Posts Tagged ‘9/11’

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Letter From New York September 16, 2014

September 16, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

As I begin to write this, it is a quiet night. I am sitting in the kitchen of my friends Dawn and Gail’s home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They are out with friends and I am sitting putting together my thoughts about the past week.

It was another anniversary of 9/11, the 13th. There was for me a certain symmetry to this one. On September 10th, 2001 I spent the evening with Jon Alpert, the visionary filmmaker, at a screening of a film he had done about the election in New York that was about to happen, Mark Green versus the billionaire Mike Bloomberg.

An early review of the film said that it would topple Bloomberg’s chances of winning the election. Mike Bloomberg came across as arrogant, privileged, ill-mannered, capricious and not a good candidate for Mayor. But then 9/11 happened and the world changed and a billionaire businessman seemed the best person to take over a city that was reeling from a great catastrophe. And, it turned out, he wasn’t a bad mayor. He may have been capricious, ill-mannered, arrogant and privileged but he brought the city back from the brink and carried it through the dark days of 2001 and 2002 when the city was so wounded it didn’t understand how it would survive its pain.

So on September 10th, 2014, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11 I found myself back in the company of Jon Alpert. He and I had dinner with our mutual friend Diana Sperazza, currently an Executive Producer for Investigation Discovery. Before that, she had been at Discovery Times Network and had been the EP on a project we had done ten years ago, OFF TO WAR.

We laughed and reminisced and talked about 9/11, 2001. Diana had been living in Washington. I had been in New York. Jon had been in New York, too. Filmmaker that he is, he grabbed a camera and headed towards the catastrophe and caught poignant images of that day. He had marched from his organization’s headquarters in the oldest firehouse in New York, mere blocks from Ground Zero and managed to get past the barricades. His footage ended up in an HBO special.

The weather has been eerily like that surrounding 9/11. Beautiful, sun kissed days. All summer I have thought about how like that time this summer has been and have had an uneasy feeling. 9/11 in New York was the most beautiful day and we have had the most beautiful summer. Some part of me has lived in fear that some terrible event would befall us this beautiful summer.

We made it through. There was no repeat of 9/11. No mass terrorist event.

But we now live in a world that is the child of that day. Since then, we have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and made a bloody mess of them. ISIS has just killed yet another Western hostage. The Caliphate rises; Arab states want to stop them but are tepid in their support of our desire to stop them. Various terrorist groups now seem to be starting to cooperate, lending their “expertise” to each other. Beheadings are becoming a trend. Egyptian terrorists have started using the gruesome practice in hopes of getting as much attention as ISIS or ISIL or IS, whatever they are being called.

The world feels like a more dangerous place these days. Our outrage against beheadings doesn’t stop them. Sanctions haven’t tempered Mr. Putin’s expansionist tendencies. And our response to Ebola has been slow and strangely muted.

A strange exhaustion has fallen upon us. Everyone seems tired on all sides of the political equation. Boehner seems reading a script as opposed to acting from conviction. One pundit described Obama as a bird in gilded cage, waiting to be let out. Like many Presidents, the office is aging him rapidly.

So we go on, living our lives as best we can while the world seems whirling out of control. Here at home our infrastructure is decaying as we fight wars to keep the barbarians from the gates.

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Letter From New York

September 16, 2013

September 16, 2013

Or, as it seems to me…

It is early Monday morning as I begin to write this, riding the train back down into the city, a grey day, rain falling softly, chill with the first leaves turning.  I am wearing both a sweater and a jacket; last night I had the first fire in the old Franklin stove.  Tonight there may be frost in the Hudson Valley; the seasons are changing.

The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone again, with its reading of names and somber remembrances.  It felt less raw this year to me, less time spent catapulted back to that day, to the raw emotions of shock, surprise, hurt and confusion.  Though I say that, I know I will never be free from that day nor, I think, will any New Yorker who lived through that experience.  Sudden loud noises still cause me to jump.  I have learned to be watchful traveling about the city.  I ride the ends of subway trains, not the middle because for I deem them safer from any terrorist bombers.  Wouldn’t they want to ride the middle of the train where they might do the worst damage?

So I am changed by that day, forever and always, as, I suspect, is everyone who lived through it, in some way carrying a bit of post-traumatic stress with us as we continue to plow forward into the future.

