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Yorkers will be pleased to know that their tragedy is the tragedy
of their upstate neighbors. In the eastern Catskills, where the
economy depends on fading farms, a fading tourism industry, and
flourishing prisons, they were collecting the now-familiar materials
for the business kits of rescue workers — socks, batteries
— at supermarkets, and money for the families of firemen at
middle-of-the-road checkpoints on Route 209, the big highway up
there (it is two lane). All the stores, from gun and trophy-mounting
shops, to Tae Kwan Do studios, to nail salons, had patriotic messages
on their signboards. Flags hung on every porch, many with the creased
brownish lines of long storage. (The mainline Protestant churches
added a somewhat discordant note: "Revenge Restrained/Is a
Victory Gained" said one church signboard. Food for thought.
Was Dresden wrong? Arguably. Was D-Day?) On Route 17, closer to
the city in Joisey, Satin Dolls, a strip club which claims to be
the model for the Ba-Da-Bing Club in The Sopranos, offered
"God Bless America," instead of a typical come-on such
as "Brunette Night."
What
else is missing, besides so much of the city's heart? The famous
map of blue and red counties has temporarily become red, white,
and blue. Osama bin Laden's strike at Gotham may have been like
Pearl Harbor, tactically brilliant but strategically obtuse. Consider
only the question of political psychology. What foe, bent on a major
war, would strike America in liberal New York? It would be as if
the Germans, early in World War I, instead of sinking the Lusitania
and its load of eastern rich people, had cunningly sailed up the
Mississippi and bombarded Des Moines or some other capital of the
peaceful, Germanic midwestern heartland.
Al Sharpton
is also missing. He might as well have been having breakfast at
Windows on the World for all the noise he has made. The New York
mayoral candidates were dancing around the issue of how much to
praise the drop in crime, while promising to reform the cops. The
latter was a feint to Sharpton, who argues that the telos of the
NYPD is to shoot Guinean peddlers and ram nightsticks up the rectums
of hapless Haitians. Now New York has seen that the telos of the
cops is to rush to heart of disaster and die by the hundreds in
the line of duty. A very cynical friend of mine said, "White
people may be coming back."
Two great New
Yorkers who died in the last few years are also missed. Think of
the passion Leonard Bernstein would have thrown into a performance
of the German Requiem. His politics was loopy, but he had a heart
of gold, and the soul of a showman — not a bad combination
for now. Kurt Masur will perform the German Requiem this week, and
he will undoubtedly do a splendid job — the German repertoire
is his mother's milk. Perhaps he will etch a new style of concern
in our minds.
Also missed
is John Cardinal O'Connor. The tough old Irish admiral would have
been a welcome presence. Cardinal Egan is more austere and dignified:
perhaps that too will become the prevailing style of the Roman Catholic
Church. In a service at St. Patrick's he delivered a line —
"not ground zero, but ground hero" — that could have
seemed tinkling and vulgar, but that, combined with his demeanor,
was instead ringing.
Which leads
to a delicate point: What is the matter with the Pope? We hear more
from John Paul II when a serial killer is about to be executed after
numerous hearings and appeals, than when 5,000+ innocent New Yorkers
have been murdered. Is this impression the result of faulty media
coverage? Since John Paul II is one of the great men of the 20th
century, I hope so.
Wall
Street reopened this morning. I took the Lexington Avenue line to
the Municipal Building, north of the financial district. City Hall,
a fine old wedding cake of a building, had black and purple bunting
— a very nineteenth century effect. One expected to see men
in frock coats and toppers. Pedestrian traffic was directed away
from Broadway to the west. At Nassau and Liberty Street, a loudspeaker
was playing patriotic tunes. I caught the end of the "Star-Spangled
Banner," with a trumpet taking the melody. What a grand and
stirring song — and how untrue that it is impossible to sing.
The one trick is to start it low, say the key of G, not the key
of B-flat in which it is usually arranged, to suit the voices of
professional singers.
Wall Street
is the newest and oldest part of town at once. Old New York burned
so many times — once during the Revolution, again in the 1830s
— that most of the buildings are a museum of twentieth century
styles, towering, and vastly overbuilt for their tiny lots. The
streets, however, are still the warren of the seventeenth century,
named from longest items or things (Beaver, Marketfield), or for
English sovereigns or dynasties (William, Hanover).
Police were
letting only people who worked at the stock exchange proceed to
it. One man, New York reasserting itself, argued that he had to
cross the cordoned off space because his office was on the other
side. Sorry, pal — there's been some roadwork. By shuffling
west, one could cross Wall Street at William St. Trinity Church
at the head of the street looked undamaged, but worn — like
an old man who has let himself become shabby. A big flag hung from
the exchange. George Washington (he seems to be everywhere) stood
on the steps of Federal Hall. At the corner of Broad and Wall is
the Morgan Bank in front of which someone exploded a wagon full
of dynamite and metal fragments in 1920. The shrapnel marks are
still in the façade. It was the preceding great Wall Street
disaster.
The spirit
of the Exchange in reopening is admirable. But behind it loomed
the backdrop of ever-burning smoke, and a twisted mesh of building.
The wreckage of the World Trade Towers looks like the ugly modern
sculpture that used to disfigure the courtyard in front of it. Firms
have gone to New Jersey for temporary headquarters. Those will become
permanent unless the city fathers offer some attractive packages,
either downtown, or on Governor's Island, or on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Wall Street cannot survive as a heavily guarded Colonial Williamsburg
of capitalism.
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