9/11...25 Years Later

 

I took this picture in July 1998.

            My girlfriend (now my wife of twenty-two years) and I were on our way over to Liberty Island to do the whole tourist thing of seeing the Statue of Liberty.

My wife’s family lived about an hour north of the city and we visited them for the week. This wasn’t my first time in New York. That would’ve been the day before when we got lost in The Village, and ended up at some chain restaurant in Times Square. The standard, garden-variety tourist experience. I should remember that more whenever I get short-tempered with tourists, which happens more than it should. I’d seen the Manhattan Skyline before. From the Jersey Turnpike on the way up north. From Route 17 in Jersey. From Hoboken, where the PATH train took us over to The City.

But there was something about seeing the Manhattan skyline from the water.

The way those two buildings rose like giants.

I don’t profess to have any greater emotional understanding of 9/11. I wasn’t living in NYC at the time. My fiancé and I moved there in March 2003, a year and a half after the attacks. My first images of Ground Zero came after midnight, later that year. We’d just taken my brother, his wife, and our family friend to their hotel in Jersey City. We took the PATH back to the city. The train went right around that big gaping hole in the earth. I couldn’t tell you if they were still doing recovery or beginning construction for the new World Trade Center. I just remember that image feeling ghostly in my head. And it stayed with me for twenty-three years.

My memories of 9/11 are of living in Pittsburgh. How beautiful that morning was. I took my usual walk to work through Schenley Park. I was listening to U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Kris was the first one who told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then my girlfriend emailed. The internet not being as video heavy as it is now, I thought a commuter plane had hit. I thought I saw images of the destruction on YouTube. But YouTube wasn’t a thing in 2001. Most likely it was video from CNN’s web site. I know for certain that I watched images after the Trade Centers collapsed on a film-screen in a concert hall at the Carnegie with my co-workers Kevin and Mark. They sent us home early. The flags at the golf course in Schenley Park were already at ½ mast. There was an actual newsboy on Murray Avenue holding up copies of the Post-Gazette with fresh images of the day on it. I met my girlfriend at her job. We went home numb like everyone else.

We put the TV on.

Witnessed the world change forever.

I took this picture of the Manhattan skyline on July 4, 2026, on the 250^th birthday of our nation.

What to make of these last twenty-five years. The War of Terror? The Iraq War? The way the nation seems to get more divided by the year. I think most people my age feel like there was an American before 9/11, and an America after 9/11. I know that on September 10^th, 2001, I was a 27-year-old man living in a massive apartment complex on Shady Avenue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. I was living with my girlfriend and our two cats, June and Belle. I was in Library school for the second time. I’d drop out a mere two weeks after 9/11, declaring it pretty useless, even though I’ve now been a public librarian for almost twenty years. There was a dog that barked into our bedroom at all hours, and I wanted to murder the beast. And every single day of the work week I went up to the 3rd floor of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and handwrote my first novel, Out the Angels Come.

A simpler time perhaps.

Or maybe I'm just being naive.

Anyway....

Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike, Ralph, Johnny...Noel & Liam? New Edition's Home Again turns 30

 

You know the names

            Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike, Ralph & Johnny.

Maybe you don’t.

Ronnie DeVoe

            Bobby Brown

            Ricky Bell

            Michael Bivins

            Ralph Tresvant

            Johnny Gill

            New Edition was one of the greatest R&B groups of the 1980s/90s

They were my Temptations.

The first group I ever loved that actually came from my generation and not my parents. I’m trying to remember where I was when I bought their 2^nd album (1^st on a major label) 1984’s self-titled New Edition. 

The first time that I’d ever bought an album (okay cassette tape) with my own money.

I know where I was…Gold Circle department store in the Penn Hills Shopping Plaza. It’s when that I’m having some trouble with at times. I always assumed that I bought NE’s album with money from my 10^th birthday. But I’ve learned the album didn’t come out until September of 1984. It’s not unreasonable to think that I still used birthday money. But if I know me, and I think I do, any birthday money that I had at ten-years-old would’ve gone to a Star Wars figure or baseball cards.

Kids like me didn’t have walking around money. So. I’m thinking I bought the cassette with Christmas money. Late 1984/early 1985. Regardless of the when and the where, the purchase of that New Edition cassette started off a fandom that has lasted some forty-two years.