We have seen in a week the stunning turn around in Syria from imminent bombing to a tortured diplomacy that hopefully will succeed in depriving Assad of his chemical weapons without a missile being fired.  It’s a stretch to hope this but a stretch we have committed to taking and one that resonates with a country that is weary, weary as we were, perhaps, when Viet Nam was winding down, exhausted by the expenditure in lives and fortune for muddy goals not completely achieved.

When asked this week how I was by an old friend with whom I had not talked in awhile, I responded that my life, compared with 99% of the world was pretty miraculous, which it is.  I don’t live in the suburbs of Damascus.  I am riding a train down to New York through some of the most beautiful countryside America has to offer, the grey light glinting off the magnificent Hudson.  I have health and am successfully navigating my recuperation from arthroscopic surgery on my knee, not too bad but not quite the walk in the park the doctor made it sound.

Yet, like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I have a sense of ennui.  As we felt as Viet Nam wore down, we are tired and there is a sense of travail.  We have endured ten years now of war in far off places.  We are still weathering the Great Recession, an economic downturn that narrowly avoided being another Great Depression.  We have been dodging bullets, literally and figuratively, and we are weary from it.

Yet we rebounded from the ennui that came at the end of Viet Nam, the oil crisis, the roiling inflation of the 1970’s, the shock upon the body politic of Watergate, a President resigning and the horrible fashion choices of the era.  We survived that, we survived the Yuppie 1980’s and we will survive all this and return to a sense of forward movement.

It is easy when we are in such moods to chat about the decline of America and we are in such a mood.  We have survived ten very difficult years, leaving us questioning much, just as we did at the end of Viet Nam.  We will question for a while yet and we will come up with answers.

I believe the national spirit will revive and prosper.  We have some very challenging and exciting times coming toward us.  There is some economic revival, we have a pause in Syria, the country is barreling toward the moment when whites will be the minority and that will reshape the country in ways we have yet to discover.

On this grey, chill day, I feel the warmth of optimism, wondering what the future will hold, for the country and for me.

 

 

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Letter From New York

September 19, 2011

September 17, 2011
Or, as it seems to me…

My own private 9/11…

One of the most vivid memories of the time of 9/11 came on the 12th. It was morning, and I walked out on to Spring Street, where we lived at the time and walked up and down the street. I paused, across the street from our apartment, and my mind took a mental snapshot of the moment. Ever seen ON THE BEACH, the 1959 apocalyptic film with Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck? In the final frames, the camera pans deserted streets; everyone is dead, there is only the wind, loose paper blowing like tumbleweed, desolation without destruction.

That was Spring Street that day and my mind took a black and white photo of that moment, which remains with me today. The street was empty; I was the only person on it. Bits of paper from the Towers blew down the street; there was no sound but for the wind and the air was heavy with the smell of melted plastic. The moment seared itself to my brain.

So it was that on 9/11I wanted to go back there, to stand in the same place that I had when my mind captured that moment, to capture a new photo, not to supplant the old but to add to it.

So I went there, found the place I had stood, and captured the moment. This time it was a color shot, of a street full of people, of cars and taxis moving east, a feast of visuals and a mélange of languages, of laughing people, street vendors with jewelry, none hawking, that I could see, souvenirs of “9/11” – those bits of plastic engraved with Tower Images, dramatic photos of the buildings before their fall, of dramatic shots of fire fighters or of smoking buildings after the attacks. Nope, not that day, not that street.

I walked down to the Manhattan Bistro, still there after all these years, owned by a Frenchwoman named Maria who had it re-opened as soon as she could, perhaps only a day or two later, determined to be there for her clientele. We sat there often; drink in hand, not saying much that I recall. When I arrived, I recognized the woman behind the bar; it was Maria, Maria’s daughter. I asked after her mother and was saddened to hear she had passed on August 17th; I had hoped to see her. One of the waiters, a busboy then, came over and held my hands and told me it was good to see me. He asked after Al, my former partner. I told him he was now in DC. He smiled and then moved on; I was left warmed by the fact he had remembered us and seemingly well.

My friend Rita Mullin was in town and she wanted to see me but respected that I might want to be alone that day. At first I thought I would but then determined that I really didn’t want to be alone. Sport that she is, she tucked herself in a taxi and met me there, arriving with her son Matt, who has become my friend also.

