Home Again Home Again jiggity jig
**Anyone can comment on this blog now. I disabled the have-to-be-a-member dealio. This isn’t a cry for comments, but--well--an invitation. *
Hey, all. Back from the MD-D.C. area where I discovered I’m going to try to live in a place a lot more in the center of D.C. than on the outskirts of the College Park campus. (For those of you who are unaware: the next year for me ='s my first shot at an M.F.A. degree from the University of MD. FEAR THE TURTLE!)
**Please! Tell me SOMEONE else caught the Billy Graham "Road to Redemption" movie on prime time this past week so I can "rant" about it!! **
I have a list of things to do a mile long. But, the trip was grand in most senses of the word. I got to be around ppl who think of creative writing as a serious, academic, honest pursuit, and word on the street from a 3rd year student says the literature profs respect it as well. (OMG! Wheatonites, can you stand it?) Here’s an interesting thing, too: the Maryland website’s catch phrase is “Maryland Alumni Light the World.” Haha, borrowing from Xnese or the other way around?
But the real reason for this post comes from me and my mom’s trip to Shanksville on the way home. Aside from the killer finds at the local thrift store and the rolling Pennsylvania scenery, it’s the place Flight 93 crashed, inspiring the Patriot Act, the Class of 9/11, and the Todd M. Beamer Student Center. My mom had been there before, so she pulled the car up to the “Thunder on the Mountain” Chapel. The first thing I noticed was the port-o-jon set up outside with the brandname “Honey-Pot.” Please, if anyone has ever seen another Honey-Pot port-o-jon, let me know, bc it was really a transcendent experience. We got out of the car and walked under a bell tower into the foyer of the chapel. My mom saw Reverend Alphonse T. Mascherino and said, “Hello, Father. We’d like to see the video.” This guy looks at my mom and remembers her from the time she came with my dad. (They mistook the Rev. for the church groundskeeper until he stood up on the stage and began a group tour and introduced himself.) The Rev. goes over to an 11” TV/VCR combo and pushes in the tape. The instructions on screen are in Spanish which makes me think of home. It starts and he leaves to meet with a man at his desk 20 ft. away about setting up road signs to mark the chapel’s placement in Shanksville. The tape plays an Intro to filmmaking documentary about this man (the rev.) who heard the FLight 93 crash and wrote an essay about it (“Thunder on the Mountain,” an essay that makes me think of the Joshua Harris-Brian Moore fiasco) then decided to buy an old church and create a memorial. In the video, all this miraculous generosity starts pouring out of the local 84 Lumber and construction companies until this really fine chapel-memorial is built. The bell outside was donated and worked by a bronzist who was annoyed until he found out what the donation was for. At one point on the tape, the Rev. rings the bell over and over and over again. I can hear why it’s called the Thunder Bell. The strikes are short and unfulfilling, but the bell’s resonance, even through the bad quality of the TV/VCR combo’s small speaker a collection of black holes in the shape of a circle, pools in the center of me and makes me feel the smallest bit like the residents of Shanksville (1 main st., an ice cream parlor and an Amoco Station) on that September morning when I was actually leaving my dormroom on Fischer 4W and my RA (whom I never spoke to if I could help it) said “Come here, look at this on the TV.”
The Rev.’s been sent rocks and plaques from all over the world that he’s displayed around the chapel. One alcove has displays of every casualty’s bio. The most interesting parts of the bios are the captions under the photos of each man and woman, reading things like “She was on a business trip to Reno.” “He had just visited New York City for the first time.” indicating the reason for each person’s presence on the plane. The worst ones were those who had caught an earlier flight or had planned on returning home that evening (like Todd Beamer). I thought about Lost, then my inability to relate to evil and mortality outside of the mediation of images.
The chapel has three flags flying: the American, the Pennsylvania and another one that I don’t know the name of that looked something like this:
---------------
* * * * * blue, white stars
---------------
white?
---------------
red?
---------------
When we left, we walked under the Thunder bell (no affiliation with Wheaton) again. The first time I pulled the line, the sound was tinny. The second time I didn’t pull hard enough. I let go after that. We drove into Shanksville to find the crash site. It was like Union City, Penna. only smaller, meaning without the strips of stores and the Pizza-Hut & McDonald’s. If any of you didn’t get a chance to go to Ground Zero in it’s heyday or Shanksville or any other sites of plane crashes that devastate hundreds of ppl’s families, etc., it’s too visceral to ruin with words or melodrama. The stuff ppl left at the temporary memorial: old Hotwheels models, a Finding Nemo toy from Burger King, hundreds of hats.
The man who was volunteering in the informational shed was a misfit, one of three eye witnesses. He spoke like he was partly deaf. His name was Nevin. I’m sitting in front of the computer right now, staring at the autographed card he gave me with his address. He told me the 9-11 Commission Report was “this big.” He showed me with his hands (4-inches thick). He lived in the white house on the hill. He saw it happen. He said abt. the other eye witnesses, “They don’t talk about it. You can’t.” He tells of what happened in numbers: 248 ppl died, the plane came in on its back at 580 mph, they found the black box after digging 45 ft. down. He asked me was I a reporter with my notebook in my hand. He told me he didn’t like those reporters.
The other visitors kept asking why the government planted grass over the plane's impression in the sand. Why would they change the site like that? I thought to myself, don’t they know that they planted grass over the blemish lift by Flight 93 on the countryside? Don't they know it was because they were ashamed of their weakness.
From Shanksville to the Grove City exit, I read my mom “Good Old Neon,” which was so cool bc we were driving in a car and all the narrator says about the listener driving in a car was eerily accurate.
