9. MARY HALVORSON TRIO "Dragon's Head" (Firehouse 12).
A glowing critical consensus has formed around the guitarist Mary Halvorson in the last two years, since the arrival of "Dragon's Head" (Firehouse 12), her superb debut.
MARY HALVORSON "Dragon's Head" (Firehouse 12), the first record by the Mary Halvorson trio, is an itchy but appealing artifact of new jazz, full of tension, excitement and awkward pleasure, and very much of its moment.
The continuing power of the police and firehouse cultures to head off any reform that seems threatening was still clear in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's insistence before the commission that there was no "battle of the badges," only isolated episodes in the lower ranks.
Throughout the night, officials went from firehouse to firehouse doing head counts to reckon the death toll.
"We were back on the street when I saw the steady stream of trucks from the Brooklyn firehouses heading downtown," she said.
Mr. Taxiera remembers when the fire whistle would go off in the middle of the night, and his father, a forklift operator at the General Motors plant in Sleepy Hollow, would get out of bed, dress hurriedly and head for the firehouse.
Deputy Chief John Esposito not only remembers off the top of his head the day the firehouse closed — Oct. 19, 1980.
Mr. Scoppetta added that the driver appeared to have backed the van into firehouse doors, rather than ramming them head-on.
The stories are as moving as they are varied, including a Midwestern firehouse chaplain who was on a truck heading to New York as soon as the towers fell; a pilot who left the cockpit to run for office after 9/11; and the school where the youngest passenger on Flight 93 had been enrolled.
