The Schubin New York WTC Letters

These letters were all written by Mark Schubin, well-known TV engineer, historian, journalist, etc., following the recent terrorist attacks.  They have been compiled by popular demand, and with Mark's permission.  Thank you, Mark.

The Schubin Chronicles -- September 2001

9/11/2001  1:51 pm  About today's disaster

WCBS-TV is, indeed, on the air, apparently from the Empire State Building. All other major analog TV stations appear to be off the air.

Mark

9/11/2001  2:24 pm  More about the disaster

Lower Manhattan, as you might expect, is a disaster area. The two plane crashes affected primarily the World Trade Center. The collapsing south tower affected the immediate neighborhood. But the collapsing north tower sent a cloud of smoke and dust that has completely enveloped lower Manhattan and has yet to clear about four hours later. Many rescue personnel were trapped by that collapse. People in downtown Brooklyn are having breathing problems.

Here in the middle of Manhattan island, things are not so bad. The dust and smoke hasn't come this far, but phone service (and, therefore, most e-mail) has been very intermittent. Long distance has been almost nonexistent. If you don't hear from or can't get through to someone, that doesn't necessarily indicate anything.

Transportation is also very spotty. All bridges and tunnels are closed. Ferries are being used primarily as ambulances. Subway service is minimal, and there is no service into Manhattan. There is also no train service into Manhattan.

I can sometimes make local calls, so, if anyone wants me to try to relay a message, e-mail me at <tvmark@gateway.net>. I may not be able to respond by phone, so be sure to include your e-mail.

For what it's worth, the primary election was suspended all over New York State.

Don't assume the worst, and please carry on with your normal routines. If we don't carry on, the terrorists win.

TTFN, Mark

9/12/2001  12:30 pm  Prayers

Having spent much of last week at the World Trade Center, I wasn't there yesterday, so I am fine. The wind doesn't seem to be carrying the smoke and dust north, so we are physically unaffected in midtown Manhattan, but, even aside from emotions, we are certainly affected.

I cannot yet make any long distance calls (yesterday even local phone service was sporadic). The subway service is still spotty. For reasons I do not understand, most stores and theaters even in my neighborhood were asked to close. The entire Lincoln Center complex was closed, and, even with my ID card, I was not allowed in. Restaurants and food stores remain open, but they cannot take credit cards due to the phone problems. With no traffic allowed into the city, I wonder how long supplies will last. The blood drives have been overwhelmingly successful. The Red Cross has been turning donors away. The sound of fighter jets thundering by is a little freaky. Most people look a little dazed, even up here.

From a TV standpoint, most analog and digital TV stations had been broadcasting from the top of the north tower of the World Trade Center, so they are all off the air. The notable exception is WCBS-TV, which retained an auxiliary transmitter in the Empire State Building. When the World Trade Center was bombed years ago, WCBS-TV was the only major station to stay on the air; that's still the case. WCBS-DT and WNYW-DT, which are also located on the Empire State Building, are also on the air.

Because programming on the major stations yesterday consisted of wall-to-wall coverage of the attack and aftermath with no commercials, WABC-TV (channel 7) was able to be carried by WNYE-TV (channel 25, the Board of Education station, located in Brooklyn), WHSE-TV (channel 68, Home Shopping Network, Empire State Building), and New Jersey Network (PBS, which has one station, WNJM, channel 50, located just eight miles from Manhattan).

Most local cable systems get video and audio feeds either directly from the stations or via the microwave New York Interconnect, so cable had all channels. In addition, co-owned cable networks carried broadcast news programming, so, for example, VH-1 had CBS news, ESPN had ABC news, TNT had CNN, Fox Sports had Fox news, etc.

If anyone would like me to relay messages via local calls, just let me know.

TTFN, Mark

9/12/2001  6:40pm  New York Update

The bad news is that, after the latest collapse this afternoon, the wind shifted. The acrid smoke is now heading north. It burns the eyes and the throat rapidly. I first encountered it at 122 Street, about eight miles from the disaster; it's not fun.

All subways are running now, but slowly. I still can't make long distance calls, and even local calls got spotty again.

With the mayor suggesting that those not at work get out, there was a weekend sense on the streets and in the parks (that was before the smoke). There were even some smiles.

The city has been overwhelmed with volunteers, so the excess have formed cheering squads to thank the rescue workers and provide them with water and snacks. The campaign office for one of the candidates for public advocate (number two executive in the city) is down the block from me. The windows were plastered with the latest info on what's needed, hotlines, etc. One of the posters was issued by a rival candidate; it went up anyway.

Some stores are still closed, and the ban on traffic into Manhattan kept The New York Times out -- it was neither delivered nor at newsstands. The freakiest thing I encountered today was the fact that security was keeping people out of Riverside Church! I was up there because WNET, the local PBS station, wants to create some sort of ecumenical concert on Sunday - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc. Riverside specializes in that stuff.

Except below 14th Street, schools will open tomorrow.

We're getting there.

TTFN, Mark

9/13/2001  3:30pm  Another New York Update

Most things are getting back to normal. Traffic was allowed into Manhattan today, so I got both today's New York Times and yesterday's. Most stores are open. Theaters are opening tonight. The smoke plume seems to be blowing out to sea again.

On the other hand, some subway service is worse. Reports as to why vary. Some say the tunnels are flooded from the huge amounts of fire-extinguishing water; others say it's because the vibrations could knock down other damaged buildings.

A large part of the facade of the American Express building collapsed today. It's in the World Financial Center, across a very broad thoroughfare from the World Trade Center. Other buildings are leaning. Laser systems have been set up to provide alarms if they tilt enough to endanger the rescue workers, a difficult proposition, because most of those buildings were built to sway in the wind.

In most ways, New Yorkers are still being wonderful: plenty of blood, plenty of volunteers, etc. But there was a large number of bomb threats today, causing evacuations at LaGuardia Airport, Grand Central Terminal, the General Post Office, etc.

As for me, I still have no outbound long distance, but now I can leave the island with the knowledge that I'll be allowed back. Alas, the airline situation prevents me from attending IBC.

The ecumenical memorial event will be on PBS and NPR 5-6:30 on Sunday, but I don't yet know the content or which stations will carry it.

TTFN,

Mark

9/13/2001  1:30pm  Yet Another New York Update

I am continuing these reports by request.

The "frozen zone" was shortened today by about a mile and a half. It is now roughly equivalent to the area of lower Manhattan that has no electric power or telephone service, but crews are working on both, and the New York Stock Exchange, right in the heart of the "frozen zone," says it will open on Monday, so we can be hopeful. There are people in our industry who normally work in the "frozen zone."

Some equipment that I need for both the ecumenical event on Sunday and another show I'm working on Monday and Tuesday is sitting on a production truck stuck in the "frozen zone." All-Mobile Video is trying to arrange a police escort so they can remove the equipment. The lack of air freight has also been problematic. We're so used to thinking we can just get lenses from L.A. or recorders from Pittburgh or whatever.

There has been tremendous cooperation going on. Liman Video and All-Mobile are trading facilities and equipment to help make my shows happen. I think I previously mentioned WABC-TV being carried on WNYE-TV, WHSE-TV and New Jersey Network. Now WHSI-TV, another Home Shopping Network station, is extending their coverage (which has been wall-to-wall, commercial-free news). WNYE-FM is also carrying the programming of WNYC-FM, one of the few FM stations that had been on the World Trade Center. And NPR's New York bureau is giving WNYC production facilities (their own are in the "frozen zone").

The Metropolitan Opera will be doing a memorial concert a week from tomorrow, using image magnification to the Lincoln Center plaza. Most (if not all) facilities and services seem to be getting donated. People are good.

The shortened "frozen zone" now allows two more bridges into Manhattan to be used. Only the Brooklyn Bridge, the Holland Tunnel, and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel are still off limits, and even the last is being used by express buses to and from Staten Island, so they must have been able to clear away enough of the debris. A million tons of building generates a LOT of debris.

This morning I noticed the noise outside my windows that is normally everpresent. It had been "unnaturally" quiet. The noise is a good indication that life is getting back to normal. People on the streets also seem to be getting back to normal routines. And there were police cars in Central Park again (as usual); earlier this week there were none visible.

The New York Times (the only news medium I've seen that gives any indication that anything ELSE is happening in the world) doubled the size of today's movie listings. I don't know if that's meant to be symbolic or is just because they couldn't print and distribute as many different region editions as they normally do. Maybe it's just a new Friday practice. By the way, WPIX-TV, the WB affiliate, has gotten a low power signal back on the air.

I made my first long-distance phone call last night! I tried a bunch of carriers and finally found one that worked (10-10-333). I actually managed to call Sicily, where my wife has been working on a TV show. She's scheduled to return on Sunday, but we don't yet know if a non-U.S. carrier will be permitted to land -- or if the airport will be open.

