DAY TWENTY EIGHT:Oct. 8:
As I write this temperatures in New York are falling below freezing, the National Guard is mobilizing and rumors are spreading faster than Grant took Richmond. It's been a long anxious day, and tomorrow promises to bring more of the same.
The day began at 7:30am with an editor's call, "There's a second case."
"Anthrax?"
"Yes. Same place, in Florida."
Sixteen exhausting hours later the Florida episode looks like a case of a disgruntled, probably mentally ill ex-employee taking revenge upon the worst of American "newspapers" in a truly terrible way. It's "bio-homicide", not "bio-terrorism". At any other time this might be an awful, but small episode. But this isn't any other time: this is war time.
As I write these words I don't know if 24 hours from now I will be in Seattle, as originally scheduled, Florida, New York, Washington or even Afghanistan. These are, indeed, uncertain times.
On the very long ride home from Columbia University tonight I watched a woman read her newspaper. All of the papers in this city now have special World Trade Center obituary sections of two or three pages in length, featuring the photographs and memories of some of the more than 5,000 named dead. I watched the woman reading her paper, flipping through news of WAR! and BOMBING! And city elections SHOWDOWNS! Each section received due attention until she hit that special obituary pullout Then her facial expression darkened, and she flipped past those pages swiftly, without reading a word, as if one more word of sadness would be more than she could bear.
I fully understood.
Many New Yorkers, including myself, have been under the impression that the Democratic Party runoff election is tomorrow. All elections are on Tuesday. Except this one. It is on Thursday. But I swear thousands of New Yorkers will get up tomorrow and think, "Darn, I'm gonna be late to work if I don't run down to the polls and vote right now." The times are discumbobulating.
Security in this town was so high today that it took one of my students three and a half hours to drive into Manhattan from New Jersey. She complained of having been questioned at four roadblocks before crossing the bridge to Manhattan.
We are, indeed, at war.
Tonight the National Guard is moving into new positions throughout the city, and special units are being deployed in Grand Central and Penn Stations. Though this has been handled quietly, the rumor vine is working overtime, conveying word of all manner of evil said to be planned for the two massive hubs of human transport.
My students, all of whom are mature adults, two over 50 years of age, couldn't listen to tonight's lecture until I answered their bioterrorism questions. Barely had I crossed the threshold into the room when they literally called out the queries: "Is it bioterrorism in Florida?", "Should we take ciprofloxicin?", "Are gas masks worth getting?" These are, mind you, seasoned skeptics, would-be journalists who usually doubt every darned thing they hear. But they are also human. And they are scared.
At 5:45pm this evening I walked several blocks to the only subway that reaches Columbia. Along the way I passed the Empire State Building, now the tallest structure in New York. I bumped into a man and woman who suddenly had stopped their stroll on the sidewalk, spun around and stared up at the building. After feeling the inconvenience of my hurried walk to the subway interrupted I took note of the couple, and then spotted another man, videocam in hand, shooting the building. And another, taking a picture. And for just a moment I thought, "Oh no, please no. Don't let it be another plane flying towards us." But it wasn't that. These were simply folks who, like me, had been minding their own business when suddenly the notion popped into their heads that they were now at the base of the tallest building in New York, isn't that strange, how odd, I think I'll take a look.
Be well. Be safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
