These pieces were originally published in The Spectator, Stuyvesant High School's newspaper (http://www.stuyspectator.org/). Download a .PDF version of the entire Special Edition of the Spectator here.

I felt guilty for days after running from the dust cloud of the second World Trade Center tower collapsing, guilty that on top of being so lucky as to escape with my life, I had the nerve to shoot pictures of the demise of thousands. I spoke with my father's friend from Bronx Science who is now a photographer for Con-Ed. Both of us, like many others who photographed the collapse of the WTC, did so with tears in our eyes. I told him that I was ashamed to be taking pictures, but he said that it was our responsibility. He told me that through our photographs, even more than our writing, the world would remember what happened on September 11, 2001.

I told my father that I would venture out with my camera to take pictures . I felt sorry that I had moped around the house and wandered Lower Manhattan for the last four days, without taking any pictures. I felt guilty that I had let the sorrow of my fellow New Yorkers, as well as my family, go unrecorded. I felt a responsibility to take pictures because I was there, I ran from the debris cloud, and even more horribly, thought my father, mother and many family friends were inside or in adjacent buildings. I told my father that for the sake of my children, and my children's children, he should do the same and go help to record history.

He said that he had been in bed crying for the past two days. He couldn't watch the news, and he couldn't look at the pictures. I've always known he was not able to look at pictures of the Holocaust or of the Vietnam War without wincing and turning away. This is because he saw the pictures of Vietnam and World War II. They conveyed to him at least a little of the trauma that those who were there lived through. The reason we should be taking pictures is so that thirty or sixty years from now, people will see them and have to turn away.

To all of you, if you can bring yourself to do it, please take some pictures that will capture the present suffering and unity in America. Write about it. Make sure no one ever forgets.

Essay by Ethan Moses, Stuyvesant High School

Always Wear Your Walking Shoes

Always wear your walking shoes
cause you never know how far
you may have to walk.

They told me
to go North
but they didn't tell me when to stop.
So I kept on walking.

Everyone flees.
The World has come crashing down
Leaving a gap hole where I stood
Yesterday.

But I am wearing
Comfortable shoes.
I'm ready to walk away
away from the ash
that falls like snow in winter
and my feet will carry me
Home.

Poem by Elizabeth O'Callahan, Stuyvesant High School