The weather has changed. It had been incongruously beautiful earlier this week. It is colder now, and it has been raining. The rain is problematic for the rescue efforts; workers are slipping, and, when the rain is heavy, they have poor visibility. Maybe the rain has reduced the smoke, but it hasn't yet eliminated it.

There were 90 false bomb reports yesterday, some innocent (people overly suspicious) but all problematic. One woman has been arrested for falsely reporting getting a call from a cell phone of someone trapped in the wreckage. The mayor made that announcement as a warning.

Press reports have also been wrong -- about rescues, airport arrests, etc. Take what you hear with a grain of salt.

Requests for assistance are now getting VERY specific (markers, hard hats, giant insulated coffee urns, underwear, etc.). The centers for this stuff are the giant Javits Convention Center and the Chelsea Piers. As soon as requests are announced, people rush off to stores to buy what's needed and bring it back. There's still plenty of blood at the moment, but someone reported (perhaps sneakily) that we'll still need blood NEXT week. The reason I think it was sneaky is that we had a blood shortage BEFORE the attack.

I'm going to attempt to leave Manhattan and return tonight, visiting friends on Long Island. Tomorrow we set up for Sunday's ecumenical broadcast.

Thanks for all the good wishes. We DO appreciate them.

TTFN, Mark

9/14/2001  10:09am  PLEASE be careful!

A horrible crime was committed on Tuesday morning.

Those who committed it are criminals. They are murderers. They are terrorists.

Those of them who remain alive should be brought to justice. Anything that can be done to prevent such atrocities in the future should be done.

BUT

Whatever ethnic group or groups those criminals/murderers/terrorists belong to, THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THAT (OR THOSE) ETHNIC GROUPS.

Whatever religion or religions those criminals/murderers/terrorists may have practiced, THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THAT (OR THOSE) RELIGIONS.

Whatever countries those criminals/murderers/terrorists may have come from, THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE PEOPLE OF THOSE COUNTRIES.

PLEASE do not direct your anger at the crime at any ethnic groups, religions, or citizens of countries.

Since the crime on Tuesday morning, there have been more crimes committed. Places of worship have been firebombed. Innocent people have been beaten. Homes have been vandalized.

COOL IT!

Thank you.

TTFN, Mark

9/15/2001  7:35 pm  The Fifth Day

It was really good to be with friends last night. The Long Island Railroad operated absolutely normally and on time. The subways were something else. Service below 34th Street on the 7th Avenue lines has been suspended, making the Times Square Station the last useful transfer point. The platform there was the most crowded I have ever seen it, including on New Year's Eves.

Despite what reports have been saying, only six subway lines are operating on their "normal" routes ("normal" is in quotes because several of the six were already diverted for a long period due to bridge construction work). The others are all truncated in some way. The biggest mess is on the 7th Avenue lines, one of which ran right under the World Trade Center, and the other of which came awfully close. Still, stations in the financial district are now open. The "frozen zone" isn't frozen anymore.

From midtown northward, things seem almost completely normal now. There's the usual traffic, all the stores and theaters are open (and so is Riverside Church), the subways seem pretty normal, etc. There was even a little street fair outside Columbia University. Here are some of the differences from normality: - a somewhat somber mood - ad hoc memorials everywhere - TV sets tuned to WCBS-TV (still the only easily receivable major-network station) sitting on the sidewalk - many posters -- about donations, checking on the pets of the missing, etc. - non-acceptance of credit and debit cards (verification calls are still unreliable -- so is my long-distance)

The city has literally been overwhelmed with donations of food and with volunteers. Please do NOT send any more food. What's here is being distributed to homeless organizations, but there's too much even for that, and the distribution diverts personnel from other activities. Only heavy equipment and money are desired now. Details are on the official New York City government web site:

http://nyc.gov/html/em/volunteer.html

There have been reports of looting in the rescue area (including a generator stolen). A friend who is trying to get a developer to open an empty building for the newly homeless is running into a brick wall. Yes, New York (unfortunately) seems to be getting back to normal.

One of my neighbors in my apartment house is among the missing. So is a good friend who worked at the transmitter of one of the TV stations. A friend's fiancee is a teacher at a school near the World Trade Center who now has to deal with students whose parents are among the missing. A friend of a friend was the ticket agent who checked in two of the terrorists and wished them a nice flight. It will be some time before we realize the full impact of this on our lives.

But, at the moment, I'm happy to be busy working on THREE televised memorial events. The first is the musical ecumenical event at Riverside Church tomorrow. The time has been moved up to accommodate another memorial service at St. Patrick's cathedral. So, our show will be live on many PBS and NPR stations from 4 pm to 5:30 pm New York Time. I know it's being carried on WETA in Washington. Cablevision's MetroTV channel will also carry it. CNN will come in and out periodically. If any of you who are not PBS stations want to take it by satellite, it'll be GE-3 K-18 (if you want to broadcast it, no more than ten minutes without further permission please). Talent includes the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Mandy Patinkin, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Dawn Upshaw, and Joshua Bell. There will also be Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish clergy. You could look it up here (if you do, note that it's Ted Sperling, not "Red"):

http://www.theriversidechurchny.org/index.asp?id=502#1

It's called "America in Healing at The Riverside Church."

The next one will be a Metropolitan Opera benefit next Saturday night, with image magnification to the Lincoln Center plaza. All-Mobile Video and Scharff-Weisberg are being very generous already, but we could use a large (22.5' x 30') screen and maybe some scaffolding with a portable projection booth and a generator (or a giant video wall). If anyone wants to help, the best thing is probably to contact Louisa Briccetti at the Met's media department (212 870-7413 <LBriccetti@mail.metopera.org>).

Then comes the "official" memorial in Central Park next Sunday, being produced by David Stern (per the forwarded message yesterday <sterndb@earthlink.net>). I don't know many details of that one yet (except that it's supposed to start at 3 pm), but a camera operator working on the shows says it's already being hyped as an event likely to draw a live audience of a million.

Alitalia says its flights to New York got through today, so I look forward to seeing my wife again tomorrow. YAY!

I don't know when I'll have a chance to do another report.

Years ago, President Kennedy tried to express his solidarity with an isolated Berlin by saying that he, too, was a Berlin resident (some German scholars report that, by the addition of an article, he actually said, "I am a jelly doughnut"). Now, people all around the world are saying they are New Yorkers. Welcome!

We are, in fact, very warm hearted, even though we are perceived as rude. For those of you who don't understand this apparent contradiction, I will explain it: We are always in a hurry. Suppose a midwesterner asks a New Yorker for directions. ALL New Yorkers LOVE to give directions -- even to places they have never heard of. That's how warm hearted we are.

But we can't stand the length of time it takes some people to ask. As Garrison Keillor once pointed out, the New Yorker is thinking, "I'll gladly carry you there on my back if only you'll finish the sentence!"

That's us.

On behalf of all eight million, thanks!

TTFN, Mark

9/16/2001  8:58 pm  Epilogue

Karen (my wife) got home tonight, only an hour-and-a-half late. YAY!

Alitalia gave everyone printed apologies for the plastic cutlery, saying that's all the FAA would allow.

The first of the televised memorial events went off pretty well (though all the clergy exceeded their time allocations). I now have THREE more to look forward to working on between now and next Sunday.

The subway was screwed up tonight, but it didn't seem to be related to the World Trade Center -- more the usual it's-Sunday-so-let's-see-how-much-we-can-confuse-everyone-by-routing-trains screwup. When the announcement of the diversion was made, we all started laughing.

Life is good.

TTFN, Mark

9/17/2001  11:57pm  Marks' Monday Memo

- I am typing this while sitting inside a TV truck outside the Metropolitan Opera House. I've been booked for this show for months. The avenue outside is packed with noisy traffic. The sidewalks are crowded with school kids, shoppers, dog walkers, and office workers. Inside, chorus members in hoop skirts and make-up are singing. Almost everything gives the appearance of being normal. But, one block north, at a firehouse that has lost 11 of the occupants it had one week ago, there seem to be more flowers under a red tent than at a wholesale florist. Across the street, lines of volunteers are still signing up at Red Cross headquarters. Pay phones are free. Subway stops are closed. The skyline has a hole. 5,000 people in New York are missing. It is not normal.

Today's and tomorrow's days in a truck are the only two I've had booked for a while, but I have been spending and will continue to spend a lot more time in trucks last week and this. Yesterday, I helped transmit "America in Healing from the Riverside Church," an ecumenical performance service. Thursday, I'll be working on a special "Live From Lincoln Center" broadcast of the New York Philharmonic playing the Brahms requiem. I expect to work on three more benefit/memorial televised events before Sunday night. I am donating my services to all. I need to. I am not an ironworker, a firefighter, or a doctor. This is how I am trying to help.

I am not alone. All-Mobile Video is donating trucks and equipment. Scharff-Weisberg is donating projectors and labor. VCA and MCSi are donating videoconferencing. When I sent out a request for assistance with this coming Sunday's event, I was soon flooded with positive responses.

