[For news of today, scroll down.]
9/11 remembered
‘A giant factory of death.’ As many websites faltered under the burden of traffic during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, then-Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart was live-blogging news coverage—and his account lives on, thanks to the Internet Archive.
■ When the Chicago Tribune’s site went down, the newspaper’s internet team leaned on its then-new email alerts system to detail what was happening in Chicago and elsewhere.
■ The Wall Street Journal recaps a timeline of how the day unfolded (all times Eastern).
‘Every time I look at it, I see him alive.’ An Associated Press photographer who took the shot that came to be known as “The Falling Man” recalls reactions to “a photograph that was considered too upsetting for readers to look at.”
■ Tom Junod’s memorable 2003 Esquire quest for the identity of the photo’s subject concluded, “We have known who the Falling Man is all along.”
■ Junod’s editor, David Granger, looks back on what made him love the story: “You get in the end that you can’t leap into the arms of God. You have to fall.”
‘I can still smell the smoke.’ Veteran Chicago journalist Carol Marin—now co-director of DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence—recounts her narrow escape as the second tower of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed.
(Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Here she is, covered in dust, interviewed that day by Dan Rather on CBS.
■ In 2009, she discussed the challenge of giving up “trying to reconstruct the moment that you didn’t die.”
‘Get out now.’ A special assistant to then-President George W. Bush shares her experience inside the White House after the Secret Service got the word: “There is an aircraft coming at you … right goddamned now.”
■ The author of The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, writing in The Atlantic: “After 9/11, The U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong.”
■ The Associated Press: “From 9/11’s ashes, a new world took shape. It did not last.”
■ Seventeen of the most consequential U.S. architects of the post-9/11 world tell Politico what they see as their biggest mistakes.
If you watch one 9/11 documentary … it should be Memory Box.
■ If one’s not enough, here’s a roundup …
■ … and, yes, after a couple of erroneous alerts in Square last week, tonight indeed brings Michael Moore’s free online, worldwide screening of his much-honored documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.
‘I was genuinely scared.’ What your Square columnist wrote for his kids in the days after the attacks.
And now the news of the day.
‘Your refusal has cost all of us.’ In what The Associated Press describes as a war on the unvaccinated, President Biden’s ordering all employers of more than 100 workers to require either vaccination or regular testing …
■ … and requiring vaccination outright—no testing option—for most federal workers.
■ Biden’s plan takes the decision away from larger U.S. businesses that have been dithering until now.
■ He’s also working with the nation’s largest retailers to cut prices on at-home COVID rapid tests.
■ Politico: “The only group of people that has disappointed Joe Biden more than the Afghan national army is unvaccinated Americans.”
■ CNN’s Oliver Darcy surveys Fox News’ “vile attacks” on Biden after his address.
8 days, 3,000 kids. A little more than a week into the school year, a breathtaking number of Chicago Public Schools students are back in remote-learning mode—in isolation after potential exposure to COVID-19.
■ Chicago aldermen are pushing the city to require proof of vaccination for those visiting indoor public places—including restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms and concert halls.
■ The Conversation: 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in seven charts.
‘Historic.’ The path looks clear for far-reaching legislation to end Illinois’ carbon emissions by 2050.
■ It unites two groups who’ve been at odds: Environmentalists and labor unions.
■ It probably means your electric bill’s on the rise.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s ready to sign it, “because our planet … ought not wait any longer.”
■ A University of Texas researcher: Biden’s proposed tenfold increase in solar power would remake the U.S. electricity system.
■ Consumer Reports: Domestic demand for recycled materials is up—“largely due to pandemic-related increases of the cardboard boxes shipped to our homes, plastic for takeout food containers, and face masks and other protective gear”—so here’s how to recycle smart.
‘He needs to resign and seek counseling.’ Block Club Chicago: Chicago Ald. Jim Gardiner is under investigation for texts indicating he used his power to seek revenge on his critics.
■ Gardiner’s now in the sights of the Cook County Circuit Court clerk’s watchdog.
■ A suburban mayor’s lawyers have told a judge to call off his trial because he plans to plead guilty in a red-light camera bribery case.
‘The worst I’ve seen it in my life.’ A River North business owner is among those issuing a cry for help amid a crime wave that yesterday saw eight people robbed in less than an hour.
■ A second guy’s been arrested in connection with a State Street brawl—video of which went viral.
‘Maybe a document that a bunch of drunk, white slave owners wrote isn’t that great?’ Columnist Lyz Lenz’s “Dingus of the Week” is the Constitution …
■ … which the U.S. Justice Department cites in suing Texas over its oppressive anti-abortion law.
■ PolitiFact slaps a “False” rating on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s assertion that the law “provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”