s anger, finding her way and her voice and I, well, I was working out my late 30s anger and trying to find my way and my voice.

I think that it was after she left that we both realized that we really, truly liked and respected each other.  She stayed long enough to get her Masters, inquired into and was recruited by a federal agency, and went to work for the national government helping to protect our country and our leaders from security threats.  I couldn't believe that this little waif of a woman would do this type of work, but my impression was that she loved the job.  Perhaps the agency she worked for was not the greatest - after all, it's hard for any woman to make it in what has traditionally been a redoubt for men.  But she made it through her boot camp and was given important assignments.  When she eventually left they worked very hard to persuade her to stay.

She was stationed for a while in the New York City area, and lived in Staten Island.  She found a boyfriend, a quiet state police cop.  She liked where she lived, which if I remember was a little apartment owned by a retired cop who looked after her like a father might his daughter or grandaughter.  Life seemed to be going well.  She and her boyfriend came out and visited us on their way through New Mexico to visit her parents in Colorado.

The boyfriend became a fiance, but there were signs of trouble.  He was moody, and had been dealing with depression through medication for years.  By then she had left her job.  I hadn't heard from her in a while and then one day she called me up.  She was going to be passing through New Mexico to Colorado again and wanted to visit me.  I asked about her fiance.  She was unusually quiet, told me that he had committed suicide, and that she would tell me more when she saw me.

When she arrived, she looked terrible - flat, and like all the life had drained out of her.  She told me that she had an argument with her fiance.  Before she knew it, he had shot himself in the head with a revolver right in front of her.  She spent some time in an institution where they gave her medications.  She had racked up a horrible set of bills because of her hospitalization and care that she could never hope to pay off.  We talked, I listened.  I couldn't do much consoling, because she was never one who wanted to be consoled.  But I couldn't get out of my head the image of pain and shock, anger and betrayal that I sensed behind the eyes of this young woman who once drove me crazy in the office and who carried a gun and put herself potentially in harm's way because of her job but who now seemed so human and so fragile.  She really seemed like the little waif I sometimes saw her as,  but this time very lost, very lonely, and very afraid.

She moved away from Staten Island.  She went back to New Orleans to finish her PhD.  I'm not sure if that is what she wanted or if it was because she didn't know what else to do.  But finish it she did, despite the usual academic obstacles that are thrown in the way of graduate students.  Once she received her PhD, she got a job at a small southern Alabama university.

She has become one of the most popular teachers on her campus, bringing a new life to her department and inserting some feminism into criminal justice studies on campus.  She threw herself into a stuffy academic program and brought her talents and best features to bear.  She found herself, somehow and somewhere, in the depths of her tragedy.  She pulled on her vast resources of inner strength to grasp at the opportunities presented her.  I don't know if she has any post-traumatic stress disorder from what she went through, but I do know that she has succeeded in spite of them.

I have been proud of her and her accomplishments, and I care for her very much.  Recently, she got married.  Though I wasn't able to attend her wedding, she and her new husband visited us recently.  It was great to see her happy after all these years, and wonderful to hear about her accomplishments.

If life is a continuous series of journeys, and if one can map lives, I can imagine what her life map would look like.  There would be roads and pathways through forests of indecision, dangerous passages through mountains of hardship, drops into the darkest and deepest valleys of relationship and loss.  There would be forks in the road where choices must be made and dead ends where the choices didn't work out.  But, there would also be, especially lately, flat roads along the ocean shore of happiness or the endless plains of contentment.  On these roads, she can look toward where the sun sets and know that wherever her life leads from now on, she has the capability and the wherewithal to meet any challenge ahead of her.

So, using a nickname that is a remainder from our contentious office days, I'll give her a shout-out: "You've done so well, shithead!  It makes me happy that you are happy, it makes me proud that you've come so far despite the hardship and tragedy, and I will be in your corner for as long as you need me."  She'll blow off my kudos, but inside, she'll appreciate it.

Musical Interlude

The band that I most associate with the woman I wrote of above is a band that she really enjoyed, Garbage.  This song, Push It, has lyrics that I think probably best embody my friend.  It helps that she and Shirley Manson have a slight resemblance in build, hair color, and style.

