A survey of how New Yorkers will observe the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks

Sunday, Sept. 9

9/11  2012
Icahn Stadium, Randall’s Island, 911heroesrun.com;
9 a.m., $35 per person
The Travis Manion Foundation is sponsoring a 5K run on Randall’s Island to honor the heroes of 9/11. Half of all race proceeds go toward charity.

9/11 Memorial Community Evening
9/11 Memorial, Albany Street (betw. Greenwich and Washington streets), 911memorial.org; 6-8 p.m.
In commemoration of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the 9/11 Memorial will be open to lower Manhattan community members for the evening. Passes are reserved for lower Manhattan residents only and can be picked up at CB1 offices or via email prior to Friday, Sept. 7. Email community@911memorial.org for details.

Premiere of ‘9/11 Dust: A Healing Journey’
Kraft Center Gallery at Columbia University, 606 W. 115th St. (betw. Broadway & Riverside Dr.), 911dust.org; price TBA.
Filmmaker Penny Little will premiere her film 9/11 Dust: A Healing Journey in conjunction with the Pause Press Play Project on Sunday evening prior to a Sept. 11 news conference at 1 p.m. Additional film times will also be announced.

Monday, Sept. 10

9/11 Exhibit at the Trinity Museum
Trinity Church, Broadway at Wall Street, trinitywallstreet.org; Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Free.
Artifacts from the eight-month-long 9/11 ministry at St. Paul’s Chapel will be displayed in the exhibit. According to the church’s website, “St. Paul’s, part of the parish of Trinity Wall Street, became a place for Ground Zero recovery workers to eat, sleep and try to understand what had happened on Sept. 11, 2001.”

9/11 Remembered at the New York City Police Museum
New York City Police Museum, 100 Old Slip at FDR Drive, 10 a.m. daily, $8 adults $5 seniors and children
This exhibit explores the NYPD’s response to the disaster, featuring testimonials and artifacts. Children under 6 and members of the NYPD get in free.

Tuesday, Sept. 11

September 11th Commemoration Ceremony
WTC site in lower Manhattan, cityhall.nyc.gov; 8:46 a.m. first moment of silence
The September 11th Commemoration Ceremony is for the family members of Sept. 11 attacks and features a reading of all memorial names with six interspersed moments of silence and a music program in the background. The program is scheduled to conclude around noon.

Steve Reich: Complete String Quartets Performed By ACME
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (betw. Sullivan & Thompson streets), lepoissonrouge.com; 6:30 p.m., $35 table seating. $30 standing room
The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) will perform, with composer Steve Reich in attendance, WTC 9/11, which was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by various musical foundations.

Shifting elections away from anniversary date is a mistake

The move is shortsighted and contrary to the public interest.

The decision in question: shifting the state primary from Tuesday, Sept. 11 to Thursday, Sept. 13. The governor and the state legislature have decided that Sept. 11 is, as the New York Times put it last week, “a day for reflection and not for politics.”

The mindless attack on anything deemed political really needs to stop—especially when it comes to this significant anniversary on the national calendar. There are political implications to almost everything, but especially to the most serious attack against Americans on their own soil.

The governor and the legislature have it exactly wrong. Sept. 11 is a perfect day to go out and vote. To exercise freedom. To express opinions. To take part in the democratic process. One of the terrible little realities of Sept. 11, 2001, a day of much bigger atrocities, was that voters were stopped in their tracks. It was, after all, a municipal primary day.

Granted, this year, New Yorkers statewide are being asked to vote in too many elections. The state needs a sensible, streamlined approach, voting machines that inspire confidence and an open-minded attitude about same-day registration, among other electoral innovations. Not needed: any more of this reflexive, silly and downright dangerous dislike of anything deemed “political.”

I use the quotation marks on purpose, since almost everything falls under the definition of politics, according to what they say in freshman year poli sci classes. Politics is about the struggle over limited resources and who gets what. Politics is sometimes, but not always, about partisan struggles, although that’s the way it’s usually viewed today. In truth, there’s nothing more political than a lively Board of Education meeting or a bad personal relationship, even if nobody is ever outwardly aligned with a political party.

Too bad the anti-politics crowd has got hold of the way we talk about public affairs. Cynicism increases and the people who love low turnout rates wind up being thrilled that they can keep running the nation. When you say you don’t like politics, you begin to opt out of self-government. When you don’t vote, you fulfill someone else’s agenda.

In reality, politics is a thrilling and all-encompassing business. In a new play about newspaper biggie Joseph Alsop by David Auburn called The Columnist, the famous scribe takes aim after hearing someone decry politics. “My boy,” Auburn’s Alsop says, “politics is life! Politics is human intercourse at its most sublimely ridiculous and intensely vital. You may as well say you don’t very much care for sex.”

