After an exciting couple of years, tapmag has decided it’s time for a break. In the past years of reporting, live-blogging, and commenting on transatlantic relations, we have become part of a network of fellow transatlantic minds, and we hope we’ve helped bridge the gap for some of you and maybe even inspired some of you to cross the pond.

We have been privileged to have meet and work with great transatlantisists and  journalists. A special thanks to all of the guests and participants at our “Reporting America” seminar at the Free University Berlin (read more about it here)!

We will be using our time off to work on various projects ranging from Bachelor’s theses to getting to know Zurich or Chicago. We will check in from time to time and let you know where tapmag is headed.

In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter or stay in touch with the individual editors through their social media presence:

Kolja is currently studying in Zurich, Switzerland. He’s finding out university can actually teach you things, and that the Swiss are a very nice and helpful people. All the while, he’s analyzing media trends and developments in journalism on his blog, All Things Considered.

Jessica has moved to Chicago to study at the Medill School of Journalism. She is roaming the Windy City for stories and moving steadily into multimedia reporting. You can read about her experience being Curious in Chicago on her blog of the same name.

Semir is working hard on his thesis at Free University Berlin and will soon be a proud Bachelor.

Dirk and Peter are moving in the same direction as Semir. They look forward to taking that to the next level at the John-F.-Kennedy Institute’s graduate school, and will thus stay true to North American Studies.

Thanks to our great readers, fellow bloggers and students for sharing this experience with us, for your inspiration and contributions. Please keep in touch!

We are always open for new ideas. If you want to get involved with the tapmag team, please contact one of the team members in Berlin.

Keep your eyes and ears open – we’ll be back!

The nearly two-million-people following thronged the inauguration, each spectator defying the unendurable cold, and massive chaos in order to be able to utter three magic words: “I Was There!” Each one sincerely hoping that the substance of those words will become only more awe-inspiring in four or eight years.

Before even taking office, Obama is a worshipped symbol in the same league as Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, or John F. Kennedy. Among thousands of ingenious paintings of Obama, Shepard Fairey’s already iconic red-blue portrait of Obama, echoing Andy Warhol’s mass production art, has come to incarnate the transformation of the president from politician to pop icon. In the streets around The Mall on Tuesday, you could buy t-shirts, dolls, badges, and even condoms (!) bearing Obama’s name, while protest groups against Jesus, for Jesus, against homosexuality, and for homosexuality fought for the passer-bys’ attention.

Everywhere, Obama’s “fans” (they do indeed seem to be much more than merely voters) could be overheard talking of him in high-pitched terms, a bit too reminiscent of sectarian rhetoric. Then again: Who can blame people for embracing hope and change, as if it came from Jesus himself, when they are in the middle of two wars and economic despair, and have just gotten rid of a president, who leaves office just as unpopular as the criminalized former president Richard Nixon did? The immense excitement is in that sense much more than a psychological observation of mass and media hysteria.

On the one hand, the profound worshipping is paradoxical. Obama has stressed time and time again how his campaign was about the American people and not about himself, and, yet, he has become a mythical figure. He has pointed out the people as the true carriers of change, and they have pointed right back at him. But at the same time, people see themselves in the image of him. Obama has created a sense of solidarity, and a willingness to sacrifice, which was clearly felt in the Capital’s streets during the inaugural events. Walking in the city’s broad, car-empty highways with hordes of people on Tuesday was like being in a catastrophe movie, only with hope instead of fear leading the march.

While the freezing temperatures did prevent an unrestrained street party to break out, the genuine and persistent enthusiasm was in itself impressive. Thousands of people waited outside eight to ten hours in order to see the big parade from front row, while thousands more waited several hours to get just a three second view of the leading character through fences and spectator stands. Far more people had volunteered to help out around the city than were needed. It was all about being there, even though, for most people, that meant seeing the swearing in on a jumbotron far, far away from the main stage on Capitol.

Luckily, “No Drama Obama” is well aware that, in the long run, the intense fandom can quickly evaporate if political results do not materialize. In press conferences before his inauguration, as well as in his inaugural address, his rhetoric was relatively somber, doing his best to sound like what he is: A political, rather than a spiritual, leader. Many people will undoubtedly have a hard time taking this fact in, when this – through political compromises and less popular decisions – becomes obvious over the next four years. And the pundits will, with some delight, say that Obama isn’t all he was cracked up to be.