We talked about 9/11 but it was background and didn’t, as I now recall, completely dominate the conversation. I realized that their presence and our talk helped me bridge the days, the 9/11 that was and the 9/11 I was currently living. The photograph in my mind was not black and white; it was color. It was not of desolation now but of life in all its annoying Soho grandeur, noisy crowds and boisterous sidewalk sellers of art and jewelry – life.

I was glad for that, glad that my friends were with me for that moment and glad I could appreciate their presence.

There is a great line from THE GO-BETWEEN, a film written by Harold Pinter. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” It is my solemn hope that ultimately “9/11” will become a foreign country and that the one we will be living in will be that better place we can still find after all this tragedy.

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Letter From New York September 8, 2011

September 8, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

I am sitting on Labor Day afternoon at the bar of Café du Soleil, my favorite Bistro on the Upper West Side, a place I know because of my friend Lionel, who is sitting next to me, who is chatting with other regulars here while I work on my letter.

I have been doing my best this weekend to avoid writing my letter. The reason? It is the week leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the city is prepping for it and I am not prepared for it. I have been having harbingers of the anniversary all this year. In Norfolk, VA I heard jets that took me back to that night and I have been running from the memories since then. They are burned in my soul and I feel that day intensely when I think about it. That’s why Norfolk was hard.

Monday was hard too. My brother was in town and before we went to breakfast we wandered through the Time-Warner Center at Columbus Circle where there is an exhibit on the heroes of 9/11, photos of those who lived. The policemen, the firemen, the pilots who flew the sorties over the city that are now so indelibly in my mind that the sound of those jets, the F-14’s, will take me back to that night, all their pictures are in the public areas of the Time-Warner Center and, today, reading them, I was about to start crying when my phone rang and I was dragged back into reality.

I was changed by that day; everyone was changed by that day and to think that ten years have gone by is hard, almost impossible. Could that much time have gone by? Or was it not in another lifetime that all this happened, another world that isn’t really real? But it is real. It happened. I was there. I felt the earth shake when the first plane hit the first building. My partner called me, asked me: do you know what’s going on? No. Turn on the TV. I did. The world was changing in front of my eyes. Our eyes. We all saw it, thanks to live television.

So I have had a hard time facing the fact it’s the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I am having a hard time having that day come back so immediately into my life. I am permanently changed by that day. I am, somehow, a little, scarred by that day. I didn’t lose anyone but I lost the world in which I lived. We’re not the same. The world is not the same. And I am sorry we are not the same.

It will be interesting to see how this week plays out as we move toward the anniversary. We cannot “celebrate” this anniversary. We can acknowledge it; we will – everyone will.
It was the seminal moment of this part of American history and I was there. I walked those streets with old man death. There was the smell of death and burnt plastic and my street was full of papers that were blown down from the Twin Towers. And I will, next week, walk those streets, will remember, will sort my feelings from those days and see what sense I make of it all.

I will let you all know. I don’t know how many tears are between this moment and next week – I just know that I know that I was here, that I, in the first person, experienced 9/11, have a set of memories from that day, was at the Pearl Harbor of my time, and that I am still experiencing that day because that kind of experience never dies in one who lives through it.

My brother told me in the days following that he was sorry that I was in New York when it happened. There was no other place I would have been. I was here. I was at the point of history. It was hard but it doesn’t get more real than that.

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Letter From New York, September 25, 2010

September 25, 2010

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Letter From New York

September 23, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

Fall is in the air; the leaves have begun changing on the trees that overhang my creek and litter my land.  Soon they will begin to fall and will literally litter my drive, unattended they are daunting and so weekends will begin to be devoted to clearing them away.  I both love and hate the fall.  I embrace the brisk wind and the wild tension between the encroaching winter and the summer that wants to linger, a autumnal ballet of seasonal forces, a lovely, painful dance as the world sinks into winter.

As that dance progresses, the world has been watching the tiny island of Manhattan for two events that occurred there, one following the other.  The first was glamorous – the all important, celebrity studded Fashion Week; the rich, the beautiful, the fashionistas, the models, the mavens all squirreled in and through the tents at Lincoln Center, all sponsored by Mercedes Benz.  The city could barely sustain the excitement of all this elegance, luxury and excitement; every morning the city woke to yet another display of fashion fabulousity.