If you want to know more about Staten Island

SILive (Staten Island Advance) (newspaper)
Staten Island Borough President
Staten Island Ferry
Staten Island History
Staten Island Museum
Visit Staten Island
Wikipedia: Staten Island
Wikipedia: Staten Island Ferry

Next up: Lakewood, New Jersey

Blue Highways: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, New York

Unfolding the Map

We pass over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on our way into Staten Island and eventually out of New York City.  Why do bridges figure so prominently in our architecture, and why do we celebrate them so much?  I have a few ideas.  To see where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge spans the waters of New York, cross over to the map.

Book Quote

"....Then a windingly protracted ascent up the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (the Silver Gate of the East coast) with its world's longest center span, and below the bay where the Great Eastern, the Monitor, the Bonhomme Richard, and the Half Moon sailed.

"The low sun turned the Upper Bay orange.  Freighters rode at anchor or headed to the Atlantic, and to the north, in the distance, a little glint of coppery green that was the Statue of Liberty.  I slowed to gawk and got a horn; the driver passed in a gaseous cloud and held aloft a middle digit opinion."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Photo by Carl and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, New York

More than any other city that I've visited, New York is connected as a city, an entity and a wider community through its bridges.

Recently, on a trip to Brooklyn with my wife for a friend's wedding, I was reminded of just how special the bridges in New York City actually are.  My wife had never strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge, and so we took part of a day to walk across.  For anyone traveling to New York, I would suggest you make that walk.  It is on an elevated wooden walkway above the traffic, and the views are phenomenal.  Just on a superficial level, if you want an amazing view of the skyline of Manhattan, the bridge is worth that walk across.  But there are multiple levels.  At each tower there are plaques that briefly tell the story of how the bridge was built, and the context of history in which it was built.

At the time the bridge was conceived, New York City was really just Manhattan.  Brooklyn was its own city and political entity and in many ways a rival of New York City.  A walk along the upper walkway takes one past a plaque that shows a woman representing the City of New York clasping hands with a woman representing the City of Brooklyn, with the bridge underneath, and the motto Finis Coronat Opus.  The Latin translates literally into "the end crowns the work," but could mean "the end justifies the means" or "the end of a crowning achievement."  Regardless, the Brooklyn Bridge paved the way for Brooklyn and New York to join together to create a greater New York.  At this time, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island also joined.

Much of New York is on islands.  Manhattan is its own island, separated from New Jersey on the west by the Hudson, and on the east from Brooklyn and Queens by the East River.  To the south of Manhattan lies Staten Island, which is also separated from New Jersey on the west by the Arthur Kill and on the east from Brooklyn by The Narrows.  There are 10 bridges connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn over the East River.  There are fifteen bridges over the Harlem River, connecting Manhattan to the Bronx.  There is one bridge over the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge connecting Manhattan to New Jersey and four bridges connecting Staten Island to New Jersey.  Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.  Of all the bridges, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first completed, in 1883, and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was the last major bridge to be completed, in 1964, spanning 81 years of a process where New York City connected itself together into the unified metropolis we now know.  And all of this doesn't even count the tunnels that were dug under the rivers for traffic, train and subway service.  Nor does it count the ferry services that existed before the Brooklyn Bridge, and which still operate as alternative ways to travel in the New York City area.

In fact, I'd argue that without the bridges, New York City wouldn't have become the major city that it is today.  New York City is what it is because of the variety of its boroughs and neighborhoods within them.  On my last trip there, I had the opportunity to spend a morning and early afternoon in the neighborhoods and more laid-back central areas of Brooklyn, getting the flavor of the place through its fine museum, its botanical gardens and its restaurants.  Then, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, noisy, busy and constantly moving.  We got above the hubbub on the High Line and enjoyed a less crowded, more peaceful walk through Chelsea, and then took a taxi up to  to meet a friend in a high-rise and fancy apartment for drinks on 5th Avenue overlooking Central Park.  We ended back up in Brooklyn by subway later that evening.

Staten Island, closer to New Jersey than the rest of New York City, has almost been a reluctant participant as a member of the consolidated New York City area, and indeed voted to secede from New York City in the 1990s.  However, the vote was non-binding and the issues of Staten Island were resolved.  Yet, even if the vote had carried some weight, I believe it would be hard for Staten Island to sever itself completely from New York City because of its connection through the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry.  It might be able to sever politically, but not necessarily culturally.