My thoughts and feelings leap to the injured, the missing, and the families and friends of the injured, missing, and dead, including those I knew. I will single out Rod Coppola, transmission engineer at WNET, the big New York PBS station, only because I knew him best.

We spent many hours together -- slogging through the mud at the nascent New York Teleport on Staten Island, admiring the views from the roofs of many tall Manhattan buildings, and tolerating descents into tunnels and sub-sub-basements. Rod created transmission paths for "Live From Lincoln Center" and helped establish some of the first stereo audio transmission paths to Europe.

I always found him to be smart, innovative, resourceful, and fun. That's why I still try to convince myself that he managed to find some safe way down from the top of the north tower of the World Trade Center to some sub-sub-basement (equipped with a comfortable couch, of course), where he is waiting to smirk at his rescuers, "What kept you?" He was last heard from on Tuesday morning, calling WNET master control to say he was powering down the transmitter.

- Television technology and the attack -

- The transmitters of nine of New York's analog television stations, five DTV stations, four FM radio stations, and many communications channels were all located atop the World Trade Center (WTC), and many video fiber paths were located below it. When the north tower went down, so did most off-air New York TV. Of the WTC broadcasters, only WCBS-TV was able to switch to its auxiliary full-power transmitter, located on the Empire State Building (ESB). It may be worth noting that, when the WTC was bombed eight years ago and all of the stations located on it went off the air, only WCBS-TV was able to switch to its auxiliary transmitter on the Empire State Building. Univision's WXTV, also transmitting from the ESB, served the Spanish-speaking community.

- Within hours, Sinclair/Acrodyne offered assistance and, Dielectric, Harris, and the New York broadcasters began recovery plans, which clearly do NOT include waiting for a new WTC on which to place antennas. The most likely candidate at the moment seems to be a communications tower in Alpine, New Jersey, a few miles northwest of Manhattan, which looks like a giant power pylon. It was the site of the world's first FM broadcast and was a beloved spot of its creator, Major Edwin Armstrong.

After the television broadcasters left the ESB, other communications companies moved in. It reportedly would take years for the broadcasters to move back.

- Most area cable-TV systems continued to carry all of the New York TV stations, based on direct audio/video feeds and a microwave interconnection system. It was reported that WWOR (UPN) and WNJU (Telemundo) briefly disappeared from cable systems due to a loss of video circuits, but they were soon restored. Similarly, satellite local-TV service reportedly lost WCBS, WNYW (Fox), and WWOR when a fiber was lost but soon restored them. I'm sure no one was going to nitpick about it, but, for a time, many of the broadcasters were carried on cable without broadcasting.

- Cable systems without non-broadcast feeds from the New York stations still offered broadcast-network programming. Some Comcast subscribers received Philadelphia stations instead of the usual New York stations. And co-owned cable/satellite channels carried broadcast-network programming. Thus, ESPN viewers got to watch ABC, VH-1 viewers got CBS, Fox Sports viewers got Fox news, TNT viewers got CNN, and so on.

- There were also broadcast arrangements. At various times, WABC-TV was carried by the New Jersey Network (PBS, which has a station, WNJM-TV, just eight miles from Manhattan), Home Shopping Network's WHSE (on ESB) and WHSI (in Middle Island on Long Island), and the New York Board of Education's WNYE-TV (on ESB; WNYE-FM carried the programming of WNYC-FM, one of the four FM stations knocked out). WNBC-TV was reportedly carried by WMBC-TV, near Sparta, New Jersey. In a most unusual (but probably very welcome) move, after WABC-TV had established itself on the other stations, WNYE-TV switched to carrying New York One, a normally cable-only news channel. Incidentally, WNYE-DT remains on the air, too.

- WPIX-TV (WB) might have been the first station (after WCBS) to get some off-air signal going, but it seems to have been extremely weak -- at least in my direction. I can pick up low-power TV stations on short buildings in the outer boroughs and New Jersey, but I was barely able to get even WPIX's audio. At the moment, WABC-TV's replacement transmitter is the best I can get (not counting WCBS-TV). WPIX-TV has received permission to transmit on channel 64 as well as its usual 11, a channel number that allowed the station to use the twin towers of the WTC as its logo.

- For quite a few people, WCBS-TV appeared to be their only receivable source of news. In Manhattan, few can get satellite signals directly. Aside from congestion problems, the Internet requires a connection, and I had no reliable telephone service the first day. The telephone problem also periodically knocked some radio programming off the air. Here are some comments from lower-Manhattan resident David Leitner: http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_12647.asp

Outside the campaign office of a candidate for New York City public advocate (the number two executive position), a TV was set up, receiving WCBS-TV off-air via rabbit ears. Chairs were set up so people could watch, and sign-language interpreters helped the hearing-impaired.

TTFN Mark

9/18/2001  10:36 pm  New York Continues

New York City, where both James Cagney and Colin Powell spoke Yiddish, is a city of immigrants. The newly arrived often end up in the businesses of their established relatives, and thus it is that an ethnic group comes to dominate a segment of city life. Italian grocers have given way to Korean grocers. Greek coffee shops are almost a cliche. There are Israeli-run car services (what non-New Yorkers might call taxis), often with Arabic-speaking drivers. One of the latest manifestations of this phenomenon is -- I kid you not -- southeast Asian tortilla stores.

As I passed ABC's large Lincoln Square complex yesterday and today, I noticed another horrible hole in the urban fabric of New York. The coffee, bagel, and donut cart usually on the corner was gone. I haven't seen one on any corner in days. The ethnic group that has dominated that little niche has been Arabic.

On this first day of the Jewish New Year, I missed the friendly man who would prepare my sesame bagel with cream cheese (75-cents) as soon as he saw me coming down the block and who would greet me with a smile and a bright, "Good morning!" -- just what I could use on my way to a 6 am call. I hope he is all right. I hope he is not frightened of retaliation. Maybe he and his compatriots are serving the rescue workers downtown. I hope so.

Something else missing is campaigning. The primary election, which was to have been held last Tuesday (which is one reason so many reporters were around), has been postponed to next Tuesday. There are virtually no campaign posters to be seen, and one candidate for mayor said he wished the current occupant of that position could continue. Term limits are forcing Mayor Giuliani out of office. Last Tuesday morning, he probably drew relatively equal amounts of approval and disapproval. Today, I'd say his approval rating hovers around 150%. Formerly anti-Giuliani New Yorkers are amazed (and often amused) at their conversions, but converted they are. Now the candidates are saying that we should vote simply as a patriotic act. I'll be voting, as I always do, to choose those I'd like to have represent me.

Security has been increased at the places where I work, which is a nuisance. We need to wear ID tags. We can no longer roll camera, lens, and pan-head boxes into position without stopping at checkpoints to have the contents inspected. Closed entrances and exits demand long, circuitous routes. Oh, well. Those should be our biggest problems.

We have a new ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sixteen subway stations are currently closed, and no one is complaining. Earlier this year, one station had to be closed for construction work, and the topic was newsworthy for months.

Workers made it to the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train station 80 feet below the World Trade Center today. It is intact, with an unscathed train sitting in the marble station. But it is deserted.

The Science section of today's New York Times reports that the debris might be the only thing preventing the Hudson River from pouring into that station, crossing to New Jersey via the train tunnel, connecting to other tunnels to midtown Manhattan, and flooding the New York subway system. Yikes! Workers are plugging up the New Jersey end of the PATH tunnels from the World Trade Center just in case. I recall seeing those tunnels hanging in mid-air in the vast excavation of the WTC foundation.

Something nice I saw today was a moving van unloading dozens of new chairs for the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, which used to be my favorite spot to do research. The library has been closed for renovations for years. It was supposed to have opened in July 2000. I take the chairs as a sign that it will open soon. YAY!

The various televised benefit/memorial preparations continue apace. There has been some minor bickering among the planners ("But I need the cameras for MY show"). We're working everything out. Vendors, crews, and unions (which wanted to make sure their members weren't coerced into working free) are all being very generous. I hate to single anyone out, but two of the vendors that stand out in my mind are Scharff-Weisberg (which doubled the number of projectors it is supplying without a whimper when the producer asked for a bigger screen) and All-Mobile Video (which responds to calls for additional equipment as though we were paying a premium instead of getting it free).

Messages arrive from across the country from people who want to help. I appreciate all of the offers, even if I can't accept them all. I know I'm fortunate to be able to be doing something to help (I'll try to keep that in mind on my tenth consecutive 20-hour day). I know it's harder on those of you who want to help and can't. Remember the words of John Milton in 1652: "They also serve who only stand and wait." We DO appreciate you -- VERY much.

Hang in there. It's important for you to make the TV shows (and the commercials that pay for the TV shows, and the equipment used to make the shows and commercials) that will entertain us in the future. If you experience any doubt about that, please rent and watch "Sullivan's Travels." It works for me.

As we left today's TV show, my wife had a lengthy conversation with one of the long-time security guards at the Metropolitan Opera (there are other, newer ones seemingly in every hallway). He said it was strange that people outside New York seemed to be so angry. He said New Yorkers were sad and sometimes frightened but, by and large, not angry.

