I report and link. You decide. - BJon
From a Lucianne .com article, Rescue.Recover.Revenge:
Friday, September 14, 2001 [/] Rescue.......Recover......Revenge — written in dust — for now.
NEW YORKERS ARE A RELATIVELY impatient lot. Each of us has our own agenda. Our general reaction to changes in our environment is "What's in it for me?" and if it looks like something worth having, "Can I get it yesterday?" Around the World Trade Center where the dust is thick and heavy enough to hold graffiti for more than an hour, someone has written "War"and "God Help Us" and of course, untypeable obscenities as comments on the changes that took place on Black Tuesday. But we are a goal oriented group as well. On the wall at the epicenter someone has scrawled this suggestion on how to proceed. Rescue, Recover, Revenge. This shows our grim love of priorities. Save lives, recover the dead and then support a fire storm from hell to rain down on those who have to savagely tried to destroy us. We are still in the first two phases and very busy.
In order to understand the quiet ferocity under which we are currently living you have to know that New Yorkers are junkies about their city. Mainliners and stoners so hooked on the excitement, the people, the chance to change one's life that this great city promises and delivers, that they die a little when they have to be away from it for too long. New York is their White Lady. Their drug of choice and they cannot, will not live without it. This is why our Mayor cries when he talks of dead fire fighters. They die for this city and for us.
Today I got an E mail from a non-New Yorker whom I love a lot. A good and abiding friend who is not from here but from some bosky southern glen that drips moss and musk, where men say ma'am, still wear hats and tip them and ladies still use fans and talcum powder. He said this has all been too much, too horrible, too scary. He and his lovely southern wife and Bottecelliesque child want to leave - go anywhere where he can make a living - just go - get out of hell on earth where buildings blow up in the shimmering morning sun and snot-nosed teen-age cretins beat up innocent Arab American grocers on Atlantic Avenue.
Last night, he writes, he and his wife stopped in for a bite to eat at a local cafe. There was a fireman at a table. My friend's toddler recognized a hero and offered him his "sippie" cup. The most valuable thing the baby owned.
I wrote my friend that even though he was not a native New Yorker he shouldn't leave, that a child with that kind of judgment deserved to be raised here. Bring up a different kind of kid. One who doesn't cut and run when the going gets dusty and bloody and scary.
LAST NIGHT my older son Josh spent the night in the "hole" at the World Trade Center. They gave him a respirator, an iridescent flash vest, a hardhat that a falling steel beam would crack like a robin's egg, water and as many sandwiches as he had time to scarf down. Because he is a street level working New Yorker, he had the right shoes. This is a town where having proper foot gear can mean everything.
When the crew boss decided Josh was about to collapse with fatigue they told him to go lie down on one of the cots set up in the American Express building (later evacuated. It too, was about the go down.) On his way to a cot he noticed that other workers never made it to the building with the cots. They just sank down on the rubble and slept. Sometimes they fell down in puddles and slept. It didn't matter. When your bones weep, sleep is sleep.
The nightly news showed Clinton on the street here in New York. He was in front of Curry in the Hurry on Lexington Avenue miles from the scene or carnage. He had his arms around a comely, crying brunette holding a picture of a missing loved one. He was feeling her .....pain. Doing something for himself, not New York. Sorry, that may be crass but my loathing for this man requires medication. What, dear God, is he doing here in the first place?
Josh returned from his labors around 2 this afternoon. He had walked most of the way from downtown. He reported that as he dragged his dust covered body passed the loaded cafes, people applauded. A bartender was hanging out a flag in the Village. Josh had strength enough to remind him to fly it at half staff. He got home, showered, changed his crusted shirt and at 5 p.m. he went back downtown.
It is morning now and Josh has not returned from the "hole" where the biggest job is sorting body parts. Matching a leg to another leg, a hand to an arm. If he finds something he gives it to a medic who takes it to be logged. He and thousands are working like this hour on end. They are too old to own and offer a "sippie" cup. Their heart and spine is all they have to give. These are New Yorkers. They don't quit (Fuggetaboutit), they are tough (Wanna make somethin' of it?) and unforgiving (You gonna pay for that, man)
Rescue, recover....that's for now. Revenge?
Hey, bin Laden! Yo momma!
Originally published 9-14-01 [/] [My ellipses and emphasis]
Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays
