Monday, March 03, 2003
Letter to a European Friend:
You're entitled to ask what explains this dramatic split in public opinion, and the answer is simplicity itself:
September 11, that's what.
Folks on your side of the Atlantic can't imagine what an impact the attacks had on the American psyche. Perhaps your experience in Brooklyn can help you understand. Start with the nearby NASA photograph; you can see that the plume from the World Trade Center fires blew directly over the church where you preached and the neighborhood where your parishioners live. While the intensity waned, those fires burned for 99 days. The promenade where you walked was filled with memorial candles, bright on their first night, but over the months turning, somehow appropriately, into sorrowful lumps of wax.
[Photo]
Remember the fire station on Middagh Street, a couple of blocks behind the church? That houses Engine 205/Ladder 118, whose men raced over the Brooklyn Bridge to respond. Eight firefighters from the station were lost. One was fatally injured when he was hit by a jumper, someone driven to leap off the burning building. At Christmas, the junior and cherub choirs went to the station for caroling.
Engine 205/Ladder 118 was one of the hardest hit squads, but not the worst. Rescue 1 lost 11. The alarm sounded at the change of shifts, and three off-duty firefighters jumped on the truck to help evacuate the building. None returned.
You're entitled to ask what explains this dramatic split in public opinion, and the answer is simplicity itself:
September 11, that's what.
Folks on your side of the Atlantic can't imagine what an impact the attacks had on the American psyche. Perhaps your experience in Brooklyn can help you understand. Start with the nearby NASA photograph; you can see that the plume from the World Trade Center fires blew directly over the church where you preached and the neighborhood where your parishioners live. While the intensity waned, those fires burned for 99 days. The promenade where you walked was filled with memorial candles, bright on their first night, but over the months turning, somehow appropriately, into sorrowful lumps of wax.
[Photo]
Remember the fire station on Middagh Street, a couple of blocks behind the church? That houses Engine 205/Ladder 118, whose men raced over the Brooklyn Bridge to respond. Eight firefighters from the station were lost. One was fatally injured when he was hit by a jumper, someone driven to leap off the burning building. At Christmas, the junior and cherub choirs went to the station for caroling.
Engine 205/Ladder 118 was one of the hardest hit squads, but not the worst. Rescue 1 lost 11. The alarm sounded at the change of shifts, and three off-duty firefighters jumped on the truck to help evacuate the building. None returned.
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