From: Sandy King (sanking@clemson.edu)
Date: 09/16/01-11:50:42 AM Z
Dear Judy,
It is wonderful to hear from you and to know for certain that you are
safe. Hope that the same is true for all of our other friends in New
York.
I can not imagine what the people of New York must be going through.
Our minds are so full of the horrific views of the catastrophe that
everything else is numbing. However, you are all on our minds, and in
our hearts and prayers.
Sandy
>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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