DAY NINETY-FOUR:Dec. 13:
Yes, it's too darned warm. And, sadly, the National Weather Service predicts no snow for Christmas. But New Yorkers are stubbornly striving to get into the spirit of the season anyway. Consider, for example, the two Upper East Side blondes strolling up Madison Avenue this evening, looking for the perfect little something for someone. One wore a full-length mink coat, the other sable. Both wore stiletto-heeled boots, pastel cashmere sweaters, perfect coifs and, just to give the look a hint of daring, ironed jeans. One clutched her small (not to be pretentious, mind you) turquoise Tiffany's bag while the other chatted away on her cell phone. Overheard as I passed: "Sweetie, I don't care if there's no snow in Vermont right now, we booked the entire lodge and that's that!"
Midtown Manhattan was as congested and crazed as I've ever seen at Christmas time, and there were the usual gals clutching four or five huge Saks Fifth Ave bag at a time. Somebody has money in this town - or credit.
Our small Manhattan office Christmas party was, as usual, brief, largely nonalcoholic and over-supplied with desserts and carbohydrates. But the occasion was made festive by the arrival of Tina Susman, our intrepid foreign correspondent who has been laid up with broken bones, suffered in a car crash in the Kashmir Mountains. Word to the wise: check the brakes carefully on your hired car before driving down a 10,000-foot peak. Susman regaled us with the wild saga, delivered with such pluck and humor that it was almost possible to forget she was covering a war, and could well have died.
Osama bin Laden's video tape was today's major news, sparking outrage worldwide. Most of the world leaders denounced bin Laden, saying the tape proved once and for all that he had ordered the September 11 attacks.
"There is no doubt in my mind that bin Laden was behind those operations. The tape confirms that in a way that leaves no room for doubt," UAE Information Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan told Reuters. "They (al Qaeda) deserve the punishment that befell them. I go further to say that we, Arabs and Muslims, should punish them for offending Islam, Muslims and Arabs. This confession also proves that those who opposed strikes against al Qaeda during the blessed month of Ramadan were wrong because those terrorists have no relation whatsoever to Islam".
But from much of the Islamic world also came comments like this:
"This is shameful," said Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of Jordan's mainstream Islamist party the Islamic Action Front, told Reuters. "Do the Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?"
On the videotape bin Laden said of the World Trade Center, "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all."
Coincidentally today I finally had time to check a friend's website, on which he has loaded photos he took when he happened to be visiting New York on September 11. Michael Couzens' photos of Ground Zero and the reactions of New Yorkers brought tears to my eyes. Memories washed over me. You can see them at:
www.lptv.tv
There were some bits of hopeful news regarding the future of New York. Gov. Pataki announced that $544 million had been raised, largely from federal sources, to rebuild the PATH train that connects New Jersey and New York City. The primary nexus of the PATH was under the World Trade Center, and its devastation has left many of the 65,000 New Jersey commuters with up to two-hour slogs into the city. The good news is the money has been found, and construction has commenced as of today. The bad news is that full service will not be restored until the end of 2003.
Last night when I wrote my message to all of you there was one story I decided not to pass on, because it was so very sad. But over the last two days the World Trade Center attack claimed two more lives. Pat Flounders saw the jet hit the first tower from the comfort of her dream home in rural Pennsylvania. She called her husband, who was on the 84th story of the second tower, and told him to rush home. But he stayed to help evacuate a colleague, and they perished on September 11. Pat fell to pieces, overwhelmed by grief. Friends told reporters that Flounders had simply lost the will to live. On Monday she shot herself with a shotgun.
And in Massachusetts Tuesday night Dave Bernard died as a result of injuries sustained when he was hit by falling debris as he fled a meeting in Building 7 of the World Trade Center. For three months Bernard struggled in hospital, paralyzed by two broken vertebrae and serious spinal cord injuries. Moreover, he punctured lungs, nine broken ribs and a fractured shoulder blade.
A month ago today American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into Queens, killing all on board. At the time it seemed more than New York could bear. Today the city medical examiner 's office said that only one body remains to be identified, which is remarkable given the ongoing enormous burden of body part identifications the office has been dealing with since September 11th. And the National Transportation Safety Board asked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to join investigations into the cause of the horrible accident. Recently investigators had been saying that seagulls might have flown into the engine upon take-off, causing the plane to stall-out. But today the NTSB indicated that they are returning to the theory that the plane's tail, which sheared off before the crash, caused the disaster.
NTSB isn't the only agency stumped in its investigations. The FBI announced today that it would shortly mail out fliers to residents of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, asking the citizenry to help find the anthrax perpetrator. The fliers will contain a FBI profile of the suspected character, copies of the letters that were mailed to Sens. Daschle and Leahy, and a plea that people try to recall anything, or anybody, that might somehow seem to be connected. It seems a desperate strategy on the part of investigators.
Weeks ago anthrax spores turned up in the central mailroom of the State Department, and all diplomatic pouches were quarantined. Today traces of anthrax were found in ten such diplomatic mailbags in Vienna, which had been shipped by plane from Washington on Oct. 23. Embassy personnel were put on antibiotics, and cleanup crews moved into the site. It all sounds so routine now, doesn't it? Ho-hum, a few spores, doses of antibiotics, been there, done that.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