By Jacob Ludvigsen

Jacob Ludvigsen is a film critic, has a BA in Media Studies from the University of Copenhagen, and is currently a graduate student at the University of Maryland.

This was the perfect occasion for LA’s hipster crowd to sport their “unique” vintage style, look pretentious, and to– needless to say – network. Thus, Gondry’s devotees lined up in hundreds to worship the #68 of Stuff White People Like and killed time sipping Fair Trade latte-to-go and trying to reach a FOAF on their iPhones to get into the museum without waiting in the line. Actually, if you wanted to see Gondry himself in person, you should have arrived at least three hours before; otherwise you had to be content to seat yourself in the telecast room (like me). At least you could feel a little cooler for arriving nonchalantly in the early evening… or not.

Gondry turned out to be a pretty entertaining interlocutor, unlike his awful interviewer who, by the way, worked for USA Today (sic!). He seemed to have attended a workshop called “How to interview an artsy French guy”, according to his terribly unfunny remarks. For instance, after showing the extraordinarily beautiful music video of Mad World by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, apparently shot in wintry Brooklyn, he asked Gondry: “So, tell me about this shoot. I bet it was cold, huh?” being the only one laughing about this, err… joke. Overall, the USA Today contributor was dreadfully stiff and inflexible, and he couldn’t keep up with Gondry’s quick wit and charming quirkiness. However, Mr. USA Today had his funny moment when he couldn’t stop coughing after choking on his water, even when the next video had started, and it didn’t cross his mind to remove the microphone.

Explaining his work on Be Kind Rewind, the French director and screenwriter mentioned his tendency to “induce chaos” and create “those Ed Wood situations” in order to “make things smooth”. He explained how he would deliberately do unpredictable things on set to unsettle the actors and to make them less focused on their own performance. Gondry criticized American actors, interestingly enough, especially the male ones, for paying so much attention to their appearance on screen. A little imperfection doesn’t hurt. Yet, “as a director, you have to constantly pretend to know what you’re doing”, he added.

Since an estimated 90 percent of the audience were likely to be Björk-lovers, they showed the music video of Declare Independence and Gondry talked about his collaboration with the, let’s say, headstrong Icelandic artist. Though the musician is infamous for her resoluteness and considerable intransigence, Gondry assured that he enjoyed working with Björk and that he admires how “hardcore” she is. Moreover, they share a contempt for potheads: “Björk and I, we hate pot smokers.” He further complained about his weed-smoking friends who want to convince him of their habit : “I don’t wanna do it and then I get upset!” It would have been interesting to know how many in the audience agreed with him in that respect. Contrary to many people’s belief that his work is heavily influenced by substantial drug use, Gondry also added that he couldn’t have shot that video in two days if he had been on drugs.

Despite their slight irritation concerning the filmmaker’s disdain for drugs (we’re still in California), the crowd was predictably pleased with Gondry’s criticism of American corporate capitalism. He uttered his doubts concerning working with film distributors or publishers as they always try to imitate his style in terms of the production of album art, posters, and other pop culture items. When asked about the White Stripes’ appearance on The Simpsons – where Bart ‘battles’ Meg and Jack White in a scene referencing Gondry’s The Hardest Button to Button video – the director said he was flattered and tried to use that footage for his DVD, but they wouldn’t let him. With a lot of French drama, he exclaimed: “Tell me, how fair is that?”

The last question was asked by a guy in the audience who had attentively noted that Gondry’s work was influenced by dreams and who wanted to know whether the artist ever has lucid dreams. Gondry’s priceless answer: “Yeah… but I have to admit, it’s always about disgusting sex.”

By Melanie A. Wolske

At U Street Corridor, Reps Won't Find Rest

Black Broadway
3:40 p.m.: Green line from College Park, Maryland, to Washington, D.C.
Greenbelt metro station: the beginning and end of the Green Line. I am struggling to find an analogy more befitting this day: “The beginning and end.”

The train is almost empty, save a few voices announcing their soon arrival at friends’ or families’, eager to watch as the nation turns the page on a new chapter of American history. It is rainy and gray. I squint my eyes, hoping that might magically turn the gloomy downpour into drops of catharsis. In America, today is the day of reckoning – the “final verdict on eight years [of failed policies],” as Obama likes to call it. Regardless of where one stands, November 4th, 2008, will be a day of either gloom or catharsis – the beginning or end. Some things not even man can control, no matter how hard we try. But today, that won’t keep people from at least trying.