I began yesterday's Monday Memo with a remembrance of my friend, WNET transmitter engineer Rod Coppola, still among the missing. I'd like to end today's report with a remembrance of three other victims of the tragedy, none of whom I've ever met: Adelal Karas, Waqar Hassan, and Balbir Singh Sodhi.

Karas, of Egyptian Christian heritage, was killed Saturday in San Gabriel, California. Hassan, of Pakistani Muslim heritage, was killed Saturday in Dallas. Both might have been victims of robbery/murders, but, in the words of a Dallas police spokesperson, a "considerable amount" of money remained on the crime scene, apparently in both cases. There's less doubt as to the motive in the killing of Sodhi, of Indian Sikh heritage. The person charged with his murder, in Mesa, Arizona, reportedly shouted, "I stand for America all the way" as he was handcuffed. According to a radio report today, he couldn't understand why HE was being arrested instead of those he called terrorists.

Today was the first day I cried.

TTFN, Mark

9/19/2001  9:39PM  One Week Plus a Day

The weather has been too beautiful in New York; it doesn't seem right. Tomorrow is supposed to bring thunderstorms -- unfortunately the first day that we are doing an outdoor event.

We're feeding opening night of the New York Philharmonic tomorrow as a special "Live From Lincoln Center." It's a benefit concert -- the Brahms requiem -- and it will be "plazacast" to a large screen on the Lincoln Center plaza. Two days later, we'll be doing another benefit opening night -- this time the Metropolitan Opera's (acts of "Ballo," "Rigoletto," and "Otello") -- again to a plazacast (30-foot screen). The Met has already raised more than $2 million for the relief efforts. Then comes the first "official" New York City memorial service on Sunday. It was originally supposed to have been in Central Park, but, due to security issues, it's been moved to Yankee Stadium (still outdoors), with feeds to other ballparks around the city and with tickets given to the families of the dead, missing, and injured. The mayor promises a bigger event for the whole city in a month or two.

According to one producer, the mayor's office of motion pictures and television is not issuing any permits for anything except a memorial or benefit event. Perhaps that's why the John Lennon tribute on TNT on October 2 will now be a benefit to New York relief groups (it was to have been a benefit anyway -- for a nonviolent world).

I'm not sure I'm a good reporter of what's going on in the city, because I'm so busy these days. From what I see on my way to and from work, life in the city appears much as it did before. I am told, however, that theaters, restaurants, and hotels are doing poorly. As soon as I get a breather, I'll start attending some shows myself. The mayor says it should be easier now to get into "The Producers."

I have still not seen any bagel carts, but the hot-dog vendors are back -- a good sign (unless you're dieting). Some of the crew and I went to a pizza restaurant for dinner tonight; it was reasonably crowded for a Wednesday night.

Last night, I listened to the latest subway-service report on the radio, and I burst out laughing. It was like a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song about how to assemble toys -- insert slot A into tab B, and so on. I wish I'd recorded it. It went something like this:

"The A is operating normally, except that it's local in northern Manhattan but won't stop at Chambers Street, 155th Street, or 163rd Street. The B is normal except for the pre-attack diversions. The C is not running. The D is normal except for the pre-attack diversions. The E doesn't stop at the World Trade Center but has been extended into Brooklyn to replace the C. The N is replaced by the M in Brooklyn and the W in Manhattan and Queens. The R is replaced by the J in Brooklyn and the Q in Queens. The Q and W have no stops in Manhattan south of 8th Street except Canal. The 1 has no service south of 14th Street. There is no 9. The 2 and 3 run local from 96th Street to Canal Street; there are no stops at Chambers Street or Park Place. The 4 and 5 are bypassing Wall Street."

All of that was delivered at the approximately the speed of a tobacco auctioneer. Amazingly, every New Yorker I know understands it all (or at least the applicable portions) -- and is accustomed to worse. We LOVE our subways!

Some more info from the mayor today: There are 5,422 missing. That's in addition to the dead and injured. There have also been at least 50 bias crimes (fortunately with no serious injuries) that the police attribute to the World Trade Center attack.

There are fall flowers blooming in Central Park. A friend called this morning on her way to work in lower Manhattan from her radiologist; a growth has recently doubled in size, and she might need surgery. Neither has anything to do with the attack. Life goes on, warts and all.

Is it time yet for a joke? We were telling this one at Sunday's memorial event. It's mildly off-color and relates to religious fundamentalism, but you might enjoy it anyway.

A member of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect is getting married and has some questions, so he goes to see his rabbi.

"Rabbi, I know that men and women aren't supposed to dance together, but after we're married I may dance with my wife, right?"

"Absolutely not! There is a strict prohibition. Men and women must not dance together!"

"Not even after we're married?"

"Not even then! It's absolutely prohibited."

The man starts thinking and gets worried.

"Rabbi, what about sex?"

"Oh, that's completely different. Sex between husband and wife is absolutely permitted. It's encouraged. It's a commandment."

"But how can we do it?"

"How would you like to do it?"

"Is it okay with me on top?"

"Absolutely!"

"Is it okay with my wife on top?"

"Of course!"

"Is it okay side by side?"

"It's wonderful!"

"Sitting in a chair?"

"Fine! Fine!"

"Standing up?"

"Absolutely not!

"Rabbi, why not?"

"Because it could lead to dancing."

TTFN, Mark

9/20/2001 3:55 pm   A Rainy Day in New York

I expected to end these reports on Sunday, but you keep asking for more, so I'll keep grinding them out. Please let me know when you want me to stop. I promise not to hold it against you.

The weather is lousy today, which seems more appropriate, though I feel bad about the rescue crews, the overflow crowd in the Lincoln Center plaza, and even our uplink. I'm getting wet, too, but I have my plastic sandals on, and, unlike the wicked witch of the west, I won't melt. I expect the crowd in the plaza will have a similar attitude.

Wonderful news today! The bagel-cart man is back! I haven't had a chance to chat with him yet, but he seemed as happy to see me smiling at him as I was to see him. YAY!

The few Manhattanites with cars have been having a long holiday. They normally have to move their vehicles from one side of the street to the other every day so that the street sweepers can get through, but alternate-side parking regulations have been suspended, and not just for the Jewish New Year.

Although I'm not concerned about a few days without the streets being swept, another recent development has me a little worried. There's a notice in our building that says we are no longer permitted to have large trash cans on our floor. That means we may no longer remove our trash whenever we want to. We have been given three short windows of time during which we must call down to have someone from the building come up and accept our trash. Considering that recycling requires us to generate different types of trash, this gets pretty complicated. I hope we don't end up without trash bins on the streets.

As best I can tell, the restaurants in my neighborhood (the upper west side) are as full as ever. Maybe it's just the $100/appetizer restaurants that are said to be empty. I don't think they can count on my help, but I heartily encourage those of you with money to burn to patronize them often; I understand the food's very good.

I heard loud booming noises yesterday. I don't think it was the fighter jets that have been patrolling our airspace. The more likely culprit is the excavated sidewalk down my block. I have no idea why it's gone, and, at the moment, I haven't got time to find out. Such is life in New York.

Verizon, our "local" phone company, reports that they lost 200,000 subscriber lines (out of 500,000) in the area below 14th Street in Manhattan. They have thus far restored 50,000 and hope to have the others up next week. I can wait another couple of weeks before reporting my long distance problems. Thank you all for providing this long-distance connection.

I note that there is a spate of new computer viruses and worms, especially Nimda. In a way, it's nice to know the attack didn't wipe out those jerks.

There was an interesting report on the radio this morning by a woman who doesn't consider herself prejudiced in any way but still flinches these days even at the sight of a Sikh in a turban. A psychologist explained that most of us don't flinch at the sight of blond white people like Timothy McVeigh because we're accustomed to blond white people. We supposedly flinch at the sight of turbaned Sikhs because we're not accustomed to them (not that any Sikhs have been implicated in any way with the World Trade Center attacks).

In that regard (as in so many others), I consider myself very lucky. I was born and raised in the city of Hoboken (the city of which New York is merely a suburb), just one square mile with a disproportionate quantity of Sikhs. It was almost as likely that I would see a man in a turban as one who was blond.

I was also accustomed to flying to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam every other year on Middle East-based airlines. They were the cheapest: Royal Jordanian Airlines, Uzbekistan Airways, Pakistan International Airlines, etc. It's interesting that this year, when the plane didn't leave, I was booked on Delta (in 1978, my wife and I crossed the Atlantic both ways in a four-seat plane and were delayed by weather only when we left the plane in Toronto and took American to New York).

