FROM THE EDITOR

What do you do?

By Sam Pfeifle

I was in early on Tuesday, finishing up my Beat Report that should have been done Monday. People filtered in around nine. Phones started ringing, email beeping, general chatter ensuing. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention.

“Did you hear a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center?” somebody asks.

“What?” I say, “I just got finished watching the Today Show’s opener. They would have mentioned that.”

“No,” he says. “It just happened.” Of course, it had. And it would continue happening throughout the morning, while I’m trying to finish up this Beat Report, edit our stories for the week, get what news I could. Never did I feel more helpless.

We don’t have a TV. So, for a while, I was dependent on emails from people who do. Pictures were up on the Internet, but they’re slow, and “developing.” I took a walk outside only to find the police have shut down Monument Square because someone’s got a gun. Is this related? Later I found out it was only a cap gun. But while I was in Coffee By Design I heard that one of the World Trade towers has collapsed, then the second one.

How many people work in those buildings? Too many.

On any other day, I’d go home to my wife and cats, but the paper’s got to go out, and I had work to do. But what work? Am I really going to put out a paper with a cover singing the praises of Maine oysters the day after the worst terrorist attack in history? How do I edit stories about puppets, thoughtful art, the Grateful Dead, when people I know could be injured or dead?

At various points we heard the Capitol Building, White House, Camp David had been attacked or were on fire. We heard they were going to hit every state capitol building in the country, one each hour. None of this turned out to be true.

What do I do?

I just did. Like many people in Portland and Maine and across the country, I did what I could to go on with my day and do my job. In my case, doing my job means giving you information. And so, in these pages, you’ll find the best stories I could acquire to help to explain this horrible and tragic day in American (our) history.

I hope they provide some empathetic catharsis, are of some comfort, some interest. Maybe just of some distraction.

For those of you who have lost loved ones to these despicable terrorists, I, and everyone here at the Phoenix, would like to extend our most heartfelt condolences.