A bridge is a lifeline, an artery.  We have sayings that reflect how important bridges are.  We try to "build bridges" to span gulfs and bring us together with others on common ground.  We try not to "burn bridges" with friends, colleagues and those we care about.  In war, bridges are among the first primary targets, targeted to cut off routes and supplies to the enemy.  When consolidating newly conquered territories, the conquerors often build bridges to enable the consolidation to take place.

I remember the movie Escape From New York, in which Manhattan is a large penal colony and all the bridges have been mined to keep convicts on the island.  In I Am Legend, the Will Smith movie, as the contagion of the deadly virus spreads through Manhattan the military destroys the bridges in a futile attempt to keep the contagion on the island.  The main theme in both of these films is that without the bridges, the New York City as we know it ceases to exist as an entity.

With so many bridges that that connect New York City to itself - to its boroughs and neighborhoods and all that is great about the place - it is easy to appreciate the role of a bridge, no matter how small or how large, how young or how old, how complex or simple the design.  They allow us to access places not easily reached, and bring together disparate parts into unity.

Musical Interlude

I had hoped to find a song about bridges that matches this post.  But I couldn't.  A lot of songs have to do with building bridges or burning bridges.  Some have to do with jumping off bridges.  They really didn't feel right to me.  The song I kept coming back to was a simple song by Steve Young that The Eagles covered, Seven Bridges Road.  It may have nothing to do with the post, but I like it.

If you want to know more about the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

MTA: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
NYCRoads.com: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: A Brief History
Wikipedia: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Next up: Staten Island, New York

Blue Highways: Brooklyn, New York

Unfolding the Map

Sometimes, when dates and stars align, one just doesn't question and one simply goes with it.  If you read the quote below, you'll understand why I chose my topic for this post, and why I waited an extra day or so to post it to Littourati.  On this day of remembrance, let us set aside differences for a little while and reflect on how events like those which occurred on September 11, 2001 affect so much in our world.  The image at right is the flag of Brooklyn, found at Wikimedia Commons.  The point I picked in Brooklyn, where I imagine, maybe, that William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) saw those now toppled "stumps in the yellow velvet sky" can be found at the map.

Book Quote

"....Things raced past like the jumpy images of a nickelodeon: abandoned and stripped cars on the shoulders, two hitchhiking females that nobody could stop to pick up, a billboard EAT SAUSAGE AND BE HAPPY, low-flying jumbos into Kennedy International, the racetrack at Ozone Park, bulldozed piles of dirt to fill the marsh at Jamaica Bay, long and straight Flatbush Avenue, Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, the World Trade Center like stumps in the yellow velvet sky."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

The former Twin Towers from Brooklyn. Photo by Sander Lamme and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Brooklyn, New York

You might wonder why LHM refers to the World Trade Center as being like "stumps in the yellow velvet sky."  I remember once, while driving in Brooklyn back when the towers still stood, that in certain areas you could only see the tops of the towers in the distance, and that they did look like stumps, at least compared to how tall you knew they really were.  Now, a new tower like a young sapling or, some might say, a slender headstone, rises above the urban gravesite where those towers once stood.

Every generation has its "Where were you when...?" moment.  These are the moments that happen, usually tragic or devastating in nature, that have the potential to change lives and cause far-reaching effects that create and even transcend history.

For my parents' generation, December 7th, 1941, the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was one of those moments in history that changed everything.  That day determined how many young men would spend the next four years of their lives, and it also sent many of those young men to their deaths.  We will never know what contributions to society those men might have made had they not been compelled to go to war to defend their country, but that day and their actions following that day certainly helped reorder a world and even remake it.

For many, that day came on November 22nd, 1963.  People around the United States, and even around the world, stood aghast, and even wept, as the incredible and almost unbelievable news reverberated around the world - the president of the United States had been gunned down in Dallas.  We will never know what John F. Kennedy would have done in his fourth year of his presidency, nor if he would have won a second term.  But his death ushered in Lyndon Johnson's presidency, which created a new era of civil rights and government responsibility, and an escalation of a war that sent many young men to their deaths and scarred many others.