The Metropolitan Transit Authority has published a new subway map with a big gap on the west side of lower Manhattan, where the various stations are closed. But even they are exaggerating a bit. They show a closed line to a station called World Trade Center; it's actually part of the Chambers Street station: http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/maps/mapsys919.pdf

Digital Television magazine asked me if I wanted to change my column for the next issue. I took them up on the offer. I called Frank Graybill, who is hard at work at the Alpine tower on getting WNET's TV service back to normal. He choked up in talking about Rod Coppola. Then I wrote the piece and got pretty teary myself. When I proofread it, I got teary again.

We will go on. But there will be grief.

TTFN, Mark

9/21/2001  6:18 pm   New York - The Good Planes are Back

In the early 1970s, I lived on West 48th Street, just west of Eighth Avenue. Across the avenue was a firehouse, near the bus stop I sometimes used (and where, if I was going to an early morning call, the local prostitutes would usually come over for a chat while I waited).

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for firefighters, so, soon after I moved into the neighborhood, I baked a cake for that firehouse and decorated it with fire-department symbols in red. They were pretty suspicious of the first cake, but soon it became a ritual. Every Friday night, I would bake a cake for Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9.

Today I learned that ALL of the members of that firehouse who were on duty on September 11 are missing. Every day we learn something new that we'd rather not have found out. The estimated number of missing increased late yesterday by about a thousand, based on reports coming in from foreign countries. Only about 250 dead have been found thus far.

I am very tired (but at least I have a later call tomorrow). Tonight is the third memorial/benefit I'm involved in. Tomorrow will be the fourth, Sunday the fifth. I got a call today for yet another. I am approaching memorial/benefit fatigue. This may not be such a bad thing.

I'm pretty good at avoiding jet lag. If I'm traveling to Europe, I try to exhaust myself the day before I leave, getting up ridiculously early and exposing myself to a high intensity light. The exhaustion seems to help me adjust to the new time zone rapidly. I wonder if I'm subconsciously grinding myself down on these shows so that when I'm done with them I'll be able to adjust to the new environment.

Last night, I listened to the big speech. I'm glad Mr. Bush emphasized over and over that we shouldn't be taking things out on Muslims.

Other parts of his speech I didn't understand. He said that, with the exception of December 1941, this is the first time we've been attacked on U.S. territory. I won't nitpick about the War of 1812 or the fact that our embassies are considered U.S. territory, but what about February 26, 1993?

People say we will never forget September 11, 2001, but, in less than nine years, it appears that almost everyone has already forgotten February 26, 1993, the last time the World Trade Center was attacked by foreign terrorists. People were killed then, too. Survivors were covered with dust and choked on smoke then, too. The television broadcasters located at the World Trade Center went off the air then, too, and, then as now, only WCBS-TV had a backup transmitter at the Empire State Building.

Security increased tremendously at the World Trade Center after the 1993 attack. My wife and I went to Cellar in the Sky, a branch of the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center, for our first anniversary in 1979. We visited another branch specializing in appetizers on several occasions. If we were taking people around New York and didn't want to wait in line for the observatory, we'd just pop up to the restaurant.

After 1993, that became impossible. Anyone entering the building had to have a good reason for being there. The added security didn't do much good last week. It may have hurt. A security guard in one of the so-called sky lobbies reportedly told people fleeing the south tower to return to their offices (before the south tower was hit).

That's why there's another part of the speech that I didn't understand. How we can eliminate terrorism? Would our new battle against states that harbor terrorists have done anything to have stopped Timothy McVeigh? The Unabomber? Son of Sam? George Metesky ("The Mad Bomber")? New York has had a long history of terrorism.

Today there was noticeable air traffic on the approach to LaGuardia Airport that goes right up Manhattan's Amsterdam Avenue. I was a little surprised. I thought they might have eliminated that approach. I'm also delighted.

I made a coin-phone call today and had to pay for it. Things are getting even more back to normal.

It could lead to dancing.

TTFN, Mark

9/22/2001  12:44 pm  A Central Park Morning

Ah! A night's sleep! It works wonders!

The latest word is that the number of missing may be too large. Some may have been counted twice (or more).

I had the morning off today; I just had to deal with a few calls and e-mails about tomorrow's Yankee Stadium memorial event. So, my wife and I went for our first bicycle ride together around Central Park in about a month.

The calendar says it's fall, but it's warm and humid, and no leaves seem to have turned yet.

The New York Road Runners Club was having a race in the park, and, as usual, everyone was happily cheering the runners on. There were the usual tourists (speaking a wide range of languages), bicyclists, in-line skaters, families, wheelchair athletes, etc. On our corner, a female police officer was joking with a male police officer. There were many couples holding hands and smiling. There's an awful lot of happy smooching going on in New York, and not just in our bedroom.

The sidewalk all along our block and the next is completely torn up. No one seems to know why. Welcome to New York. It may be a confusing mess, but it's OUR confusing mess.

There are special laws in New York. The motor vehicular code, for example, can be reduced to two sentences (in this order): 1. Don't park. 2. Don't hit anything. Another apparent statute is one we refer to as The Law of the Conservation of Scaffolding. It states that, if a sidewalk scaffold is removed anywhere in the city, it must immediately be re-erected somewhere else. We New Yorkers take all of this in our stride. I think it's our Dutch heritage.

The Dutch learned early on that the best way to do business was to have everyone as customers, and that means being tolerant. New York (formerly Nieuw Amsterdam) doesn't have the picture-windowed red-light districts or marijuana-smoke-filled brown cafes of Amsterdam, but we're still pretty tolerant. I once saw a man walk stark naked down 57th Street; most passers-by didn't give him a second glance.

Those of you who have seen me at ITS events know that I am often sartorially unique at those -- wearing a khaftan, a pareu, a wizard's hat and robe, a towel, a sequined star-spangled banner, one legged pants, or even (in Nevis, where everyone else was in shorts) formal wear when I speak. In New York I could wear any of those (and often have, plus a kilt) unnoticed.

Like every New Yorker I have spoken to since the attack, I wholeheartedly approve of the job our mayor has been doing in managing the crisis. Like many New Yorkers, I did NOT approve of the job our mayor was doing BEFORE the attack. These days he is the very picture of calm, reasoned, and tolerant administration. Before the event, I don't think even his fans would have used any of those words to describe him. He once attacked an innocent victim of a tragic police shooting (the result of an undercover operation gone awry) by improperly publicizing a sealed juvenile-offense record and saying, "He was no altar boy!" It later came out that the victim HAD, in fact, been an altar boy. One of his more-recent pre-collapse actions was the establishment of a "decency commission" to regulate arts funding, one that would likely have rejected Michelangelo's David for its frontal nudity and the same sculptor's Moses for its horns.

Mayor Giuliani has not previously been the poster boy for a tolerant New York, but he certainly IS being tolerant now and is doing a superb job. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his new personna is real. If he were running for re-election, I'd certainly consider him. He is not, however, because a campaign funded by a conservative billionaire pushed through term limits. Twice.

Having had the morning off, I managed to catch up a little bit on newspapers. There was a full-page ad on the back of the World Business section of yesterday's New York Times. It was placed by the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and it asked New Yorkers to petition the government to suspend this year's election so that Giuliani may continue as mayor.

Suspend democracy as the result of a terrorist attack? No, thank you.

I received my first piece of post-attack campaign mail today. The gist was that we should go out and vote in Tuesday's primary election, but it was also plastered with the candidate's name, desired position, and picture. I DO plan to vote on Tuesday, but not for that candidate.

Here's another item, this time from Thursday's Circuits section of the paper: Just one of the five damaged Verizon telephone central offices served "175,000 phone customers and 3.5 million data lines." Today, I am VERY pleased to report, we were able to make a direct-dialed long-distance call! FYI, New York's battered phone system usually handles 115 million calls a day; since the attack, it has been dealing with twice as many. Go, team!

Tonight's Metropolitan Opera benefit should be interesting. It will have the choral piece "Va pensiero" from Nabucco. Although it's about exiled Jews longing for their homeland, it has become sort of the unofficial national anthem of Italy. Go figure. Then there will be an act of Un ballo in maschera (A masked ball), an opera dealing with political conspiracy and assassination in Boston (not to mention a love triangle). Then there will be the act of Otello in which the governor, prodded with false information, jealously kills his wife. Then comes the end of Rigoletto, in which a father, blind with desire for revenge, ends up causing the death of his daughter. Somewhere in there is supposed to be "Stars & Stripes Forever," too. Again, go figure.

Thank you for all the encouraging and generous messages. I received a nice snail-mail card from one of you, too. Alas, it lamented my being so sad.

I don't think I am (anymore). It's tough to write about death and destruction in a cheery tone, but, rest assured, we ARE getting in some laughs (and not just gallows humor -- like the fear that must have hit potential terrorists when they learned they could no longer use curbside check-in or e-tickets nor count on picking up a plastic deli knife at an airport fast-food concession).

So, here's an even worse joke from one of this week's shows:

Finkelstein had willed his body to science. When the pathologists pulled the sheet below his waist, they both stared in awe. It took a minute before either could speak or move.

"Wow," said one.

"Yeah," said the other. "Say, I know this is probably improper, but do you think I could take it to show my wife?"

