Beyond NIMBY: Americans can be very generous, selfless in their determination to help the less fortunate. Look at all the volunteers who helped clean up after the tornadoes in the Midwest, or Tropical Storm Lee in the East. But try putting a solid waste transfer center in their neighborhood, or a drug rehabilitation center, or a cell tower, and they turn very protective of their home turf, a condition summed up in the acronym NIMBY, not in my back yard.
Today’s NIMBY fight centers on the financial health of the country. Almost everyone agrees cuts must be made in spending programs, while tax loopholes or credits must be closed to raise more revenues. Trouble is, no one who benefits is eager to give up any program or tax advantage in the national interest. In other words, any relief to the country’s debt and budget crisis should come Not On My Back (NOMBa).
NOMBa defenders come from both parties. Normally, Democrats favor higher taxes for energy companies. But Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) has expressed opposition to President Obama’s plan to hike taxes on oil companies. They have, in the past, greased her campaigns with significant contributions.
The Postal Service has indicated a need to close a gaping deficit by, among other measures, eliminating Saturday deliveries. But rural state politicians are aghast at such a prospect.
Shared sacrifice...doing the patriotic thing...compromise. Words and concepts no longer part of the modern day politician’s lexicon, nor part of his or her NOMBa constituency's.
Child Pat-Down: Seems the Transportation Safety Administration is ready to relax rules requiring ultra-scrutiny, including pat-downs, of young children awaiting flights.
Ah, the innocence of youth is finally being recognized by the bureaucrats. Only, I find it all rather discomforting. Sure, there might be the occasional inappropriate pat-down or diaper check. No one would argue with the need to rid the system of these aberrations.
But remember, people, we’re dealing with the mindset of terrorists, evil men and women who are willing to blow up themselves and their loved ones to advance their cause. The TSA and Homeland Security are always countering the last known terrorist plot. As reprehensible as it might appear to us, hiding an explosive in little Johnny’s clothing, or in grandma’s clothing, is not beyond their capacity, especially as we have now opened the door ever so slightly to such possibilities.
Dirty Fingers: Actually, my fingers are a lot cleaner these days. Except this morning, when I chose to read parts of The NY Times in print, rather than on my iTouch.
Some 20 years ago I complained to The Times about the ink that transferred from its paper to my fingertips each day. It got so bad I would periodically stop reading the paper to give my fingers time to shed the stained skin that refused all attempts to cleanse it from “all the news that’s fit to print” on my digits. The Times said it was no worse than other papers, not a very heartening response. I apparently wasn’t the only one who suffered, as advertisements appeared in several publications promoting gloves to wear while reading The Times.
Reading the paper on an electronic device is cleaner, but I’m still an old-fashioned type of guy. I like the “feel” of newsprint in my hand, just not on my hand.
A Final 9/11 Thought: Among the more poignant, and heart-wrenching, 9/11 remembrances were the scenes recounting final telephone calls from victims trapped on the top floors of the Twin Towers. They made me contemplate: Is it better to be reached by your loved one for a final goodbye, or is it preferable to receive a voice mail message that can be kept for eternity?
I don’t have an answer. I hope never to face such a technology-driven Sophie’s Choice.
Showing posts with label Twin Towers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twin Towers. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Reflections on September 11
Inside my cranium all sorts of thoughts, emotions and memories swirl about, battling for supremacy.
I get it. I understand media fixation on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But I’m struggling with my own acceptance of the commemoration, as if paying respect to the dead in some way can assuage the tragedy that has befallen our nation by the subsequent acts of our elected leaders who chose to plunge us into two intractable, interminable wars and into a political no-fly zone where government by negotiation and compromise is as foreign as an al-Qaeda peace offering.
I can’t bring myself to read but a handful of the articles spewed out by the omnipresent media. I can’t bring myself to watch special after special depicting the loss of our seeming innocence 10 years ago. September 11 without a doubt was a national catastrophe, but it was not the first time our country suffered physical and emotional scars, some deeper and more conflicted than the sudden though perhaps expected assault by an enemy committed to our destruction as a beacon of civilization.