The second event was the General Session of the United Nations.  World leaders gathered; Obama addressed the General Assembly, hoping to elicit the support of others in the world to buoy up the Mid-East Peace Process.  Every leader comes with an agenda, a shift they would like to see the world take in the way it sees their efforts on the world stage.  Thursday, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, took the podium and used his time to decry the United Nations, the United States, capitalism, Zionists, laud the wonders of nuclear power and declare that the majority of Americans think that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Delegates from many nations walked out on him.  It was, as the United States spokesperson said:  predictable.  Ahmadinejad has used his annual trips to the UN General Assembly to further distance himself and his country from the rest of the world.  The scariest part of this scenario is that this man runs a country with an army, a pretty big army that has been testing missiles that seem to go farther each time they test them.  The saddest part of all of this is that the Presidency of Iran held by someone more rational could wield a huge influence for good in that desperate part of the world.  Iran is using its influence to stir up anti-Israel feelings all over the world and plays its hand on the world stage with a fistful of wild cards.  No wonder he makes the West crazy.  He hates the West.  Likes our toys, like nuclear power, but doesn’t like what we stand for…

Also in that part of the world is poor Pakistan, ravaged by floods, [have you donated anything to help Pakistan?] being torn apart by religious and political strife, the secular being clawed at by religious fundamentalists with a virtual civil war going on in the north west.  And, oh yes, they have a stockpile of nuclear weapons and they rattle that saber once in awhile.

When I think about these things, I feel great disquiet.  No wonder the fabulousity of Fashion Week is so attractive to so many – it diverts us from the fearsome realities that are just across town as the UN General Session met with frightening men like Ahmadinejad standing up there with all the other world leaders, completely free to rant against the organization hosting him and reminding us that he is running a country that is quite capable of the worst kind of mischief.

There is another Iran, the one that doesn’t want him and who marched in the streets in the spring but we saw what happened to them.  Who will ever forget the pictures of the young girl bleeding to death on the street, an event twittered around the globe.

It is fall, the season that precedes the long winter, a time when the mind roams to all the things that could go bump in the night.  And right now I hear a bump.

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Letter From New York, September 17, 2010

September 17, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

On the anniversary of 9/11 I found myself at a baby shower, thrown by two of the conductors of the trains I ride for two of the passengers. Sixty people were there, forty-five of them from the train community. We laughed, we played games, had a couple of glasses of wine, watched the mothers receive gifts and visited among ourselves. The somber background of the day was not forgotten. On the radio in the morning there was the backdrop of the reading of the names, the remembrance of the gloriously, sweet, beautiful day that was 9/11/2001, a day that could not have been more beautiful, a day that was in perfect juxtaposition to the horror of the day.

At the party, people talked of it, the anniversary. Many commented that there were an unusual number of social events planned for the day. Several at the baby shower had more than one invitation to a social event and there was speculation that many people were holding special events that day because they wanted to leap over the pain of that day, to begin to imprint upon their brains some happier memories – and yet all felt a little a guilty about doing something pleasurable on 9/11. It is a somber day, a holy day in some ways, a day that may remain with us for always as a secular Good Friday, a day in which we will remember the terror that changed our world, forever.

And, at the same time, people are struggling to have life go on in this new reality, which includes terror and tension, fear and fright. Because on September 11, babies are born and folks pass from this earth, love needs to be celebrated and we have to come to terms with the great pain of 9/11 and the reality that the world continues on. Perhaps that’s why this year, more than in years past, there were parties on 9/11, because people are beginning to integrate the reality, the horror of 9/11 into the calendar of their lives.

It was the following day that I felt the spirit, the ethos of 9/11 more than I did on the day itself. I had to return to the city from the cottage early so that I could help with video coverage of a march organized by Religious Freedom USA. Founded by two young men, one a rabbinical student and the other an evangelical Christian, it has devoted itself to fighting intolerance of religious groups in America and right now their focus is on Muslims because they are the group receiving the brunt of intolerance right now.

The day started with speeches at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, around the corner from the proposed Cordoba Center, buildings united, said the pastor of St. Peter’s, by the fact that both were damaged by debris from the same plane hitting the World Trade Center. Josh Stanton, the Jewish half of the founding team, recalled the story told him by his still living grandmother who, as a child, found herself huddled in her home with her parents as a mob surged through the streets of lower Manhattan, ranting as they went, torches in hand, that it was time to kill the Jews.