I thought that my "Where were you when...?" moment was going to be November 10, 1989.  I remember listening almost without comprehension as East Germany opened its checkpoints and thousands of East Berliners and West Berliners danced together on top of the Berlin Wall.  This symbol of the Cold War, which had stood for almost 50 years during a conflict that I thought would never end in my lifetime, crumbled overnight.  For a moment, in the new era that followed, many hoped that the threat of a nuclear war that lingered over everything and everyone had, if not dissipated, then at least taken a step back in favor of democracy and world cooperation.

However, the positive forces unleashed that day also set other forces in motion that reached an apex in the events of September 11, 2001.  That date will stand as this generation's "Where were you when...?" moment.  As a political scientist, I see the train of events that link November 10, 1989 and September 11, 2001, so for me it is almost as if my generational marker spanned the nearly 12 years in between.  Nations that had been under the thumb of communist governments suddenly began to move toward democracy, which allowed simmering conflicts to rise to the surface, which fostered the rise of transnational groups bent on overthrowing the world order.  Of these groups, one with a fundamentally radical pan-Islamic philosophy began planning what would be the most symbolically and literally destructive moment in United States history.

That moment, when the United States was spearheading a global market and trade regime that it planned to lead, and which was symbolized in the Twin Towers, once again altered history.  At the time, I was working on my PhD and teaching classes at the University of New Orleans.  I remember hearing on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and thinking that it was a small plane.  I then heard that another hit, and turned on the television to scenes of destruction caused by "low-flying jumbos" that are seared into the memory of, possibly, a majority of the earth's current inhabitants in one way or another.  I remember having to calm a student who called me.  She was afraid that, in the new and dangerous world that suddenly revealed itself to be lurking within America's post-Cold War confidence (and perhaps arrogance), she would become another victim of terrorists while driving to school.

I often wonder how my life changed after that horrific day.  That was a day in which thousands of men and women calmly went to work or boarded an airplane, not realizing it would be their last commute, their last trip, their last moments on earth.  American self-assurance was shattered, our confidence in its ability to protect ourselves was compromised, and worst of all, our hopefulness in the future was lost.  While, as in any disaster, the best of our natures came forward and heroes and martyrs were and still are justifiably celebrated, the events of September 11th also brought forth the worst of our natures as well, including fear, racism and a tendency toward the reactionary.  In the wake of the disaster, the sorrow and support of the whole world was evident in the thousands of gatherings and demonstrations, the most poignant example of which were the signs in many other countries proclaiming "We are all Americans."

I felt that we wasted the the opportunity, born out of tragedy, that was given to us.  In individuals such as myself, as well as the larger population, a re-evaluation of what was important occurred.  Some moved toward a focus on protection and security.  Others focused on the actions of our country and how our foreign policies over the years and decades could have culminated in the disaster.  Some held the United States blameless, and others held the US and its policies and practices around the world wholly to blame.  The US became preemptive, and started two wars from which it is only beginning to disentangle itself.  Even in death Osama bin Laden is still a political issue.

For me, I realized that the charade of a peaceful world was gone in the complexity of the forces surging within it.  But, I also realized that the forces and motivations of people were also too complex to be generalized.  I couldn't hold one person, movement or country responsible.  I began to see, for example, that Islam was very complex and that it was too easy to brand it as a religion of terrorists and fanatics.  Instead, I wondered how we had simultaneously ignored that aspect of Islam while taking for granted the more moderate forces that were quite willing to work with us and had even warned us.

But most of all, the loss of those Twin Towers reminded me that nothing - absolutely nothing - is certain.  We get up in the morning and expect our day to go as usual.  We head to work, we spend eight hours there, we head home.  We do our evening activities and go to bed and expect much the same to happen the next day.  Until an event that impacts our lives, like that on September 11th, 2001 or any other date where the continuing human drama surprises us with an act of tragedy, reminds us just how fragile and unpredictable our lives can be.

Musical Interlude

I was going to leave this space for a moment of silence.  However, one of the most moving pieces of music I have ever heard is Terence Blanchard's Funeral Dirge, written for his post-Katrina album A Tale of God's Will.  I left New Orleans a year before Katrina, and didn't experience that life- and history-altering event but I think that Blanchard's dirge captures so much about the loss, pain, hope and emotion brought about by tragedy.

If you want to know more about Brooklyn

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Next up:  Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, New York