See the rest of the city, please, and wait for the memorial
The security firms about to lose contracts are
complaining about Federal government take-over of the airport screening and patrolling duties.
ÒPeople may think the work force will transition to the federal government, but they could well be dead wrong. There are lots of folks who donÕt want to work for the federal government, and the good and professional folks in the work force are likely to be retained by security companies and placed in other demanding security tasks.Ó The firms will lose about $330 million in contracts, but too bad. They had their chances and blew them in a big way. Of course, the firms are right in one regard: IÕd be surprised if the federal government manages to fully implement security in 420 airports within a year. I wouldnÕt be surprised, however, to find that the government hires ÒexpertiseÓ from the firms currently with the contracts, putting the same bozos back in charge.
The Red Cross move to give all of the Sept. 11 donations to the victims and their families is a mistake. The donations are being treated like the spoils of war, like booty, handled in the same way we handle the payoff in a punitive damages suit. And who are the ÒvictimsÓ who will receive these funds? Only people who were killed? What about people made homeless from the disaster? TheyÕre victims, right? And the jobless? All those airline workers, the restaurateurs and their waitstaffs, even the media employees cut because of weak advertising? What about people affected outside of New York City?
And who are the families which will receive those tens of thousands of dollars (or more) per victim? Husbands, wives and kids? Sure. Parents? Okay, maybe. FiancŽs? Romantic partners? Homosexual partners? Roommates? Who will say? Is somebody going to track down those families in Mexico who still donÕt know why they havenÕt heard from their father or brother or aunt and give them money, too? Or do they have to come get it?
The Red Cross reversal in how to spend those funds was a result of complaints from donors. But what kind of donor would freely give money then presume to tell the Red Cross where to spend it? Some folks said they felt misled by the television ads, that they were under the impression the money would go directly into the pockets of firemen, widows and orphans. But the Red Cross has expertise nobody else has, needs that nobody else knows about and a responsibility that should not be meddled with. You gave the gift: wanting ÒglamorousÓ recipients like smoke-blackened firefighters, big-eyed children and weeping widows is ignorant and selfish, when phones go unanswered, computers are outdated and no reserve is kept for future, less ÒsexyÓ disasters when the money wonÕt flow as freely. The real needs are mundane and unexciting, but vital, absolutely vital, to the success of the relief operation.
The gift-giving is out of hand. ThereÕs something almost nonsensical about the in-kind gifts given to the firemen. What purpose do 12,000 tickets to 20 concerts serve when there are fire trucks to be replaced and funerals to pay for, educations to plan, mortgages to pay? Relief efforts are not helped by gifts of trips to ÒSpain, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Panama, Delaware, Tennessee, Germany, France, Austria, Canada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Zealand, South Carolina, Mississippi, Colorado, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, North Carolina and the Grand Cayman Islands.Ó They are certainly nice gestures and well-meant IÕm sure, but not very helpful or well-thought. Cooking and baking and serving on the spot are the sorts of in-kind gifts that are effective. Or cash, always cash, without strings attached.
The new ads promoting the city are funny, but theyÕre not quite on-target. Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune writes, ÒThe implication of divine intervention discredits the grit and resolve displayed by flesh-and-blood humans. ItÕs not a miracle. ItÕs what ordinary people under extraordinary pressure can do.And while the ads have a veneer of New York moxie, they, at their base, suggest something uncharacteristic, even disconcerting: that the city is the nationÕs underdog. As much as I empathize with its loss, I donÕt want to be thinking about the pluck of New York City. Pluck is for places like Omaha and Sacramento. When you think New York, you want to think in terms like ÔbrassÕ and Ôchutzpah.Õ
You want, even now, an ad campaign that says, ÔNew York City. Come or DonÕt Come. Whatever.Õ Or: ÔNew York. So you think now you can score Producers tickets? Fuhgeddaboudit.Õ Ads like those would tell me it really is time to visit New York, because things are getting back to normal.Ó
One letter we received this week made a point of complaining that New York City is receiving too much attention. People are suffering elsewhere, too, it said. Yes, we donÕt doubt that. You canÕt blame all of the nationÕs current economic difficulties on September 11. The economy was already teetering precariously, with zero cash on hand for contingency and a lot of pushing and shoving for jobs and new business.
Yes, thereÕs misery elsewhere, too. But the trauma of the terrorist attacks still stands large in our minds, us New Yorkers. We havenÕt all partitioned off our feelings, or wiped away the memory, or repressed the need to think about those events. ThereÕs a space in our brains that was filled by those towers, and at the moment it is being refilled by stress, fear and tension. Friends tell me they feel tapped out, sapped, stretched thin. The effect of the attacks is physical and mental, a negative space around which we steer but keep bumping like furniture in the dark. I donÕt doubt that misery continues elsewhere in the country, as it does here. But do not slip back into your old perceptions of the City as the sneak who steals from the nation more than it gives. Some of us are still hurting, and your patience will be appreciated.
