Worst news of all
Wednesday night Glenda and I went out for a walk, all around the city, and there’s an eerie calm over the city right now. The air smelled of burning plastic, and made your eyes water.
We actually have “smoke reports” along with weather reports on the local news (complete with maps of which way the wind is blowing the smoke).
It feels incredibly safe here at the moment. of course, we’re living in basically a police state. Tomorrow they are opening up the city further (down to Canal Street), but for the past two days I’ve had to show ID just to walk below Houston Street (to the grocery store).
Last night we happened on a candlelight vigil in Washington Square Park. It was peaceful and beautiful there, but people were somber and quiet.
In Union Square, there’s an anti-war demonstration. People have put down paper and markers, and people have scrawled their opinions that peace should prevail over continued violence.
I think, especially given today’s developments that there were more potential hijackers, and other attacks planned, reacting without violence would be completely irrational. Saying you don’t want to go to take some aggressive action after something like this is kind of like saying that if an individual raped and killed your mother, you wouldn’t want to prosecute him.
I agree that a protracted ground war would be only more costly in terms of human life, butI do hope that we can simply find those responsible (and really the ones who are responsible, not a scapegoat), and deal with them appropriately (i.e., kill them, preferably in a rather painful way).
Finally, we visited St. Vincent’s Hospital, which is a hospital in the West Village. They have blocked off Seventh Avenue and created a huge triage center. There were tons of nurses and doctors available.
The really sad thing is that they really had nothing to do. There just aren’t any survivors.
And that’s the worst news of all.