Flash forward three or four years.

The removal of one Bobby Brown from the group.

The addition of one Johnny Gill.

Summer of 1988.

Gold Circle had become Hills Department Store.

I was going to start high school in two months.

I was fourteen.

I had my own paper route.

My own money.

I had purchasing power! Albeit in little quantities.

I bought these two albums the same day. (photo)

Still on cassette tape.

New Edition’s classic Heart Break.

Don’t be Cruel, the 2^nd solo album from excommunicated member and all-around bad boy Bobby Brown.

Fandom and a desire to blend into the scenery on the morning and afternoon school buses, lest some upperclassmen ridicule me, caused me to wear out both cassette tapes to the point where I could not read the songs listed on Side A or Side B.

Then came the Heart Break tour…which I was too young to go and see.

Then came the hiatus.

Those solo albums that took our young world by storm. 

Those solo albums that didn’t…though I still loved them all.

            Flash forward eight years from 1988 to 1996.

            I was twenty-two years old. Fresh out of a relationship that lasted one year and nine months, that should’ve maybe lasted six months. But I was new at the love game. I was pining for my co-worker behind that big reference desk at the Carnegie Library. I had my first full-time job. Weekend nights were spent at the clubs, at the bars, at the dive bars (and later in the night the strip clubs) with my buddies Doug and John. Whenever I could I played Jack Kerouac and took long bus rides down to the D.C. area to visit my friend Ron. I felt free. I felt on top of the world. It’s easy to feel on top of the world when you’re twenty-two and you don’t know shit about shit, and your only responsibility is buying the next round.

            And New Edition was back. 

            Hit Me off was my song of the summer in 1996. My jam. Man, I couldn’t wait for the new album to drop. And with Bobby Brown back in the group? All six New Edition members on a whole album together…for the first time?

            But it was true.

            All of it.

            Whether by nostalgia or necessity, my favorite R&B group of all-time was reunited…and it felt so good….er…maybe it didn’t. Maybe for us fans. Maybe not so much for them. But we’ll get to that.

            Now…I KNOW where I was when I bought Home Again. I was playing Jack Kerouac. I’d hopped a bus down to the D.C. suburbs to visit my friend Ron. It was my first paid vacation from my first full-time job. We were in a Tower Records in some suburban mall. I’d never been inside Tower Records. I’d never seen a record store so huge, so vast in scope. Records. Cassettes. CD. Books. Underground books. Underground comics. Tower Records had it all. I remember a display set-up for Home Again. Or maybe there wasn’t. Maybe in my head there was the BIGGEST display for Home Again in that Tower Records. The album did end up selling over two million copies, hitting number one on both the Billboard Hot 200 AND the Billboard R&B charts. So maybe there was a display.

            Because my musical tastes were all over the place in 1996 (and getting stranger) I also bought the 4th album by Pearl Jam.

            September 10^th, 1996.

            There’s just something about New Edition in September.

            A day that will live in infamy…well, not if you’re a New Edition fan…but if you were an Oasis fan it sure was.

            And like being a huge New Edition fan…I was a huge Oasis fan.

            I had been since 1994 when MTV did a five-minute profile on them for the release of their debut album Definitely Maybe. That record didn’t do much of anything America, even though it made Oasis the biggest band in the U.K. But Oasis’ 2^nd album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? on the strength of the Wonderwall single (no 8 on the Billboard Charts) was enough to the rest of America to catch up to what I already knew. And it was enough for a band like Oasis (usually playing to 100,000) to play to a crowd of 12,000 people at the Nissan Pavillion in Bristow, Virginia, a show yours truly was at.

            Why does this show live in infamy for Oasis fans? Unless you live under a rock’n’roll rock you’d know that the Gallagher brothers (Noel and Liam respectfully) were a combative pair. Think of the Davies brothers of The Kinks fame. Noel and Liam made great rock music together but could hardly ever be in the same room without a fight breaking out. Things had been tense on that tour for Oasis. And after that Nissan Pavillion gig, a fight between the brothers caused Noel Gallagher to leave the tour, fly back to London, and subsequently put the future of Oasis in turmoil. That’s right, they could’ve broken up and I could’ve been there for Oasis last gig.

            But that didn’t happen.

