DAY SIX:Sept. 16, (two parts)
Part One (skip to Part Two)
The sun seems to be shining especially brightly this Sunday morning, and under any other circumstances New Yorkers would be remarking on what an exceptionally beautiful day this is. But each time the wind direction shifts another community catches the stench of fire -- a sort of acrid, electrical smell that periodically so overwhelms my apartment that I awaken from a deep sleep and recall, once again, that life will never be the same.
All manner of pontificater and bag-of-gas is filling the airwaves with "insights" this morning, largely from outside New York. To hell with every one of them, regardless of their political stripes. We, living near Ground Zero, have little patience for this crap, this armchair instant wisdom, this mindless hindsight and this saber-rattling from a safe distance. I can't say that handwringing editorials and sermons have much meaning here, either. New Yorkers have always known that most Americans don't like our city, and that we suffer "an image problem", as they say. What really matters, and deeply affects, New Yorkers today are the outpourings of solidarity and affection directed to the city, some of it franky admiting that at least a few people in the rest of America have always, and will continue to, love New York. The most heart wrenching example of this occured early this morning when Mayor Guiliani was on the phone with the Arab Mayor of Jerusalem, and started crying when told, "We in Jerusalem feel such solidarity and love with your city that we are renaming a main boulevard New York City Street."
I notice that at least 20 people sent me the same alleged Afghani letter:
"the following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I...."
Because this thing is everywhere on the Internet, I sincerely doubt it's authenticity. It reads to me like a peace plea, disguised as an Afghani essay, circulated by some well-meaning soul who hopes to influence the debate. People need to be very careful about information circulating on the Internet right now. Much of it is bogus, little is helpful to anybody. This is a good time to stick to well established news sites on the Internet, and to take ALL unsolicited "information" you receive with a very large grain of salt. We in New York have already been collectively hoaxed on a grand scale --- noteably by a mentally ill woman who claimed to have received cell phone calls for help from police buried in the rubble.
At times like this nobody is well served by false information, no matter how well intended its dissemination may have been. As a journalist I am, of course, biased: I strongly believe in triply confirmed information, wherever conceivably possible. But I think every person reading this needs to urge friends and colleagues, no matter what their profession, to think for a moment before passing along a note or rumour, whether in conversation or on the Internet. These are volatile times.
In that vein, my pal, John Pope of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Emailed asking how he could help. John is temporarily working at the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer, and I said, "Damnit! Get your butt up here and help the public information officers of the NYC Dept. of Health! These poor folk are working out of a juryrigged facility, no sleep, brains on fumes. They need someone with your skills -- NOW." I hope that John's temporary bosses at CDC will agree.
Not all voluntary energy, no matter how well-intended, is helpful, however. So many boxes of clothing and food have been sent to NYC that the real problem now is what the hell to do with the stuff. I saw enormous piles of stuff --- what else can I call it, but "stuff" --- piled high along the perimeter of the Javits Center yesterday, in stacks so overwhelming that nobody is even touching it. Similarly, people are driving in from all over the world -- literally, even flying to Mexico or Canada and then driving the rest of the distance. It is tear-jerking for Gotham, but what the heck are we going to do with all these people? It's becoming a full time task trying to figure out where to put them all, how to use them. In most cases, emergency response personnel simply have to say, "Thanks, but no thanks." The Mayor, only half-jokingly, said, "Tell them to spend money here --- that's the best way to help New York!".
Life in New York is, indeed, improving. Shelves are restocked in stores, newspapers are getting delivered on time, more subways are running and some 3000 businesses that were affected in some way by the disaster will reopen tommorrow. That means that people will be back at work, kids will be back in classrooms and some aspects of life will normalize. But conversations among strangers in the subways and elevators of the city betray continued anxiety. Last night, on my way home from Pier 92, I listend to two eloquent young African American men earnestly debating the liklihood that the terrorists, whomever they may be, plan to blow up a subway or school or other target in the city. "You never know, " one repeatedly said, "We could be killed right this minute. They could have put a bomb on this train." And when he said that, an African American woman sitting near them got a frightened look on her face, reached into her purse, pulled out a CD player, and covered her ears with full volume headphones. Who could blame her?
