It has been almost nine years since the Twin Towers came down, leaving deep scars in lower Manhattan and giving then-President George W. Bush carte blanche to play Civilization III with the Middle East.

Nine years of ceaseless war in countries that did not attack America; years of Bush and Cheney’s steady erosion of human rights for Americans and most people on the planet, and, more recently, President Obama’s capitulation on fixing many of those wrongs.

Nine years after 9/11, “Ground Zero,” a phrase born out of the necessity of emergency, is still there, a shameful sixteen-acre open wound near shameless Wall Street. It has become a proper American noun.

Cottage industries have, nearly from the first day of the disaster, sprung up around the site of destruction: savvily opportunistic street-vendors sell Ground Zero-branded hats and jackets, flag pins and fluttering flags, and cheesy sculptures of the Towers sketched in glass relief.

Do you require a heart-tugging watercolor of the Twin Towers lit by sunset and the New York City skyline, in a cheap frame, with perhaps a dove winging overhead? I know a guy on Fulton Street who can help.

Tourists from all over America flock to our giant old hole in the ground and take home a “patriotic” souvenir as if to say, “Now I have a representation of our national tragedy that I will treasure spitefully forever.” Legions of foreign visitors gather to gape around the scaffolding, too, and gaze down into concrete-covered nothingness. Everyone snaps pictures for social media posterity.

For years New Yorkers were threatened with the idea of a thing to be called the “Freedom Tower” to go up where the World Trade Center once stood. That name’s thankfully gone the way of Freedom fries, but Ground Zero remains Ground Zero, a place of absence and the still-visible after-effects of attack. Whenever I pass by, my horror is grounded in our collective inability to fix it. How those out-of-towners must take their Flickr’ing Facebook photos and wonder: why is this here?

Political and financial wheelings and dealings have seen one plan after another fall through for how and what to build on the site. The state, the City, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (which technically owns much of the land), insurance leech leaseholder Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties, and a parade of squabbling developers and politicos have muddled the process for years.

They’ve left the nation with little but commemorative light shows to show on each successive September 11th.

We couldn’t even agree on – or build – a proper memorial to those who lost their lives in the towers and those who died trying to save them. Now we have computer-generated pictures of promised reflecting pools to cling to and some symbolically-selected trees are in the process of being planted.

The Republican governor, mayor, and President all declared at The Time Of Terror that we would rebuild; we have new public servants of variant parties in their place now and still no triumphant tower. Real estate developer Silverstein, who has since spent years in court haggling over how much of a pay-out he could get from the attacks (based on whether the Towers coming down constituted one or two acts of terrorism) said directly after 9/11 that to leave the site in its eviscerated state would “would give the terrorists the victory they seek.” Victory, it seems, is still theirs.

Meanwhile, posters on NYC subways helpfully remind first responders, rescue and clean-up workers that they are entitled to medical care for the horrific after-effects many are suffering because it turned out the air down there wasn’t as clean as the E.P.A promised it was. And you don’t need to be a conspiracy-obsessed Truther to believe that many questions about 9/11, its lead-up and aftermath remain unanswered through commissions deemed ineffective by the people who ran them. All of this contributes to our collective hysteria concerning anything Ground Zero.

Though plans for building at Ground Zero are at last approved, and some foundations lain, the anxious chatter then turns to whether companies will want tenancy there. The vacancy rate for office space in the Recessioned city is high, and many, many commercial spaces are unoccupied. But surely some will move to occupy such a significant place if it ever comes into existence; that is a matter that will be addressed once the skyline is finally restored.

The nasty, fruitless, xenophobic fight over whether an Islamic cultural center should exist somewhat near Ground Zero only has traction because Americans are easily distracted by hatred and finger-pointing in place of action – and because Ground Zero remains an open graveyard of skeletal beams. If, nearly a decade after it was created, there was no Ground Zero, there could be no ‘GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE’ headlines.

Even if we had gone forward and constructed a place called the Freedoms Screeching Eagle Under God Capitalism Center, the tone of this ridiculous sideshow would have to be very different: should a religious institution be built in a nation built on freedom of religion, in the very shadow of the Freedom Tower? Why, yes! Yes, it should. How poignant a symbol and how free that would mark us to be.

It’s raining, it’s pouring. The city weeps. Or maybe that’s me: birthday.

Radar Online had exclusively been told that Roberts (who has suffered seizures in the past) would be absconding for “personal reasons,” paving the way for Obama’s second Supreme Court appointee.

Other news outlets scrambled after the story, and some of us gleefully held our breath. We batted around ideas on the internet about what could be in Roberts’s closet. We have to admit that in this day in age the tabloids, especially the up-to-the-minute online outlets, are often the first to know the news.

Alas, quickly disproved, the post soon disappeared, and Radar retracted with a weak “Despite considering resigning from the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts will stay on the bench, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.”

If John Roberts had died, or had a love child or a drug problem “breaking,” TMZ and Radar Online and The National Enquirer would have outsourced and outpaced the papers of record.

