DAY EIGHTY-ONE:Nov. 30:
I awoke this morning to the news that George Harrison died during the night. Days ago he had come to New York seeking micro-radiation treatment for multiple tumors in his brain. The treatment was a last-ditch procedure.
Morning found me in Cleveland, in a hotel located a few blocks from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Earl Pike, the head of Cleveland’s largest AIDS organization took me to I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid museum. As we arrived we were enveloped by Beatles’ music. The museum’s special exhibit was “John Lennon at 60” – a bizarre concept. Looking at the familiar bed in with John and Yoko held their sleep-in for peace I couldn’t register that this would have been his sixtieth birthday. Traditionally hundreds of John Lenon fans gather on Dec. 8th, the anniversary of his murder, in a part of Central Park called Strawberry Fields. Located across the street from Ono and Lennon’s home in The Dakota, there is a mosaic at Strawberry Fields bearing the word “Imagine”. Tonight hundreds of people spontaneously assembled at the spot, a week prematurely, paying homage to George Harrison.
Today Cleveland was giving out awards to political and health leaders for exemplary service in the battle against HIV/AIDS. In Cleveland, which has been an economically depressed city for at least two decades, the average HIV+ individual is African American, earns less than $6,000 a year and is a deeply closeted gay man. I was asked to give the speech for the awards luncheon.
Most of the folks attending the luncheon were worried about how events since September 11 were going to affect funding for HIV prevention and treatment. There was strong suspicion – even fear – that money for bioterrorism preparedness would be carved out of other public health budgets, noteably AIDS. For people living in America’s Rustbelt fear of financial doom is far from abstract. Indeed, when I arrived in Cleveland last night LTV Steel announced it is shutting down all operations in Cleveland, which puts 20,000 people out of work.
As I headed to the airport I looked at the downtown Cleveland shopping area, festooned in its Christmas decorations. The largest and oldest department store in town, Dillards, has only modest Christmas finery. It just announced imminent closure, as well.
On the flight back to New York I read a lengthy NY Times article in which the movie actor John Travolta watched the WWII-era James Cagney movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. For paragraph, after paragraph Travolta wept and praised the patriotic fever of the film, saying it was the perfect movie for post-September 11 America. At one point in the article Travolta turned to the reporter and sang, “”Over there. Over there. Spread the word, over there. That the Yanks are coming!”
While scientologist Travolta puffs his red-white-and-blue chest my heart aches over a landmark eclipsed yesterday: Funeral Number 300 for a firefighter who perished in the World Trade Center. As I looked at a photograph of the funeral I heard in my thoughts George Harrison singing, “While my guitar gently weeps….”
Approaching New York, which was hidden beneath a thick gray blanket of clouds, the pilot said, “In a few minutes these clouds will clear, Ladies and Gentlemen, and you can look out the window at the most beautiful city in the world.” I choked up.
On the taxi ride home from La Guardia I gazed at the Manhattan skyline, noting successively the familiar edifices of Gotham: The Chrysler Building, the PanAm Building, and the Empire State Building. And as the cab made its way further south, the Woolworth Building. For years I’ve taken satisfaction on this very drive in knowing I was nearly home when the Twin Towers drew parallel to the cab. Now only a gap is there.
Many years ago, long before I moved to New York, my friend Gianna was visiting from Rome. En route to our San Francisco home Gianna stayed a few days in New York. Over a dinner of spaghetti carbonara and Chianti she told us that she had fallen in love with New York. She seemed transported, in a rapture: “And the buildings! The tall buildings! They are the landscape; they are the mountains. It is a city of manmade mountains. It’s fantastic!”
I recalled Gianna’s “mountains” as the cab headed towards the Brooklyn Bridge off ramp – a position from which the World Trade Centers used to loom large. Our mountains are gone. Gianna was right. They were our tallest mountains, and their loss is as if the people of Geneva awoke to see Mont Blanc had disappeared in the night, or Seattle lost Mt. Ranier, Portland -- Mt. Hood, Santa Fe the Sangre de Christo Mountains. Our mountains are gone.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