"I guess so."

So they removed it and placed it in a very large jar filled with formaldehyde. The pathologist put the jar in a large paper bag before taking it home.

His wife asked, "What's in the big bag?" So he removed the jar.

"Oh, my god!" she gasped, taken aback. "Finkelstein died?"

TTFN Mark

9/23/2001  5:57 pm  Another day , another memorial

Just when you think things are getting back to normal in New York, you encounter the strange.

Last night's Metropolitan Opera benefit was, by all accounts, a huge success. The company's general manager announced more than $2.5 million raised by the beginning of the event. The house was packed with 4,000 people (not unusual at the Met, where people regularly line up for standing-room tickets) and so was the plaza, where we fed a 30-foot-wide video screen. Estimates were that at least another 3,000 people stayed in the plaza for almost four hours to watch the show outdoors and that, in the quiet parts, you could hear a pin drop. The message I took from that was that New Yorkers are not scared to go out and congregate.

All of the restaurants in our neighborhood seem to be (as usual) running at capacity. But there's no question that Broadway shows are doing poorly. It must be tourists who aren't showing up, in part, perhaps, from fear and in part, perhaps, from transportation problems.

Today's "official" memorial event at Yankee Stadium was something else. I have worked on TV shows around the country with a number of U.S. presidents. I have dealt with Secret Service and State Department security. But I have NEVER before encountered security the likes of what I experienced today at Yankee Stadium.

After supplying our identifying information days in advance, it still took close to half an hour to get in. POLICE officers were being stopped for credential checks! We had wrist bands, multiple pendant credentials (different for each day and for different access), and digital photos. Incidentally, it helps to be sartorially and tonsorially unique. Once I had passed through each checkpoint once, I breezed through on successive visits, while my associates had to undergo more stringent credential checks; no one else was wearing pepper shorts, pepper T-shirt, and Birkenstock sandals while sporting a bushy beard.

But why all the security? Mr. Bush never showed up (neither in person nor via closed-circuit feed). The mayor was there, but he was at the opera benefit, too. Former President Clinton was there, but we were prepared for him at the New York Philharmonic benefit with minimal security. Could it have been for all the different clergy? For Oprah Winfrey? For Bette Midler? Maybe it was for the families and friends of the victims, though they, too, were delayed by the heavy security, forcing us to start the show late.

The crowd at Yankee Stadium, too, showed that New Yorkers are not afraid to go out and congregate, not even those who lost people in the attack. A nice touch was the subway being free on the way home (participants also got flowers).

The volunteerism has been astounding, even just on the shows I've been associated with. Some of today's Yankee Stadium crew had just done the Philharmonic "Live From Lincoln Center" benefit on Thursday, the all-network telethon on Friday, and the Met Opera benefit on Saturday before showing up this morning. A jerk spray-painted graffitti on the side of the TV truck at the Met just as we were wrapping, and the Met house crew, all on their own time and in the wee hours of the morning, dug up some cleaning solvents and scrubbed it all off before the truck left. This morning, with many of the crew working on just a few hours of sleep for days, I heard not a word of complaint about the long security lines. And, at the end of today's show, with the crew facing a long, unpaid wrap, many thanked ME for getting them involved!

I cannot express enough appreciation for what everyone has contributed, so this will have to do. Many, MANY thanks to all! My long-distance phone service seems to have returned, and all of the over-the-air TV signals seem to be back, too (the Alpine tower actually seems to serve my neighborhood better than the World Trade Center did). At the end of today's memorial service, during yet another multi-verse rendition of "America, the Beautiful," the big flag in the Yankee Stadium outfield was raised from half mast.

We're supposed to move on, I suppose. But the Mayor's Office of Motion Pictures and Television is not yet issuing any permits. I have two non-memorial/benefit shows coming up at the end of this coming week, and neither producer has yet been able to get permission to bring a TV truck to the site.

Life continues to be strange.

TTFN, Mark

9/24/2001  8:53 pm  Justice, yes, but . . .

In Colorado, one often encounters a license-plate-looking bumper sticker touting the driver's "NATIVE" birth in the state. In some parts of the world, not even natives are considered part of the community. Sometimes it takes many generations to be accepted; sometimes even that is not enough.

New Yorkers are different. We figure that, if someone actually WANTS to come here, he or she is at least as entitled to be called a New Yorker as is a native.

We're different in other ways, too. Well into my second half-century of life, I have yet to own either a home or a car, and, in that regard, I'm pretty typical.

We know subway origami -- how to fold The New York Times in such a way that we can read it while standing cheek to jowl in a crowded subway car and not fall down as the train jerks to a stop. We eat things others would rather not even hear about. And we change instantly in the presence of an emergency.

During the transit strike that began on New Year's Day in 1966, New Yorkers who otherwise wouldn't even have looked at each other (a technique offering personal space in a crowded environment) shared taxis and stopped their cars and limousines to offer rides. During the two big power blackouts, every street corner had at least one person with a flashlight directing traffic. Volunteers have been running supply operations near the World Trade Center disaster site for two weeks.

Now, New Yorkers -- even those with loved ones among the victims -- don't seem to be interested in revenge or retaliation for the horrible attack of September 11. We'd like the perpetrators brought to justice, but the thought of "collateral damage" is appalling.

A story in The New York Times suggests that this is not something unique to our character as New Yorkers but rather to our presence in the city that was attacked. We have seen the destruction. We know the victims. We cannot want to bring such horrors to any other innocent people.

In 1920, a bomb in the New York City financial district killed 35; the prime suspect was an Italian anarchist. In 1975, a bomb at LaGuardia airport (the second deadly bomb of the year in New York) killed 11; it was planted by Croatian nationalists.

We hold nothing against Italians or Croatians. We hold nothing against Puerto Ricans, though bombs set by them have also killed in New York. There are Italian New Yorkers. There are Croatian New Yorkers. There are Puerto Rican New Yorkers. And there are Afghanistani New Yorkers.

I've mentioned before that our mayor has been doing a superb job of managing the emergency. Our governor has not.

From the outset, he has been calling for retaliation. At yesterday's memorial at Yankee Stadium, he told New Yorkers to write the mayor's name in when they voted in tomorrow's primary election, despite the fact that it would be illegal for the mayor to be elected again, something decided by the people of New York twice. Fortunately, today the mayor told voters not to write him in.

There has been a lot of singing of "America the Beautiful" lately. Few people know the words to more than one verse. Here's the end of the second one:

"Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!"

TTFN, Mark

9/25/2001  4:13 pm  My World Trade Center

First, I want to apologize for something in yesterday's report. Even though my point was that we cannot blame an ethnic group for the acts of some of its members, I attributed the 1975 LaGuardia Airport bombing, as have some news sources, to members of one such group. I've done some more research since into that bombing, and it remains unsolved.

Today, I'll stick to personal knowledge. Starting at about age six, I used to travel by myself from New Jersey to New York to visit my much older siblings. To get to one, I'd take a bus to the Hudson & Manhattan (now PATH) train station, take a train to Manhattan, walk underground to the Long Island Railroad part of Penn Station, and take the train from there. It was all routine until one day, on the return trip, the train pulled into a different track in Penn Station, and, as I climbed the stairs, I saw -- to my horror -- sunlight! After years of traveling underground, I had accidentally emerged into the magnificent grand hall of the old Penn Station. I was not pleased and hurried as best I could back to the familiarity of the underground passages.

There's no need to fear the sunlight anymore in Penn Station. The building has been torn down. All that remains are underground passages.

My high school had classes on Sundays but not on Fridays, so, most Fridays, having long since overcome my photophobia, I'd take the ferry to Manhattan to visit Radio Row, a large collection of stores and stalls selling electronic parts and equipment. The closest equivalent I know of today is Tokyo's Akihabara. You could find anything from a ham-radio transmitter to a plastic sheet to "Change Your TV To Color;" it had a bluish tint on top, a brownish tint in the middle, and a greenish tint on the bottom. It looked almost as though it worked if a western was on.

I'd spend hours watching the "auctioneers" at Gray's Discount work the crowds in the style of old-time medicine shows. "Hold your money! You're willing to pay $5 for this, but I'm going to throw in...."

And then it was all gone: Radio Row, Gray's Discount, the ferry terminal. They were all torn down to build two giant towers that would be higher than my beloved Empire State Building.

I visited the construction site with morbid fascination. The towers turned out to be as sterile as I'd feared. Not only was Radio Row gone, but so were the small shopowners who'd had businesses in the old Hudson Terminal (the downtown terminus of the H&M trains). They were replaced by chain stores in what was, effectively, an indoor shopping mall. An indoor shopping mall in New York City!

On the Wednesday before the attack, I was passing through the bowels of the World Trade Center with an expatriate Canadian friend. She looked around and made a face. "Ugh. It reminds me of Toronto." We had just come from Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, walking to the ferry to Manhattan, enjoying the sunshine and the lower Manhattan skyline, including, yes, the gleaming twin towers.

