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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: A Taste for the Big Apple

A Taste for the Big Apple

11/09/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, A Taste for the Big Apple

Ten years since 9/11, Irma Kurtz shares her memories of living in New York City.

On the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre, the writer and broadcaster Irma Kurtz shares her memories of living in New York City.

On this tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre, the veteran writer and broadcaster Irma Kurtz shares her memories of living in New York City in "A Taste For The Big Apple". These include sleeping under newspapers in Washington Square Park and frequenting the famous 'White Horse Tavern' on Hudson Street where Dylan Thomas drank, James Baldwin worked behind the bar and the Beat poets dropped in.

Her final memories on the programme concern the events of 9/11. On that day she was staying with her mother in New Jersey, idly watching the television when in front of their eyes the towers shook and crumbled, billows of smoke unrolled against the sky and they saw the silhouette of a man falling from the top of the towers. 

A terrible silence ensued as the traffic in the surrounding streets stopped. When public transport was reinstated she caught the train to Manhattan and found streets full of smoke and dust and poignant messages pinned on public walls: "Have you any information, please...?" Then she saw a man selling t-shirts printed "I survived 9/11" and youths breakdancing in Herald Square and thought that despite the worst that could be thrown at it, New York was still alive and kicking.

The programme includes writing by Allen Ginsberg, Dorothy Parker, Harvey Shapiro and Damon Runyon.

The readers are Kim Cattrall and Peter Marinker and the producer is Ronni Davis.


Producer: Ronni Davis
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