We lost 2,983 mostly civilian souls 10 years ago. An almost incomprehensible tally. But not unprecedented, not in sheer numbers the largest of any one day toll, nor the biggest in percentage to total population. On the killing fields of Antietam, near Sharpsburg, MD, on September 17, 1862, the armies of the North and South inflicted the highest single day carnage in our nation’s history: 3,654 died, almost 20,000 more were injured. The dead represented .00011% of the U.S. population of 31,443,000. Put into perspective, the equivalent loss of life against 2001 census figures would have been 31,361. Antietam. Aside from Civil War buffs, hardly anyone takes note of September 17, I’d venture to say.
We do remember and commemorate Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, when 2,459 perished, .000018% of our then population. Film of the sneak attack was as visible in its day as the tumbling of the Twin Towers.
Other seminal moments have been seared into our national conscience: 274 sailors killed in the the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor February 15, 1898, that precipitated the Spanish-American War; the sinking of the Lusitania May 7, 1915, with the loss of 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Though a British ship, the torpedoing of the Lusitania fueled U.S. entry into World War I two years later after Germany began a new campaign of indiscriminate U-boat attacks on Atlantic shipping; the now refuted attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin August 2-4, 1964. No one died in that incident; from 1965 until U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975, nearly 58,000 Americans perished.
Perhaps part of my antipathy to September 11 is I knew no one who died that day, though one of our friends surely escaped death by having the good fortune to reschedule a morning meeting to his midtown office rather than in the headquarters of AON in 2 World Trade Center.
Perhaps another part of me is disturbed by the failure of our government to seek shared sacrifice in the war on terror. I’m not an advocate of a draft, but paying for the wars with a more equitable tax schedule, especially for the wealthy, would have been appropriate. Moreover, equipping our troops with the right materiel should have been a no-brainer, along with providing top notch veterans medical care and employment help once their tours of duty ended. Of course, launching an undermanned, trumped up war in Iraq instead of pursuing al-Qaeda in Afghanistan cannot be ignored, either.
Perhaps I’m distant from the commemorations because on September 11, 2001, I was in Phoenix, attending a technology conference. I turned over in bed at 6 am and decided to alter my usual business travel routine. Instead of turning on the TV to watch the news, I picked up the USA Today at my front door and returned to bed to read. A half hour later, 9:30 in New York, I called my office to listen to voice mail. My brother Bernie in Maryland had left a cryptic message asking if I was all right. I transferred to Mary Beth, our managing editor. Perhaps she could explain why he might have asked a question so strange 10 years ago, so commonplace today. She stunned me saying two planes had flown into the Twin Towers, one of which had already imploded. For the next several hours I lay transfixed in bed watching hell transform lower Manhattan.
I called Gilda. Along with the rest of the Beth Israel Medical Center staff, she was assigned to prepare and wait for survivors who never materialized. At 8 pm, she was sent home.
I was marooned in Phoenix until Saturday. Sunday morning, after an overnight stop over in Chicago, I flew back to LaGuardia Airport, a trip I had made some 25 times a year for the prior 25 years. More than 500 approaches to the city, in daytime and evening, never tiring of the spectacle under wing. At first, if not at a window seat, I would crane my neck to snag a view of the stalagmites of steel and glass rising from the bedrock of Manhattan.
Now, on September 17, 2001, as the flight from Chicago descended in the sky above New Jersey, from 50 miles out plumes of smoke could be seen still rising from the spot where the World Trade Center stood less than a week earlier. As the plane glided up the East River, even without the Twin Towers the Manhattan skyline was still spectacular, as majestic as the Rockies or the Grand Canyon.
I had visited the World Trade Center many times for business meetings. I had eaten in Windows on the World, taking in the food and the view. I was a dazzled tourist on the observation floor, sitting in the scooped out seats flush against windows that let you peer almost straight down from more than 1,000 feet in the air. I miss the towers.
