Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 08:57:21 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?eldorra=20mitchell?= <manynotone-AT-yahoo.co.in>
Subject: Re: letter from ground zero


 Letter From Ground Zero
> by JONATHAN SCHELL  
> The Power of the Powerful
> This article is the first of a series of entries in
> a
> sort of reflective public diary that will chronicle
> and comment upon the crisis set in motion by the
> attacks on the United States on September 11. It
> will address the issues that are flying in
> profusion out of this new Pandora's box while
> seeking to preserve as much as possible the
>   continuity of a single unfolding story. 
> 
> Of course there can be no such thing as a literal
>        letter from ground zero--neither from the
>    ground zeros of September 11 nor from the
>    potential nuclear ground zero that is the origin
> of
> the
>    expression. There are no letters from the beyond.
>    (By now, "zero" has the double meaning of zero
> distance from the bombardier's assigned
>    coordinates and the nothingness that's left when
> his work is done.) As it happens, though, I
>    live six blocks from the ruins of the north tower
> of the World Trade Center, which is about
>    as close as you can be to ground zero without
> having been silenced. My specific
>    neighborhood was violated, mutilated. As I write
> these words, the acrid, dank, rancid
>    stink--it is the smell of death--of the
> still-smoking site is in my nostrils. Not that these
> things
>    confer any great distinction--they are merely the
> local embodiment of the circumstance, felt
>    more or less keenly by everyone in the world in
> the
> aftermath of the attack, that in our age
>    of weapons of mass destruction every square foot
> of
> our globe can become such a ground
>    zero in a twinkling. We have long known this
> intellectually, but now we know it viscerally,
>    as a nausea in the pit of the stomach that is
> unlikely to go away. What to do to change this
>    condition, it seems to me, is the most important
> of
> the practical tasks that the crisis requires
>    us to perform. 
> 
>    It takes time for the human reality of the losses
> to sink in. The eye is quick but the heart is
>    slow. I had two experiences this week that helped
> me along. It occurred to me that I
>    would be a very bad journalist and maybe a worse
> neighbor if, living just a few blocks
>    from the catastrophe, I did not manage to get
> through the various checkpoints to visit the
>    site. A press pass was useless; it got me no
> closer
> than my own home. A hole in the
>    storm-fence circling the site worked better. I
> found myself in the midst of a huge peaceable
>    army of helpers in a thousand uniforms--military
> and civilian. I was somehow unprepared
>    by television for what I saw when I arrived at
> ground zero. Television had seemed to show
>    mostly a low hillock of rubble from which the
> famous bucket brigade of rescuers was
>    passing out pieces of debris. This proved to be a
> keyhole vision of the site. In fact, it was a
>    gigantic, varied, panoramic landscape of
> destruction, an Alps of concrete, plastic and
>    twisted metal, rising tier upon tier in the smoky
> distance. Around the perimeter and in the
>    surrounding streets, a cornucopia of food, drinks
> (thousands of crates of spring water,
>    Gatorade, etc.) and other provisions contributed
> by
> well-wishers from around the country
>    was heaped up, as if some main of consumer goods
> on
> its way to the Trade Center had
>    burst and disgorged its flood upon the sidewalks.
> The surrounding buildings, smashed but
>    still standing, looked down eyelessly on their
> pulverized brethren. The pieces of the facade
>    of the towers that are often shown in
> photographs--gigantic forks, or bent
>    spatulas--loomed surprisingly high over the scene
> with dread majesty. Entry into the ruins
>    by the rescue workers was being accomplished by a
> cage, or gondola, suspended by a
>    crane, as if in some infernal ski resort. When I
> arrived at the southern rim, the rescuers
>    were all standing silent watching one of these
> cages being lifted out of the ruins. Shortly, a
>    small pile of something not shaped like a human
> being but covered by an American flag
>    was brought out in an open buggy. It was the
> remains, a solemn nurse told me, of one of
>    the firemen who had given his life for the people
> in the building. And then the slow work
>    began again. Although the site was more terrible
> even than I had imagined, seeing was
>    somehow reassuring. Unvisited, the site, so near
> my
> home, had preyed on my imagination. 
> 
>    A few days later--one week after the
> catastrophe--I
> took my dog for a walk in the evening
>    in Riverside Park, on the upper West Side. Soft
> orange clouds drifted over the Hudson
>    River and the New Jersey shore. In the dim,
> cavernous green of the park, normal things
>    were occurring--people were out for walks or
> jogging, children were playing in a
>    playground. To the south, a slender moon hung in
> the sky. I found myself experiencing an
>    instant of surprise: So it was still there! It
> had
> not dropped out of the sky. That was good.
>    After all, our local southern mountain peaks--the
> twin towers--had fallen. The world
>    seemed to steady around the surviving moon.
> "Peace"
> became more than a word. It was
>    the world of difference between the bottom half
> of
> Manhattan and the top. It was the
>    persistence of all the wonderful, ordinary things
> before my eyes. 
> 
>    Curiously, it was only after this moment of
> return
> to confidence in the continuity of life that
>    the shape and size of the change that had been
> wrought in the world a week before began
>    to come into view. The very immensity of that
> change--and, what was something different,
>    the news coverage of that change--was itself a
> prime fact of the new situation. In an instant
>    and without warning on a fine fall morning, the
> known world had been jerked aside like a
>    mere slide in a projector, and a new world had
> been
> rammed into its place. I have before
>    me the New York Times of September 11, which went
> to press, of course, the night
>    before the attack.It is news from Atlantis. "Key
> Leaders," were talking of "Possible Deals
>    to Revive Economy," a headline said, but who was
> paying attention now? Were "School
>    Dress Codes" still in a struggle with "A Sea of
> Bare Flesh"? Yes, but it was hard to give the
>    matter much thought. Was "Morning TV" still a
> "Hot
> Market" in "a Nation of Early Risers"?
>    It was, but not for the reasons given in the
> article. Only one headline--"Nuclear Booty:
>    More Smugglers Use Asia Route"--seemed fit for
> the
> day's events. 
> 
>    Has the eye of the world ever shifted more
> abruptly
> or completely than it did on
>    September 11? The destruction of Hiroshima of
> course comes to mind. It, too, was
>    prepared in secrecy and fell like a thunderbolt
> upon the world. But it came after years of a
>    world war and ended the war, whereas the
> September
> 11 attack came in a time of peace
>    and--so our President has said--started a war.
> The
> assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
>    on June 28, 1914, starting the First World War,
> is
> another candidate. Yet the possibility of
>    war among the great powers had long been
> discussed,
> and many previous crises--in the
>    Far East, in the Mediterranean, in the
> Balkans--had
> threatened war. It was not the event
>    but the aftermath (we are still living in
> it)--the
> war's ferocity and duration and the war-born
>    horrors that sprang out of it to afflict the
> entire
> twentieth century--that changed the world.
>    Also, whereas the guns of August touched off a
> chain of events--the invocation of a web of
>    treaty agreements, the predetermined mobilization
> schedules of great armies--that
>    statesmanship and diplomacy seemed powerless to
> prevent, today little seems
>    predetermined, and the latitude of choice,
> ranging
> 
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