New York City woke up on Monday and went to work. Not business as
usual. It will be a long time before anyone is likely to use that phrase
anywhere within miles of Ground Zero. And yet, the subways rattled, the
busses rolled, and life continued.
But track back. Back to Friday night. Around noon on Thursday, I saw the first e-mail. Lit candles on Friday at 7:00 pm. A nice sentiment, I thought, but New Yorkers, I wasn't sure. New Yorkers are a cynical breed, rarely moved to such gestures. Yet still, easy enough to make sure we had a candle on hand. Easy enough to make sure we placed it where others could see.
On my way back to our apartment Friday night, it became clear that the city was not running to type. Candles. Everywhere candles. Lonely ones, in windows. Clusters, in front of larger buildings. People, walking, with candles. In front of stores, candles set out, as people shopped, and then, packages in hand, picked them up and continued. In front of restaurants, shoals of flickering flame. People arriving, candle in hand, and placing them, carefully among those already there.
Saturday, we escaped the city, off into suburbia at my parents. But suburbia transformed. Everywhere, flags. Then we made our way down the road two towns to Chappaqua. Westchester Suburban prosperity redux. But not on Saturday night. On Saturday night, a tiny slice of small town America. On a slightly soggy ballfield, in the center of town, people slowly filtered in. $20 dollars a family. A community gathring to raise money for the emergency service personal in the city, or more importantly, their widows and children. And far more importantly, a chance to assert a sense of community. Cub scouts, Boy scouts and girl scouts parading the colors. 2,000 people, singing songs we rarely sing in public in our jaded era. Perhaps even more to the point, verses we rarely sing. The third and fourth verses.
How often do we ask the rocks to break their silence, how often do we sing of the alabaster cities? How often do we hear the words of "We shall overcome" Not merely the refrain, but the verses, all the verses. How often do we mean them, as we sing them? Finally, sun set, two thousand candles lit, two thousand voices, many blurred by tears, suddenly unashamed to sing "God bless America."
Not, I think, a sight to give much satisfaction to those who would terrorize us. Now, will this last? I don't know. Outrage is easy to raise, but hard to sustain. A week, a month, even six months of focus won't answer the need. Our society has become bad at the long haul. Easily distracted, and prone to quick fixes, how long before we move on to the "next thing?" And how will we react when the next shoe drops. And then the next.
Make no mistake, if we want to actually attack problems, and not merely
make gestures, we've set ourselves a long serious task. The roots of this
crises are sunk deep, the soil which nurtures it is spread wide. Problems
decades in the making are unlikely to vanish in short order, and our ability
to actually attack some of the root causes are limited.