There WAS a plaza surrounding the World Trade Center, but it, too, was largely sterile. There were no stores, and most traffic into and out of the buildings occurred at a lower level. Only recently did the plaza add two features of interest to bring people out of the inner gloom: a memorial to those killed in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and a small farmers market -- the latter actually closer to the street than to the towers.

The farmers market was open on Thursdays and, for part of the year, on Tuesdays. September 11 was a Tuesday in that part. Twelve farmers were at the market. All survived, but their trucks and stands were destroyed. The September 29th Farm Aid concert will benefit those farmers and the ones displaced by the temporary (we hope) closing of four other New York City farmers markets, three in lower Manhattan and one (for security reasons?) near the United Nations.

Most people don't associate New York City with farmers. There are still, I believe, two working farms in the city. Then there's the beekeeper who maintains secret hives on the roofs of Manhattan buildings. The resulting honey is sold at the farmers market near me.

Honey is a new industry in Manhattan. The city is always changing. Penn Station gave way to the latest incarnation of Madison Square Garden, not exactly an architectural masterpiece. Radio Row gave way to the World Trade Center. Lincoln Center, where I often work, was once row after row of tenements -- where "West Side Story" was shot.

There were some things I liked about the World Trade Center. I liked the marble excess of the PATH station and the many huge escalators that connected it to the surface. I liked the outdoor platform of the observation deck because it afforded the best view of the Empire State Building. I liked the chalk signature of Philippe Petit, who managed to rig a tightrope between the towers and walk across; I liked the fact that his signature was preserved on the roof beneath the observation deck for all to see.

When JVC introduced S-VHS and the S-video connection (at Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park), they used pictures of the World Trade Center to demonstrate the freedom from cross-color artifacts. The vertical stripes of the towers provided better problematic video than Johnny Carson's striped shirts and suits.

My favorite thing about the World Trade Center was the dirt removed in its excavation. It helped create the land for the World Financial Center and Battery Park City, both much more human. They changed the World Trade Center from a forbidding wall facing New Jersey into the central spires of a giant cathedral of urban life. The World Financial Center and Battery Park City had a riverfront promenade, the beautiful glass Winter Garden (with its indoor palm trees), a marina, and this quotation from the poet Frank O'Hara in bronze letters:

"One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes -- I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store, or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."

The excerpt is from "Meditations in an Emergency."

Spellbinding though the sight of the towers collapsing was, they were just buildings. Had the terrorists wanted only to destroy the buildings, they might have attacked on a Sunday afternoon. They didn't.

The latest figures are 287 confirmed dead and 6347 missing. More than four thousand of the missing have been registered at the official family centers. The numbers are numbing. That's not good.

Think of one person missing. Think of that one person's family and friends and how they must feel. Then think of that feeling six thousand times more.

The dead and missing and injured are not numbers. They are not "collateral damage." They are (or were) relatives and friends and co-workers. They have names.

Mayor Giuliani sounded as though he was on the verge of losing it today, and I don't mean that in any pejorative sense. He was explaining the procedures the city had set up to allow families to get death certificates for the missing if they needed them. A reporter asked for more details, and the mayor's voice cracked -- for the first time I can recall during the crisis -- as he explained that it was entirely up to the families. The city wasn't rushing anyone. The rescue effort was continuing. But, if a family had a need to declare someone dead -- perhaps to begin receiving insurance -- the city and state would help accelerate the process.

Today was primary election day. My election district usually has superb turnout. If I vote at 8 in the morning, I'm usually something like number 120. Today I voted at about 3 pm, and I was in the low 80s for my party. That surprises me. Was it the rescheduled date? Maybe people were waiting to vote later, when the weather was to improve.

The mayor announced new traffic restrictions today. It's not over yet.

TTFN, Mark

9/26/2001  8:59pm   A new kind of politics?

Ever since the attack, Mayor Giuliani has given the impression of being willing to answer all reporters' questions truthfully and fully, with certain exceptions. He didn't want to dwell on figures of the dead or missing. He held back certain information he thought might be a security risk or jeopardize the rescue work. He avoided some subjects he thought might be too painful for the survivors.

Tonight he added another category, his secret plan for the future government of New York City. He said he didn't want to reveal it until he had discussed it with all three of the men whom yesterday's primary election put in position to become the next mayor. He said he'd discussed it with two but not yet with the third. He said he hoped they'd go along with his plan for a new kind of politics instead of the old. What a cliffhanger!

Incidentally, one of the three said (before the election) that he would go to court if Giuliani tried to run again. A second, when pressed (also before the election), said he would, too, if it became necessary.

The official election results will not be released until Sunday, but the Associated Press has released the following figures as of 3:30 pm today, with 95% of precincts counted:

In Mayor Giuliani's party, media mogul Michael Bloomberg had a decisive victory over long-time New York politician Herman Badillo, 72% to 28%. Badillo said there was a large write-in vote for Giuliani, but that didn't show up in these figures. Badillo had offered, before the election, to step aside and let Giuliani have his spot, if the legal issues could be worked out.

In the other party, given that there was a field of five candidates running, none got the requisite 40% to avoid a runoff election. The closest was Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who was supported by the Reverend Al Sharpton. He got 35%. In second place was current Public Advocate (the number two executive position in city government) Mark Green. He got 31%.

That seems closer to Badillo's 28% than to Bloomberg's 72%, but the raw figures tell a different story. Bloomberg got 44,761 votes in the counted precincts; Green got 219,555 and Ferrer got 251,333. Ferrer and Green were generally considered to be the most left wing of the candidates of their party; Bloomberg was also considered to be to the left of Badillo. All three are considered to be left of Giuliani.

There were so many candidates in one party's primary for the public advocate office that we don't even know who will be in the runoff. One likely candidate is Betsy Gotbaum, a former parks commissioner and the one who raised the most campaign funds. The latest figures I've seen have second place (and, therefore, a spot in the runoff) held by Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer who was pretty low in campaign funding. His support reportedly increased considerably after the attacks.

I can't wait to hear the mayor's secret plan for our government.

Today, for what I think is the first time since the attack, the New York Times had a Metro section. Today, for what I think is the first time since the attack, our local public radio stations carried the Marketplace financial program.

At sundown this evening, the Jewish Day of Atonement began. That means that traffic will be lighter tomorrow. Starting at 6 am tomorrow, all river crossings into Manhattan below 62nd Street will ban single-occupancy cars. A friend suggested this evening that this will create a new business -- people standing near the river crossings offering to ride in cars for a small fee. The restriction is to continue at least through Friday.

I started firing up the Texaco/Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network today in preparation for the coming season. Our primary transmission path, involving a fiber circuit to Staten Island, is fine. We have no working backups at the moment, however. One path, through ABC, is down along with ABC's other circuits to Staten Island. They hope to have it back by Friday. And none of our ISDN circuits has long-distance access. We have a little over two months to work things out. I'm sure we will.

The saga continues.

TTFN, Mark

9/27/2001  8:54 pm  A different hero

In Central Park today, I passed a hot-dog vendor whose umbrella said "Historic Battery Park." That's located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, near "Ground Zero." Business must be better farther north.

There is much concern here about the businesses affected by the attack. Outside of New York, most of the concern seems to be for the airline industry. The U.S. government (i.e., taxpayers) is poised to bail out airline companies with billions of dollars. There seems to be some sense to that. If the airline industry collapses, it will take other businesses with it.

Some airline companies weren't doing well even before the attack. Others were making money for their shareholders.

Earlier this year, my wife's foster father died in Dallas. The mid-week short-notice round-trip fare from New York was more than $2100 each (it still is). The bereavement fare was $800. When we got on the flight (to Love Field), it was 2/3 empty.

Other businesses may wonder why they're not being bailed out, too. As elsewhere, New York hotels are hurting. So is Broadway theater. The mayor's press conference today discussed small business loans that are being made available.

But what about the tens of thousands of airline workers being laid off. Should we be bailing them out, too, or just airline stockholders?

I'm a stockholder and a worker. On paper at least, I've lost quite a bit of money in stocks since the attack. And today I got a call from a client canceling three upcoming days of work due to reduced revenues. Oh, well. I'm alive. I'm well. As those of you who have seen me know, I'm not in imminent danger of starving.

A classic New York joke has a old man emerging from a burning building and collapsing from smoke inhalation. A firefighter nearby folds his jacket and places it under the man's head. Trying to reassure him before the ambulance arrives, the firefighter gently asks, "Are you comfortable?" The man stares at him and says, "I make a good living."

As I mentioned in a previous report, I have always liked firefighters. They're all brave heroes.

You've heard a lot about the New York Fire Department recently. They work for the city. But there's a second group of uniformed personnel in New York who race to fires in red trucks. They're the New York Fire Patrol. They work for the insurance companies. Their job is to spread tarpaulins and perform other functions that might minimize property damage.

All firefighters try to save both lives and property, in that order.