But perhaps because I’m from an ethnic culture that has known more than its fair share of trauma, unspeakable, often unimaginable, offenses, and yet extraordinary resilience and rebirth, I can’t stop for a day dedicated to one event. I can pause and hope we will be vigilant enough to prevent a similarly invasive assault on our way of life. I hope those who lost loved ones always remember them. I hope their fellow countrymen never forget them. But I also hope we keep our collective grief in context while rededicating our nation to values that made America the most remarkable and envied in the world.
I get it. I understand media fixation on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But I’m struggling with my own acceptance of the commemoration, as if paying respect to the dead in some way can assuage the tragedy that has befallen our nation by the subsequent acts of our elected leaders who chose to plunge us into two intractable, interminable wars and into a political no-fly zone where government by negotiation and compromise is as foreign as an al-Qaeda peace offering.
I can’t bring myself to read but a handful of the articles spewed out by the omnipresent media. I can’t bring myself to watch special after special depicting the loss of our seeming innocence 10 years ago. September 11 without a doubt was a national catastrophe, but it was not the first time our country suffered physical and emotional scars, some deeper and more conflicted than the sudden though perhaps expected assault by an enemy committed to our destruction as a beacon of civilization.
We lost 2,983 mostly civilian souls 10 years ago. An almost incomprehensible tally. But not unprecedented, not in sheer numbers the largest of any one day toll, nor the biggest in percentage to total population. On the killing fields of Antietam, near Sharpsburg, MD, on September 17, 1862, the armies of the North and South inflicted the highest single day carnage in our nation’s history: 3,654 died, almost 20,000 more were injured. The dead represented .00011% of the U.S. population of 31,443,000. Put into perspective, the equivalent loss of life against 2001 census figures would have been 31,361. Antietam. Aside from Civil War buffs, hardly anyone takes note of September 17, I’d venture to say.
We do remember and commemorate Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, when 2,459 perished, .000018% of our then population. Film of the sneak attack was as visible in its day as the tumbling of the Twin Towers.
Other seminal moments have been seared into our national conscience: 274 sailors killed in the the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor February 15, 1898, that precipitated the Spanish-American War; the sinking of the Lusitania May 7, 1915, with the loss of 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Though a British ship, the torpedoing of the Lusitania fueled U.S. entry into World War I two years later after Germany began a new campaign of indiscriminate U-boat attacks on Atlantic shipping; the now refuted attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin August 2-4, 1964. No one died in that incident; from 1965 until U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975, nearly 58,000 Americans perished.
Perhaps part of my antipathy to September 11 is I knew no one who died that day, though one of our friends surely escaped death by having the good fortune to reschedule a morning meeting to his midtown office rather than in the headquarters of AON in 2 World Trade Center.
Perhaps another part of me is disturbed by the failure of our government to seek shared sacrifice in the war on terror. I’m not an advocate of a draft, but paying for the wars with a more equitable tax schedule, especially for the wealthy, would have been appropriate. Moreover, equipping our troops with the right materiel should have been a no-brainer, along with providing top notch veterans medical care and employment help once their tours of duty ended. Of course, launching an undermanned, trumped up war in Iraq instead of pursuing al-Qaeda in Afghanistan cannot be ignored, either.
Perhaps I’m distant from the commemorations because on September 11, 2001, I was in Phoenix, attending a technology conference. I turned over in bed at 6 am and decided to alter my usual business travel routine. Instead of turning on the TV to watch the news, I picked up the USA Today at my front door and returned to bed to read. A half hour later, 9:30 in New York, I called my office to listen to voice mail. My brother Bernie in Maryland had left a cryptic message asking if I was all right. I transferred to Mary Beth, our managing editor. Perhaps she could explain why he might have asked a question so strange 10 years ago, so commonplace today. She stunned me saying two planes had flown into the Twin Towers, one of which had already imploded. For the next several hours I lay transfixed in bed watching hell transform lower Manhattan.
I called Gilda. Along with the rest of the Beth Israel Medical Center staff, she was assigned to prepare and wait for survivors who never materialized. At 8 pm, she was sent home.
