dear troops, everyone in the band is fine ive talked to all parties oddly im the closest to the crime scene here in new york, about a mile or less uptown… barbara and i watched the whole thing from the street in front of the house… initially everyone of course thought it was just a terrible accident, even the second plane hitting wasnt visible from our point of view and and we all thought the second explosion was a gas line or such… anyway pretty soon everything was revealed the loft and studio here is just inside the last perimeter thats blocked off before ‘ground zero’ and we have to show our id’s to walk around the neighborhood, oddly this makes me feel more secure in light of what went down… most of the people are gone from the neighborhood and the streets around the nearby blocks are filled with con-ed workers and lines of heavy machinery, firemen and police going to and from the site… at night the worlights and smoke can be seen down the block making a white glow… but just above 14th street except for the lack of traffic the city is almost buisness as usual the biggest difference is peoples reactions to each other with strangers being much closer than whats normal barbara and me also just came back from burning man, had just been here for i guess less than a week when this happened im still not really sure what my reaction is to all this it changes constantly… right now rather than put down a lot of thoughts about politics and such id just as soon hear from any of you whod care to write… aside from that we all have to condemn this action as just greedy horror, no human good could possibly come out of something like this and we all have to just hope that the aftermath is not any more terrible than what’s already happened keep up your spirits chris