Thursday
Sept. 13, 2001
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Thursday Sept. 13, 2001 |
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aftermath |
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There will be consequences, from the ridiculous to the momumental. People are looking for loved ones. Knowing that as time passes, the likelihood of finding them injured in the hospital or dazed with amnesia in a shelter is declining, adding up to grief. Have you noticed that you aren't seeing commercials on commercial stations? How unseemly to have commercials. Yes, but. They pay for the broadcasts, ultimately. FFP mentioned that he will have to scramble to redo schedules for clients who sell things and buy commercials and pay him to help them. Commerce and commercials share a root, don't they? Have you thought about a company that sells food in airports? One airline (Midway) has gone out of business while grounded. They were already on the mat, of course. Does it mean anything compared to human life? No. Will it have an effect on all of us? Yes. The other odd thing about watching TV with digital cable is seeing the show that is not being shown when pushing info. M*A*S*H, Jerry Springer, whatever. A trivial oddity. A reminder that we don't always have many channels of rubble. As we fly again, a tiny thing will change for me. In my backpack, there are always emergency supplies. You see some of them here. Compass, a flat pack of mending tape, a spare watch, hard candy, velcro strap and...a Swiss Army knife. This knife has opened wine bottles, sliced cheese, opened bottles, unscrewed screws. Opened a can of coffee in our guest house in Vancouver, Washington. I wonder can I pack this handy thing in my checked luggage? Or does it just stay home? Those of us lugging computers and wanting to also carry a clean shirt and dress shoes and stuff on board may tax the patience with carryons, as I understand it. With longer and longer delays, I'll be taking more and more decongestant trying to keep ears flight ready. They may have to take me off the plane on a strechter. But...it's a small thing. What if you are a kid with an Arab-sounding name who wants to be a pilot? So many consequences. Large and small. Will there be positive things, too? Will we rethink our prejudice and attitudes? Apparently not. People are lashing out at Muslim mosques. I don't believe in their religion. But I believe in leaving people to their religion except when the try to subjugate others with it. Acts of war. Locking up all the women. (Question: If the Teliban had locked up a random fifty percent of the population instead of all the women, would we already be bombing them? I bristle at the thought that I would be chattel in a bunch of these countries. And don't write me hate mail about it being their religion. I don't believe in their religion.) Still, I like to leave people alone. And I like to believe that people have all kinds of different attitudes and should be considered innocent until proven otherwise to protect my freedom. Bryant Gumbel says that we have, in the past, been reluctant to do covert action or allow collateral damage. What planet has he been on? Of course, we probably have limited these things in recent years a bit. And maybe we shouldn't have. Especially on targeted covert actions. I took a poll on eXcite today. What freedom would you give up for security. I voted 'none of the above.' Freedom wins with me. So did 54% of the people.
And guess what, ladies and gents? The amount of hand luggage you and I take on isn't going to change one thing. That Swiss Army knife isn't either. (It will, of course, theoretically make it easier to check that bad guys don't have them. But they will have moved on to weapons left by maintenance guys or infiltrating the crews. Oh, they already have.) We need to collect a bunch of personal data about fliers and then dump it into a secure data base and use it to target a close look at a few fliers. Who are they? Are they working? How do they support themselves? Credit ratings. How did they pay for the ticket? Have they been in pilot school along with several other travellers? Are they going where they claim? If we protected the data (OK, it's the government, it could be a problem but they already know a lot of stuff) and just issue an alert on suspicious situations, we could be tons safer. These hijackers would have set off every bell and siren, I'll bet.
I still find my work hard to do. It seems trivial. Why wouldn't it?
I did sleep a bit better last night. If I'm having trouble sleeping and awake with a start each morning with a knot in my stomach, realizing it really happened then what, I ask myself, must people feel who saw it, lost friends and family. Who, if they survived, don't have an office. People who must dig through the rubble. That guy who lost probably hundreds of his workers in his company is the most shocking (including his brother).
Lunch. I wandered around Best Buy. I don't know why. Just looking at gadgets and DVDs. Then I bought some cheese and humus from Whole Foods and took it back to the office and ate it with some free chips and a soda. I had a taco for breakfast from the stand downstairs, too, this morning.
Dinner. I had steamed squash and onions and chicken with a tomatillo sauce. Because my sweet husband cooked it.
I tried to watch movies instead of the rubble channels. Two tries in sucession showed a Manhattan skyline with the towers. I'm comfortable that these channels are running programming decided long in advance, but the effect is jarring. I napped in my chair. FFP, too. He woke up and asked me if I'd been on the phone. No. A phone rang on TV and he woke up ready to answer it a little later. Either the molds or the cumulative feeling of helplessness, is making me sick. I take some Dimetapp, drink Sleepy Time Tea and eschew alcohol and caffeine and try to get a good night's sleep. I'm such a wimp. What if something had actually happened to me?
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emergency supplies
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182
JUST
TYPING