He was organizing because he did not want a surging mob in the streets calling for the killing of Muslims. At the end of the speeches, there was a mile long march through the streets of lower Manhattan, through the rain, past places in the process of rebuilding, rebuilding from that terrible day that has shifted history. Walking with them brought all of that day back to me and brought back all the weeks following and all the horror, standing on a friend’s rooftop, staring down into the still smoking pit, a miasma of broken buildings and lives, smoldering weeks later, still spewing death.

But out of that horror, out of that smoldering cauldron, the resultant mix should not be hate and bigotry. We should have learned something from our mistake of putting Japanese Americans in camps during WWII, that not all members of a group are the same. My mother told me of our family attempting to downplay our German background during World War I [and II?] because of fear that people would think we were one with the ones we were fighting. Let us look at our history and learn from the mistakes made and do our best not to repeat them.

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Letter From New York September 8, 2010

September 9, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

Saturday will be September 11th, the ninth anniversary of 9/11, a day that will not be forgotten by anyone sentient that day and this side of paradise. We, as a country, are indelibly marked by the events of that day.

A friend asked me what I thought I had learned from 9/11. How had the world changed? Were there any good things that had come of this?

Good, I wondered. Good? What good things could have come from that day?

I find myself staggered, still, by the acts of loving kindness I saw between people that day. There were two African American women who took an elderly Jewish man under their wing and commandeered the universe to see that he got where he was going. There was a bus driver who just did his best to keep everyone moving, moving away from Ground Zero. There was a woman who spoke Connecticut lockjaw but who took her time to take a man, not from her social class, under her wing and see that he got where he was going.

New York changed with 9/11. Already on its way to being a better city, it has become a much better city. The ranting for which New York was so well known has subdued. It began with the need for quiet following 9/11, when any loud noise sent tremors of fear through those who heard it.

One of my favorite stories following 9/11 was that of one of the trade unions here in New York. The man who had the coffee cart at the corner near their office was Muslim. Realizing he might be an object of vindictive behavior by fellow New Yorkers, the union set up guards to make sure he was not harassed, not troubled, not hurt. I weep when I tell that story.

What’s been positive about this?
For one, I know I need to understand and pay attention to one of the great religions of the world. Islam. Incredibly complicated and incredibly nuanced. Just like Christianity. I am beginning to learn the differences between Shia and Sunni and Sufi. The folks who are building the reviled Cordoba Center are apparently Sufis, who are reviled by Osama Bin Laden. Which demonstrates that Islam is not a united front. And if Osama Bin Laden reviles them, should we?

General Petraeus recently asked the group down in Florida that is planning on holding a Quran burning party not to do it because it will endanger troops. I yield to the Commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. If he tells me to stand down, I think I would. We need to think about the implications of actions. And to learn that is a good thing.

What I have learned has grown from the pain and suffering of 9/11, from breathing in the acrid smoky air of the city that day and the days that followed, from walking through streets, litter filled with debris blowing up from Ground Zero, from walking shell shocked through the empty, quiet streets of the busiest city in America. I was there. I walked it. I breathed that air. I smelt death in the streets; no amount of washing the sewers could completely cleanse that smell from where I was, two blocks north of the evacuation zone.

We have entered into a brutal age and unless we become clear about whom exactly we are fighting it will become an even more brutal age and that is not what we need. The Crusaders brought blind brutality to the Holy Land and we are still paying the price of that. What 9/11 has taught me is to acknowledge the huge work that needs to be done if we, the human race, are going to survive, to live in peace. And that is, at best, a distant golden goal when facing some who look to the past and not the future. To acknowledge that, to face that squarely, is a positive thing.

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Letter From New York May 31, 2010

June 1, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

Over the Memorial Day weekend my brother Joe and his friend Deb came to visit me in the city and we did everything we could to make it a New York weekend. We wandered the city, did a rickshaw ride through Central Park, went to see Jersey Boys on Broadway, went to very good restaurants, Redeye Grill and Capsouto Freres and Café du Soleil. We walked the streets, took taxis here and there and soaked in the beautiful weather.

