A fascinating if rather grim documentary, detailing the gargantuan forensic project that arose from the smouldering hell of ground zero.
Interestingly the global scale of the disaster is brought home through the story of Geoffrey Campbell, a British man killed in the attacks.
Geoff Campbell, at right, with his bothers.
Just as technology advances during war time, the science of forensics has been advanced by the unprecedented work required.
At one point, the investigation had to be halted, as the DNA work that could be done, had been done. Of the nearly three thousand victims, a little over half had been painstakingly identified.
The scale and intensity of the carnage was so extreme that very few remains – about 300 people – could be identified in the quickest normal ways: visuals, such as facial recognition, fingerprints, teeth, tattoos, scars, etc, yielded very few results.
Rubble is sifted for human remains.
Ultimately ground bones and the DNA they contain would be the key. Both in the initial investigation, and again in the second wave of analysis. And so a larger tranche of results became available. And in 2013 a third wave of new identifications occurred, but only four victims could be ID’ed.
So there’s a law of diminishing returns at work. And still there’s a pretty large number of relatives – about 40% – who have no remains at all with which to commemorate their loss. This is a very particular angle on these momentous events. Fascinating and heartbreaking.
Emotions and memories are funny things, are they not? I’ve just recently been given a load of mp3 files from the ‘family band’ I was in, for a few years as a kid, circa age 16-18 year old, perhaps?
The band went through many band name changes. Something I really disliked! At the point when these recordings were made, we were called The Minotaurs, and comprised my mum on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, my dad, on bass, and I was the drummer. Completing the line-up was Malcolm Heyes, on lead and rhythm guitar and backing vocals.
I’m 49 at the time of typing this, so this music is over 30 years old. It’s the best early record of my playing as a drummer that I have. And for that I’m grateful. But it also brings back memories of a lost era in my life when my family were still what one might call a solid nuclear ‘family unit’. It could be said that this band put paid to that.
But that’s another story.
Or is it? That’s the thing. I can’t really hear this music and not feel some of the pain associated with events that would unfold in the ensuing years.
Part of me might want to be able to just listen and respond to it ‘purely musically’. But then again, that’d be weird. One of the chief appeals of music is how it stimulates feelings.
My mum and Malcolm – that tells you something about what came to pass – recently contacted me asking if I’d like to hear these tracks. And also talking about songwriting credits, etc. I’m glad they did. It is nice, on one level, to hear this stuff again after so many years. It’s surprisingly good, in certain respects.
And it’s nice, if this music is to exist our in the real world, as opposed to languishing on a few cassettes in drawers here and there, to be credited for my part in it. I have to say that I’m rather proud of my number, Blue Claw Sky, and for my age (and considering how little schooled I was in the art) I’m quite chuffed with my playing.
I didn’t know this, but I think we owe John Garrad, a friend of my dad’s who ran a folk record label called Plant Life, and is I believe responsible for the surprisingly good recording quality, a debt of gratitude for capturing is so well. This was, after all, just a little local pub gig, in (I think?), Fordham.
But we also owe ourselves a big pat on the back for a decent set competently played. We were well rehearsed, from frequent practise and quite a busy giggling schedule. The set, mostly originals, with a couple of those being instrumentals, and one or two covers, is strong.
Also in our favour, we had a decent and appreciative audience, who can be heard digging out stuff. Very gratifying! If only all local pub gigs could be more like that!
Anyway, I found the impact of the complex bittersweet mix of emotions too powerful to do the whole thing in one sitting. In fact I had to dose myself carefully, and it took three sessions of listening to hear the whole thing.
I don’t think it can be the entire set, there doesn’t seem enough material? And as I recall we were the main (only act?) that night. I may be wrong!? It also seems to be in a random order, starting with what was the last song before we took a break between sets… we’re all the tracks recorded that night? If so, what’s become of the rest?
Anyway, I must admit I’m fairly proud of what we had going, and pleasantly surprised that it’s pretty good in most respects: songwriting, performance, recording. But listening to it isn’t too easy, thanks to the historical emotional baggage. But, hey… that’s life. And that’s part of the charm of music, that it sears the emotions into the synapses.
Based on a real story, Bernie mixes the reflections of real life ‘talking heads’ with actors delivering a very polished (and rather stylised) re-imagining or re-creation of events. Of the two quotes on the image above, ‘murderously charming’ is the better and more accurate. There is an element of gentle humour, but ‘absolutely hilarious’? Hmmm… not really.
Bernie Tiede was, if this film is any guide, a slightly odd but basically very nice guy, who ultimately befriended a rich widow, who, by all accounts, was not an easily likeable person. Bernie got an in on a ritzy lifestyle, and Mrs Nugent got a friend and dogsbody. Which, if either, of the two was using the other?
Was Tiede playing the long game, as a gold-digger? Or was he simply who he seemed to be, a loveable oddball? His behaviour after his arrest and incarceration suggests the latter. But then again, he shot and killed a defenceless old biddy, and stuck her corpse in a freezer!? And carried on living an ever deepening lie, whilst generously splashing her cash around.
Jack Black gives a great performance, and the entire cast conspire to make the whole thing both a little zany and yet totally believable. The ‘real people’ are worked into the fabric of the film expertly. And throughout – but especially when the camera lingers on the faces of Tiede’s jury – you feel this is a film that, as unusual as the subject may be, gives a glimpse of the real America so absent from mainstream Hollywood generally.
Not sure this a ‘great’ film. But it’s very good. And really interesting. Oh, and very entertaining as well.
I was working at the home of my illustrator pal Tim Oliver, on Sept 11th, 2001. I was outside the house, working in a wooden shed studio in the back garden. Tim came running in, clearly agitated and excited, saying I had to come inside and see what was on the TV. I think it was a sunny day in the UK/The Fens, just as it was in the US.
Now, 20 years later, it’s still very powerfully affecting, seeing the footage and images of that fateful day. And there are a number of interesting ‘twentieth anniversary’ type programs on TV and other media, about these unbelievable events. This particular program is particularly fascinating, as it’s a view into the nerve centre of the American government as it came under attack.
I remember the way one thing after another kept happening: first one plane, then another, hitting the first and then the second tower, then a plane crashing into the Pentagon, then one tower coming down, then the other. It was a series of hefty punches, raining down, one after the other. This program conveys that well.
As well as the panoply of illustrious and powerful talking heads – all the key players: Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc. – who so suddenly seemed rendered powerless, there’s a cleverly deployed visual timeline. The combination of source materials, such as footage of the events themselves, audio recordings, and stuff like the computerised data of aircraft in flight, is incredible, and very well presented. The whole adds up to a very powerful experience.
One could argue that this might be official and therefore hagiographic propaganda. And maybe it is? A joint production by Apple TV, and the BBC, it appears, at first glance, to be independent. Certainly it’s very candid, with full and frank admissions as to the unpreparedness of US govt’ for such events.
The chief protagonists come across very well. Bush in particular impresses. Compared to some of the buffoons that have disgraced high public office on both sides of ‘the pond’ recently, the levels of eloquence and dignified calm in the face of such trauma are salutory.
Bush was doing a meet ‘n’ greet at the Emma Booker Elementary School, Saratoga, Florida, when he learned of the unfolding events. Watching how he reacted to learning the news is powerfully compelling viewing. And as things escalated the President and his entourage had to work out how to react; where to go, what to say.
This programme shows how uncertain things were. Bush wanted to go straight to Washington. But the bureaucratic machinery around the President overruled him, and they went instead to USAF Barksdale, and then a secure bunker in Nebraska.
One thing that this brief but impressive doc’ doesn’t address, which is something many non-Americans will think about (hopefully some Americans also?), is how America is happy to use violence abroad, but is so shocked when it comes home to roost. And of course there’s the irony of violence begetting yet more violence.
NASA Astronaut Frank Culbertson‘s photos of 9/11, from way above Earth.
One of the things about Bush and his coterie of advisors at this point is that they were clearly very competent. It’s good to hear the former President acknowledge the importance of such resources as the teams of advisors he had around him, and to see that this was real and meaningful advice – willing and able to contradict him if need be – not just place-serving ‘yes men’ (and women!).
But after all of this, Bush felt, and undoubtedly rightly so, that he had to get to somewhere visibly ‘central’, which for him was Washington, and be seen and heard to be calmly in command. Bush, an assertive and competitive man, was psychologically exactly the right kind of leader for this ver challenging moment.
I may object to his religious platitudes, apple pie Americanisms and machismo, but Bush handled the unfolding events pretty damn well. On the day. But maybe the longer term legacy of such blue-blooded American posturing hasn’t been so good? To their credit, the production team don’t duck this issue (see below).
Bush aboard Airforce One, where com’s were not ideal.
BBC ‘Do you think your actions after 9/11 made the world a safer place?’ GB ‘I’m comfortable with the decisions I made.’