Turned out it ’twas a tale of a Georgetown law professor making a point about the unreliability of sources and web-addicted, distracted students doing exactly what they weren’t supposed to do. The lesson therein: pay more attention in class. Stop surfing. Take notes. You’re studying to be servant of the law, for God’s sake.

On second thought, carry on. All is well.

Niall Connolly and the Best of Humanity

Three Mondays a month, the storied Red Lion on Bleecker street features three groundbreaking hours of music. With musicians vetted by singer-songwriter and host Niall Connolly, the line-up sees a weekly mix of returning favorites and innovative visitors.

Recent performers include The Third Wheel Band, E.W. Harris, Warren Malone, Kelley Swindall, Justin Storer, Steven Capozzola, Roesy, Adnan Sabir, Jessi Robertson and more.

The Bleecker Street Folk session runs from 7-10pm the first three Mondays every month. There’s no cover, and a fine array of beer to choose from at the bar or from the attentive waitstaff. The space is big enough to accommodate groups and also has a Village-enhanced bar menu (hummus alongside nachos).

[The Red Lion, 151 Bleecker Street, New York City. 6 train to Bleecker Street, ABCDEF to West 4th]

I helped cover the New York City Comic Con in February ’09, and this post never ran. Its themes are eternal.

The Authors Round Table saw a standing-room only turnout at Comic Con: the moderator announced that it was one of the largest crowds ever gathered there for writers.

The panel featured ten popular genre authors, with grand dame Tamora Pierce a particular draw, judging by the cheers her introduction and answers generated. The gathering of so much talent could have been handled more smoothly — the experience was muddled by asking too-typical, boilerplate questions like “What made you want to write?” across the board, then waiting for ten separate answers. But as it turned out, we had a lot to learn.

By the time the authors had dutifully gone down the line of moderated questioning, there was little time left for the audience’s. The answers provided, however, never failed to prove illuminating. The event in full can be watched on host Suvudu.com’s website, but I wanted to share the best moments – and lessons – gleaned from some of today’s most successful masters of genre fiction.

The writers were:

John Birmingham, the Axis of Time series

Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man, The Painted Man

Alex C. Irvine, The Narrows, A Scattering of Jades

Kim Harrison, The Hollows series

S.C. Butler, the Stoneways Triology

Tamora Pierce, the Alanna series, the Circle of Magic series et al

Vicki Patterson, the Sign of the Zodiac

Jeff Somers, the Avery Cates series

Carrie Vaughn, the Kitty Norville series

Jackie Kessler, the Hell on Earth series

When the panel was asked how they first found out about fantastic worlds, and what initially brought on their interest in speculative literature, the answers were varied but often held surprisingly common threads. I was struck by the sheer number who cited parental encouragement and their parents’ bookshelves as the initial spark that got them going. Almost all were voracious readers from youth.

The influence of parents promoting books at an early age would seem to have a direct correlation with fostering creative thinking (and future writing careers). Some of the titles mentioned as particularly influential were The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wizard of Oz , The Princess and the Goblin, and “Dangerous Visions,” the ’60s science fiction short story anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, which left author Alex C. Irvine’s head “permanently bent” at age 12.

There were also freely-volunteered tales of using mind-altering substances as a gateway into other worlds. Irvine encountered Dungeons & Dragons via his father’s friends coming over to get “wicked baked” and playing all night to the sounds of Steve Miller. John Birmingham got to travel around Australia smoking weed and writing for a book, which, he said, led to a new perspective and his conversion to science fiction. The topic was mentioned enough that Irvine interrupted with “creative people never smoke pot” and “this is not a theme” to widespread laughter.

Others returned to books as a more conventional gateway into other spheres of thinking. Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine taught at a young age that you could do “magical things with words.” Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and the groundbreaking work of graphic novelists were hailed. Tamora Pierce declared that she writes “fantasy novels with girl heroes who kick butt” to even louder audience appreciation and applause.

She explained that her father was blessed with three daughters, “so I was the oldest son,” and she was brought up on a diet of Sir Edmund Hillary (the famed explorer who wrote about being the first to ascend Everest), The Boy’s King Arthur, The Boy’s Robin Hood, and other adventure books. Her only “feminine” literary influence was Louisa May Alcott and her steely ladies. Pierce’s father encouraged her early attempts at novel-writing, but “neglected to mention it might be difficult.” Reading Lord of The Rings finally got her off to the races.

The authors were asked: what influences your work now?

The answers were varied here. Many touched on the need to “be a sponge” and take in the world at large, suggesting that everything from history books to magazine articles to posts on the internet can be plumbed for ideas about alternate worlds and cultures. It was stressed that creatively recycling an old idea can be a very good thing, to take the standard tropes of a genre and turn it on its head, to do something unexpected.

Kim Harrison cited music as major influence while writing, pointing out that “musicians can do what I do, tell a story, in three minutes.” She recommended searching for music that well-fits your individual characters for further inspiration.

