DAY TWO:SEPT. 12
Wednesday Response to "are you ok" queries:
We are all ok --- ALL meaning myself, and friends and family who came to NYC to celebrate my birthday over the weekend and are now stranded here due to airport closures.
Everybody is fine.
But Day Two has brought a depression over the city, as the reality of what transpired sinks in. Nothing is as jarring as walking one block from my Brooklyn Heights home to the Promenade, looking across the water directly from my street to -- to what? To a gaping empty hole where three large towers used to be, out of which smoke continues to belch.
Gone.
People are starting to cry, and lack of sleep is making everybody edgy and irritable. Grief and anger are well mixed in this city and, as evidence seems to mount that Osama Bin Laden is responsible, the usually liberal New Yorkers are likely to favor nuking Kabul, or wherever Bin Laden is hiding.
I live in Brooklyn Heights, which is a key neighborhood inhabited by people who worked in the WTC, or in buildings surrounding it. Many people in my neighborhood are missing friends, coworkers and family. Grief is setting in, along with exhaustion.
Two blocks from my home is the church that traditionally is used for firefighter funerals. When even one firefighter dies in the line of duty the entire neighborhood resonates with the sound of bagpipes, fifes and marching feet, as hundreds of firefighters from all over the eastern seaboard come to pay respects. However will we bury the more than 200 firefighters who perished yesterday? Or the esitmated 300 police? Or the possible 20,000 civilians who were in or around the WTC? When the funerals commence, the city will be beset by paroxysms of grief unlike any the world has seen. The worst is definitely yet to come.
I must get back to work now. I'm on body bag duty today.
Thanks for worrying. But don't. Just pray for a rational way out of this turning point in world history.
Laurie
