Black Tuesday Afterthoughts

Black Tuesday Afterthoughts

The events of September 11 continue to resonate in the lives of everyday New Yorkers (as well as the people from the flights and the Pentagon). Summer solstice just passed; it is only a little more than three months until the one-year mark will arrive.

I do some traveling, a little in my work, and in my personal life I make numerous trips to where my children live, and other places. It is a stark reality that outside of the areas where the terror events occurred, life has gotten very close to ìback to normal.î

Sure, there is Tom Ridge ìColor of The Day [1]î news and follow-up [2] on his ideas and the cabinet-level Homeland Security position, plus the media has updates on al-Qaida sightings, snoopings, and the whereabouts of a dead-or-alive bin Laden. Yet this seems to have become run-of-the-mill daily news fodder. For most of the country, it would seem, the attack of September 11 has fallen into the same category as the Oklahoma City bombing: a tragedy, an outrage, an event of magnitude, but yesterdayís news.

In the New York region (and I suspect the Pentagon and for that spot in Pennsylvania where the plane went down, and for the families and loved ones of all the passengers and crews of the hijacked planes) the pain is still an ever-present, daily ache. That big hole in what is now referred to as Ground Zero is a daily reminder to New Yorkers who frequent lower Manhattan. The horror that followed the terror remains.

Where I live, in a suburb of NYC, Iíve learned of a number of locals who died in the Twin Towers attack. One lived across the street from where my children went to school. Another lived quite close to me, was actually a neighbor. And others were people I knew in passing or were the kind of faces one recognizes when doing the grocery shopping or going to the video store. Locals, neighbors, people on the periphery of oneís everyday life.

All of them had families. The surviving families and loved ones still suffer those losses. To the attackers, they are simply ancillary to the cause; this is just some bystander fallout being described here. And to them, those loved ones and families are infidels, so what of them, anyway? And the believers who perished in the attacks, those who share their faith? Justifiable bystanders, privileged to have lost their lives in what they perceive as so noble an act.

Two locals of were just honored with Little League games for cups named in their honor. I read the story in the local paper [3] and felt a lump in my throat, an ache in my heart. Once again, families impacted by the terrorist attacks. The two Little League coaches are permanently absent. And not just from the baseball games, but from the lives of their families and loved ones. This is painful stuff.

I had occasion to visit lower Manhattan on business two times in the past two months. Both times I was within blocks of Ground Zero. Both buildings in which I had business were vacated that day. As I walked along Broad Street, and then on Beaver Street, by Stone Street, and those other little streets and alleys in the patchwork of lower Manhattan [4], it awed me to think that the entire area had been swept with the dust of the crumbling towers.

Everyone who knows me is aware of my passionate status as a New Yorker. I once was pitching a job that would have had me moving to Massachusetts. One of the reasons I fell out of consideration (the main reason, according to the headhunter) was that the President of the company [5] perceived me as being the kind of guy ìwho would only be dragged out of New York kicking and screaming.î I had made what appears in retrospect to have been an error when I asked the fellow why the job couldnít be done out of New York. Give me a phone, a computer, a fax machine and a desk, and I can work anywhere, I had said. And their proposed main office was a short drive and even shorter plane ride from New York. But what should one expect from some parochial New Englanders, who wanted their Senior Broadcast VP right up there in their suite of offices? The funny thing is that the job included about 75% travel, so Iíd barely have been there even if I had been there, so to speak.

Passion for New York is an easy description for me. But I am also a realist. I love Chicago. In many ways it is a nicer place to live than New York. Chicagoans have a great pride and joy about Chicagoland. They thrive on the activity, the happenings, the culture. The sense of action and motion in Chicago is intense, but the intensity is not the main spirit. Many New Yorkers are easily defined by their intense New York style. But so much of that includes stress, and many wear their stress as a red badge of courage.

We all seem to suffer from too much work and too little time. Connectivity by standard phones, cell phones, pagers, direct connect, e-mail, palms and blackberries enabled with cellular capabilityÖ often makes for too much access. Immediacy becomes an expectation, a demand. Private time can suffer. In New York, there are many who take this so a raging degree. That work ethic and stereotypical description of first-year law associates seems to have become standard fare for many professionals. One sees it all over New York.

September 11 brought about a halt to that for many. Love, family, private time, quality of life, and communications outside of oneís professional life became more important matters. Workaholics rethought their lifestyles. Time, our most precious commodity, and how to spend it, was a matter of much reconsideration.

Outside of the sites and surroundings where the events occurred, everyday life has resumed much of the normal pace, the way things were before the events. In New York there is constant talk about how to rebuild, how to honor those lost, just what would be the proper and appropriate. Architects and planners are busily offering up projects, solutions, ideas, proposalsÖ it remains a topic of some current, ongoing debate.

The New York Times continued until December 31 to print the daily page with the thumbnail descriptions of those who perished in the attacks. Since then the page appears only sporadically. These short vignettes are often difficult to read. The Timesí website offers a complete list [6] and it is also available as a book. Some of the profits go to the Victimsí Fund.

The general consensus in the talk I hear is that as a nation we await, anticipate, and expect another attack. Terrorist action, on our soil. But the repercussions of September 11th, and continued focus, perception, and awareness of the proportion, magnitude, and impact of the attack seems lessened in the national eye.

New Yorkers (et al) now share what the victimsí families and loved ones felt in the aftermath of Oklahoma City, the USS Cole attack, the embassy bombings, and other such instances.

I am not promoting long-term mourning or being somber as a way of life. I am concerned, though, that everyday life seems to somehow minimize, and thus ignore these harsh realities and the resultant fallout and effect on our daily lives.

Your thoughts? I welcome and encourage comments. The Manila Weblog system (the blogging software making this possible) offers a fully functional comments feature.