Love Amidst the Horror

I will forever remember seeing and breathing the massive agony all in
smoky tones of death and destruction. Really bad and horrible debris.
More than steel and concrete, more than the stuff we can always fix or
rebuild. There in the total devastation were the lives we can't fix. The
broken lives. So much prayer and kindness was offered. So much healing
energy.

I remember people standing around outside the fenced off security zone
by the thousands, numb with sadness, yet prayers fell from the mouths of
so many. Prayers to a greater power. Prayers of hope to help us to make
some sense of it all. Prayers of to offer help for those who needed it the
most at that moment.

As impossibly difficult to comprehend, in that place the human spirit was
lifted. People did comfort each other and we all became so much closer
because of the magnitude of it. It was like we needed each other. We
needed to know we were not alone.

A cosmic connection about those who have left us behind and how the
bond is never broken. The universal paradox. Star dust to star dust. The

circle unbroken but so painfully changed into something else. Something
as strong as faith and love. Something eternal and without explanation.
Something beyond our earthly understanding and yet ever present in our
lives.

Press Release

 

- PRESS RELEASE -               

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The Dust Glyphs Project                Tiburon, CA 94920   www.dustglyphs.com

Press Contact Information: Jihan McDonald, Project Manager E-mail: dustglyphsproject@gmail.com

Dust Glyphs: The Book Project Uses Kickstarter Campaign to Reveal Previously Unknown Images from Ground Zero

“These ephemeral markings that Jim has collected catch a moment in time that was erased with the first rains.  At the same time they record the grief, shock, and the anger that still remain with us.  They are an important piece of history and we are all very grateful to him for preserving these fragile, heartfelt proto-poems from oblivion.” - Dr. Jeremy Taylor, co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and blogger for Psychology Today.  

San Francisco, CA July 26, 2011- Dust Glyphs: The Book Project has launched its Kickstarter campaign to publish a book of previously unseen messages written by first responders in the dust formed by the burnt ash of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001.  

The photos were taken by Jim McGovern between September 20,2001 and February 25, 2002 while he was on assignment as a restoration expert for a San Francisco, CA based global insurance and claims management company.  The messages were written all along the walls and windows that remained at and around the World Trade Center site, particularly at the neighborhood bar dubbed “Ground Zero Bar” by USA Today where the first responders mourned and worried over the fates of their missing comrades.

Jim unearthed the photos in his files roughly three months ago and dubbed them “dust-glyphs”- fragile messages washed away by weather, time, and memory. These photos are the only known records of these messages in the dust.  The Dust Glyphs Project needs help to identify the authors of these lost messages and to learn to more about the people they are linked to.

The Dust Glyphs Kickstarter campaign ends August 18, 2011.  To get an inside look at the dust-glyphs, arrange an interview with Jim McGovern, and/or request reproduction permission please contact the Project Manager. New York City Firehouses can request a dust glyph print at dustglyphsproject@gmail.com.  The project email address can also be used to ask questions or submit information that can help the project succeed in its intentions.  

- END-

Honoring and Remembering

Welcome.  In this first blog post I want to take the time to say a few things as this project gets underway.  I am a guy who works at disaster sites and have for over 25 years. I come in behind the first responders long after the danger has passed. I have worked as a recovery worker, a volunteer and as an insurance adjuster.

When I passed into the zone at Ground Zero and came out 13-14 hours later I was a changed person. I could never leave the zone behind. I may have had a round trip ticket back to California but part of my soul, my very humanity never left.

When I look at the dust-glyphs I know so very little about who they honor, who wrote them, what they were feeling, if the could ever be expressed. There are blanks in the story that we will never know. I truly get that these messages are very personal and private yet there they were, written on the walls in dust. Written by human fingers. So much was conveyed yet so much remains unknown.

It’s our hope that you will spread the word so that these stories can be completed.  Please watch the video below and join us in discovering the human core of this event and how it has affected every year after it.