I spent several hours yesterday at the new Command Post for city operations, located on Pier 92, at 53rd St and the Westside Hwy. You may know that the much-touted NYC Emergency Command Post was inside the WTC. For five days the Mayor and city have operated out of a lousy facility downtown. Now a genuine command post is in place, at a safe location that is easily secured and cannot be attacked. I was there for a few hours, and got a glimpse of Rudy Giuliani in action. I must say, he is impressive. This sort of crisis is what he thrives upon --- Rudy is best when quick decisions are needed, and crisis leadership must be exercised. He becomes a jerk when he has time to think, and pit races against one another or kneejerk for the cops. Yesterday I was truely impressed by what I saw, and by the coordination of city and state leadership.
But, of course, the funerals have begun. Several of the firefighter heroes who were buried when the buildings collapsed were memorialized yesterday amid much sorrow in the city. The Fire Cheif seemed in a daze yesterday --- he has lost more than 300 of his men and women, and had to promote 160 officers to replace the ranks of those now deceased. My local fire station in Brooklyn Heights is staffed by men and women who saved our lives in 1997 when an arsonist set fire to the building behind my apartment, causing the largest conflagration in Brooklyn history. Thanks to their efforts, nobody, amazingly, died. Last night signs posted around my building sadly informed us that a third of the firefighters in our station perished on Tuesday, and, like pilgrims, my neighbors have made their way to the station, creating a shrine of gratitude to these genuine heroes.
"Genuine heroes" --- what an overused, hollow phrase! HEROES, damnit. I will never again look at a firefighter anywhere in the world the same way. They practice the single most selfless profession I can imagine. I see the exhausted rescue workers, reeking of smoke and dust, on the subway at the end of their shifts and I want to hug every one of them. What few tears I have managed to shed since Tuesday have all been over the firefighters and their families. While the world's attention is focused on the WTC site, yesterday a "standard" fire broke out in a Brooklyn apartment and firefighters rushed in --- AS THEY ALWAYS DO --- to rescue two children. I looked at the photo this morning, one like so many we have published daily for years, and burst into tears. What is "normal"? Never again will I, or I suspect most New Yorkers, look at the courage of firefighters in a "normal" way.
I spent a couple of hours among rescue workers at FEMA (Fed. Emergency Management Administration) HQ yesterday, located inside the Javits Convention Center. Their chief onsite, Peter Bakersky, has been, by his account, "in every major disaster in America since 1988." But nothing has prepared him for what they are dealing with here. Among those 300+ firefighters buried under what once was the WTC are the close personal friends of every single emergncy responder, no matter where they came from. That's because the elite squads of firefighters and ER responders in the US an Puerto Rico have traind together, and gone through numerous role-playing practice scenarios. They all know each other. And every one of them I have spoken to says their greatest fear is that as they dig through the rubble they will see the familiar face of a fallen comrade. Emotions are so raw among their tough, seasoned rescue workers that FEMA has brought in teams of masseuses, chiropracters, psychologists and trauma counselors who work on each team as it returns from a shift. Their dogs are also traumatized. That's because everything they sniff smells of human.
As I indicated yesterday in my note, I spent a fair amount of yesterday dealing with the issue of "bodies" -- there are none. That's my story in today's paper. No intact bodies. Just pulverized, cremated remains, attached to slabs of concrete and steel. From these scraped bits of flesh the Medical Examiners office is doing DNA analysis to identify the dead. Most of the families of the missing are still wandering, stunned, about the city holding signs asking if anybody has seen their loved ones. They are in denial, of course, and that is a natural stage of grief. But what damned "stage of grief" is the one you go through when you realize that all that's left of your father or brother or sister or mother or spouse is a fragment of flesh on a rock and an accompanying piece of paper saying, "DNA match"?
I just cannot imagine it. At one point yesterday, as I waited for the Mayor in the cavernous, cold Pier 92 space, I flashed on an instant some 20 years ago when I stood at the bow of a boat trawling under the Golden Gate Bridge, and the skipper handed me an urn inside of which were the ashes of my brother, Brian. I remembered thinking, "This is odd. I thought ashes were light, but I almost dropped this urn because it's so heavy. It must be the bones." And then I realized that the families of the WTC victims will nver even share that grim, finalizing experience of closure.
