A RE-PUBLISHED ENTRY
IN REMEMBRANCE: 11 SEPTEMBER 2001
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TRAUMA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/nyregion/911-survivors-ptsd.html
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11 SEPTEMBER 2001
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One of four original works – each representing a cardinal direction
Measurements: 42″ H x 26″ W
Mixed media on paper
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11 September 2001
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The morning of 11 September 2001
was a beautiful clear blue sky day in the Twin Cities.
I turned the radio on, as I always did, to start my day with classical music.
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The announcer’s voice sounded like he was walking
on slippery logs on a fast-moving river.
Staccato gasps and then a retrieval of steadiness
and
this cadence was repeated.
The fragments of the telling became clear:
one of the World Trade Center towers had been hit by a rogue plane.
Synapses and connecting new wires of comprehension
are disrupted when confronted with confounding tragedy.
It was like language and thought was severed.
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While living in New York City’s Little Italy
and
completing the prestigious year-long MOMA’s
P. S. 1 International Artist Studio Residency,
I took a part-time sales/marketing position
with an international company
whose U.S. offices were located on Wall Street.
For six years I took the subway to the World Trade Center.
11 September 2001
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On that date, I was living in Harold and Esther Stassen home in Sunfish Lake
near the Twin Cities international airport.
One would hear planes constantly
– departing and landing with the accompanying sonic decibels
shattering the bucolic landscape.
My beloved friend, Jane Matteson, lived down the lane.
I called Jane.
She actually had watched the event on the television.
I called my brother in London who is in finance.
He had not heard.
I implored him to evacuate.
I called my sister in Washington, D. C., a General Counsel.
She did not answer.
My heart was pounding.
I called Rachel Stassen-Berger,
the grand-daughter of Harold and Esther Stassen.
Slowly, with gentle questions,
I asked if she had talked with her parents
who lived in her hometown, New York City. Greenwich Village.
I could intuit that she had not learned what had occurred – yet.
She is a star political reporter for the Pioneer Press.
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I called a local craft store
and
asked for them to bring out all
the red, white and blue ribbon they had in their store.
– not knowing what I would do.
I am someone who has an instinct
to bend the harrows of lightening into a softer and meaningful light.
My nature.
I am an artist.
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I taught at the South YMCA,
a Y serving a community of
mixed ethnicity and a wide range of economic demographics
– factors that are priorities for me.
I became certified as a Water Fitness instructor
six months after my total hip replacement surgery, 26 May 1999.
I had to lay at 120 degrees for eight weeks
to ensure the prosthetic would weave into the remaining pelvic bone.
I had created a healing circle:
Catherine’s Courageous Compassion Circle
to assist in my recovery.
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The Stassen family is a family that defines gracious, kind, proactive leadership.
Rachel’s family invited me to stay at the Stassen home
as Harold and Esther were then residing in Fellowship Village, a retirement home.
I was living there on 11 September 2001.
I picked up spools and spools of red, white and blue ribbon
and
drove to teach my first weight lifting class for women.
Most of the women had experienced Pearl Harbor as children.
Their panic was audible.
I asked them to join hands in prayer before the class began.
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After the class,
I set up a table and began making pin ribbons of red white blue.
The television was blaring and cycling the images,
the horrors of what would be coded: 9/11.
I began to teach others how to make the pin ribbons.
I set up nine stations so each person
could contribute and perform one of the nine steps
in the creation of the pin ribbons.
The Pioneer Press sent a reporter and a photographer to the South Y
to document/publish this community event
that involved all the Y members.
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One night later, I went to Lowell Pickett’s Dakota Jazz Club
in Bandana Square in St. Paul with Jane Matteson.
Every night for a month I created and gave away the pin ribbons.
There were 30 different versions-
evolving from tangible folded fabric into evanescent whispers.
Total: 3000
On 12 September,
I joined my brother Bill at the Minnesota Orchestra for the season opener.
It was decided to honor this profound time of grief and shock
with Sir Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations
as the beginning piece of the night’s programme.
I brought a basket of pin ribbons
and
during intermission I brought them backstage for the musicians.
