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Joined: Nov 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
The compounding of tragedy, the multiplication of crimes against humanity, cannot be. We are better than that. We must be.
Amen.
"we must be" ... or we surrender our humanity.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Yes, exactly. Over this there can surely be no disagreement - we have to rise again, to the heights of what we can be, not the depths of what we have seen this week.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
<<not the depths of what we have seen this week.>>
No, indeed. But to the heights of what we have seen this week--when the grandeur of the human spirit has shown itself in very small, very intimate acts of kindness, caring and immense self-sacrifice. The front of what is good in us is in the minutia of interpersonal act and expression. If I can occassionally be convinced that anything exists in this world, it is love. New Yorkers begin to donn their poker faces again, but we have seen each others' hearts. Along with every anguish, that is the vision to sear into heart and mind as memorial of what this time has wrought.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
A good friend asked me, "How valuable were the WTC buildings? In dollars, what were they worth, and who will bear that loss?" (My business is in the field of commercial real estate.) Appreciating that dollars can never be an appropriate measure of this terrible tragedy, the following may nonetheless be of interest:
July 25, 2001: Leasing of Trade Center May Help Transit Projects, Pataki Says. By RONALD SMOTHERS Source: The New York Times Abstract: Gov George E Pataki, speaking at closing of Port Authority's $3.2 billion deal to lease World Trade Center, NYC, to partnership of Silverstein Properties and Westfield America, says funds from deal could help finance long-stalled Second Avenue subway and plans to provide tunnel access for Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal; hails Port Authority's return to its core mission: transportation; Mayor Rudolph W Giuliani, whose administation has been at odds with Port Authority, does not attend ceremony Lead Paragraph: Gov. George E. Pataki, speaking yesterday at the closing of the $3.2 billion deal to lease the World Trade Center, said the money from the deal could help finance the long-stalled Second Avenue subway and plans to provide tunnel access for Long Islan...
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
For a little relief from all the horror, check tsuwms other thread on "ghosts" in Wordplay and Fun.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
As an aside to all, please plese please check your home, auto, and perhaps ife insurance policies to see if there is a terrorism/act of war exclusion.
I am beginning to fear that the administration's continued references to the attacks in NY and DC as acts of war is going to trigger these clauses.
My auto insurance policy excludes both from coverage.
I have to assume that the owners of the WTC either did not have the exclusion or sought extra protection after the 1993 bomb attack
Ted
TEd
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
Radio today quoted a spokesman from the Insurance Information Institute (if I got the name right). In the course of a much longer discussion, he projected that future insurance policies "will have" such an exclusion. From which I deduce that a typical policy today would not have an exclusion which, properly read, would apply.
The institute's website appears to be www.iii.org, but that is not responding at this time.
BTW - I have little doubt that after WTC management experienced the 1993 bombing there, they made sure to have applicable insurance coverage (if indeed they had not had it before).
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
<<I just got this from Capital Kiwi (thanks, friend):
...at the changing of the guard at Buck House yesterday the band played the AMERICAN national anthem as a mark of respect and tribute. It's the first time EVER that the band didn't play God Save The Queen.>>
It occurred to me today, to enjoy the irony of the Royal Guard playing an anthem which recalls the war of our liberation from the British Empire.
(There are a couple of theses lurking in that, but I was just enjoying the smile it the thought brought--and, anyway, bless them for it)
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Among the monuments left to photograph, the Empire State Building stands tall. But if you do stop to take a picture of it, you may notice something different near the top. The ring of twinkling lights is gone from the observation deck: there are no tourists there photographing you. The building has been left unilluminated at night since, I don’t even remember when it was, Monday? It would almost be comforting to suppose it were a sign of mourning, but one has to think it is a question of defense.
In the park are those who point it out on this second of loveliest days—but not many, it is relatively quiet in Midtown—this last and longest standing of rivalrous siblings. And where are they, all those hordes of visitors? Not on the streets. But there has been no egress from a newly sober Gotham. Ninth wonder of the world this, the withdrawal of the polyglot throng.
Most do not look long at the building, though. They prefer their books, a hand around their coffee, an arm around their love. Different sorts of comfort in the spectrum of that emotional intensity through which we pass in the course of a normal day. These comforts carry new meaning, now, in the very fact of their belonging to that spectrum. More than simple reminiscences of the ordinary, they are the—only seemingly—tentative taproots of imperative life.
And people do watch the building; I am sure, it is as a signal of that life.
Tomorrow, the Stock Exchange will reopen. The first one or two are bound to be madhouse days. Then things will settle into a semblance of the ordinary. For weeks, the invisible hand will play the shell game of prosperity or want beside a now workman-like search for bodies, evidence, the excavation of rubble. For years, if we are fortunate enough to have them left to number, the business community will work beside the terrible void in the skyline.
It will take more than good fortune, but diligence with which the ordinary will never again be quite so ordinary. And that is where I take heart in the 65% figure. It is not, for example, the resounding and nearly entire bigotry that met Al Smith when he campaigned against Hoover beyond the North East.
As a city, New York is far from innocent. We have been slavers. We have preached, from cloistered vantages, against almost every religion and ethnicity. But we have also welcomed them—ourselves. And if that welcome has often been exploitative, so, too, has it often been heartfelt. Queens, where Helen lives, is the most ethnically diverse landscape in the world.
In the course of my lifetime I have witnessed how, from some of the crimes we, as a nation, have perpetrated, we have begun to acquire a new sense of justice. Had Maverick not subjected the statistic to a sleight of hand—that is, were it even an authentic figure concerning an out and out call to violence, I would still find reason to take some sort of comfort in it. It is not 95%. And if we have learned so much as to quiet the call for blood that much, perhaps not all hope is lost.
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