I was marooned in Phoenix until Saturday. Sunday morning, after an overnight stop over in Chicago, I flew back to LaGuardia Airport, a trip I had made some 25 times a year for the prior 25 years. More than 500 approaches to the city, in daytime and evening, never tiring of the spectacle under wing. At first, if not at a window seat, I would crane my neck to snag a view of the stalagmites of steel and glass rising from the bedrock of Manhattan.
Now, on September 17, 2001, as the flight from Chicago descended in the sky above New Jersey, from 50 miles out plumes of smoke could be seen still rising from the spot where the World Trade Center stood less than a week earlier. As the plane glided up the East River, even without the Twin Towers the Manhattan skyline was still spectacular, as majestic as the Rockies or the Grand Canyon.
I had visited the World Trade Center many times for business meetings. I had eaten in Windows on the World, taking in the food and the view. I was a dazzled tourist on the observation floor, sitting in the scooped out seats flush against windows that let you peer almost straight down from more than 1,000 feet in the air. I miss the towers.
But perhaps because I’m from an ethnic culture that has known more than its fair share of trauma, unspeakable, often unimaginable, offenses, and yet extraordinary resilience and rebirth, I can’t stop for a day dedicated to one event. I can pause and hope we will be vigilant enough to prevent a similarly invasive assault on our way of life. I hope those who lost loved ones always remember them. I hope their fellow countrymen never forget them. But I also hope we keep our collective grief in context while rededicating our nation to values that made America the most remarkable and envied in the world.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
A Time for Every Purpose
My birthday is March 6. It’s not too early for those who don’t have that date circled on their 2011 calendar to do so now, though that is not the reason I am giving you six months’ notice. Rather, I am reacting to a story in this morning’s NY Times, “This Life: A Day To Dance Or Weep?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/fashion/05ThisLife.html?_r=1&hpw)
As a New Yorker, I reflect almost daily on the void in lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers stood. Now that I’m no longer commuting to an office, most days I’m listening to WCBS880 radio news as I putter around in the morning. With uncanny persistence, the announcers each day call out the time exactly at 9:11. They probably don’t realize they repeatedly are piercing the hearts of so many listeners. Perhaps no one who was not a New York area resident that fateful day nine years ago can fully appreciate the ongoing assault to our sensibilities.
The Times article raised an important point. When is it proper to return to normalcy, to celebrate happy occasions that by coincidence, or planning, fall on September 11? In a larger sense, in the context of the current debate on the building of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, when is it proper to just...move on?
If we wanted to always dwell on the past, there are ample reasons to live a cloistered and melancholy life. A few years ago, some enterprising(?) souls put together a daily calendar listing calamities that befell Jews throughout the millennia. How comforting to know I’m part of a people with so long and rich a daily history!
When I tell people I was born on March 6, I usually say I share the date with the fall of the Alamo. I don’t mention that Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, as well as a hundred or more other Alamo defenders, died that day. I was a big Davy Crockett fan as a child. I adored Fess Parker. Even had a ‘coon-skin hat for a while.
The Alamo wasn’t the only infamous event to happen on my birthday. Of far greater import was the Missouri Compromise that President Monroe signed into law in 1820, permitting the Show Me territory to enter the Union as a slave state. Thirty-seven years later to the day, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most egregious decisions. In the Dred Scott case, the court ruled, according to Wikipedia, “that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves—whether or not they were slaves—were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process.” How would you like that legacy as part of your birthday heritage?
Of course, some less traumatic occurrences happened on my birthday. In 1475, Michelangelo was born. Lou Costello (1906), Alan Greenspan (1926) and Shaquille O’Neal (1972) also took their first breaths on March 6. Life ended for Louisa May Alcott (1888), John Philip Sousa (1932), Pearl S. Buck (1973), Ayn Rand (1982), Georgia O’Keeffe (1986) and many more luminaries on March 6. In short, every day has its pluses and minuses.
