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a turning pointDate: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 From: John Voelcker <johnvoelcker@yahoo.com> Subject: a turning point Thanks to all for the outpouring of concern and love, especially from those outside NYC. What began as a letter to family and a few friends now seems to be reaching a few hundred people. I'm glad you all enjoy it, and I'm honored by your interest and thanks. Yesterday, Thursday, was probably a pivotal day. As I walked out at 8:30 am, NYC was still quiet, with emergency vehicles the only ones on the street except for the ubiquitous yellow cabs. By the end of the day, regular street traffic was back and business -- the lifeblood of NYC -- was being done. We opened Eziba at 9 am and closed about 6 pm. We answered e-mail, sent and received local packages, and shot catalog photos. Many of us paused to tell stories, send and receive e-mail and answer phone calls. All calls begin with well wishes and gentle questions: "All OK?" and "Did you know anyone?" We are all one degree away from a missing person, it seems, but everyone has a friend with a miraculous escape. My friend Michael decided to go home and get a clean shirt after working late the night before. He's alive. It's raining as dawn breaks. The traffic & transit report sounds fairly conventional -- at least until it includes a request for traffic to stay off the Long Island Expressway (Long Island's east-west interstate) to keep it clear for emergency vehicles. This sense of surreality diminishes the excitement Manhattanites would otherwise feel on hearing the magic phrase, "Street cleaning regulations are suspended," meaning alternate side-of-the-street parking needn't be observed. The rain, of course, has stopped the activities of rescue workers and turned Ground Zero into a sea of soupy and very slippery grey mud. Rescue workers are now asking for goggles, clean socks, high-powered flashlights, tents and wooden pallets. But few, too few, stories of miraculous rescues are coming out. The work must be soul-destroying. Workers carrying large bowls roamed the wreckage behind cadaver-sniffing dogs. The dogs find not only bodies, but body parts as small as a fingernail. The rescue workers then place these parts into the bowls. Civilian volunteers by the thousands were turned away yesterday after four-hour waits. The greatest need was for EMTs, trained and licensed medical professionals, heavy-equipment operators and constructions workers. Local blood banks were full at the end of the day, though this should not discourage donors elsewhere. Friends and relatives of missing persons now gather at a new location, a block-long armory a few blocks from my apartment. Their desperation is heartbreaking. Some carry hairbrushes and toothbrushes in plastic bags, for potential DNA matching if body parts are found. Hundreds of signs posted on buildings, lampposts and cars have a snapshot and basic information on a missing person. I'm stunned how many of the missing have tattoos, lovingly described. And one British man, if he's found, will find that much of NYC now knows that he's uncircumsized. It's worth pointing out that I haven't heard a single case of looting or rioting. Almost everyone is deferential, apologetic when bumped and otherwise fairly quiet. And all reports say that crowds are calm and efficient when evacuating buildings, making yesterday's 90 bomb scares seem almost routine. Many people have flags in hats or on backpacks. Union Square Park, site of so many union organizing rallies in the 19th and 20th centuries, has become a spontaneous memorial shrine. Hundreds of candles ring long strips of butcher paper covered in messages, photos, mementos, missing persons posters and gifts -- necklaces, CDs, cash, trinkets, stuffed animals, and flowers everywhere, singly and in bouquets. I counted five languages and three character sets on a single length of paper. As stories are told, retold and etched into memory, vignettes stick in mind. One married man had quick, wordless anonymous sex the night of the attack. "It was the first time that day I smiled," he said, shaking his head in bafflement at what he called "wartime sex". One woman unexpectedly broke down in sobs when the person ahead of her ordered a missing friend's usual Starbucks drink. And everywhere, everywhere, people grab their pockets whenever a cellphone rings, hoping it will be the magic call saying "he's OK" or "she's safe." Churches doors are wide open, with people drifting in and out. At one bar, I heard a crowd roaring Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" -- the bittersweet, angry look back that has become a patriotic anthem despite itself. But much louder than that was the simple, beautiful chorus at Union Square Park: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." John Lennon and Yoko Ono's timeless plea has never seemed more appropriate. Finally, Jonathan Powell created a web page that brought together for me the beauty of NYC and the former WTC in a particularly poignant way. I printed copies of this page and added them to the memorials, shrines and tributes in Union Square Park. http://www.walrus.com/~jpowell/nyc/ I also like this Washington Post page of comments and sympathies from outside the USA: Today will be a workday. It won't be the hardest day any of us has worked, as the story-telling continues. But the same spirit that keeps New Yorkers civil in the subways will keep us going as we return to a simulation of routine, a pseudonormality in which we step over or around the tears in the fabric of what we used to call real life. love, jv. |
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