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When the second half of the concert began,
all the musicians as well as the conductor, Osmo Vänskä,
wore my redwhiteblue handmade pin ribbons.
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I responded to requests from Fire Departments,
Police Departments,
Hospital Emergency Rooms,
and
to companies representing the financial sectors,
counterparts and colleagues to those in the World Trade Center
to create pin ribbons of remembrance.
On 15 September 2001,
I set up my studio outdoors and created four works.
One of the pieces is the image above.
Four collages were created
– visual compositions of drawing and collage with roses as the leit motif.
It was beautiful outdoors as I worked.
It was a tremendously jarring disconnect to experience
the beauty of nature
and
process what had just occurred.
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The heroism and the global compassion of the human heart
was called out with momentous velocity –
a powerful, poignant choir of humanity’s empathy.
Flight 93: “Let’s roll!”
2002
I only exhibited my work in places of worship and in places where people sought solace.
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11 September 2002
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In July 2002,
I called the Wayzata Community Church via Reverend Bob Stout,
who officiated at my Mother’s funeral – a face-to-face meeting was set up.
I brought my portfolio of the four 11 September 2001 works.
I asked Reverend Bob Stout and the Senior Minister (whose name I cannot recall)
if they were planning
a commemorative/remembrance service on the first anniversary.
A memorial service, at that time, had not entered their radar.
The next day, I received a call from Rev. Stout.
He said: YES!
The Wayzata Community Church (WCC)
would lead an ecumenical remembrance service.
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Three weeks before the service,
I installed the four works
– each one was placed at a cardinal direction
in the light filled, spacious colonnade.
They were installed high above eye level.
I draped each in a black veil, shrouds, that fell to the ground.
Haunting.
I know trauma sears the nervous system and scars the bone and heart.
I know healing occurs in communion with others
– sacred listening and intimate acknowledgment
which slowly draws out the embedded dark energy.
A slow adagio sacred process of grace love.
On 11 September 2002,
the Wayzata Community Church’s pews in the main sanctuary
was shoulder-to-shoulder
and
the standing room was occupied one hour
before
the hour-long service began.
I had been confirmed there.
Wayzata is a small town, west of Minneapolis,
representing a wide swath of economic realities,
nestled on Lake Minnetonka.
Leaders in the financial world live there
and
the losses of 911 were personal and professional.
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The WCC ministers asked me to join in the processional:
every faith was present with their respective officiants
as well as Fire and Police Departments,
U.S. Representative Jim Ramstad,
and
me, the artist,
who suggested the ecumenical memorial service.
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People wore mourners’ black.
The hour-long service was solemn
and
ended with everyone singing:
God Bless America
at the recessional.
The four Wayzata Community Church ministers
led the participants/congregants to the colonnade.
The four ministers stood to the right and beside each of the veiled paintings.
At Rev. Bob Stout’s agreed upon visual signal,
each minister,
at once,
pulled down the black fabric veiling the art.
It was like the images of shattered roses
– and made whole in each piece,
soared upward, a/ROSE,
as the black shrouds
fell to the ground.
Gasps were audible and extended.
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One amazing note:
on the morning of 11 September 2002,
Bob called me and asked if I was watching the Ground Zero services.
Yes, I replied.
We both felt each others’ shiver up and down our spines.
The color of the roses given
to each survivor and to the families of the victims
were the same color as those in my art.
It was windy and the ashes of the World Trade Center Towers
were swirling upward
paralleling the movement/motion in my art.
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Artists are vehicles.
Prescient.
Shamans.
We are disciplined athletes of the soul,
conditioning ourselves to be open to the Divine.
We have the capacity…
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11 September 2011
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I have organized a KAYAK /CANOE event.
I sent out notice to create a gather a temporary community
to paddle on the Chain of Lakes in Minneap0olis.
It is a beautiful blue sky and hot day here.
We meet at 5 pm at Lake Calhoun and will paddle on the horizon between heaven earth.
Floating and on water.
Floating, letting go of control, on the the element of life.
To revel in beauty and commemorate life and moving forward.
I have no idea how many people will come.
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To life, the very life of life…
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Please note this poignant article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016162644_junejo10m.html
CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 