Marian's Blog

Where Were All of Us on 9/11? (Pt. 2 of 2)

... Sometimes I wonder if Sunday, 9 September 2001 may have been the last ‘normal’ Sunday for the rest of my life. That afternoon on Kauai, Michael, a jazz composer/pianist, and his group – including neoRican percussionist Jorge – played Princeville Hotel’s open air lounge & bar while Michael’s 9(?) yr old daughter sat to one side fidgeting & mouthing the lyrics she knew from memorizing all her Dad’s songs. Those who know me know I'm the type of person who usually would prefer a carrot juice or a fruit smoothie, but that day I arrived at Princeville Hotel armed with a drink voucher so I ordered rum punch. Then I had a pina colada, and another rum punch. From the terrace that evening the sunset in the tropics seemed the most stunning I’d experienced in years. And so passed my first evening in Princeville – colourful, peaceful, harmonious and good.

Early Monday I awoke sick as a dog. To this day I have no idea WHAT BRAND of (apparently cheeeeep) rum was used but whatever I saved on tall tropical drinks - mixed with their house rum - a few hours later I paid full price .

I'd planned to go windsurfing first thing Monday morning; I'd also brought my (roller)blades, but that Monday on Kauai was a wash. Early that morning and most of the day my only goal became to stand long enough to take myself to the Princeville grocery market for buy Tylenol or aspirin. I don’t remember what time I finally got them. Being in the store is a blur, but I bought them, went back to my condo, took some with plenty of H2O and fell back asleep.

I woke Monday evening, 10 Sept, too late to go anywhere for dinner. Earlier at the supermarket I’d gotten a few things for the fridge and made do with that. I watched TV and again fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke in the early hours of Tuesday, 11 Sept, Hawaii time, on Turner movie channel TCM was “AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER”, the 1950s movie classic with Deborah Carr & Cary Grant in New York where they plan to meet atop the Empire State Building – New York’s tallest building – when tragedy intervenes. Perhaps a strange coincidence considering what was happening in real time on the other side of America.

The TCM film ended around 4/5 a.m. Kauai time. The no longer funny bullying in a very dated Laurel and Hardy skit made my heart wince so I turned the channel. Suddenly hot images... Pentagon in flames. Another network. Chaos and horror in New York and Washington... planes full of passengers used as weapons, another plane missing. It quickly sinks in that the world will never be the same. By phone I finally reach family on the East Coast. But that morning - in my solitude on Kauai - I chose not to sit shocked and saddened, and I want to thank CELESTE HARVEL, my instructor-friend at Windsurf Kauai. I found Celeste where we'd scheduled to meet. Though we'd never before met each other we offered each other some consolation for what was happening in our country & our world; we moved our time to the afternoon and later that day we windsurfed. M.

Where Were All of Us on 9/11? (Pt. 1)

I first want to send a happy birthday shout-out to my cousin in New Jersey whose birthday happens to be today, 11 September. She's one of the millions for whom Sept 11 was their day long before it became 9/11.

On Sept 11, 2001 I was on the Hawai’ian island of Kauai. Thanks to two more of my cousins and a timeshare they couldn’t use I’d decided to go, and had arrived two days earlier on my first-ever visit to that part of the Pacific.

In the waning days of Aug 2001 we’d just left SKOPJE, Macedonia (& Kosovo) and flown straight to LA-LA-Land (Los Angeles). We arrived in Cali for long-overdue r&r and a visit with family and friends. Take my word. There’s a world of difference between Hawai’i & Skopje. And no pun or disrespect intended... I love the Balkans. Putting it mildly... things were on edge back in Makedonija. When our plane landed in L.A. we left behind the almost daily ominous screeching roar of army fighter jets flying low over Skopje, the dull thud of not-distant shelling & smoke rising from battle between the Macedonian army & heavily armed ethnic rebels in a village just beyond the international airport on the outskirts of the capital city.

Through spring/summer 2001 Macedonia see-sawed on the knife's edge of civil war. Embassies evacuated their families. In Skopje & across Macedonia pretty much everyone was emotionally & politically exhausted. By late August the men holding the power of war versus some kind of peace had managed a small but critical step away from the brink, and we caught a plane flight to American normalcy & the gorgeous, engulfing unreality of L.A.

About 2 weeks into this American exile I was finally on Kauai. Due to my other half's work commitments in Europe, I went alone & quickly figured out Hawai’i is 3 hours behind California and 6 hours earlier than the east coast U.S. I arrived Sunday, 9 September, rented a car and drove north to Princeville and the beautiful condo that was to be mine for a week. After checking in, I went back out and discovered a wonderful group of jazz musicians performing at Princeville Hotel. So that's where I hung out for the evening of Sunday, 9 Sept.

When I think of that day from the distance of 3 years it seems as though perhaps it was the last truly normal Sunday in the world, & in my life. [Cont'd in Pt 2...]

Sudan's Arab Blacks: "Kill the Slaves"

IVAN's on the warpath. A level 4/5 hurricane is the last thing folks need in the Caribbean & Caribbean Basin. Grenada, Tobago, Jamaica... and probably Florida. Again. They say Hispaniola - Ayiti & Republica Dominicana - was spared. Grace a Dieu for that. Across the Atlantic, on the continent from which our ancestors were taken to the same Caribbean, finally the word "genocide" has been used officially about DARFUR. One group of Black people - referred to as ARABS - raping, slaughtering, starving and driving out other Black people whom these "Arabs" call Slaves. No one's ever really ended this bondage imposed on Africans for over 500 years, nor the other dehumanising ways many choose to view, label & treat Blacks. According to Darfur's survivors "KILL THE SLAVES" is what the Arab militiamen say as they attack. This is NOT a reference to women trafficked into prostitution.

10 Sept '04

I feel myself going into >"Sept. 11th mode." On 11 Sept 2001 I was on the island of KAUAI. But more on 9/11 later. Got a mass email from Josh Kravitz, exec director of democratsabroad.org, encouraging me to "be proud of america." For some time that's been a bit tough. HOW MANY MORE DAYS TO THE ELECTION?? M

Welcome to the Marian Chronicles

Thanks for coming to this new blogspace of mine. You're very welcome to visit and offer feedback. So we'll see how all this develops. Over here where I am we don't yet have fast phone lines... so that hinders technical bloggability. But we'll 'soldier on'. More later... Marian