"The piece of artwork that has affected me the most is a drawing by Ashley. The very first time we met, we were both so scared. After meeting at the Social Worker's office the two of us went to McDonald's, where I was so nervous I couldn't eat a french fry--so you know that has to be nervous. While at McDonald's, I told her about the phone call that told me I got to be her Mom, and how happy I was when I got that call. The next time we met, she gave me a color crayon drawing. It has a rainbow arching over me, and shows me on the telephone getting that phone call. Above the rainbow are two guardian angels looking down at me. I've always been touched that it wasn't just my guardian angel looking down, but hers too."

And this highly edited text from "Griz", also in Minnesota-

Maybe all this would have happened without the cartoon, but I think the experience would have been entirely different. And now that it is hard to live from day to day without somehow being reminded of 9/11, I have encountered a small group of friends who sometimes I radically disagree with, but I am always glad to hear from. I tend to be very much a loner and to fall in with a group out of the blue is not what I had in mind. But there you have it. Sometimes life is more than you plan on. Expect the unexpected was a phrase that a friend of mine used to say a lot and I think it is true- keep your eyes open.

And here's Mine-

When I bought a new video card for my computer last September, one of the features it had that I was intrigued by was its TV antenna “in” jack. I installed the card and found that my computer was just one hair short of a wig. I had been sure that my computer was the minimum that was called for, but the card’s software told me otherwise. In the morning Monica had gone off to school and I had gone downstairs to fire up the computer and see if I could figure out what the problem was when the phone rang. It was Monica and she said I should turn on the TV, something was happening in New York. When I got the PC running about a minute later it was just in time to see the 2nd plane crash and then the awful slow-stop-normal motion replays and the collapse and replays of all of it that followed on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

That video card never really ran all that well and I think it was responsible for the frequent crashes of the system. But it worked well enough to use some of the software that came with it. One program that I enjoyed was titled “medi8or” and allowed me to set up slideshows and timelines, show video clips and do all sorts of funky transitions. I had never played around with anything that allowed me to do such professional-looking presentations, and I began by watching pictures of the ruins of the World Trade Towers on my computer and thinking how similar the ruins of different civilizations look when given just a thin veneer of time.

I went through all of my travel photographs and slides and found all of the ruins of castles, cathedral, forts, towns… civilizations that I have walked among their ruins with a camera. I scanned the photos of them and arranged them to some very unnerving music that I had been messing around with. I had a great time with the transitions, there was a different one for every photograph, or so it seemed. At the very end of all the photos and music there was a short piece of music called “Home” that I had composed after coming home from a trip to Wisconsin and being so wired with caffeine that I stayed awake most of the night and composed this short piece of music, among other things.

For some reason, perhaps it is the “down then up then down” nature of the piece, it will always remind me of that day. Saved until the end of the slideshow, it punctuates the helplessness of the press of time.

The series of photos that I put together acted to get me working and thinking again, and was a step on the road that has led me here.

Peace

Dave Cofell
October 16, 2002