These words are thrillingly on target. I recently finished—thanks be to God—a semester teaching college students in New Jersey. So many of the most conscientious students kept telling me that they don’t like politics. They refuse to read about it or follow it. I wanted to quote Auburn’s line about sex, but worried about winding up on the evening news.
It breaks my heart. We need our most nimble minds to embrace the public sphere, the ongoing fight over limited resources in a changing society. We need smart people of all ages to think and rethink about military misadventures and health care funding and library hours and marriage rights and class size. There’s nothing we need more than an informed, active citizenry.

Sept. 11 does not now—and never did—need to become another day for people to sit on their butts and eat hamburgers. Like many Martin Luther King Jr. Day advocates understand and insist, we need days on instead of days off. We need engagement. We need participation.

We need to vote.

When it comes to shifting the election date, the governor and the legislature are pandering, pure and simple. Is it too much to ask our politicians to stand up for politics?

I vote that we vote on Sept. 11. And every other chance we get.
Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He can be reached by email
at ccmnj@aol.com and is on Twitter
(@cmoorenyc).

By Penny Grey

Battery Park becomes an increasingly vibrant neighborhood every day. Billy Parrott, library manager of the Battery Park City Library, discusses the importance of the library to the community and the joys of being a librarian.

How long has the Battery Park branch been open?

We opened on March 15, 2010, so just about a year and a half ago now.

This is a green LEED-certified building; is it the first such branch in the New York City Public Library system?

It’s the first green library in Manhattan. In 2007, the Bronx library center was built, and that’s a LEED silver building. But this is a great facility. We’ve got 26 desktop computers and 10 laptop computers for patron use. When we first opened, I thought we might have more supply than demand, but these days, everything is occupied. We have really become a destination branch. Some people will come from across town just to work and enjoy the space. One patron wrote an entire book upstairs.

Being a green library, is there an effort to move to more electronic publications rather than paper?

Regardless of being green, the world is moving that way in general. With e-books and the ease of access to electronic material, a lot of what we do here at the library has nothing to do with paper. But going green doesn’t hurt.

Does being green affect the mood and atmosphere of the space?

A lot of thought went into the design of the building. We wanted to create a bright, big, open space. The light here is beautiful, particularly in the upstairs reading area. Often people have an idea of green architecture and how that might translate visually, but [the library] doesn’t scream “recycled” by any means.

Who has made the most use of the library since its opening last March?

It’s definitely the community using the library, no doubt about it. This is a residential neighborhood, so we have families in here all day long. But we’re also a business neighborhood, so we get the World Financial Center crowd, and lots of people use the space from noon to two on their lunch breaks. Stuyvesant High School is just up the street, so we get lots of students and young people. And Hallmark Assisted Living is just around the corner, so we also attract the senior population.

What sort of programming have you generated to meet the needs of such a diverse group of patrons?

Our children’s programming is definitely the most popular. Baby Story Time for newborns to 18-month-olds is such a hit that we continue to add new days and times. We also have Toddler Story Time for 18-month-olds to 3-year-olds and Regular Story Time for 5- to 12-year-olds, as well as crafts, puppet shows and other outside programming. We’ve also got a Teen Advisory Program, which gives teens a chance to provide input and generate programming. And then we offer adult programming as well, most notably computer classes and author readings. Recently, we hosted a talk on journalism in the world post-9/11. So we stay pretty busy.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Probably the teaching moments, when you can really guide someone to something they’ll love and remember. It’s not that people aren’t expecting to get answers, but when you can really help them in that way, it’s incredibly rewarding.

And the worst thing about your job?

There’s nothing bad about libraries! I really can’t think of anything I don’t love about my job. After all, people love to read—and anyone who comes to the library is sort of self-selecting, aren’t they? They’re here because they love the idea of a place where reading and learning is possible.

What’s the difference between being a librarian now and being a librarian in, say, 1950?

The ease of access to information, most definitely. It used to be that there were three encyclopedias to search, but now a good librarian really needs to be aware of all the possible sources, and of those sources, the best possible resources.

That must be pretty overwhelming.

It’s not overwhelming at all, actually. The Internet has changed the way people think and the way people read, but librarians still help people to get to the bottom of it and find what they need.

The New York City Public Library system has been a cornerstone of New York City culture for such a long time. How do you see yourself shaping that cornerstone in the Downtown area with the Battery Park branch?

First, I don’t really do anything individually. It’s really a team effort. There are seven full-time and two part-time staff members here at the branch, and I encourage everyone to come up with ideas. When there’s one idea, we all work to implement it.

Just to give you an example, in the last four months we’ve been working on a paper crane project. Every Friday, we held workshops to teach kids how to make origami peace cranes in honor of September 11. The community participation was so positive; kids would bring the supplies home and teach their neighbors, the security guards, you name it. So this project that started out just for kids turned into something for our entire community. The paper cranes started out as a display for September 11, but I think we’ll keep them up. Having those paper cranes suspended from the ceilings is a great reminder of what we’re doing in the community.

Photos by Penny Grey