4:00 p.m.: Arrival at the U Street Corridor.
“Black Broadway,” as it was known in its heyday during the first half of the 20th century. The home of legends: Jazz greats Duke Ellington (a D.C. native), Sarah Vaughn, Billy Holiday, and Miles Davis were U Street staples, and, as the story goes, it is where Dr. Martin Luther King grabbed a spoon at Ben’s Chili Bowl after his “I Have a Dream” speech.

After the assassination of Dr. King on April 4th, 1968, U Street erupted into 4 days of riots, destroying businesses, and causing both unemployment and insurance rates to reach for the sky. Meanwhile, the gates to an inferno of drugs and prostitution seemed to open ever wider as investors fled “Black Broadway.” The winds of change first swept through the Corridor with the onset of the 1990s, and today is considered to have just the right degree of luring-but-safe ruggedness to make it hip in a city which, on the surface, tends to get lost in suits, ties and pearly whites.

Politics is for people, by people; a perpetual negotiation of grants – of trust, of power, and of liberty. Win some, lose some. While former D.C. mayor Marion Barry was shunned for being caught smoking crack cocaine at downtown Vista International Hotel in 1990, black Washingtonians assured his 1995 reelection despite a 6 months prison stint: Barry had reached out to the black community, he had created jobs. As gentrification has pushed housing prices up, and the prostitutes down a few blocks, many of the neighborhood’s black residents fear to be pushed away.

U Street is all about politics. And here, as in the rest of country, the people have learned about the proteanism of politics the hard way. And yet, on this rainy day, no one squints. On Black Broadway, everyone is eagerly anticipating the biggest show in town: The 2008 Presidential Election. Judgment Day is here.

The Other Bradley Effect
50-year-old Bradley rests in the rain outside of Garnett Patterson Jr. High School, doubling today as “Precinct 22” polling station. He has just voted for Obama, and has been voting since he was 18.  To him, this election is about redemption – he has said his final prayer in the voting booth, and now it is in God’s hands. We both ponder the scene before us in bemusement: I, 26, white, and ever so European; Bradley, 50, black, and a D.C. native, telling me that the fate of the nation is in the hands of God.

“They could put both in office, for all I care,” says a withered voice behind me. A short man slides by me, and joins Bradley in contained excitement. He is easily in his late-60s, with keen eyes behind tinted glasses in brown plastic rims, gleaming from under a red baseball cap. They shake hands, and nod consentient. “But you just voted, so you must believe there is something you can do, right?” I try. “Well, I’m voting for everybody else; for the future generation. Obama, a black person, that’s historical,” says Bradley as he shakes my hand goodbye.

Captain Crystal
Inside the polling station, a speech-impaired woman greets me warmly over a steaming Styrofoam box. Admittedly, reports of endless lines and long waiting hours had me bracing for a long, busy day “in the field.” “It’s been crazy out here,” Captain Crystal, three-time Precinct Captain, reassures me, as I, to my great surprise, discover a meager line of 6 people waiting to vote – in 5 minutes, it will be down to 2, tops.  “It’s the rain,” the Captain insists, “just give it another hour.”

Crystal boasts how this year, they have done their best to accommodate the large turn-out by providing Optical Scan screens to ensure that impaired voters, too, get to cast their ballot. “Everybody wants to vote,” Captain Crystal tells a small team of local young journalists from Howard University and myself, “so we’ve trained volunteers, line control workers, and hired management to make sure to help them – the elderly, the illiterate, disabled people, and the deaf and blind. We’ll help them vote, but we’re not going to tell them who to vote for.”

Captain Crystal is markedly proud. She and her team has been at the station since 6 a.m., and do not expect to leave Precinct 22 before 10 p.m. She bolts to and fro.

“International man! Over there, that’s the press area,” the Captain demands, navigating me to a green paper patch stretched along one side of the polling room floor. “International man,” that is me. I hear the budding journalists from Howard U giggle behind me, strutting their notebooks and digital cameras. They are not a day over 20. Meanwhile, I try to “capture the moment” with my 2 megapixel camera on my Nokia phone. My digital camera ditched me last weekend at the Beauty Bar in the Big Apple, and has probably been living it up with Cosmo-sipping hipsters ever since.

