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Perspective History tour ends at Ground Zero
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
I returned recently from a two-week
vacation with my husband to the East Coast. We rambled our way east and north
from Missouri through Virginia, up the Hudson River and through the New England
countryside, visiting along the way with relatives not seen for decades and
good friends. The weather was glorious, the colors dazzling.
Having canceled plans for a trip overseas, we made up our
itinerary as we went, incorporating historic sites wed missed or not seen
for a long time. They included Monticello and Mount Vernon in Virginia and
several sites in Massachusetts -- Plymouth, Lexington and Concord, where, on
April 19, 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War were fought, and the
historic mill town of Lowell.
On the second day out, I added one more destination to the list.
My husband cringed but offered only mild protest when I told him I wanted to
see the former World Trade Center, or Ground Zero, as it is now being
called.
Why would you want to do that? he wanted to know. Not
an unreasonable question, but I didnt have a clear answer. Knowing that I
would be likely to write something about the scene, I recalled those oft-quoted
words of Flannery OConnor, I write because I dont know what I
think until I read what I say.
Long before we got to Ground Zero, the effects of what happened
there shadowed our movements. We noted that tourism was down in this normally
heavy New England season, along with other signs, more ominous. Along the
Hudson, posters warned boats to stay away from Indian Point, site of a nuclear
power plant. In Portland, Maine, and Providence, R.I., the Coast Guard was
searching ships. The resulting backup was so severe in Providence that pleasure
boats waited up to 96 hours to dock. South of Portland, at Kennebunkport, a
popular viewing area overlooking the Bush summer home on Walker Point was
closed.
You know, were following the trail of the terrorists
now, I mused in Portland, where two of the hijackers had started their
journeys south. From Portland we would make our way to Boston and to New
Yorks financial district, though by car, not by plane. We would arrive in
the city on Oct. 11, the one-month anniversary of the attacks.
We approached Ground Zero by subway, taking the green line south
from Grand Central Station to Fulton Street and exiting with a crowd far
smaller than usually seen at weekday subway stops. As we wound our way out of
the station, following temporary signs, I was surprised to discover that my
heart was pounding. What would confront us when we emerged, just a couple
blocks north of the towers?
The air in lower Manhattan was still heavy with smoke and dust,
the mood sober, even reverent. Undeterred by Mayor Rudolph Guilianis
admonitions that Ground Zero was not a tourist site, visitors to
the area moved from street to street, pausing between remaining buildings to
catch glimpses or snap photos of the remains. Police were nonchalant.
From one spot we could see earth-moving equipment and gigantic
cranes at work amid the rubble just a block away. From another, we got a full
view of the still-standing frame of one of the towers, about six to seven
stories high. Giant metal shards dangled from the side. At still another, we
could see the burned-out frame of the towers arched entryway.
Some businesses, closed for a time after the attacks, were now
operating in a semblance of normal. At one of New Yorks ubiquitous Duane
Read drugstores, though, several customers wanted, along with their purchases,
information from checkers about daily life on these eerie streets.
On the streets soot and ashes were everywhere -- on tables and
displays inside now-vacant buildings, blown into small mounds where buildings
met the sidewalks. I suppressed a strong impulse to scoop up some ashes and
mark my forehead with a cross. It seemed an appropriate gesture, signifying all
that ashes do for liturgical Christians: remembrance and humility, death and
resurrection, above all, transformation.
It was hard to think, as one who feels close ties to New York, of
resurrection in the context of such carnage. Too many dead, too soon, too
suddenly, too senselessly, some 5,000 who did nothing more dramatic on Sept. 11
than get up and go to work. Too many grieving. Too many questions unresolved.
Shrines, memorials and photos of the missing were posted along the streets. One
woman, held by another, sobbed in the shadows of the buildings.
But transformation? That was easier. The world isnt
the same. Everything is different now. Those thoughts had been expressed
so often after the attacks. Among historic U.S. sites, the land the World Trade
Center once occupied is sure to figure mightily. Sept. 11, 2001, like April 19,
1775, clearly marked a turning point in Americas relationship to the
world. Already, history texts are being revised.
As many have noted, for this season at least, and for the
foreseeable future, we are a changed country: more guarded, literally and
figuratively, less focused on the stock markets ups and downs, less
assumptive about safety, and in certain ways, less free. Movies, even theater,
many books, seem temporarily diminished, overshadowed by the enormity of the
evil visited on us.
I was sensing a change in myself, too: stirrings of a deeper
resolve. Though born of anger, these stirrings were accompanied by a conviction
that our nation will have to go through a long Lenten period before the smoke
will fully clear.
Though I bristle at any hint of blame-the-victim responses to the
attacks, it seems paramount that, as we recover from shock and pain, we reflect
deeply on our nations role as the worlds only remaining superpower,
on our actions around the world -- actions that, while they do not justify
terrorism, may, to the extent that they stem primarily from self-interest,
justifiably nurture rage. Many publications, including NCR, have
provided fodder in recent weeks for such reflection.
Though the issues are complex, though we will often disagree, we
might begin the process by figuratively marking our foreheads with the ashes of
Sept. 11 and ask ourselves where lies hope. Hope not only for ourselves and our
nation, but also for a world that alternately loves and hates us -- less, I
suspect, because of our freedoms, as President Bush asserts, than because of
the wealth and power we often insensitively wield.
Pam Schaeffer is NCRs managing editor. Her e-mail
address is pschaeffer@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 2,
2001
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