I met Jim Harrison only once, in 1968, when we were on a “little magazine” panel with Russell Banks, Anne Waldman, and Charles Newman. Even then Harrison was a “character,” a voluble personality who cut quite a figure.—wore a rakish straw hat, a black patch on his blind left eye, and sported a hand-carved walking stick.
Archives for September 2026
‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers
It first appeared six months after 9/11 as a public art installation and has appeared every year since. It is presented from dusk of Sept. 11 to dawn of Sept. 12. It’s the most striking memorial to be seen, especially in person.
The Day the Twin Towers Vanished in a Shroud of Ash
My report grew longer by the minute. It ran, updated in real time, as MSNBC.com’s cover story. The lede kept changing throughout the day. … It was the scene of a nightmare … people on fire jumping in terror from the towers … the buildings collapsing … splinters of debris falling from the sky like confetti … deadly smoke blackening the air … an exodus of thousands of New Yorkers coated in white ash streaming on foot for hours across the city’s bridges.
Visions of ‘Ground Zero’ That Fell by the Wayside
I have seen the future and it is B-I-G. It is also tall, fantastical, memorial, ecological, symbolical, cultural, commercial, skyward, subterranean, park-like, Lego-like and — what seems most certain — futuristic, as in a long way off.