Precinct 22: No irregularities, no nothing. No 2004 voter suppression scenario, no dirt to dig up. This ship won’t sink on Captain Crystal’s watch.

The Promise
It is rainy still. A stocky, middle-aged man greets me with a gratified smile, and calmly seeks shelter under his umbrella. He lends an air of class to the grayness – no squinting necessary. Trivial exchanges give way to conversation. Meet Robert Harp, self-proclaimed long-time Democrat (with the exception of Gerald Ford in 1974).

“What’s your proudest moment during this election?” I ask him.

“Obama has run a noble campaign. He’s stuck with the issues, and stated them clearly. And he’s provided comprehensive solutions,” Robert begins. “He could’ve played the race-card, but he didn’t,” he continues, signaling a silent nod to the historicity of U Street, and the polling station behind me, where a majority of the voters I have witnessed today are African American.

We discuss John McCain and the early primary debates. “He could have made a good president,” Robert says, “but then he started bolting from one position to another,” reiterating the claims that McCain has appeared “erratic” in the final stages of the campaign. VP pick Palin, the negativity, and then the economic meltdown: “the darkest moments of the campaign.”

My jacket turns a darker shade of grey, as our conversation continues under the drizzling DC sky. From a working-class upbringing in Brooklyn, NY, through making peace with one’s roots, to a successful life in Boston and DC: Robert’s life reaffirms that the appeal of Obama’s story, in many ways, rests in the shared experience of the American people.

Our conversation makes a last stop at the debate over “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” as Palin dubbed him, in what seemed a blatant attempt to invoke fears so effectively aroused during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s.

“What about the American Dream? Is that why there’s so much focus on the middle-class?,” I ask. The idea of liberty – the freedom to succeed, and the freedom fail – is sacred to most Americans. “Are Americans afraid that if they take their eyes off the middle-class, they’ll loose sight of the American Dream?”

Robert looks up: “What I’ve learned from this election is that we are one nation. But in the last years, that has been constrained.”

For millions of Americans like Robert, the 2008 Election is not just about reclaiming Washington, but about reclaiming the nation – the promise. Or as Obama would have it: Reclaim the audacity of hope.

I bid Robert farewell, and head down U Street. Rain still. I squint my eyes as I pass a barbershop. Four kids are lined up, getting groomed for the moon landing of our time – a new frontier – while their parents are out trying to guide the hands of God.

By Peter Dahl

[Show as slideshow]

They are on his side here in Detroit anyways. Michigan’s economy is in shambles. The big auto manufacturers are suffering from a massive slowdown in sales since decades; each year they lay-off younger workers. I talk to one older union leader – he romanticizes about the time when the Michigan unions could bring more than one million workers out for a strike. Today, the unions are fighting Wal-Mart. They are happy if they can organize workers at all. If change is necessary, then it is most needed here in Michigan, or “fly-over land,” how people from the east coast call it. If Washington wants to face the problems in America, they might as well start here in Detroit.

A dark-blue poster promises “Change that you can belive in.” It hangs in the back of the stage which Obama will enter with ease in twenty minutes. But before that, Aretha Franklin sings the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance is sworn. Praised by the three presidents of the big automobile unions, yearned for by the tens of thousand who wait in the Hart Plaza and outside, the charismatic Senator from Illinois doesn’t face a tough crowd.

Change and unity – these are Obama’s issues. The movement he helped galvanize by his candidacy is set to bring change to Washington because Washington will not change from within, Obama begins his speech. He wants unity to replace the Republican mantra of ‘dog eats dog’. That’s why he is forming a big coalition – Obama convinced the unions and the poor of his message, he knows the youth and the students are rallying behind him and the citizen right’s activists are on his side in any way.

The speech itself is rather short. Obama talks about his strong relations to the labor movement, recognizes its achievements. “You know, I’m a labor guy!” Then he sings one or two lines of Aretha Franklinks “Chain of Fools,” before he switches to this day’s big news. Hurricane Gustav is threatening to devastate New Orleans once again. “There is a time to argue politics, and there’s a time to come together as Americans.” Instead of seizing the moment to hold a truly big speech like JFK did on Labor Day 1960, Obama aims to show respect to Hurricane Gustav’s potential victims and asks for a brief moment of silent prayer. For a short moment, Hart Plaza turns quiet, not even the photographers on the press box dare to click with their shutters now.

