Just beginning to emerge from the fog of shock that overcame me as I watched the first World Trade Tower crumble to the ground...New York is very special to me, I grew up 30 miles away in Plainfield, NJ, lived downtown in New York on E. 11th Street in the 70's, and always considered myself a New Yorker, so this was not just a national assault for me, but a very personal invasion as well. I thought of Helen, insel, and all the friends and acquaintances I have known in New York and the New York area over the years...the casualty numbers are liabel to have many faces. Spent until this morning trying to get in touch with the family of a friend, John Elsberg, who works for the Army in Washington as an editor of their Military History magazine and who is also a poet and publisher of an Anglo-American literary journal called "Bogg"...finally reached them this morning and he's okay. Turns out he had a meeting scheduled concerning some funding matters in the part of the Pentagon that was hit, but he decided to take the day off instead. The woman he was supposed to meet with is now among the missing. Then word came today that a young surgeon, the son of a doctor who saved my father's life back in '86 and who lives just a few blocks away from us here in Wildwood Crest (NJ), had an office on the 108th floor of the WTC and his family has not heard from him. So that really brings it home. Then the daughter of one of the pilots of the downed aircraft is from Mays Landing , NJ, on the Cape May County/Atlantic County border, just about 30 minutes from here, and a crew member of another plane is from Marlton, NJ, not far from here either. And, yet, as harsh as it may sound, all these personal connections seem trivial in light of the horrendous losses that will unfold to us. Celebrities, artists, sports figures, friends, family members...how can any one be an iota more important than the loss of any other in the magnitude of so overwhelming a tragedy? I especially think of all the children who have to be subjected to this gargantuan evil, how their innocent lives must now be forever changed by the horrible images they'll see on their screens, how their sense of youthful safety has been blown away by monsters. What kind of world are we bequeathing to them?
I weep for us all, I weep for humanity...to quote an old folk song, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn....?"
By the way, the State of New Jersey has declared a state of emergency, and teams of emergency personnel from every city and hamlet are heading to New York to help in the rescue and recovery effort.
Cape May County has already sent a contigent of firefighters, police, and EMTs, organized by the county sheriff with representatives from every town in the county, to the rescue scene.
A madman behind any mask is still a madman! ...ditto "barbarian" and "murderer"!
