Within minutes after thick gray smoke started rolling through the airplane-shaped hole in the North Tower, even before a message from the Coast Guard calling for “all available boats” crackled out over marine radios, white wakes from vessels racing toward Lower Manhattan zigzagged across the harbor.

Soot-covered refugees–some injured and disoriented, some splattered with blood from people who had fallen or jumped from the burning tower–fled to the water’s edge. Soon after the second plane hit, authorities shut down the bridges and tunnels, trapping millions of people in the city. Never was it clearer that Manhattan is an island.

A massive, unplanned mission rescue mission ensued. Ferryboat captains, tug crews, dinner-boat and sailing-yacht operators, and other mariners delivered 500,000 people from Lower Manhattan to points north, and off the island entirely. Later they shuttled rescue workers and critical supplies. In the aftermath of an inconceivable assault, mariners stepped in, spontaneously, to provide invaluable, irreplaceable assistance. Still, more than a decade later, their crucial contributions have gone largely unrecognized.

I’m honored to have been given the opportunity to collect and share the stories of boaters and evacuees who participated in this pivotal event in American history.

Can you help me locate individuals willing to share their experiences? I’m currently interviewing commercial and recreational boaters, people facilitating the evacuation dockside, and individuals who were evacuated by boat either from Lower Manhattan to points north or off the island entirely.

Please email me at: jessica[AT]jessicadulong.com with any leads. Much appreciated.

• writing a story about mariners’ crucial role in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse (I’ll post the link shortly),
• a private commemoration aboard fireboat John J. Harvey,
• a talk I’m giving with Carolina Salguero aboard steamship Lilac as part of PortSideNY’s multimedia exhibit, and
• a reading, A Mosaic of Remembrance, on Sunday, September 11, 3pm, at the Community Synagogue Center, 325 East 6th Street in Manhattan.

Through all this I’ve been trying to take some comfort in sociologist Nancy Berns’ argument that closure is a myth: “While grief can diminish over time,” explains Boston Globe reporter Christopher Dreher, “there is no clear process that brings it to an end—and no reason that achieving this finality should be our goal.” Maybe that’s why, a decade later, this all still feels so raw.

In honor of the tenth anniversary, I’ve posted an excerpt from chapter four of My River Chronicles, “Fireboat John J. Harvey Serves Again.” You can read it HERE.

My best to everyone during this difficult week.

Goodbye NYC

Still hours before high water

Disappearing minivan trick

Huntley, Karl, and I set up two 3-inch trash pumps on the barge to keep it from sinking. Before long the rushing brown creek filled with rainbow swirls—evidence that some fuel tank must have let go upstream. Then more solid debris started careening by: somebody’s deck, a whole field’s worth of pumpkins, and a slew of sailboats that had been ripped off their moorings and began smashing into our bow.

Karl was able to secure a 20-footer with a grappling hook and tie it to a port-side bitt, but before he could figure out salvage rights laws a heavy wooden dock zipped downstream, smashed into the boat, and ripped the line right off. The pair then shot toward wooden tug W.O. Decker, who was tied up several hundred yards behind us. After a clunk, they managed to fend off the attack.

Here comes the sun

Disappearing barge trick

This is not the Mississippi

Forty percent of North American manufacturers with offshored production are investigating bringing that work back to the US within the next year. Of all the companies surveyed … 15% say they have repatriated production back into the US in the past 2 years.

A Reuters Insider video, “Made in the USA Makes a Comeback,” cites a “sea change” for the U.S. labor market, due to more manufacturers choosing to reinvest in domestic plants.

Last month, meanwhile, Boston Consulting Group announced predictions that a “manufacturing renaissance” would occur within the next five years, explaining that rising Chinese labor costs, among other factors, would spur repatriation of manufacturing operations.

“All over China, wages are climbing at 15 to 20 percent a year because of the supply-and-demand imbalance for skilled labor,” said Harold L. Sirkin, a BCG senior partner. “We expect net labor costs for manufacturing in China and the U.S. to converge by around 2015. As a result of the changing economics, you’re going to see a lot more products ‘Made in the USA’ in the next five years.”

According to BCG, the trend has already begun:

Caterpillar Inc., for example, announced last year the expansion of its U.S. operations with the construction of a new 600,000-square-foot hydraulic excavator manufacturing facility in Victoria, Texas. Once fully operational, the plant is expected to employ more than 500 people and will triple the company’s U.S.-based excavator capacity.

“Victoria’s proximity to our supply base, access to ports and other transportation, as well as the positive business climate in Texas made this the ideal site for this project,” said Gary Stampanato, a Caterpillar vice president.

NCR Corp. announced in late 2009 that it was bringing back production of its ATMs to Columbus, Georgia, in order to decrease the time to market, increase internal collaboration, and lower operating costs. And toy manufacturer Wham-O Inc. last year returned 50 percent of its Frisbee production and its Hula Hoop production from China and Mexico to the U.S.

Reuters reports that the onshoring trend will affect, in particular, the manufacture of “higher-value goods made in lower volumes, such as home appliances and construction equipment … especially if they are large and expensive to ship.” The four-year, $600 million expansion of General Electric Co’s appliance unit in Louisville, Kentucky is just one example. The company has said it plans to add 830 new jobs.