It was hard not to be thinking of the military this weekend, what with it being Memorial Day and it also being Fleet Week and the city full of sailors and Marines, all marching through the town in crisp uniforms, unfailingly polite and looking oh so young while some, for reasons I can only imagine, also seemed so old, looks in their faces that spoke of what they had seen. One such young man was on the train with me on Thursday morning coming up from Washington, D.C. He was a Marine, carrying his kit with him, a face both impossibly young and impossibly old, eyes that burned, making me wonder what they had witnessed. It was a face that marked itself into my mind and will be with me for a long, long, long time.

We also walked around the area near Ground Zero, seeing the hole from which, slowly, is arising the new World Trade Center. We passed a listing of those who had died there, the first name, whose last name started with a double “a” was actually the son of a friend of my brother’s, a moment that made 9/11 even more real than it already was. We walked up Broadway and stopped at St. Paul’s Chapel, mere steps really from Ground Zero. On that day everything around it was destroyed but it endured. George Washington worshiped there during the months that New York was the nation’s capital. Since 9/11 it has become a shrine to that time, that moment in history. In the days and months following 9/11 it became a place of refuge for those who were working in “the pit.” Men and women would work, stagger to St. Paul’s and sleep in the pews or on the cots that were around the perimeter, each of which was outfitted with a stuffed animal. Food was served, souls were touched, bodies were cared for and human beings met human beings, anchoring the workers in the goodness of the human spirit as they were fresh from working in a place that spoke to the evil that men can do to one another.

It was difficult for me. When Deb asked me a question about where I was, what happened to me that day I found myself choking back tears. It comes that way sometimes – I can speak of 9/11 dispassionately and other times I can’t. I am there, I am back again in all the trauma of that day and the days that followed. I can feel the shudder of the building I was living in that was the result of the impact of the first plane hitting the first building. I can stand again at West Broadway and Spring Street and see the flames from the first hit tower. I am still somewhere in my life waiting for my friend of the time Cheryl to arrive, having walked up from near Ground Zero. I am still in the smoked filled, acrid smelling streets, filled with crowds of refugees and crying, dust covered men and women walking traumatically north.

I cannot get away from all of that day. It lives within my soul. Walking with Joe and Deb through that space brought it back, painfully. And yet it was good that I remembered. It reminded me that Memorial Day was about remembering and I was remembering this Memorial Day weekend, remembering 9/11, remembering that all those young Marines and sailors were serving us in the wars that resulted from that day, remembering that were other wars that have been fought and men and women who had sacrificed in those times.

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Letter From New York January 25, 2010

January 26, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

As the Friday night train trundled languorously north, there was an animated conversation between my fellow passengers about what had been the most important stories of the week – in a week that was full of important events.

Haiti still dominated the news and my train companions were all struck by the number of children who had been orphaned, a tragic number in a tragic situation, helpless individuals in an almost hopeless situation.

Friday night there was a telethon for Haiti, organized by George Clooney, a star studded event that pulled on heart strings, opened pockets in a desperate economy, raising an unprecedented 58 million dollars. The reality of the devastation of Haiti has struck everyone – there hasn’t been a story that has quite captured the attention of the world to this degree since 9/11. It is a story that has seized the hearts and minds of people around the world.

Nothing really matches it but the drumbeat of news goes on.

Democrat Martha Coakley lost to Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts for the Senate seat once held by Edward Kennedy. He campaigned as an opponent to Obama’s Health Care Reforms and his victory has dark ramifications for Democrats, a signaling of discontent one year into the Obama Presidency. Even loyal Democrats are discontent, wondering why there is so much focus on Health Care Reform when the economy remains mired in trouble with employment not rebounding. Why health care and not job creation? Without jobs, who can pay for health care? As a close friend of mine stated: it’s the economy, stupid.

Following close on that and outraging most of my Democratic friends was the news that following a Supreme Court decision corporations are now granted the right to spend as much as they want to support candidates. Conservatives rejoice and liberals are rending their clothes. The ruling overturns decades of precedent and could fundamentally change the landscape of American politics. Have we opened the door to office going to the highest bidder?