One particularly poignant thread, amongst many, is that of Ted and Barbara Olson. Ted was, at that time, a very high ranking official in the Justice Dept, and his wife, Barbara was a conservative journalist/pundit. Barbara took a later work-related flight than originally planned, in order to share Ted’s 61st birthday with him, leaving a love note to her husband on his pillow (which he reads, very movingly, in this film). A note he would first see and read very late on the very same day he knew she had died.
Towards the end of the documentary, and in real timeline terms, on the 14th Sept – so three days after the events – Bush and his entourage visited ground zero. ‘It was almost like Pompeii’, says journalist David ‘Stretch’ Gregory.
All in all, this is an excellent programme, that gives an incredibly powerful, unprecedented and surprisingly candid insight into some very powerful era-defining events. Definitely well worth watching.
Well, I’m amazed. I’ve made a bodhran, or frame drum. It’s made from a cut down 13” rack tom, from a cheapo ex-school beginner kit.
It’s quite high pitched and resonant. And I think a ‘true’ bodhran would have a bigger heavier frames and lower tone. But hey, it’s a first attempt. And I have to confess I’m chuffed. Chuffed it’s a playable drum at all!
Adding furniture tacks.
I’ve kind of jumped from the previous post to the finished thing, with this second post. I might at some point put up more pics and info’ on the complete build process.
Teresa seems happy with the results. Go on… give it a bash!
I don’t know how to play it. Leastways not in the authentic bodhran manner. And I don’t have a stick/tipper/beater thing. I’m trying (unsuccessfully so far!) to put up a short video or two, just for a quick sample of the tonal characteristics.
I literally just finished this excellent book. The two main characters in it are are Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The titular Club was actually founded by painter Joshua Reynolds, to get Johnson out of one of his regular depressions. Boswell wouldn’t be invited to join for quite some time.
More than a history of The Club, this is really a group portrait of figures in the Johnson Boswell orbit, and of the places and times they lived in. It’s heavily illustrated, which is great, really adding several layers of warmth and depth to what is already interesting, helping one imagine the characters and the settings of their lives more vividly.
Damrosch clearly loves the whole era, and the great majority of the colourful cast. But this doesn’t stop him from giving a balanced portrait, warts and all, so to speak. Johnson is a cranky conservative prude, as well as the witty savant behind his famous dictionary. Boswell is an inordinately vain womaniser, in thrall to Johnson, and both are in many ways unattractively hidebound and old-fashioned.
But the chief attraction of this book is that it vividly and compellingly captures the multifarious facets of a kaleidoscopic era, populated by a diverse bunch of very interesting (if frequently flawed) people. And it does so with equal measures of detail, balance and excitement, such that it’s both very informative and highly enjoyable.
It’s perfect for me, as a way to start to learn more about a whole slew of folk I’m interested in, from Johnson and Boswell, to Adam Smith and Edward Gibbons, and many more besides. It’s pitched in the sweet spot between scholarly and suited for the lay reader. I loved this book, and would unhesitatingly recommend it.
Utter garbage. I’m amazed I bothered to watch it all the way through. How many lame ass Nic Cage films am I going to inflict on myself?
White-trash prick-tease Teena (Anna Hutchinson) gets gang-raped – with her daughter as witness – by four cartoon rocker ne’erdowells. The loathsome quartet are then acquitted, thanks to the biggest insensitive prick of a judge ever, oh… and Don Johnson, as the most oleaginous Harley riding lawyer ever.
Throughout this pitiful movie the heavily made up Nicolas Cage disappears from the screen for long enough – poss due to the time required attempting to make him look younger? – to call his star billing into question. The real screen time is shared by the white trash trio of Debs Ungar (as granny Agnes), Teena, and Bethie, the traumatised daughter.
I knew this movie was going to be complete arse when the Patriot Films part of the titles rolled. What passes for patriotism in the US of A these days seems to be gun-fetishism and vigilante ultra-violence. This film sho’ is patriotic, ticking both boxes.
Set in the Niagra Falls community … aw, shoot…I really can not be bothered spending any more effort reviewing such toss. Avoid.
I’m making a bodhran for one of Teresa’s special needs clients. He’s into Scottish/Celtic type music, apparently. I’m only making the drum. He’ll have to source a beater (or whatever the stick thing is called) elsewhere.
I’ve made it from an old 13” rack-tom, cut around the circumference to a suitable – guestimated! – depth. Added a single cross-bar (some have none, some one or two, others have a ‘T-bar’, etc).
Sanded off a band to take the glue/skin.