Then, Obama follows up and evokes the ideals of the constitution: “Each of us are vulnerable by ourselves. [...] But when we are unified, we come together in a more perfect union.” All the time, the small interpreter had enthusiastically translated Obama’s words into sign language, had smiled, had given her best. She can breathe deeply now. Obama says goodbye, jumps into the tunnel in front of the stage and starts to shake hands, hold up babies and sign books.

One of the books he places his signature into belongs to Timothy. His copy of “Dreams of my Fathers” is well-read – Timothy marked the most important passages with colored stick-it notes, so he can look them up quickly. He is fifteen and a volunteer on the Obama team. He and his mother travel to all the important events in the Mid-West, help where they can and hope that Obama wins the elections in November. Tim’s mother tells me about her time in Germany, then about Sarah Palin, who has just been picked by John McCain for Vice-Presidency. That second, the woman standing next to us interrupts. Her sign reads “Staff”, and Tim’s mom turns silent. Volunteers aren’t allowed to talk to the press.

The photographers are storming the stage, they take pictures of Obama from every angle, up and down. Everybody is after a sound-bite now, a smile for his or her camera. Obama has charisma in abundance; he smiles at every lense, reaches for every hand and looks into the eyes of every voter who has made it to the first row. It is as if he wanted to assert every one of his own incarnation. Yes, I am.

By Kolja Langnese

As we now hear Starbucks will be closing more than 600 stores in the US alone, which probably no one will even notice because they have more than 10,000 of them over here.

That said, I have to add that I really feel for the 1000 people losing their already underpaid jobs. But it also shows that there is not unlimited demand for ever the same products. I admit that it gereally makes sense to have chain stores in some respect. But it also makes traveling (and living) so not exciting at times, because it kills cultural particularities.

Her comes a sermon by Reverend Billy, founder of the Church of Stop Shopping, getting the word out to the masses on Fox Biz News:

“Capitalism isn’t necessarily the same as Freedom.”…eat this Sister Rebecca! Although my favorite part is when he says that their coffee “isn’t that great”. That’s a good one.

So you can argue if Rev. Billy is taking it all a bit too far, or if Rebecca Gomez has ever given anything she said a thought – at all. Yet, one thing is for sure: supporting independent businesses is a thing we could probably all agree on.

If you do, then you can start on Sunday by showing up in New York’s East Village:

AuH2O is not only local and independent – it’s fashion with an attitude. Kate Goldwater (hence the name: Au=gold H2O=water) is a feminist, a friend of the environment, a soccer player and a sweetheart. Learn more about her store, her fashion and herself on her new blog: blog.auh2odesigns.com and come out for fashion coffee and music this weekend. I’ll be there…

By Semir (double post)

Anyway, I just read a blog post on woot.com that has occasional reviews of funny used books. This one is called “Street Smart” and was written by Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and their lawyer Murray Schwartz.

In his blog entry Jason Toon highlights the funniest and most paranoid moments of the book (including Guardian Angels fashion) and wouldn’t miss the chance to spice them up with a handful of hilarious comments. My favorite excerpt from the book is probably this one:

Wow… I’m so glad my ass is here – safely in 2008!

I mean, what is this guy doing down there? How long did he have to wait under this car? And most importantly: what happens now?

One of your white slippers you have just seen for the last time, buddy! But wait, this guy is stuck under your car. Maybe you just wait until he will crawl out of there? Or get in the car and move it just a little bit? If people really tried to rob others like that back in the 80ies, then it was probably the most brainless era in crime history.

So when I read this and the comments on the blog entry, I begin to understand: all the fears that my parents were (and still are) expressing about me moving to big cities are clearly relics from the 80ies:

Can I find an apartment in Berlin? Hell, yeah! Back in the 80ies? Maybe not so easy… Isn’t it ridiculously dangerous in the big city? Not really. Maybe more than in a small town. But I’m not afraid of people shoving me off the subway platform. Which has – by the way – most interestingly taken place in Berlin recently.

But enough of that. I don’t wanna spoil the fun.

Go and see the full blog entry here.

Have a nice day!

By Semir (double post)

My personal highlight comes with the quote of the day:
“Our computers are like SUVs – most of the energy they consume is used to propel themselves. Like the cars are so heavy they need all the energy to move themselves – not you!” so said Yves Béhar.