Hey, all. Back from the MD-D.C. area where I discovered I’m going to try to live in a place a lot more in the center of D.C. than on the outskirts of the College Park campus. (For those of you who are unaware: the next year for me ='s my first shot at an M.F.A. degree from the University of MD. FEAR THE TURTLE!)
**Please! Tell me SOMEONE else caught the Billy Graham "Road to Redemption" movie on prime time this past week so I can "rant" about it!! **
I have a list of things to do a mile long. But, the trip was grand in most senses of the word. I got to be around ppl who think of creative writing as a serious, academic, honest pursuit, and word on the street from a 3rd year student says the literature profs respect it as well. (OMG! Wheatonites, can you stand it?) Here’s an interesting thing, too: the Maryland website’s catch phrase is “Maryland Alumni Light the World.” Haha, borrowing from Xnese or the other way around?
But the real reason for this post comes from me and my mom’s trip to Shanksville on the way home. Aside from the killer finds at the local thrift store and the rolling Pennsylvania scenery, it’s the place Flight 93 crashed, inspiring the Patriot Act, the Class of 9/11, and the Todd M. Beamer Student Center. My mom had been there before, so she pulled the car up to the “Thunder on the Mountain” Chapel. The first thing I noticed was the port-o-jon set up outside with the brandname “Honey-Pot.” Please, if anyone has ever seen another Honey-Pot port-o-jon, let me know, bc it was really a transcendent experience. We got out of the car and walked under a bell tower into the foyer of the chapel. My mom saw Reverend Alphonse T. Mascherino and said, “Hello, Father. We’d like to see the video.” This guy looks at my mom and remembers her from the time she came with my dad. (They mistook the Rev. for the church groundskeeper until he stood up on the stage and began a group tour and introduced himself.) The Rev. goes over to an 11” TV/VCR combo and pushes in the tape. The instructions on screen are in Spanish which makes me think of home. It starts and he leaves to meet with a man at his desk 20 ft. away about setting up road signs to mark the chapel’s placement in Shanksville. The tape plays an Intro to filmmaking documentary about this man (the rev.) who heard the FLight 93 crash and wrote an essay about it (“Thunder on the Mountain,” an essay that makes me think of the Joshua Harris-Brian Moore fiasco) then decided to buy an old church and create a memorial. In the video, all this miraculous generosity starts pouring out of the local 84 Lumber and construction companies until this really fine chapel-memorial is built. The bell outside was donated and worked by a bronzist who was annoyed until he found out what the donation was for. At one point on the tape, the Rev. rings the bell over and over and over again. I can hear why it’s called the Thunder Bell. The strikes are short and unfulfilling, but the bell’s resonance, even through the bad quality of the TV/VCR combo’s small speaker a collection of black holes in the shape of a circle, pools in the center of me and makes me feel the smallest bit like the residents of Shanksville (1 main st., an ice cream parlor and an Amoco Station) on that September morning when I was actually leaving my dormroom on Fischer 4W and my RA (whom I never spoke to if I could help it) said “Come here, look at this on the TV.”
The Rev.’s been sent rocks and plaques from all over the world that he’s displayed around the chapel. One alcove has displays of every casualty’s bio. The most interesting parts of the bios are the captions under the photos of each man and woman, reading things like “She was on a business trip to Reno.” “He had just visited New York City for the first time.” indicating the reason for each person’s presence on the plane. The worst ones were those who had caught an earlier flight or had planned on returning home that evening (like Todd Beamer). I thought about Lost, then my inability to relate to evil and mortality outside of the mediation of images.
The chapel has three flags flying: the American, the Pennsylvania and another one that I don’t know the name of that looked something like this:
---------------
* * * * * blue, white stars
---------------
white?
---------------
red?
---------------
When we left, we walked under the Thunder bell (no affiliation with Wheaton) again. The first time I pulled the line, the sound was tinny. The second time I didn’t pull hard enough. I let go after that. We drove into Shanksville to find the crash site. It was like Union City, Penna. only smaller, meaning without the strips of stores and the Pizza-Hut & McDonald’s. If any of you didn’t get a chance to go to Ground Zero in it’s heyday or Shanksville or any other sites of plane crashes that devastate hundreds of ppl’s families, etc., it’s too visceral to ruin with words or melodrama. The stuff ppl left at the temporary memorial: old Hotwheels models, a Finding Nemo toy from Burger King, hundreds of hats.
The man who was volunteering in the informational shed was a misfit, one of three eye witnesses. He spoke like he was partly deaf. His name was Nevin. I’m sitting in front of the computer right now, staring at the autographed card he gave me with his address. He told me the 9-11 Commission Report was “this big.” He showed me with his hands (4-inches thick). He lived in the white house on the hill. He saw it happen. He said abt. the other eye witnesses, “They don’t talk about it. You can’t.” He tells of what happened in numbers: 248 ppl died, the plane came in on its back at 580 mph, they found the black box after digging 45 ft. down. He asked me was I a reporter with my notebook in my hand. He told me he didn’t like those reporters.
The other visitors kept asking why the government planted grass over the plane's impression in the sand. Why would they change the site like that? I thought to myself, don’t they know that they planted grass over the blemish lift by Flight 93 on the countryside? Don't they know it was because they were ashamed of their weakness.
From Shanksville to the Grove City exit, I read my mom “Good Old Neon,” which was so cool bc we were driving in a car and all the narrator says about the listener driving in a car was eerily accurate.
posted by LRuggiero_temp | 6:28 PM
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