            I mean…it did…but like thirteen year later.

            Noel and Liam are fine though.

            They just played a series of reunion shows in 2024/2025.

            There’s a movie coming out about it too (link).

            As for New Edition…the success of Home Again, the success of the reunion, necessitated the group’s own tour, which began in early 1997.

            Yours truly was at an early gig on a bitterly cold night.

            It was seemingly one of the few shows on the Home Again Tour to go right. Egos being what they were at the time, means that egos got in the way. There was tension behind the scenes (Bobby Brown), band members missed gigs (Bobby Brown), drugs and alcohol were abused (Bobby Brown). And it all came to a head at a gig in Las Cruces, New Mexico, when, yes Bobby Brown again, extended his solo set much to the chagrin of fellow band member (and member of Bell Biv Devoe) Ronnie DeVoe. When Ronnie attempted to pull Brown from the stage, Bobby dropped his mic and a fistfight happened…right there on stage. It continued behind the scenes, where both members’ security teams got involved, there was gun play, and the concert was halted. Bobby Brown left the Home Again tour after that. So did Mike Bivins. The tour was finished by Ronnie DeVoe, Ricky Bell, Ralph Tresvant, and Johnny Gill.

            All of that hope and promise and excitement for it to devolve like that.

            New Edition wouldn’t perform together again for years.

            And when they regrouped in the early oughts, Bobby Brown wasn’t with them.

            To date they’ve released only one other studio album as a group, 2004’s One Love. 

            If you’re interested all of this was dramatized on BET’s excellent 2017 mini-series, The New Edition Story.

            And times have healed those wounds.

            Brotherhood always wins out in the end.

            The 6-member New Edition still tour regularly. They’ve done Vegas residencies. Bobby’s done being a bad boy and has settled into middle-age.

            I last saw New Edition in 2016. Bobby had yet to come fully back into the NE fold. Those gentlemen still put on a helluva show. But seeing New Edition now, in my humble opinion, is more akin to seeing an oldies act. They don’t sing full songs. They play melodies. There’s no new album. No new music to get excited about. I know I’m fifty-two and I myself am an oldies act. I guess I don’t want to think of New Edition that way. As a bunch of soon-to-be-sixty-year-old men catering to an aging Gen X crowd.

            And I don’t want to be that middle-aged guy at the show content with one verse, a refrain, and then on to the next song.

            But that's my problem and not New Edition's. I have yet to find a way to age gracefully and am fighting this every single step of that.

No, what I truly want is what I can’t have. What the guys in New Edition can’t have either but still try to give their audiences. And that’s our youth back. I don't want to be fifty-two with fucking knee pain and hip pain and back pain. Gray faced and invisible.  Sometimes I want to be that twenty-two-year-old guy in Doug’s car cruising down East Carson Street on a Saturday night, passing all of the chicks walking down the street, going in and out of bars, the Home Again album blasting out of the car windows, mingling with everyone’s else tunes, wondering what bar or club Doug, John and I were going to that evening on a night of endless possibilities.

Maybe just once more.

            Thirty years old or not.

            That’s where my head is when I play New Edition’s Home again.

            We’re all forever young.

            People who know/they say you can’t go/Home Again/But if you ask me/I’m happy to be/Home Again.

            I always liked those lines.

            It took a lot of time.

            More time than that one reunion album a lifetime ago to get things right.

            But I’m glad New Edition has truly brought it home again.

            And this time, I hope they stay there.

Poem of the Day 10.10.25

walking to my wife’s 12th week
of chemotherapy

we
playing

the emperor
and empress
of all maladies

the sun
hanging half-assed
in union square

and don’t you know, my dear
that god only exists

for twentysomething blondes
without a care in the world

their big tits in sports bras
and tights asses in biker shorts

jogging slowly

through these piss soaked
manhattan streets.