Yves Béhar is the founder of fuseproject and the dude who designed the Jawbone (a bluetooth headset that eliminates surrounding sounds while you speak) and the new NYC Condom dispenser:

With this quite plausible comparison (PCs = SUVs) he was referring to the One Laptop Per Child project started by Nicholas Negroponte. See this Video from the Design Miami 07 for a short wrap-up of the design side of the XO Laptop:

Yves Béhar is actually also one of the designers that contributed to the botanist series by orange22 that I stumbled upon later at ICFF. Orange22 claim that the pieces are sustainable and eco-friendly. I’m not too sure about that because the base material is aluminum. It is correct that aluminum can be recycled. But the amount of energy that is needed for the process is unreasonably high. No wonder the German green party has factually banned cans from the domestic beverage market. But anyway – I guess there are different shades of green, right? At least the look and feel makes me wanna have one (and you don’t throw benches away that often):

This one was designed by Yves Béhar but speaking of natural products you may also check out that one:

In fact they are all quite sleek.

Probably the complete opposite of it may be the chairs and benches that sixinch from Belgium put on display. They have really nice pieces in general. What they showed on ICFF was “classical” chairs covered with foam. Sorry, but that was just cheesy:

Again: check out their website as they have other stuff that I actually like.

Next thing that I want to point out is the Geneva Sound System. It has an iPod dock, radio and CD player while you can also close the top flap to make it look like a simple cubic speaker on a stand. This is (for me) one of the most advanced iPod based products that I have seen yet. As in the U.S. virtually everyone has one – why not?

If I will ever live and work in a loft, I’m sure I’ll go to M2L on 215 E 58th St in New York first thing in the morning to get one of these babies:

What you can’t really see on the picture is that you can flip the plate on the hemisphere in the front, which will serve as a table. It’s a great workspace when you just need a laptop and a phone to start working. And the look is so 60ies futuristic, it’s just beautiful.

M2L is represented as part of a Dutch collective at ICFF. Check this PDF out if you’re interested in more design from the Netherlands.

Other designers that I liked (but weren’t on the designboom market) where Takumi Shimamura and Isaac Arms(although his website sucks).

Last thing for today’s post is designboom.com which is a website/blog that covers art, design and architecture. They also organize design competitions, online classes, a web shop and so called ‘designboom marts‘ one of which is currently taking place at ICFF. The concept is to put 40 young professional designers in a flea market setting with products in a range of 10 – 100$. The designboom mart is really worth seeing and very different from the rest of the booths. What I really liked was the Milk Gone Bad lamps by Anatomic Factory:

Also quite nice the Block Night Light by 25togo:

They actually didn’t have that with them but sold their My Document laptop sleeves instead. But I like the lamps better.

These were my personal highlights of the ICFF 2008 in New York. I have to go…Good night!

By Semir (double post)

6 years after 2 planes pierced the hearts of an entire nation, and penetrated the souls of the Western world, the silence at Ground Zero still screams. And though the pain will never go away, New York is back on its feet.

The sky is grey, almost black, as I pace through Chinatown at 8:00 a.m. this morning, but New York seems as loud as ever; people hurrying to work, kids going to school, and shop owners preparing for another day. Nothing unusual. I pass Columbus Park, Broadway, and head south on Church St., when the silence starts to penetrate. Today, 6 years after 2 planes changed the world as we know it, people look as though they try to escape another piercing, striding north away from the Financial District and Lower Manhattan.

I emerge on the World Trade Center site to the sight of 50+ police officers and firefighters, surrounded by even more journalists and tourists, lined up facing the emptiness that was once the lungs of the New York business life. Eerie silence develops to a slight piercing in the chest, and every step seems a thousand times heavier. A slight drizzle breaks the levee of emotions that’s been clogging the air, and it becomes hard to tell drops of water from teardrops – probably to the relief of many, for it seems as though New York is tired of crying. As one woman, who lost her husband (69) to the first tower, auspiciously noted, “raining today is like a signal for change, like it’s time to move on. Like, ‘Fuck you, we’re moving!’”

It’s 8:45 a.m. when the bell tolls, marking the time of the first plane, hitting the south tower of the World Trade Center. For a minute, the insisting sound of clicking cameras seizes, as a police chief’s commands soar to the sky along with the memories and blessings of the officers and firefighters getting in line before him, praying that their lost loved one’s have gone to a place where silence is golden. Some formal words follow, and they proceed to the reading of the names of the victims. A couple of minutes later, the audience becomes uneasy, and the last name I hear is “Paul” before the sound of cameras and chatter conquers the scene.