Our pal Ken routed a new bearing edge on the playing side (again, totally guessed at!). And today I had to sand back to natural wood after having sprayed and lacquered the raw birch black/gloss.
And then came the fraught process of gluing the goatskin head to the frame. Got in a bit of a panic over this. But I think we triumphed (Teresa helped!) in the end.
Goatskin head secured with elastic and spring clamps, etc.
Letting the skin glue overnight. Tomorrow I’ll be hammering in shortened (if not shortened they’d go straight through the shell) furniture tacks, and cutting the excess goatskin away.
Kind of scary, having no experience in this area at all. But fun as well. Hope it turn out alright!?
Quite a while back, I decided to cut back the ivy growing up between our rear gate and the shed. I had done so once or twice before. But this time I wanted to be shot of it.
The consequence of this was that the gate post and the portions of the fence that had been encroached upon by the very rampant well developed ivy were utterly destroyed.
After a very long hiatus, over this summer of ‘21, I finally got around to dealing with this. I had hoped to hire a builder. And we had a few round to quote for the job. The job being getting the ivy roots and the hardcore/cement and remnants of the previous gate post dug out, and a new post put in.
The builder whose quote we were best pleased with, a chap named Tommy, never showed, nor returned any of my calls as to when he might deign to come and do the job. So the task reverted to me. Good job, really, as I hadn’t the money to pay him!
So, after a long hard go at removing the roots and concrete, etc, with a view to rehanging the old gate in the same spot, I eventually gave up. But it before I’d got about a foot down, removing earth, and then drilling into the cement/hardcore mix with a long masonry bit, in my larger hammer drill. But progress from that point on was torturously slow.
Having decided that this wasn’t really working, I had to go with plan B, and attach a post not down into the earth, but up against the rear wall of our property.
This meant drilling through a 4” post and into the brickwork. In the end I secured the post with five long screws, going into wall-plugs into the bricks. I also used a ‘no more mails’ type fixative – a whole tube – to help really bond this post to the wall.
Having let that go off overnight, next step was to re-hang the gate. It had to be rotated through 180°, so it’s now upside-down! First attempt I screwed it into the wrong face of the post! Second attempt, success.
The vertical angles are none of them plumb. But I used a spirit level anyway, just to get a half-decent alignment.
Next it was time to return to the original post-hole. Ding-ding… seconds out, rounds three and four. Eventually, after working with a saw, chainsaw, axe, pry-bar, chisels and a skill-saw, I got as much of the ivy root system out as I could, without either going insane or mutilating myself.
I could then proceed with putting in a new post (actually an old one, reclaimed from a local skip!), which would now be the one to receive only the latch fitting, rather than, as formerly, supporting the gate itself. I fixed this in situ using some old shelf-support brackets.
The post-hole on the right of the gate, seen from our side, needed back-filling with some of the soil I’d dug out. Once that was done, using moistened soil (aka mud) so it’d hold its shape, I poured water into the hole, to half way. Then I poured on some quick-setting post-crete.
As the photos here attest, this was a rough n’ ready type job. Not quite Robert Adam or Nostell Priory! But we will be tidying it all up, in ‘dew coarse’. It’s good to get these little jobs ticked off. And also to not be paying tradesmen to do ‘em.
This album is quite divisive amongst some Stones fans. For some reason it was the first and only Stones album I had (as an original album, I had numerous on cassette!), as a young’un.
I liked it back then, and I still like it now. It’s a bit of mixed bag. But then all of their albums are. Like practically all Stones albums (once they’d turned from a covers band to an originals group) there are two great tracks: She’s A Rainbow and 2,000 Light Years From Home, on this occasion.
Then there are a number that are just ok, but that’s The Stones for you. Even the repeated Why Don’t We Sing This Song motif, which is the most dated and of its time, isn’t all that bad.
I’m not sure if I’m remembering aright, but I believe I saw a Jean Luc Godard movie either by or about or featuring The Stones, from around this era. It might even have included stuff from the album? The memories are a bit hazy!
Taking a break during sessions for She’s a Rainbow.
The whole whacked out late-‘60s psychedelic vibe does both look (that cover!) and sound rather dated and silly now. But for some it may retain certain charms? I feel like I can kind of have my cake and eat it, with this disc: it really is quite silly in places. But I really rather like it, nevertheless.
All told? Well, yes, it’s a bit of an oddity in their catalogue, but not that big of an aberration, as some would have you believe. I like it enough that, having lost or got rid of my original copy, many moons ago, I’ve recently re-acquired it.
