The kill part of Fresh Kills is Dutch for river.
From a journal:
"September 16, 2001
We briefly went to the Staten Island Mall yesterday morning, to the doctor’s office (for my son) to get his allergy shots. I waited outside and sat on a bench and looked over to the Fresh Kills dump rising up in the distance, all landscapes and green. The green mound of the dump is where they are burying the "bones" of the towers and of course bits and pieces of human beings hopelessly intertwined with the debris because of – the tragedy…
…dumping in a most uncivilized manner, unceremoniously discharged out of the back of dump truck fresh on a journey from the WTC site. In a time of war, it is sometimes impossible to observe the peacetime niceties for the burial of the dead from a battlefield of that war.
(the tragedy) parts of it in pieces, symbols and perhaps there is a spiritual pain is being born – there on the top of the hill – on the temporarily reopened landfill.
It was chilly – Autumn in the air – Winter about to descend soon after – I hear in my head some of the last lines of James Joyce’s The Dead about snow falling on the both the living and the dead… a small eulogy and some soul’s minute body parts are getting some sort of decent burial if only in Fresh Kills landfill.
"-The Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island in New York City, was formerly the largest landfill in the world and was New York City's principal landfill in the second half of the 20th century. The name 'Fresh Kills' refers to its location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western Staten Island.
"Opened in 1948, it became one of the largest refuse heaps in human history. It also achieved the status as the highest man-made hill directly on the East Coast of the United States. Under local pressure and with support of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the landfill site was slated to close on March 22, 2001. However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the landfill was temporarily reopened in order to receive and process most of the debris from the destruction. Most of the debris was later removed and sold for scrap…" ** (an old WikiP. article)
I do hope that they erect a monolithic memorial at Fresh Kills one day to consider the small pieces of the dead not sold with the scrape metal on this now sacred ground. I hope that monument is one that can be seen from the nearby highway.
I received a blackened U.S. case quarter over a year later as change from the deli in the lobby of the building where I work near Rockefeller Center in NYC. It wasn’t one of those quarters painted in nail polish that children sometimes have a tendency to do in their spare time. I did not notice the object until after I left the store. I looked at it. It had shrunk and it had obviously been subject to intense heat. It had probably reached a red-hot stage and then cooled. The quarter is not perfectly round. There are two straight lines on the coin where it had rested somewhere against something cooler on a ninety degree angle. The coin had been issued to commemorate Vermont’s statehood. I could make out the date "2001".
The most striking image on the back of the coin are the two thick maple syrup trees. Now shrunk and blackened, the two tall tree trunks remind me of an image symbolic of the twin Towers of the World Trade center.
I do not know if this loose piece of change is in fact a souvenir of the WTC tragedy. If in fact it were a bona fide artifact of that tragic day, I would be breaking the law. I have no direct knowledge of the coin’s provenance. I did show it to people on occasion. I fancy it a piece of history and since it was issued as a coin in early August 2001, it could very well be a genuine relic of that day on 911.
I have since put the coin away. The fifth anniversary of the tragedy is upon us and I hope that the dead are resting in peace considering the untimeliness and circumstances of their demise. The prayers of millions have hopefully cleared a path for the dead to that someplace or somewhere in whatever happens to us on the other side of death. I do believe there is an other side of life and I hope the living of New York City can put away the past and start in earnest to build, build, build the future in downtown Manhattan.
From a journal:
"September 16, 2001
We briefly went to the Staten Island Mall yesterday morning, to the doctor’s office (for my son) to get his allergy shots. I waited outside and sat on a bench and looked over to the Fresh Kills dump rising up in the distance, all landscapes and green. The green mound of the dump is where they are burying the "bones" of the towers and of course bits and pieces of human beings hopelessly intertwined with the debris because of – the tragedy…
…dumping in a most uncivilized manner, unceremoniously discharged out of the back of dump truck fresh on a journey from the WTC site. In a time of war, it is sometimes impossible to observe the peacetime niceties for the burial of the dead from a battlefield of that war.
(the tragedy) parts of it in pieces, symbols and perhaps there is a spiritual pain is being born – there on the top of the hill – on the temporarily reopened landfill.
It was chilly – Autumn in the air – Winter about to descend soon after – I hear in my head some of the last lines of James Joyce’s The Dead about snow falling on the both the living and the dead… a small eulogy and some soul’s minute body parts are getting some sort of decent burial if only in Fresh Kills landfill.
"-The Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island in New York City, was formerly the largest landfill in the world and was New York City's principal landfill in the second half of the 20th century. The name 'Fresh Kills' refers to its location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western Staten Island.
"Opened in 1948, it became one of the largest refuse heaps in human history. It also achieved the status as the highest man-made hill directly on the East Coast of the United States. Under local pressure and with support of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the landfill site was slated to close on March 22, 2001. However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the landfill was temporarily reopened in order to receive and process most of the debris from the destruction. Most of the debris was later removed and sold for scrap…" ** (an old WikiP. article)
I do hope that they erect a monolithic memorial at Fresh Kills one day to consider the small pieces of the dead not sold with the scrape metal on this now sacred ground. I hope that monument is one that can be seen from the nearby highway.
I received a blackened U.S. case quarter over a year later as change from the deli in the lobby of the building where I work near Rockefeller Center in NYC. It wasn’t one of those quarters painted in nail polish that children sometimes have a tendency to do in their spare time. I did not notice the object until after I left the store. I looked at it. It had shrunk and it had obviously been subject to intense heat. It had probably reached a red-hot stage and then cooled. The quarter is not perfectly round. There are two straight lines on the coin where it had rested somewhere against something cooler on a ninety degree angle. The coin had been issued to commemorate Vermont’s statehood. I could make out the date "2001".
The most striking image on the back of the coin are the two thick maple syrup trees. Now shrunk and blackened, the two tall tree trunks remind me of an image symbolic of the twin Towers of the World Trade center.
I do not know if this loose piece of change is in fact a souvenir of the WTC tragedy. If in fact it were a bona fide artifact of that tragic day, I would be breaking the law. I have no direct knowledge of the coin’s provenance. I did show it to people on occasion. I fancy it a piece of history and since it was issued as a coin in early August 2001, it could very well be a genuine relic of that day on 911.
I have since put the coin away. The fifth anniversary of the tragedy is upon us and I hope that the dead are resting in peace considering the untimeliness and circumstances of their demise. The prayers of millions have hopefully cleared a path for the dead to that someplace or somewhere in whatever happens to us on the other side of death. I do believe there is an other side of life and I hope the living of New York City can put away the past and start in earnest to build, build, build the future in downtown Manhattan.