We were also told that “the real world is deeply inspiring” and much stranger than most things in books, though history books definitely seem to help. Pierce said it’s okay to be ruled by our weird obsessions, and that we should learn and absorb all the information that we can while in the grips of them. She thinks of it as “laying up the seed bed for your own creativity,” an invaluable future resource to return to: “You have no idea when you’re going to need those ideas.”

How much of an influence is the internet on your work today?

The internet evoked a strong reaction from our panelists. It was said to steal as much time as it gives, the “greatest time saver and greatest time sink.” They related that Wikipedia should, of course, never stand as the last word for research when work is under scrutiny, and that Encyclopedia Britannica should used instead: “Trust me on this, I am trying to save you pain.”

Quite a few of the authors talked about readers on blogs as invaluable contributors, and cited reader expertise as a fantastic resource. Twitter is starting to be a “big deal” for writers, with the ability to ask for specific help or audience opinion and receive it immediately. Several said they did so much intense location research because otherwise they’d hear about it in emails from local fans. Thanks to the Internet and libraries, writers can now elaborately map out distant, never-visited cities and claim to be able to navigate them.

How to you keep outside distractions from intruding while you write?

One idea was that you shouldn’t – you should always try to be “like a sponge” and take everything in. Writing should be a parallel process in both worlds, and everything you encounter in “real life” can be incorporated. But making a fixed time for creativity was also encouraged. Two-hour blocks set aside, with the internet turned off and distractions minimized, could be ideal. The ultimate goal when writing is to “make it your escape and then you’ll love being there.”

And so two nations continue a senseless, gruesome intolerance of the other, each rallying to ancient symbols in their holy land that name the same ancestors. The Jews’ patriarch is the Muslim’s Ibrahim/Abraham.

Abraham, a guy mostly concerned with sex and sheep, would not believe the shit going down in his name.

The Jews claim Abraham as their founder, so the Christians have to, too, and the Muslims have a direct link through Abraham’s son with Hagar, Ishmael. Abraham’s very Jewish son Isaac and Ishamel were half-brothers, so we’re actually all half-brothers and half-sisters with one another if you go in for the Bible and the Quran.

Why the hell can’t we love each other or at least pretend to get along at the dinner table — and make room for everyone there?

The fight over this particular revered building is a very old one. We’ve been trading it back and forth between religions for whole eras, squabbling sibs indeed. But these days the relics of dubious history are being fought over by flesh-and-blood people who have bled each other dry with disuse and contempt. Some of them have semiautomatic weapons.

How strange that the fathers they claim to honor are shared, and would surely turn away in horror from the awful view, just as Abraham did when his God told him to stab Isaac to death on a mountain (God was only kidding).

I guess “constitutional judges in Colombia reject a referendum to allow President Alvaro Uribe to stand for a third term in office” wasn’t quite sexy enough by itself to warrant a click.

It was fun to watch the number creep up, and to sometimes share banners and proudly place badges and affiliations near the hit counter to draw others there. In the web’s wild west, there was no Twitter to show off your latest brilliant creation, and Mark Zuckerberg was screwing around in AOL chatrooms with other middle schoolers.

These days, we rely on sites that neatly aggregate that data for us to its statistical teeth, offering up more information than we could ever need or want to obsess over like links, trackbacks, and referrals. We pour over the bizarre haiku of search-term words that lead readers to our sites.

We want more, dammit. We need to know more about how people are finding us when we put ourselves out to be found on the internet. We want to know how and why people are clicking on you instead of me when they’re sucking the digital teat. We want your clicks.

You don’t spot many neon web counters still registering today, and the fall of Geocities killed many. Their memory lives on in your Google Analytics.

[myspace.com/ewharrismusic]

Harris’s music traces deep folk roots but mischievously refuses classification. The Rockwood show saw soaring ballads followed by snazzy, jazzy guitar lines.  Richly narrative sagas of space travel and robots were intermingled with more traditional folk sounds and comedic riffs. Always keeping the crowd on their toes, Harris introduced experimental electronic elements into several songs, mixing and keyboarding on-stage while never missing a lyrical note.

E.W. Harris @ Songs For Haiti Fundraiser. Photo by Debra Reschoff-Ahearn

Noted Irish singer-songwriter Niall Connolly joined Harris for “Supernova,” a particular highlight. While Connolly read books on-stage and operated an old-fashioned tape recorder that played a recording of Connolly’s voice reading (this all fit with the playfully sly mood of the evening), Harris’s plaintive, arching refrain reached its inevitably explosive crescendo.

For his final song, the gorgeous countrified ballad “Only Wind Up Dead,” most of the room took to belting out the chorus, inspired by the enthusiastic knots of Harris fans in the front tables. From Rockwood’s reaction, we’ll soon be seeing much more of E.W Harris, and though we can’t quite imagine where he’ll take us next, we’re ready to beam on-board.