My friend Melissa has returned to her apartment, three blocks away from Ground Zero, three short blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. She left the windows open that day, September 11, so the insurance company paid to have the apartment cleaned: the rugs torn out, the curtains and linens discarded, the couch carted off to the dump, every surface vacuumed and wiped to remove the fine grains of concrete, asbestos, and other chemicals of modern office life.
So she and Drew are back, sleeping on an air cushion. Their phone is working again, and the iMac was saved, and she can begin receiving postal mail (if only theyÕll deliver it). They still have to traverse police barriers to go home, and show identification, and every time they come home for the evening, they generally donÕt, or ought not to, go out again. This is not the kind of situation where you want to come home drunk after a party at 3 a.m. and try to convince a cop that you live there.
There is something that annoys her, after two months of being homelessÑin which no assistance was forthcoming from the city; only the Red Cross, in the end, was able to help, and that after much prodding and frustrationÑand that is the hordes of tourist through, around and by the barriers surrounding Ground Zero. Melissa has to elbow her way home.
You might say, perhaps, as many have said that thereÕs a need to see, that closure is called for, the itÕs a shared experience via which we become joined. A letter to the editor at The Times tells this small story: ÒWhen my wife and I went to ground zero several weeks ago to join the cordon of mourners who had gathered to bear witness, we were ordered by well-meaning and exhausted police officers to Ôget movingÕ because Ôthis is not a tourist attraction.Õ Their assessment was correct, but their directive indicated that they did not understand why we were there.Ó
The officerÕs perspective is one Melissa and I share. Those tourists are rubberneckers. Morbid importance-seekers. They want to see carnage, and they want to say, I was there: Here, these are pictures of me there. I am not a victim, nor a culprit; I am not cop nor fireman nor movie star slinging hash under an assumed name, but there I am. Am I not somehow important? Ruth Groebner writes in the Greenwich Village Gazette, ÒDespite its dusty air and desolate feel, the area may be the safest due to the large police and military presence. Or does that make it a target? You make the call. We talked for awhile with a Guardsman ÔcelebratingÕ his birthdayÑas much as he would talk, that is. When asked how long heÕd been here, his pat answer was ÔI canÕt give you specifics.Õ In the midst of our discussion, we were then asked to leave by two of New YorkÕs finest. It felt weird, like some sort of turf battle, but in a strange way it felt safe.Ó Ruth, the site is dangerous, thatÕs why you were asked to leave. ItÕs crowded. All together itÕs a crime scene, a mortuary, a demolition site, a construction site and a high-security zone. You don't belong there. We New Yorkers bear witness throughout the city; we don't necessarily see the crime as site-specific.
IÕm not even sure if foreign dignitaries visiting the site are appropriate. There is an observation deck, but whatÕs the end result? A ÒboostÓ in morale? Does it work? Do the workers feel the boost? Or would they rather work unhindered by muckety-mucks or tourists alike? Do these pictures run in papers back home? Or do they go out in the city's myriad ethnic media, showing New York's foreign citizens that though they have chosen to leave their native land, the leaders of that land still think of them?
See the rest of the city, please, and wait for the memorial.
New York City even at the worst of times is a great place for tourists. There are parts of town where they can indulge in their Disney-land idealsÑwalk in the streets (as if they were safe, as if the automobiles were on rails), take pictures of the locals (as if the locals were actors, reciting lines), talk loudly across wide spaces (as if they were invisible observers, ghosts in someone elseÕs dream). But I think perhaps they should stop coming to New York City to see Ground Zero. That kind of behaviorÑtourist behaviorÑis not appropriate there. Where does this visit to Ground Zero derive its pleasure? In the thrill of knowing so many died? Is there a sense of risk of being close to such a place of grief and misery and passed danger?