I seek cover under the canopy of the “Millenium Hilton,” and overhear an English officer ask a guy from the FBI, “when’s the next bell?” eager to take a time-out and get some coffee. A woman from Jehovah’s Witness completes the awkwardness, remarking to her group of co-Witnesses, “I got to go back to get some more [issues of “Awake!”]. They just love the story on 9/11!” Time works in mysterious ways.

Minutes pass, and the next bell tolls. 9:03 a.m.: the time of the second plane, hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. Again, the police chief commands a bit of commotion, while the reading of names rustles in the background. The following bell goes almost unnoticed, and the commanding chief causes but a ripple on the pool of people still facing the memorial site. Under the canopy, people begin to share their own experiences of that day 6 years ago: One lost her husband, who, at 69, “just wouldn’t retire;” another lost a colleague, who “wouldn’t move until he received orders.”

Across from the “Millenium Hilton,” a visual choir of critical voices display that America might just be ripe for more than ceremonies and sentimental tip-toe’ing. “Investigate 9/11” and “9-11 Truth Seeking Leads to Peace,” demonstrate that the mourning has moved beyond flowers and balloons. As the New York Times notes, “Sept. 11, as a public occasion, has shrunk to life size: potent as ever for people holding photographs of fathers on their wedding days and mothers in their backyards, but unlikely to start wars again” (New York Times, Sept. 12, 2007).

I leave the shelter of the canopy to make my final rounds of the Memorial Site, and pay my last respect. The sun peeps through the clouds, as the chief’s commands briefly fuse with the 2,750 names and then evaporates under the morning sky. The last thing I hear is, “…who went from the 78th floor to the stairway to heaven.” No one can afford to stand still in New York. Like, “Fuck you, we’re moving!”

By Peter Dahl

[Show as slideshow]

Vivid images of casualties of cross-Atlantic crusades are safely tugged away in the books of history, and the hunger for the land of milk and honey has been staved off by a club soda, a chicken breast with risotto and season salad, a complementary cracker and cheese, and a chocolate chip cookie.

120 years ago, the people now 30,000ft below me, securely screened underneath the friendly skies, would have risked their life to cross the very same waters for the mere dream of a fresh potato. This goes to prove, like anything else, there’s a past and there’s a future – a prologue and an epilogue. First come the prologue…

I’m 25, and I’ve planned this for the past 15+ years. Ever since I can remember, the U.S. was my one big dream. Age 12, I envisioned an older me – not much, about 10 years – living abroad with my wife, my kids, our two cars minimum, and maybe a dog if the kids were on their best behavior (which, of course, they always were, while attending school, basketball practice, and played baseball on Sundays in the park – the stuff regular non-Americans picture all-Americans doing). New York state, but not New York City – after all, we had just left the city, which had not only framed our perfect life for the past three years, it was also where I had met my beautiful wife.

I guess you could say, I’m an “American Studies All Star,” studying American studies for the third time in 4 years – once in Copenhagen, and twice in Berlin (so far, three’s the charm) – yet, oddly enough, I’ve been strangely unprepared. Maybe it was the subconscious angst of that around which you’ve build your visions of your future life is but a mirage. Maybe the milk had gone sour and the honey begun to crystallize? To illustrate my point, I bought extra travel insurance to serve as a kind of “dream buffer”, just in case someone, or something, would trip me up on my way there – not because it’s simply the rational thing to do, when you book months in advance.

Still, I know my history well enough to know that this is a risk anyone crossing the Atlantic a 120 years ago was running – no insurance, no “dream buffer.” So, I’ve decided to use the words of J. Hector St. John de Crevecouer’s Letters From an American Farmer from 1782 as my beacon of light to fight the gloom of angst: “He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced,” wrote.

Good for me, I’m still relatively young and unspoiled, which should make it easier for me to do just that: leave behind me all my ancient prejudices and manners, and thus eradicate my angst. For if I am no one, how can I be afraid of failure? To ensure a speedy and efficient reconstruction, I shall walk the path with the truest of true Americans, Benjamin Franklin, by using a slightly updated version of his schedule. Now, all I have to do is determine, what constitutes an American today? I just need to dive through the cotton candy below, and I’ll know. Just a couple of more hours…

By Peter Dahl