“Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When the Brooklyn Bridge was constructed, one of the first thing the engineers had to do was to securely anchor the bridge’s two towers on the solid bedrock. The problem was, the bedrock was under many layers of mud below the East River. The solution decided upon was to use a huge wooden caisson, which was assembled on land, towed to the site of the tower, and sunk. Compressed air was pumped into the chamber to prevent water from leaking in. The caisson’s false floor was then ripped out so the workers could dig up the river bottom.
The EyeWitness to History.com website described the working conditions of the caisson as follows:
The working conditions within the caisson resembled a scene from Dante’s Inferno. The tremendous pressure, the suffocating heat, the lack of oxygen and the noise all combined to limit a worker’s time within the caisson to a maximum of two hours. As they ascended through the compressed air to the top of the caisson, the workers were threatened with the crippling and painful effects of the bends – an imbalance of nitrogen in the blood caused by a too rapid ascension out of the compressed air.
Initially, 80 of the crew’s 352 sandhogs were affected by the agony of the bends, and 15 died. Work continued with slower ascent times.
Sandhogs continue to do their work, and die, under New York. Most people do not realize that New York City has a $6 billion water tunnel project that has claimed 24 lives, endured six mayors and survived three city fiscal crises.
The sandhogs have my utmost respect. My great grandfather was a coal miner in Scranton, PA. My gramma would tell about him coming home completely black from coal dust. Only his eyes remained white. They knew the coal mines would kill them one way or a another. They did what they had to do to take care of their families. It is an amazing quality in people. They will sacrifice themselves for the hope of the future. The people who are left behind also demonstrate such courage in continuing to live and by not allowing the sacrifices to be in vain.
I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. As a child, I could see the skyline of New York City from my bedroom window. My childhood home was within fifteen miles of the World Trade Center. My family attended St. Joseph’s church in East Rutherford where Father Mychal Judge, affectionately known as Father Mike, was a friar. Father Mike was the Fire Department chaplain killed six years ago today following the World Trade Center attacks. He was one of the first to die when struck by falling debris as he anointed a firefighter and a fallen office worker.
People much more eloquent than I can post tributes concerning 9/11. I just wanted to take a moment and remember those whose lives ended and the many more people whose lives were permanently altered by the events of September 11, 2001.
Back then I was working at a government facility, many states removed. I first became aware that something was wrong when my mother called to tell me that a plane had flown into the tower. Just to be clear, I was not working in intelligence or any organization within the government that should have been aware of what was going on. As I headed to an area where a television was located, I ran into people who had heard the news on their radios. We arrived and had been watching the news for only a few minutes when the second plane hit.
There was a married couple working at this location. The husband had flown out that morning to DC. I was scheduled to fly to DC for a meeting the next day. Fortunately, the husband was able to get a call through not long after the plane crashed into the pentagon. To say the wife was relieved is an understatement. My brother was working in Time Square for an engineering firm. My mom talked to him after the towers collapsed. The engineers were in shock. The towers were suppose to be able to withstand a plane crash. It would be a long day for my brother.
Fortunately, no one close to me died in the attack. I do mourn those I once knew. My life’s path was altered. Not surprisingly, security became much more important to me. Like many, watching and listening to the news started taking up a decent amount of my spare time. I found some news programs better than others and I would go off to web sites for more in depth coverage. I began having my computer record programs off Internet radio. It seems like a lifetime ago. I use to copy these recorded programs to rewritable CDs. Fortunately, I soon switched over to an MP3 player. To some degree, wanting to get my fix of news helped me start regularly working out before work. I was pretty serious and lost seventy pounds.
Later, I realized that knowing what was going on in the world, while good, was not real helpful in daily life. Sure, one could sit around at parties and make other people feel dumb. But I was never one to take satisfaction in that. Besides, anyone could bring out Trivia Pursuit and turn the tables completely around on me. I have lived a fairly focused life and I am terrible at trivia. At that time, I became aware of podcasts. While I did not have an iPod, I learned I could still listen to podcasts on my MP3. I started putting my listening time towards security and information technology podcasts.
Tom Bishop, of BMC Software Inc, talked with Ynema Mangum on Technology Trends. They talked on various trends, and it is another great TalkBMC podcast. When they brought up Google Reader, I found their comments particularly interesting and accurate. When you describe Google Reader to someone as a “web-based feed reader to keep up with blogs and news,” people respond, “big deal.” It sounds so simple. It is when you start using it, you realize how fundamentally important it is.
Recently, I was talking with folks about good sites for security information. These folks were saying, “Yeah, I go to this site, and that site…” As I listened, I was transported back to a time when I had to go off to one endless progression of sites on a daily basis just to keep up on news and information. I was trapped in IT hell. That was before RSS saved me. I knew I had to help these poor people. So I climb up on my soap box and start evangelizing about RSS. They cried out in despair, “But my company will not allow RSS through the firewall!” I enlightened them about Google Reader’s ability to pull all the feeds into one location, all accessible via the web. They could even pull the postings down and go off line. They rejoiced.
If this blog seems a bit rambling, it was intended to be so. Remember the subject is “Winding Paths.” Life is full of decisions and pathways to take. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe points out, “Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.” I wanted to do a post today that reflected on paths I have taken and paths others have taken for me. Fortunately I am not working five hundred feet below New York City. Yet, I have clean drinking water. Nor do I come home each night covered in coal dust. Yet I have heat, air conditioning, and electricity. When alarms go off and people are evacuating a building, my job is not to rush in to put out fires or help get people out. I am one of those people who is helped out. Nor am I overseas serving in dangerous theaters of operations. Yet, I benefit so greatly because of their service. I might spend a little too much time working, and fail to get much sleep, but those are minor inconveniences. I am thankful for paths that have brought me to where I am. I am thankful for those people, past and present, who sacrifice so much. Thank you.