September 11 is no exception. Did you know that in 1609 Henry Hudson discovered Manhattan on September 11? Or that the British Mandate of Palestine began in 1922 (the Mandate might have been detested when it ended in 1948, but it was the first concrete step toward Israeli statehood). One year earlier, the first moshav (cooperative farm) was settled in Palestine. In 1978, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat came together on September 11 to sign the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt. In 1989, the first breach of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary allowed thousands of East Germans to flee repression, hastening the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. In 2005, Israel unilaterally completed disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
On September 11, 2001, a day of crispness and bright sunshine, 2,977 innocent people were killed in the terrorist attacks. We should never forget them. We should never forget, or forgive, the murderous band that rained death on our country. But it’s time to move on. As it says in Ecclesiastes, “A season is set for everything...A time for weeping and a time for laughing, a time for wailing and a time for dancing.” Every day has its history of tragedy. Our spirit demands we infuse September 11 with added meanings, new hopes, new reasons to celebrate, not just commemorate.
As a New Yorker, I reflect almost daily on the void in lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers stood. Now that I’m no longer commuting to an office, most days I’m listening to WCBS880 radio news as I putter around in the morning. With uncanny persistence, the announcers each day call out the time exactly at 9:11. They probably don’t realize they repeatedly are piercing the hearts of so many listeners. Perhaps no one who was not a New York area resident that fateful day nine years ago can fully appreciate the ongoing assault to our sensibilities.
The Times article raised an important point. When is it proper to return to normalcy, to celebrate happy occasions that by coincidence, or planning, fall on September 11? In a larger sense, in the context of the current debate on the building of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, when is it proper to just...move on?
If we wanted to always dwell on the past, there are ample reasons to live a cloistered and melancholy life. A few years ago, some enterprising(?) souls put together a daily calendar listing calamities that befell Jews throughout the millennia. How comforting to know I’m part of a people with so long and rich a daily history!
When I tell people I was born on March 6, I usually say I share the date with the fall of the Alamo. I don’t mention that Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, as well as a hundred or more other Alamo defenders, died that day. I was a big Davy Crockett fan as a child. I adored Fess Parker. Even had a ‘coon-skin hat for a while.
The Alamo wasn’t the only infamous event to happen on my birthday. Of far greater import was the Missouri Compromise that President Monroe signed into law in 1820, permitting the Show Me territory to enter the Union as a slave state. Thirty-seven years later to the day, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most egregious decisions. In the Dred Scott case, the court ruled, according to Wikipedia, “that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves—whether or not they were slaves—were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process.” How would you like that legacy as part of your birthday heritage?
Of course, some less traumatic occurrences happened on my birthday. In 1475, Michelangelo was born. Lou Costello (1906), Alan Greenspan (1926) and Shaquille O’Neal (1972) also took their first breaths on March 6. Life ended for Louisa May Alcott (1888), John Philip Sousa (1932), Pearl S. Buck (1973), Ayn Rand (1982), Georgia O’Keeffe (1986) and many more luminaries on March 6. In short, every day has its pluses and minuses.
September 11 is no exception. Did you know that in 1609 Henry Hudson discovered Manhattan on September 11? Or that the British Mandate of Palestine began in 1922 (the Mandate might have been detested when it ended in 1948, but it was the first concrete step toward Israeli statehood). One year earlier, the first moshav (cooperative farm) was settled in Palestine. In 1978, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat came together on September 11 to sign the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt. In 1989, the first breach of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary allowed thousands of East Germans to flee repression, hastening the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. In 2005, Israel unilaterally completed disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
On September 11, 2001, a day of crispness and bright sunshine, 2,977 innocent people were killed in the terrorist attacks. We should never forget them. We should never forget, or forgive, the murderous band that rained death on our country. But it’s time to move on. As it says in Ecclesiastes, “A season is set for everything...A time for weeping and a time for laughing, a time for wailing and a time for dancing.” Every day has its history of tragedy. Our spirit demands we infuse September 11 with added meanings, new hopes, new reasons to celebrate, not just commemorate.
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