The emotion I find most relieving right now is defince. I am wearing my "I have Brooklyn attitude" T-shirt as I write this, and in everything I do I want to be indicating, "To hell with you, Jerks! I defy you! I live! I work my ass off! Screw you!" That pretty much sums up clasic Brooklyn Attitude, which even in "normal" times is well and loudly expressed. It's an attitude I esxpct the borough will collectively draw upon for months to come. And it will be MONTHS. The experts I interviewed yesterday tell me digging will go on well after Christmas, and will slow considerably whn temperatures drop below freezing. If we have typical weather this year, that should be in October -- perhaps at nights, as soon as three weeks from now. It's hard, indeed, to dig and grab with frozn fingers. Rebuild? Yes, we will. I am certain we will. It is part of New York defiance. But we won't be able to rebuild until the last posible scrap of humanity is extracted from that enormous pile, and that may well be four or five months from now.
The numbers of dead keep rising, nd will continue o do so as families reach out of their denial to register the names of loved ones with the police. We're up to nearly 6,000, and I expect we will top 10,000 before this is over. I was startled late last night, as I in vain searched my TV for something besides tragedy to view, to hear Ton y Blair's address to Parliament. He said that more UK citizns perished in the WTC disaster than cumulatively in ALL Irish and other terrorist attacks that had ocured on UK soil over the last 20 years. Man, that puts things in perspective, doesn't it.
Later today the Arab American Family Support Center is staging a peace and solidarity march through my neighborhood. Most of NY' Arab community lives in Brooklyn, and they are very much afraid of crazed reprisals. Given how many nuts live in this city there have been remarkably few suh incidents. I'm going to attend the parade, of course, anxious as I am to be a body counted as knowing who my enemy is NOT.
I am trying to take a break today, catching up on a week of unread newspapers and taking a lot of deep breaths. Tommorrow, on top of everything else, I have to teach journalism at Columbia U. I know the students will be eager for insights. But I frankly find it hard to imagine doing anything as banal as teaching. I guess I'll chalk it up to a vague part of my "defiance" schema, as it is a "normal activity". I'm sure that they, like so many of you, will be asking how journalists are faring through all of this. Well, let's not be ridiculous. Professionally, we are doing great. This is what we are trained for. But I do have colleagues who have taken terrible tolls. My friends Greg Smith and Liz Willen, who live in my building and write for the DAILY NEWS and Bloomberg Reports, went through hell on Tuesday. Liz was separated from her 5-year-old son whose kindergarten is located on Chambers Street, just a few blocks from the WTC. And Greg was ducking behind a car below the WTC when the first tower collapsed, and the man next to him was killed. Many of my pals were in Gound Zero on Tuesday, and escaped with their lives. My pal, Mark Schoofs, and his Wall St Journal coworkers no longer have an office, as the WSJ was right next to Ground Zero. But I can't get wrapped up in a lot of chest-beating about brave journalists: it's a load of crap. We watch disaster: that's our jobs. We don't rescue people, I doubt much of anything we do even indirectly saves lives. And a helluva lot of my "colleagues" --- especially over at the NY Post and Fox News -- are actively promoting more carnage, in the form of demands for immediate retribution.
I will say this, however, without hesitation: Newsday and The Daily News are doing a bangup job covering this debacle. The NY Times? Remarkably banal. The NY Post -- insufferable. I am proud, however, of the work produced by many of my colleagues. The grossly underpaid WNYC reporters, the overworked NY bureau of NPR, the brave photojournalists who risk life and limb to get into the midle of things, and many great reporters, editors and writers. By in large, absent the horror that is the Post and Fox, the NYC media has done its duty, and done so admirably.
If I need to catch my breath I take some solace in writing these daily missives. And I thank you for tolerating their receipt.