Poem of the Day 10.09.25

short guy syndrome at the beer and wing joint
on a sunday afternoon in august

he comes sauntering

into the center of the bar

all 4-feet 11-inches of him

bright hawaiian shirt
and cargo shorts

yankess hat pulled low

chicken neck bobbing
bug-eyes sticking out

he’s tan from a tough summer
lounging around the beach
and jerking-off to conservative tv

his woman asks him where he wants to sit

he looks at her
like she’s asked him to fuck his mom
and he says,

i dunno
any-fuckin-where

then he cases the joint
like he’s looking for a fight
even though it’s sunday afternoon
it’s just me and my wife
and a half-empty bar full of old men

he roosters around the place
like his head just got cut off

while his woman stands there
confusedly looking at empty sets of tables and chairs

finally he notices her
and says,

what in the fuck you doin?
this ain’t brain surgery
for chrissake

he cock-a-doodles over to her
grabs her arm and pulls her to a table

says,
was it that fuckin’ hard?

before they sit down
to look at the drink menu

his feet barely touching the floor

he looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy
sitting there

i can’t help but look away

before he sees me and inevitably says
what the fuck you lookin’ at, buddy?

all 4-feet 11-inches of him

and me
knowing exactly where that question
usually leads.

Poem of the Day 10.08.25

the last american tough guy?

at the job
one of them comes over
for the bathroom key
doesn’t find it and sighs

guess i’ll wait,
they say

i tell them there’s
another bathroom downstairs

yeah…but steps,
they say

i think about how i’m fifty-one
and walk five miles to work each day
just to try and keep myself in shape

i just nod and say
uh-huh

and we let it go at that

the one who spends his day
doing nothing but watching tv online

he tells me
don’t look for me here tomorrow
i need a mental health day

i think about how my wife
got diagnosed again with breast cancer in march

how neither she nor i
have slept right in months

the double mastectomy
the chemotherapy she’s trudging through

all the sick time and vacation time
that she and i have lost

i look at this little worm
and nod and say
uh-huh

i look around this place
full of teenagers
and other degenerates

who’ve wasted their summer
playing murder games online
or shooting junk in the dirty shitters here

and think about how
when i was a kid
we got thrown outside at dawn
and didn’t come back until dinner

all the fistfights and wiffle ball games
getting lost in thorn-bush filled woods

i look around
at this circus full of wimps
at pissy pants still waiting for the bathroom key
at mental health day
streaming another downloaded show

and i tell myself
you must be the last american tough guy

but no one cares about your plight old man

and i nod
and say

uh-huh
to that too.

Poem of the Day 10.07.25

the college kids

the college kids
are back in town

with their weird fruit drinks
their ten-gallon specialty coffees
and their tapioca balls hanging out

the college kids
are back in town

and everyone is calling everyone bro

the college kids
are back in town

with their asian fusion food
and meatless hamburgers

with their poke bowl philosophies

the college kids
are back in town

and some noble professor is duty bound
to write a think piece about the dangers of A.I.

the college kids
are back in town

with their biker shorts galas
and sporty gear cotillions

with their blonde coeds
who take up space in bookstores
finger fucking novels

saying, i just love books
but i don’t have time to read

the college kids
are back in town

with their business degree blues
touching grass in washington square park
vaping strawberries on broadway

and it smells like teen spirit
it smells like mommy and daddy’s money burning

the college kids
are back in town

with their venmo inheritances
their apple pay trust funds

the college kids
are back in town

and it’s autumn in new york

the leaves are falling from the trees
the sun is hiding from the daylight

the college kids

are back in town

and thanks to them  

it’s getting harder
and harder in this city

to pay for anything
with cash.

Poem of the Day 10.06.25

the tourists

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

eating twisty cones

and walking six deep
on the boulevard of broken dreams

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

clogging their arteries at food trucks
stopping to take photographs of buildings
and dudes sleeping on the street

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

shopping at the m&m store
at the NBA store
at the NBC store

looking in the windows of tiffany and co.
buying knock-off handbags by the dozen

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

carrying big bags up and down 5th avenue
pulling whiney kids through times square

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

with their foam statue of liberty hats
and their plastic empire states

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

the inbreds
and the euro trash

posing for selfies on the brooklyn bridge
going the wrong way on the D train
joining the protests in union square
and having a picnic in central park

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

top of the rock
never forgetting at the 9/11 memorial

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

their fat smiling faces sailing the hudson river
their fat asses at a disney show

their fat bodies
sweating in the gotham heat

the tourists
are everywhere in this fair city

with their pocket map hopes and dreams

and i swear

it’s enough to make a man
want to pack up all of his shit

and move

every time
the summer
comes snaking around.