CNN, meanwhile, tells the story of Ebonite, a company that has brought its bowling pin production back to the U.S. CEO Randy Shickert explained the benefits of the move this way: “Here we’d have much better control over our manufacturing, our quality, and our cost structure,” adding that compared with the Mexican plant, “our actual dollars of labor per pin is less here in Hopkinville.”

These companies will, no doubt, be the first of many to bring manufacturing back home. And the impact on the economy remains to be seen.

A recent survey from Manpower, the employment agency, found that 52 percent of leading US companies reported difficulties in recruiting essential staff, up from 14 percent in 2010.

In manufacturing in particular there is evidence of a mismatch between workforce skills and available jobs: while employment has fallen since January 2009, the number of available job openings has risen from 98,000 to 230,000.

Mr Spiegel’s concerns about skills are shared by many other US business leaders, and were reflected this month in the first recommendations from President Barack Obama’s advisory council on jobs and competitiveness.

I’m always interested in comparisons that reveal how different countries educate their workforces. Certainly the U.S. has much to learn from Germany, Great Britain, and other nations about how best to prepare young people for productive employment. (For more on this, read Ilana Garon’s Dissent Magazine piece Tunnel Vision: How a “College for All” Philosophy Leaves Everyone Behind.)

But I found this line in the Financial Times story particularly telling:

As a result of the shortage of workers with the right skills, Siemans has had to “to invest in education and training to meet its staffing needs, including apprenticeship programmes of the kind it uses in Germany.”

Um… yeah. *Of course* companies need to play a larger role in training workers. Who better to impart marketable skills than employers hungry to hire on people with those particular qualifications? For an example of competing manufacturers teaming up to do exactly that, read my piece “Moving from Help Wanted to Help Found: Attracting the next wave of skilled workers.” Note the publication date: August 2008. That’s nearly three years ago, people. Have we made any progress on this at all?

At least the press is beginning to get the message. It’s fascinating to watch the media finally clue into the “industrial tsunami,” which has been bearing down on this country for a generation—the very same generation that has been raised on the notion that making things and physical labor are dumb, dirty, and in decline. As John Ratzenberger explains:

With a dearth of wrench-savvy workers, there aren’t enough people to repair the nation’s crumbling bridges, buildings and water systems, let alone operate the gears of America’s mighty military machinery.

Will ringing more alarm bells bring about actual change? That remains to be seen.

She begins:

Memo to this year’s graduating law students: Your first job is already gone — to India.

The law firms of America, and their clients, have quietly decided that the work a first-year associate typically performs — such as document review, research and contract drafting — can be done more cheaply. And the cheaper team lives in India.

… and continues:

When the American Bar Association surveyed its membership last fall about the use of Indian outsourcers, 83 percent refused to answer. Instead, they offered evasive responses: “That is something that I don’t think we’ll be discussing” and “I don’t think that is something that we can comment on.”
…
Law firms aren’t talking, but Forrester Research estimates by 2015, legal process outsourcing in India will grow to $4 billion. What is most important about Forrester’s numbers is that they predict a shift in belief from rejecting the idea that legal work can be done in India, to relying on it. This started during the recession.

How interesting that law firms seem reticent to admit to this practice. I wonder why.

I also wonder if perhaps the REAL costs involved with offshoring will garner more attention now that “blue-collar work” is no longer the only kind being outsourced. Will the fact that the “professional classes” are suffering job losses too change the game?

Alden Krider, NYA artist, 1936

“We can ill afford to lose the energy and skill of these young men and women.” —FDR

Given the subject of my talk—rekindling respect for hands-on work—I could imagine no more fitting pause in my pre-lecture scramble than before this painting—this piece of American history.

When will we have a leader willing to create and nurture such a powerful program that will benefit not only the youth of today, but our country as a whole?

“I haven’t had the pleasure of riding on a tugboat yet… but after reading My River Chronicles, by Jessica DuLong — I have a new-found goal. … Jessica, my new BFF, also takes the opportunity to bring up other topics that I love… things like over-consumption and the world vs. technology.”

Welcome to the waters, Ry. Nice to have wooed another to the wonders of workboats. And thanks for this rousing finish:

“If you’re looking for a little ‘you can do it’ in your day to day, I highly recommend you pick this one up… You can thank me later as you quit your job or day-to-day to launch your own personal claim to One small step for WOMAN… “

“Our challenge,” he said, “is to do everything we can to make it easier for folks to bring products to market and to start and expand new businesses, and to grow and hire new workers. I want plants like this all across America. … We want an economy that’s fueled by what we invent and what we build.”

In addition to capital-improvement, business-incentive tax cuts, and deals to open foreign markets in China, India, and South Korea, the President also discussed a government clean-energy-production program designed to ensure that we can compete “not just in the industries of the past, but also in the industries of the future.”

It’s exciting to hear recognition at the highest levels of government that our American identity—our economic power—does not exist solely on Wall Street. That it’s also in the tradition of innovation and in the muscle and sweat that built the nation.

This gives me hope that the current economic crisis will continue to provide new opportunities to rekindle respect for making and fixing things in this country.