anonyMoses, spaced
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the air was not so bad. Nothing like what the folks at the tip of the island had to suffer. But it was bad enough to kill the flowers. It was bad enugh that we had to put wet towels over our air conditioners to keep down the particulates. But it was "perfectly safe"...at least according to the official reports at the time. Some people actually believed it. I was not one of them.
I knew I was breathing asbestos, burnt human remains, and all manner of horrible substances. And I knew I was just one of millions who were also told to stay put.
Were the truth known, there may well have been a total evacuation. That is, if you weren't leaving by plane. They were grounded.
The fires burned for weeks and weeks, and there was an occasional respite, when the wind shifted directions and blew the smoke, pollution and burnt remains away from the bulk of the island.
I once tried talking a walk through Central Park, a few days after September 11th, but the air was so unsustaining that I had to lie down and fall asleep...which I did for Lord only knows how long.
But look. Rather than trying to make people afraid, let me say instead that most people survived. And some may walk away entirely unscathed.
And surely people in, say, Tulsa or Phoenix or Butte, Montana needn't worry about terrorism, as the likelihood of it reaching them is microscopically thin indeed. And small towns should worry even less.
The best way to beat terrorism is to never fear. Once you fear, they have won.
There should be classes in fearlessness, like happens amongst Buddhists. If no one feared, terrorism would dry up. So again...there is nothing to fear but fear, itself.
I will probably write more about Fearlessness education, as I do think it is a low-cost way to win and even win-win...as having fearlessness is a virtue in and of itself. Like Patience.