As a New Yorker, I take an additional perspective on the idea of tourists visiting the city since September 11. In the first place, people should act like New Yorkers, and acknowledge that someone elseÕs misfortune is their good fortune. Empty hotels, cheap airfares, un-crowded restaurants await. Deals are to be had. Come, partake, and visit a New York City few see. In the second place, any tourist that comes to New York City has an obligation to him or herself to resist the pathetic pleasure of the typical, thoughtless, outings, of which I would call a visit to Ground Zero one. There is nothing to be had there, just as there is no pleasure in the Hard Rock Cafe, if there ever was. Why are you, Oh Tourist, still visiting it, when there is so much else to see? Do they not have bookstores in your hometown, in which you can buy guidebooks that tell you of ten thousand other, better things to do? Are you also standing around forlorn outside the former location of the Fashion Cafe, bemoaning its closure? What, pray tell, is the purpose of walking down Fifth Avenue at 9 p.m. when the stores are closed, in the Thirties, where there is little for you to do or see? What, too, is the pleasure of the square in front of the Plaza? You go there, but you do not see a movie, or have a tea, or traipse very far at all into the park. No, Oh Tourist, there are better things to do: they do not involve creeping along behind your baser instincts, nor do they involve fulfilling someone elseÕs desires for you. Leave your checklist of New York City landmarks home this time, and do not try to bask in the attention we have been receiving. It is not for you.
Of course, while the tourists come, thereÕs a certain type of person who has decided the city is not longer liveable, that itÕs time to leave.
Two days ago on the ground at the university I found a photocopy of PattonÕs speech to the Third Army from July 5, 1944. ItÕs a double-sided photocopy of a ragged, folded sheet, the words typed on a manual typewriter. It is a shorter, tighter version than the one found here, which is a compilation of the many versions available.
ThereÕs one passage in particular that strikes me: ÒEvery man in the Army plays a vital part. Every job is essential to the whole scheme. What if every driver suddenly decided that he did not like the whine of shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? What if every man said ÔThey wonÕt miss just one man in thousands,Õ what if every man said that?Ó
The lines above remind me of those peopleÑand they do existÑwho believe their votes do not count in elections, who choose to forfeit their public voice, in which they complain to those in charge. And they remind me of those who are leaving New York City, or considering it.
I say stay. Stay here. You are needed. You count. Your body is an important space-taker. Your absence will be noticed. Can you withstand the still-regular bomb threats just a little longer? Can you restore your native cynicism? ÒWhatÕs the "
Fighting Terrorism at Home
If you really keep your eyes open, in these, as they say, difficult times, you can catch a glimpse of unusual things just under the surface.
Take that day, a golden afternoon, a week or more ago, on the way to the Washington DC Press Club to hear Laura Bush's maiden effort to address pundits on their home ground.
Boarding the metro elevator in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, a small, dark, intent man in a navy suit backed up to the elevator wall. Body, compact; hair, jet black and closely cropped; face, a warm, dark brownÑI am thinking Japanese, but not quite. I notice his bag. The letters are upside down. No, they are Russian.
ÒYou're Russian,Ó I tell him. And he, responding uniquely to the charge, grins. (Most Russians, I have found, clam up at the suggestion.)
ÒYa govoru poruski ochen plocho,Ó I say, and, encouraged by a grin the size of Yankee Stadium, I add, straining to push forth the last bit of college Russian lit I can muster, ÒTaman. Nepriatnu gorodok na beragu moria.Ó
Which is to say, ÒI speak lousy Russian. Taman. An ugly little town on the edge of the River.Ó
ÒOh,Ó he says. ÒI love to hear Russian. It sounds so good. And your accent, you sound like a Russian.Ó
We are descending to the turnstiles now, and he is really seeming very sophisticated underneath that smile. ÒWhere in Russia are you from?Ó
ÒUzbekistan.Ó
ÒOh!Ó
(Brain on overload. Stallions racing over dunes. Spies in the desert. And that Northern Alliance guy on CNN).
ÒI am studying here in a programÑpublic health,Ó he says. ÒAnd we are cooperating.Ó
ÒAre you helping with our public health or are we helping we yours?Ó I ask.
ÒYes.Ó
He shows me his program brochure. I see faces, all captioned as doctors, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Burma and Cameroon, from Kazakhstan, and Kenya, Rwanda, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
They are working, the brochure says, on public health and tropical medicine, in a program sponsored by the United States Department of State, in a program for future leaders chosen by US Embassies or bi-national educational commissions based on their potential for leadership.
I show him my card. Strategic Communications. Health Care Consulting.
ÒAre you working on vaccines?Ó I ask.
He looks confused.
ÒWe are cooperating,Ó he repeats. And smiles.
He looks at me intently then. ÒHow did you come to be a doctor who studied Russian?Ó
No, no, I write about health. I donÕt do it, I say, realizing that Òhealth consultingÓ on my business card has been misinterpreted.
Did his interest dim a bit? Had he seen for me the kind of trip he must have taken once in troubled times? A brief encounter. A talk in some dark corridor as time or sand or trains whipped by, that can end as a recruitment trip on a Bethesda metro train, and sometimes, for some lucky American, Russian-speaking doctor in... Uzbekistan?
