From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/16/01-12:20:03 AM Z
Dear Friends,
I've missed you.
Sorry not to have said thanks before now to folks onlist & off who
inquired anxiously & sent messages of loving support, concern, horror, and
shock, assuring us that New York is indeed part of the country and the
world. They were truly comforting -- as much comfort as can be found in a
suddenly comfortless place. (New York grandiosity about being the center
of the universe now turns to ambivalence -- tho at least rents should come
down.)
I was able to log onto the list late Tuesday & read mail, but server
crashed before I could reply and stayed down until yesterday. Today, for
geopolitics I recommend Frank Rich's op-ed article in Saturday's NY Times.
Also Anthony Lewis's. For general "flavor," I recommend Saturday & Sunday
NY Times, put together by professionals with pictures.
TV seems to remain a morass of fluff persons & teleprompters. A couple of
dozen satellite trucks driven in from Texas, Ohio, Connecticut, &
wherever, are parked nose to tail along the West Side highway, all taking
the same picture of the "skyline" minus the WTC: Beefy guy sitting on his
butt gets up at intervals to read text off the AP wire (vague, inaccurate,
& don't know 12th Street from 14th Street).
We at 1.6 miles enjoy the luxury of mourning at second-hand, that is, our
family & immediate friends are so far safe. However, husband spent much
of Monday at World Trade Center untangling an airline ticket snafu. The
nice lady from Continental who helped him said come back tomorrow
(Tuesday) morning and pick up your ticket. He'd planned to get there
about quarter to nine & be back for 10 AM appointment, but one not
expected showed up & he never got out of the office. Whether the nice lady
got out of her office we do not know (tho her job probably didn't:
Continental just laid off 12,000 employees). The ticket was for yesterday
(Saturday). The idea was three days' fishing with son. They called the
trip off. Not fear of flying (probably never again so safe as right now),
but, as husband put it, "I don't feel like having a good time."
Reading the newspaper is still a two-kleenex affair, but the streets can
be really heart wrenching, aside from the dust, smoke & grim odors, that
is. Photos of missing loved ones are taped to lampposts, trucks, fences. A
copy of a wedding photo with groom's name, "Born 1964, 5 feet 9 inches,
blue eyes," with phone number. All races & types, but most of them young,
hardly having begun life.
My gym reopened Friday and, craving mindless exercise, I walked over. I
was unprepared for sight of the local firehouse at corner of Houston and
Sixth Ave -- where, as it happens, Giuliani and fire & police chiefs
regrouped after downtown "command center" collapsed. The red doors that
are ALWAYS open were closed, no firetrucks, not even on the service road,
where there's usually at least one getting polished or petted. A
handwritten sign was taped to the side door, presumably a list of the
dead, but I couldn't bear to look (still embarrassed to cry in public).
Twenty-two fire trucks are buried in rubble, three hundred fifty fire
fighters missing. A recent (unconfirmed) report is that all from that
company are gone.
Firemen have always been the good guys (as opposed to police who have been
intermittently very bad guys), rescuing citizens from their/our own
silliness and/or a range of disasters. Their large selves in yellow-jacket
slickers were familiar at our tiny neighborhood supermarket, buying the
makings of dinner. I miss them already. (Meanwhile, I hope the folks
leaving those little candles all around in memoriam will be damn careful
where they put them. Start a fire and there's no one to call.)
However, I refuse to sentimentalize the Twin Towers, as seems to be
happening -- with demands, ye gods, to rebuild them exactly as before.
There is this thing about not saying ill of the dead, but please, not
again! We tried our best to stop those monsters, so ugly up close they had
to go halfway across the country to find an architect bad enough to design
them. Needless to say they were also a giant boondoggle for the
well-connected, & razed a neighborhood with 100 small businesses ("radio
district"). During construction they sprayed the girders with asbestos
"fireproofing," carried by wind over the Village. We jumped up & down &
finally they put up shielding, but the Port Authority is NEVER a good
neighbor. (Their refusal to pressurize the stairs according to NYC fire
dept regs was why "thousands" were injured by smoke inhalation after
bombing of 1993.) Promised as profitmaking, it operated at a loss,
subsidized by us, the taxpayers -- state and federal offices moved into
the vacancies.
For those who can tolerate more, the following bears on recent list
discussion of what world owes US & vice versa:
Pearl Harbor, mentioned a lot since Tuesday, may not have been Japan's
smartest move, uniting as it did a country that had been dismayingly
isolationist. "Senator Nye" is only *name* I recall (I was only 10), but
circa 1940 many, especially from "the heartland," said in effect, "too bad
about France, China, England, & so forth, but not our problem." Bush's
disgraceful performance these past 8 months bespeaks a similar "fortress
America" mentality -- dubious 100 years ago, absurd & dangerous today. (I
don't mention his arrogant disregard of treaties for fear of getting a
nose bleed). If Bush & co have learned that US really is part of the world
and *needs* all the allies it can get, perhaps the 5000 did not die
entirely in vain.
Fortunately, the US did rack up credits in the middle of 20th century,
when, as fallible humans, we did our best to help former deadly enemies on
road to democracy. But many Americans are unaware of our abysmal acts
since then, or that we, too, have sponsored terror. Not to mention that
Bin Laden was once our buddy. Aren't all terrorist movements ultimately
funded with US money -- oil money? (Just two years at Florida flight
school costs $40,000 per, not to mention ordnance, organization and car
rentals.)
If we'd controlled our greed for oil, and that of US companies profiting
from oil, Saudi Arabia (for instance) would still be a nation of camel
herders. Nor did we change tack even after the 1973 oil embargo. When OPEC
dropped prices, we promptly abandoned work on alternative energy. And now
we want it both ways: "the American way of life" with the SUVs, while
expecting countries with the oil to take our orders re Talaban &
terrorists. (And if Jews control the world, as so often claimed, why in
blazes aren't they leading the move to conserve?)
I'm warned incidentally that comments about US bad behavior at large are
safely made on either coast, but could get me lynched in the middle...
certainly seemed that way when WNYC went off the air and I had to listen
to call in radio from ABC -- switched & got the instant packaging and bad
grammar on CBS.
I close, for our English friends, with a pre-WW2 anecdote. I was probably
in 6th grade, and we were doing a unit on debating. The teacher chose the
topic, "Lend Lease to Britain: pro or con." For the young folks: while US
was refusing to actively enter war, with, as noted, isolationists in key
spots in congress, there was a strong movement to help our "English
cousins," at least with supplies. The teacher explained that this was an
*exercise in debate*, not necessarily a statement of principle, but
sympathy in my Long Island suburban town was strongly pro Britain & nobody
would take the con side. So I took it and, to disgust of classmates, won.
The moral being that they had assumed their position was unassailable,
self-evident, and rested on that premise. I knew I had to make a case,
which I did mostly by pestering the grownups for info. I remember one of 8
points: "Our boys" were training with wooden gunstocks, we couldn't afford
to send real guns overseas.
Ultimately of course "our boys" themselves went overseas, to mixed welcome
from our British cousins, who finally complained that they were "overpaid,
oversexed, and over here." (Or so we heard.) In return of course, next
generation Brits sent us Tina Brown... but I digress...
I apologize for being so long offtopic, but am not yet able to fully
refocus on art. May those who got to their early Tuesday appointments at
the World Trade Center rest in peace. May righteousness ultimately prevail
in the world (which it sometimes has, I seem to remember).
Judy
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