Stay well, be strong, stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
Part 2:
I realized late today that five days have passed since the horror, not six. Yet it feels like such a distant, lengthy elapsing of time that I can hardly believe it's only 8 days ago that I celebrated my birthday with so many grand friends, frolicking in the Brooklyn Brewery with any cares in th world. Or that exactly 7 days ago I heavily imbibed vodka at Tatiana's Ukrainian restaurant on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, chatting about nothing of absolutely any importance with dear pals who were visiting from California. All of that feels ancient, as if it happened in some distant fog long ago.
I wanted to send a second Sunday missive for two reasons: to correct my dating of the days. Accuracy, you know. And to tell you of wonders.
Throughout the neighborhood small, handmade signs said simply that the Arab American Support Center, a group of which I'd never previously heard, was holding a peace march and vigil. The last of my stranded Californians, Jill Hannum, and I strolled on over to Sahadi's, a fabulous Lebanese market in the heart of Brooklyn's Arab area, on Atlantic Avenue. As we made our way the twelve or so blocks to the site we speculated that only a handful of people would probably show up.
We were dead wrong. A throng, a few hundred strong, greeted us, many of them local Arab shop keepers and restauranteurs, but most simply fellow non-Arab Brooklynites who wanted to show that they, unlike many DC politicians, understand the distinction between terrorism and Islam. It was a quiet throng, subdued and somber, as they marched to the Promenade that overlooks downtown Manhattan, directly across the East River from the now smokey spot that once was the World Trade Center. There were a few attempts to get singing or chanting going, but the crowd would have little of it. As we reached the Promenade our numbers swelled to the point where I could no longer possibly see either the beginning nor end of it, and imagine several hundred, at least, were there. Camera crews and photographers scrambled for positions as an imam began singing a call to prayers of peace, in Arabic. He was followed by a rabbi, who canted in Hebrew. And then a Hindu prayer. And then the local Buddhist leader. And then the head of Plymouth Church, which was founded by Harriet Beecher Stowe's father and once headquartered the Underground Railroad. Nearly every religious leader of Brooklyn Heights, of all imagineable denomination, called for peace and prayers for the valiant firefighters. And then the leader of Smyrna, an Arab women's organization, told the crowd that one of the group's members had perished inside the WTC, an begged everyone to understand that in the Arab world all women are, in some sense, victims. A cluster of African American men, dressed in a manner that reflects too much rap music video-watching, started spontaneously and loudly chanting, "God loves ALL people! God loves ALL people!" As the crowd grew to the point of claustrophobia the smoke from the still-burning WTC rubble cast a smog-glow over the setting sun, and I spotted a jumbo jet taking off from Newark, towards the WTC site. I felt a genuine chill of disgust, and actually thought I would vomit, when the jet passed through the billows of smoke, roughly where the terrible jets had flown on Tuesday. The crowd watched silently, until the pastor of the Plymouth Church began singing "We Shall Overcome", and a pianissimo defiance arose.
After a few deep breaths and a glass of wine we made our way to the Middagh Fire Station to pay our respects to the men and women who died on Tuesday -- a third of the force of that station. I had prepared a note of sorrow and gratitude, which I slipped into a book of messages sitting on a tabletop outside the station, already bulging with similar notes from hundreds of grateful neighbors. The firefighters stood loosely about, graciously accepting compliments and flowers from passersby. Over a large pile of bouquets and candles -- a sort of shrine -- they have hung portaits of members of their battalion, and I lost it when a young woman, her three golden haired daughters in tow, gently stopped her daughter from pointing and calling out, "That one is Daddy." I thought she was poking at her deceased father's portait, but Jill wasn't sure that was the case. Whatever the circumstance, it was heart wrenching.
When I got home both my sister, Linda, and pal, Jacki Lyden had left phone messages, informing me that Paul Krugman had paid homage to my books in his editorial in the Sunday NY Times. In my fog, I hadn't previously noticed. When I read it just now I was stunned. There's something unnerving about seeing somebody else make a connection you ought to have made yourself, given it is based on your work. But I hadn't really put that particular two and two together. I've been too inundated to be properly reflective
And so now it's time to try to sleep, hoping that the wind direction does not shift in the night again to blow acrid WTC smoke my way. And that sirens do not, en masse, once again break up the night and bring REM sleep worries of another attack.
Be safe. Be well. Be defiant.
Laurie Garrett