While the Haiti catastrophe played out in the endless news cycle and while Democrats despaired because of Massachusetts and the Supreme Court ruling, the pop culture landscape was also the focus of attention as NBC came to terms with what to do with its late night franchise. In the end, Conan O’Brien was out, Jay Leno was back in and Conan went out on Friday night with a great deal of humor and more class than could have been expected. In his final remarks, he lauded NBC, his home for many years while acknowledging their current differences. It was a moment he will be proud of in the future; he did not go darkly into that good night.

I went to a hotel in downtown New York on Tuesday evening to meet a producer I’ve known for years though have not seen for many of them. He and the woman he is partnered with were staying in the Millennium Hilton, which overlooks Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site. Both of them as well as many of the crew they were with had not been to that part of Manhattan in all the years since 9/11 and all of them were struck in awe by being by the site and felt, they said, the ghosts of that day all around them. It both left them awestruck and unnerved.

As a New Yorker, I simply was glad that, after all these years, construction cranes were sprouting from the site and there was movement in moving on. The actual site holds less trauma for us now; we are glad to see movement, real movement, in building fresh while at the same time recognizing the city will never be the same – and this has been a week where events have indicated the world will never be the same. It won’t be in Haiti. It won’t be in politics. New York is not the same. But then nothing is ever quite the same, from week to week – it’s just this week seemed to underscore that more than most.

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Letter From New York September 27, 2009

September 28, 2009

Or – as it seems to me…

Autumn has arrived; the official start date has come and gone and all around us there are definitive signs: the leaves on the trees along the creek have started to turn, fallen yellow leaves drift down the stream. The temperature has begun to drop and the mornings and evenings are cool and very crisp. Stores are filled with Halloween candy and accoutrements. Sweaters are being pulled forward in closets and it is sometimes necessary, at least here at the cottage, to have heat – the Franklin stove is in use.

Like the start date of autumn, the Emmys have come and gone, full this year of gallows humor about the state of broadcast television. The humor had a desperate edge to it, voices tinged with a soupcon of hysteria. Julia Louis Dreyfus welcomed everyone to the last official year of broadcast television and everyone in the audience who had a stake in broadcast television was afraid she was correct. And there’s no denying that the business is changing. So is everything in media. A once glamorous business seems a bit tarnished and frayed around the edges.

As for frayed around the edges, there is a bit of that in New York as a result of the arrest of several people who allegedly were planning to use beauty supplies to blow up – something. The central figure is a young Afghan named Zazi who seemingly has evolved from enthusiastic immigrant to ardent terrorist.

Apparently in his computer were found photos of New York subways. I hate to admit it but subway terrorism is something I think about. Not just since these folks were arrested… It’s been on my mind since the London bombings in 2005. I arrived there three or four days after the attacks and realized then, as I realize now, how easy it would be to bring backpack bombs onto trains. So I tend to ride subways at the front or rear of the train, not in the middle because if I were a suicide bomber I’d get on in the middle of the train where I would think I could cause the greatest damage.

These are the kinds of things I think about. As, I have discovered, do my friends and colleagues. 9/11 is distant but not so distant as not to think terrorism is a possibility. It is not a bright thought but it is a realistic one.
I also contemplate the changes in media, the work world within which I live. The velocity of change in the media world is unprecedented. In a very short time, many institutions, like newspapers, find themselves called into question. All in all, it’s just a more complicated world than it was ten years ago. On every level…

My great friend Lionel had the good grace to know Jane Campion in Australia, the country of both their origins, and so was invited to the premiere of her film BRIGHT STAR and he invited me to accompany him. It is the story of John Keats and his muse, Fannie Brawne, played out against the deep, lush English countryside which, on film, reminded me of nothing so much as my beloved Claverack – woody, windy, lush, wet, full of promise. It helped me understand why this area is called “New England.”

It also reminded me of the searching we do in our souls for the meaning of things, the meaning of the seemingly countless small things that end up being so important. It is the small things, piled upon each other, that make the important things. It was the combination of wind, rain, lush countryside and passionate love for Fannie that propelled Keats to greatness.

But what combination of small things caused Zazi to turn from being an enthusiastic American immigrant to one who seemingly wants in the deepest part of his soul to bring mass destruction upon his adopted homeland? What combination of small things has resulted in each of our lives taking the direction they have? How did we individually, as industries, as a society, move from where we were ten years ago to where we are today? In the answers to these questions, we have what’s called history.

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