"
—Janet Lowenbach for World New York. Award-winning writer and photographer Janet Lowenbach has covered the dairy industry in Maryland, migrant workers in Colorado and health care issues for papers such as the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.'
The post-Election, post-trauma, anti-prostitution, poppers and Viagra report
There's no truth in the rumor that terrorists are stocking up on orthodox Jewish outfits for an upcoming attack in the city, reports The Jewish Week. �It�s totally untrue,� says Ari Laufer, manager of Eichler�s Judaica in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the largest such emporium in the city. �Nobody bought 40 bekishes or 50 kapatas,� two types of long coats worn by chasidim.
NY1 reports 68 percent of New Yorkers say they have not changed their daily routines since September 11, but security lapses at JFK may indicate the folly in that.
Jewish Week also talks to Jewish voters who were confronted on election Tuesday with the never-before-seen choice between two Jewish mayoral candidates, though more interesting was �Jane Doe�s� reason for not voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt all those years ago: �He was a real bastard�. Fifty-two percent of New York City Jews voted for Bloomberg, 47 percent for Green. Meanwhile, Democrat party squabbles continue from well before the election, as early as the September 11 primary, when the party felt certain of a lock on the election and was prematurely concerned with dividing the spoils. Bob Herbert in The Times blames Green: �Mr. Green's biggest problem was not that he made mistakes, but that he never learned from his mistakes. Almost from the beginning he seemed to take it for granted that he would be elected mayor. He seemed mesmerized by the polls, which almost always showed him winning. So he ran a Rose Garden campaign in the Democratic primary, and finished second, which shocked him. He went down and dirty against Mr. Ferrer in the runoff, which he won, but his tactics turned off Ferrer supporters by the thousands.�
Statewide, the head of the Democratic Party is attempting to pre-empt this kind of political warfare by insisting that either Andrew Cuomo or Carl McCall get out of the race early, before it gets nasty. �We must avoid a divisive primary. One of them has to get out, it's clear.�
Here's the document Mike Bloomberg prepared, outlining what he'd do if elected mayor (those results available in detail). I expect this will be constantly referred to during the coming years. He's off to a good start by eliminating $14 million in tax breaks that would have been provided by the city to his company, Bloomberg LP. Maybe he could also look into the way tenants suffer when city-owed liens are collected. [Also, New York Post, can we please not call him �Bloomy�? �Mayor Mike� is lame enough, so cliched, in fact, that both the Post and the Daily News came up with it for their election day covers.] Former mayor Ed Koch has own advice for the new mayor, or rather, anecdotes about his own time in office. �The moment I enjoyed the most in my 12 years as mayor was when we had a transit strike. One morning, I was in the office of Police Commissioner Bob McGuire, and he was telling us that all we could do about the strike was provide parking lots. Everyone was wondering how we were going to keep the city going. I looked out the window of the Police Plaza building, and I saw tens of thousands of people walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. I said to the police commissioner, �Continue, I'll be back.� I got in the elevator, and I ran down to the Brooklyn Bridge. I went onto the bridge and I shouted, �Walk over the bridge! We aren�t going to let these bastards drag us to our knees.� People began to applaud.�
The number of rescue workers at Ground Zero is under contention, mainly a dispute between unions, the city and emergency organizations. Mayor Giuliani last week demanded that, for safety reasons, the number of firefighters on the scene be reduced, though the fisticuffs that broke out between "hero" firemen and "hero" police are suspected as the more likely cause (the firefighters, who invaded the site against orders and regulations, were let off the hook). Firefighters have postponed a memorial gathering in protest, and the Fire Department of New York now says it will increase the number of workers to 50 from 25, per shift, supposedly the result of a change in heart by the city administration. More than 100 had been on-site at any given time during the weeks immediately following the disaster. Reports say several bodies have been pulled from the rubble at Fresh Kills (NY1 reports four), but other people, interested in reclaiming bodies of lost comrades, say remains have been discovered at the landfill regularly since September 11, and that more workers are needed to speed recovery of corpses. �This recovery process has changed into a scoop and dump operation, and as far as we're concerned, unless it goes back to what it was�a recovery process�we have an obligation to our members and to the other people who have given their lives at that site to do whatever we can to make sure that dignity is brought back and that the families are taken care of.� Tom Hays of The Resident writes that �the city's other Ground Zero��the Fresh Kills landfill�is �a desolate, wind-swept plateau of household waste on Staten Island� and �arguably the world's largest crime lab.� [There are memorial and funeral calendars for the NYPD and FDNY at the official New York City site].
In a follow-up to here, let's note a story about how dogs brought to comfort the grieving are taking on a large emotional burden: �Few animals are accustomed to the intense conditions and constant attention of the family center, so their time there is limited to two hours a day, a few days a week. Even so, they're exhausted after absorbing all that emotion. Some must be carried out. The day after a sobbing firefighter's widow threw her arms around Jesse, a golden retriever, �Jesse's eyes were bloodshot,� said the dog's owner, Mario Canzoneri. �He was lying down. He wasn't the same dog. You'd think that dog had pulled 100 pounds on a sled for a month.��
The post-9/11 advertising campaign to bring more visitors to the city is ramping up, in hopes of protecting the $25-billion industry. The city had coasted for so long on its reputation that its convention and visitors marketing budget was a pathetic $11.8 million, ranked 17th in the nation, behind even St. Louis and barely above Little Rock.
Nana Kojo Ayesu writes with an edge of affection in The Cooperator about traditional urban nuisances: �Clearly, to have survived for months on damp, rocking ships crossing the Atlantic and then to have made a go of it in alien territory, Norway rats and house mice are hearty, adaptable creatures. They�re agile, resourceful, and strong for their size. Rats have been observed treading water for nearly 36 hours at a stretch, and mice can wriggle through holes one-quarter inch in diameter. Both rats and mice can survive temperatures ranging from 32 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit�house mice often make their homes in the insulation surrounding heating units in kitchen stoves. The little creatures can even adjust the thickness of their fur to compensate for the higher temperatures inside the oven.�
That horrific story behind a child abuse case continues to unfold on Staten Island. The Times has a full report, explaining how a three-year-old girl was beaten in a bathtub over her soiled pants, as her mother and father �scrubbed the toddler's skin raw with a Brillo pad and squirted alcohol and peroxide onto the wounds.� She was force-fed soap in order to silence her cries. The Staten Island Advance has a chronology of the family's long history of abuse. A foster mother who knew the family says the state should have acted long ago, �There were so many red flags.� At least one other neighbor regrets not reporting signs of abuse. : �He wasn't a bad guy. She played him like a puppet. Every time she got pregnant she didn't want the baby. She said he was forcing her to have them. She always said she was stressed out and tired.�
School Board 24 in western Queens voted unanimously to enforce a state law requiring that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited at the start of every school day. Students with a �good reason� will be excused from the pledge, and teachers who refuse to lead the class pledge will be allowed to have another teacher take over the task. They also decided to name Public School 58 in Maspeth �The School of Heros.� That'll be a hard one to back up on the football, field, won't it? It's like naming a kid "Abraham Lincoln Neil Armstrong Jesus.� Too much to live up to.
Arlene Lewis, writing for the Queens Tribune, says $2.2 million is earned annually by pimps via their prostitutes in Queens, a good deal of it near the Queens Plaza area at the foot of the Queensborough Bridge, not too far from where the Museum of Modern Art is installing itself temporarily. No doubt that explains the sheltering subway-to-MOMA walkway they're building.
The Blade reports that a chemical trend in the gay community is the combo of Viagra and poppers, the latter also known as "video head cleaner" and made from amyl nitrate or butyl nitrate. Both drugs are perfectly legal, but the pair can be lethal. �The vessels get larger and that lowers your blood pressure and that lowers the amount of blood that goes through your heart and into your brain. That�s what the amyl nitrate does, and that�s a similar mechanism to what the Viagra does. It improves blood flow to the penis. So these two things, working in a similar way, cause an overdose of this effect and people have extremely low blood pressure.�
The Concorde's back, Patsy and Edina, so rejoice, though there are Queens residents who fought the plane's return. Sonic booms at 8:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. every day do not resonate well in residential areas, nor does even the thunder-like sound level of the thrumming engines at non-boom times. But protests against the noise of the planes grew stale: US Congressman Anthony Weiner says he forgot to push for a bill banning the plane to be introduced in the Senate, as it had been in the House.
The New York and New Jersey construction industry, often a strong financial supporter of the Sinn Fein, not in small part due to the number of Irish construction workers, used that fund-raising skill to put together $400,000 for the support of relatives of victims the World Trade Center attacks, of which a number were themselves Irish or of Irish heritage.
Expected in New York City in winter 2002 for the Davos Forum are 3200 delegates and visitors. And how many protesters? They don't say.
Former Beatle George Harrison is undergoing treatment on Staten Island. �The word around the hospital is that the procedure he is having is the last chance of saving his life.�
Elaine Stritch is getting applause in press and in person for her one-woman show, �Elaine Stritch: At Liberty.�"
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