An unforgettable description of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 garment workers 102 years ago today, mostly young women, led the New York Times Magazine’s “The Lives They Lived” issue on December 30, 2001. Three months after 9/11, this essay by Elizabeth McCracken memorialized Rose Freedman, the last survivor of the fire, who had died at 107 earlier in the year.
Surely some of the early jumpers believed they were saving themselves: they flung their bodies into blankets and jackets held taut by strangers, into fire safety nets once the fire department arrived, which ripped in half and flung their contents to the ground. Some women died trying to leap into the arms of firemen, who stood at the tops of ladders that, fully extended, reached only to the sixth floor.
People on the ground begged women not to jump. They begged as one woman waved a white handkerchief and then leapt; her flaming dress caught on a wire and she hung there till she burned free. They begged as a man helped a series of women off the ledge with courtesy, as if the air itself was an elevator car, before he kissed the last, let her fall and followed.
I do not want to die in a fire. I do not want to die so far from the earth. I am dying, and I believe I can fly.
Perhaps these women realized they could not save their lives. They knew that those who stayed inside the building would be incinerated beyond recognition. They may have thought that it would be a comfort to their families to have something to identify and then bury.
My stepsister told me about this during our first visit to New York in the ’90s, and accounts like this one were so moving, we went to find it (it’s now the Brown Building on the NYU campus) and pay our respects.
Deathiversaries are hard. Today it’s been 6 years since my mum passed.
Sometimes I forget how pretty she was. (Photo from my high school graduation, 1986)
Egad. Truly devastating. It must feel like the end of the world for some people.
(But I’m sure they don’t need anything from FEMA, Mr. Romney, so you just go ahead and make that go away like you planned!)
Babybirdfriend rallied for a considerable amount of time, in which I attempted to give it both almond milk and jam for sustenance. It flopped around and looked like it had real fight, and at one point was sitting up like this looking for some regurged goodies from mom, but I’m sad to report after a valiant struggle, babybirdfriend passed away at about 2:20 this afternoon Pacific Time. But for a little while - especially when I took this final picture - it looked like he might make it.
RIP babybirdfriend. I’m sorry. I really tried.
I said it before, but srsly, life is fragile, y’all. CHERISH THAT SHIT.
This tiny baby bird fell out of its nest while I was outside catching some rays (if it had happened an hour earlier, it would have fallen in my lap), and I couldn’t just watch it die, so I put on some gloves and carried it over to the birdbath, where it’s still breathing and struggling to sip some water. Of course I’m in tears trying to cheer it along, and I keep checking on it and hoping it will survive, but it’s starting to feel like the Coma Baby storyline in Less Than Zero, and I really don’t know if the little guy will be able to make it.
This combined with news of the death of a 29-year-old chef who was well-known around town (and on the Food Network), and I’m reminded how fragile life is. Time to go out there and make some dreams come true.
This song, the box of tissues on my lap, this joint dangling from my lips and the shot of whiskey I’m about to pour are pretty much all that’s keeping me together at the moment.
Abide with me here awhile, dudes, and once we get through the next week or so, I’ll be just fine.
Cupertino, California: Apples and candles adorn a makeshift memorial for Steve Jobs at the Apple headquarters. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
From the Santa Monica Apple Store.
Poor little fella. That’s a face to launch a thousand memes if I ever saw one.
DEATH OF A BOOK SALESMAN: SCOTT WANNBERG RIP
Anyone who lived on the Westside of LA in the 80’s and 90’s and who read books knew Scott Wannberg. Dutton’s Brentwood then was the quintessential storybook bookstore, with narrow musty aisles cluttered with huge stacks of hardcover tomes, and obscure sections overflowing with obscure titles. In that quintessential storybook bookstore, Scott Wannberg was your quintessential storybook bookstore employee and for those who bought many of their formative works off those shelves, being guided by Scott was an indispensable part of the literary experience.
A giant hulking giant permanently hunching behind the front counter speaking in a muttering drawl that sounded a cross between Charles Bukowski, Orson Welles and WC Fields. More than a few noted Scott’s resemblance a common mental image of Ignatius O’Reilly, the hero of Confederacy of Dunces. In a store overflowing with books, Scott seemed to have read every single one and whether you were picking up a trashy new novel or a World War I history or some French symbolist poetry, he would have a few comments, pointing you no doubt to the author’s better work, before he stepped off the curb, some might say.
Scott personified the ramshackle adventure of reading, this sense that all these words, all these books was this crazy mystery that one could never truly order or make sense of but only give one’s self up to. Like an ancient Jesuit, in Scott’s sardonic half-grin there was this implication that if you could only manage to read a fraction of what he had, some great, awesome, terrible secrets of the world would reveal themselves to you. He made being an eccentric look somehow incredibly seductive.
Scott was a figure it is impossible to imagine anywhere but in a book store, and now that there are no book stores, I wonder where the Scotts of creation are to be found. Dutton’s shut down a few years back and in the brief Barnes and Borders period before the collapse, already lost was that ramshackle spirit that had made reading seem such an adventure. I feel for the young people browsing for their first books today on Amazon not to have a Scott muttering over their shoulders and urging them on.
Goodbye Scott Wannberg, the truest bard of the literary life I’ve ever known. You were already much missed. Now you will be much much more so.
(more at LA Observed)
Well, I’m a mess now. As an ex-bookseller myself, I found this an incredibly moving tribute to a vanishing breed of both person and place… and I guess in some ways, media. I know and worked with a lot of people that this guy reminds me of, and it’s really bittersweet to know how much people like him touch the lives of the people around them every day, every time they pick up a book, even years after the place they worked at (like the one we did) is gone.
RIP Jack Layton, MP from Toronto-Danforth, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
so much respect.
That’s certainly a bummer way to start a rainy Monday morning.
Incredibly sad. Great photojournalist.
That’s just unbelievably tragic.
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
This is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