On the 11th of December in 1995, on the border of Methuen and Lawrence in Massachusetts, some 400 firefighters first rescued the injured and then attempted to save what property they could at a huge blaze. Despite exploding propane tanks, they managed to preserve one small part of Malden Mills, the largest employer in the area. Almost a million square feet were destroyed, and the property damage hit $500 million -- in the same order of magnitude as the World Trade Center buildings.

The owner of Malden Mills, Aaron Feuerstein, was at his 70th birthday party that night, and his family was trying to keep the bad news from him. When he finally found out, he began making announcements: He would continue paying his staff (almost 3,000 workers). He would maintain benefits. He would rebuild. He even paid everyone a Christmas bonus.

Most media portrayed him as a saint (it didn't hurt that the plant's products, Polartec and Polarfleece, used recycled plastic). On the other hand, in some business circles, it is said, he was considered a fool for paying $15 million in salaries and benefits while the plant wasn't functioning. Thomas Teal, writing in the November 11, 1996 issue of Fortune magazine, said Feuerstein was neither saint nor fool but a shrewd business manager.

"Why in the world should it be a sign of divinely inspired nuttiness to treat a work force as if it was an asset, to cultivate the loyalty of employees who hold the key to recovery and success, to take risks for the sake of a large future income stream, even to seek positive publicity?"

The missing employees from one of the large financial firms in the World Trade Center have been dropped from its payroll. Every day, new layoffs are announced. No one seems to be making any of the promises that Aaron Feuerstein made in 1995.

The mayor said today that he still hadn't spoken to the third primary winner and, therefore, still wouldn't reveal his secret political plan. He said it should be obvious. He talked about how short a time the winner of the election would have before taking office on the official date of January 1.

In two week and two days, about 10% of the debris has been removed.

My wife worked on a call-in show, "New York Voices," on the local PBS station tonight. One guest, the documentary producer Ric Burns, said the events of September 11 made New York a shoo-in for the 2012 Olympics.

TTFN, Mark

Fri 9/28/2001  2:47 pm  Beyond New York

This morning was the first time since the 11th that I can recall hearing a siren. That wasn't the only noise.

The jackhammers started at about 7:30 am. I don't think there's any connection to the attack.

Our power company, Con Edison (or, as their web address so amusingly puts it, coned), used to have this slogan plastered all over their construction sites: "Dig We Must for a Better New York." "Better" can be a synonym for "greater," and "Greater New York" has been a synonym for the New York metropolitan area.

On Wednesday, we visited friends in Manhasset, a suburban community on Long Island. They told us about a memorial event they'd attended there. It wasn't a memorial event being held in solidarity with those of us in the city; it was a memorial event for those residents of Manhasset who remain among the missing.

There doesn't seem to be a suburban community in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut that does not number its residents among the missing; cars remaining in train-station parking lots serve as grim reminders. There are also names on the list of the missing from points beyond the tri-state area -- even from quite a few countries outside the United States.

Prior to the attack, the worst disaster in New York City history had taken place on June 15, 1904. It was the fire on the General Slocum, a side-wheel excursion vessel carrying the congregation of St. Mark's German Lutheran Church to their annual picnic on Long Island. More than a thousand died (at a time when the city population was only 3.5 million), and the neighborhood, Kleindeutschland, never recovered. St. Mark's Church became a synagogue.

Few New Yorkers have ever even heard of the General Slocum. More are familiar with a pair of front pages or covers from the mid-1970s that seemed to characterize what was then the rest of America's attitude towards New York and New York's attitude towards the rest of America.

The first was the large front-page headline on New York's tabloid Daily News on October 30, 1975, the day after President Ford said he would veto any bill to help New York out of its fiscal crisis. "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." The other was Saul Steinberg's hugely influential New Yorker cover of March 29, 1976, "A View of the World from Ninth Avenue." It showed a view to the west of few blocks of low Manhattan buildings, the Hudson River, a narrow strip of land representing the rest of America, more water, and, in the distance, the hills of China, Japan, and Russia.

Today, it seems we are all New Yorkers, and we are all Americans. Today, workers in Central Park are encircling every lamp post with red, white, and blue ribbons and a big white bow. Today, I received from the brother of a hero of the Pentagon attack a memorandum circulated to all in that damaged building.

It begins, "NYC Need Our Help! New York's tourism has been particularly hard-hit... Four Broadway shows have announced that they will close by the end of the week and six other plays may be in trouble, a theater official said." The Navy brass were organizing a mission to Broadway -- at full-price tickets and hotel rooms. It probably sounds funny here, but my eyes welled up as I read the original message.

It is now 17 days since the attack. Under current law, Rudy Giuliani will remain mayor for another 94 days. Two of the major candidates for mayor, Michael Bloomberg and Mark Green, have reportedly gone along with the idea that Giuliani might continue for another 90 days, until April 1. The third, Fernando Ferrer, isn't going along with it, which means there is a new issue for voters to consider in the primary runoff.

The mayor says the removal of the debris could go on for another year. That's 365 days.

American flags appear everywhere here, which is unusual even on the 4th of July. Today I studied them.

Like many exposed to the counterculture of the '60s, I have mixed feelings about the flag. But I recalled an incident that took place in Billings, Montana in 1993.

It was around the time of the Jewish holiday Chanukah. A Jewish family had stenciled a menorah (a ritual candelabrum) on the window of their five-year-old son's bedroom. Someone threw a brick through it. The police recommended that the family take down its Chanukah decorations.

When Margaret McDonald read about the incident in the local paper, she tried to imagine being forced to explain to her children that they couldn't have Christmas decorations because someone hated them. Instead, she started a campaign to get Christians to put Chanukah decorations in their windows.

Soon, between six- and ten-thousand homes around town sported menorah decorations. Alas, that didn't immediately stop the violence. A Catholic high school with a "Happy Hanukkah to Our Jewish Friends" sign was shot at. Windows were broken at a Methodist church with a menorah; houses and cars with menorahs had their windows shattered. A cat at a menorah-bearing house was killed with an arrow. But the brave people of Billings kept displaying their menorahs, and the violence waned.

So, today I saw the American flags not as symbols of American might but as symbols of solidarity with those who were attacked. They are our menorahs. And I hope I can be as brave as the good people of Billings.

TTFN, Mark

9/29/2001  3:41 pm  A quiet Saturday

It's a quiet day in New York. It's Saturday, and the weather is less than wonderful.

I'm in a TV truck outside the Metropolitan Opera again, this time for "Wozzeck," not a benefit or a memorial. There are still flowers and candles and other memorials at the firehouse up the block (including a large mural from the Barksdale Elementary School in Conyers, Georgia), but they take up less room, and there were no crowds.

The Red Cross headquarters across the street is quiet, too. Large signs indicate that World Trade Center-related operations have been moved to the Brooklyn office.

Some of the quiet may be due to the gigantic concrete barricades blocking 65th and 66th Streets west of here. The New York Energy Control Center is down the block. They're the ones who supervised the last New York blackout.

It's not quiet everywhere in the city. The Empire State Building "observatory" reopened today, and there was a line of tourists waiting to get in. One was interviewed on the radio, and he said, "We're taking back what's rightfully ours!" Militant tourism! Who'd have thought?

My favorite photograph of the World Trade Center was taken by Peter B. Kaplan, on a clear, bright day, looking down at the city past the rear end of a worker atop the antenna mast on the north tower. It appears on page 122 of his 1986 book, "High on New York." You can imagine the rest of the details when you know that the picture was called "Moon over Manhattan."

There were two World Trade Center-related items on the bulletin board in the principal artists dressing rooms area here. One was a cartoon from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Part of the name of the artist had been cut off, but it looked like it started with "Deer." It showed a group of men looking horrified as one was reading an ultimatum they'd received. On the paper were the following words. "To the Taliban: Give us Osama bin Laden or we'll send your women to college."

The other, which I've also seen at the other Lincoln Center theaters this week, was a quote from Leonard Bernstein. "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

TTFN, Mark

9/30/2001  3:36 pm  American freedom

It's cold today in New York. I mean that strictly from a weather standpoint.

The primary election runoff is heating up, with one candidate trying to fling World Trade Center mud on the other. Prior to the first primary, all of the candidates were on their best behavior. The only one to be flinging mud was non-candidate Giuliani, attacking one of the candidates of the other party. But that was before September 11.

I still haven't heard it from the mayor, himself, but news reports seem to indicate that his secret political plan involved an ultimatum to the three main victors of last Tuesday's primary. Either they would allow him to continue as mayor through the end of March, or he would seek to get the legislature to overturn the term-limits law for him. Now that one of the candidates has turned him down, the mayor says he wants to think about it. That seems like a good idea.

One of the candidates who agreed to the mayor's proposal held a press conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall with about a dozen officials of his party who had endorsed him. When a reporter asked how many of those officials supported the mayor's plan, only one hand went up, embarrassing the candidate. That was when he began mudslinging.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor visited New York on Friday, and, after saying that she was "still tearful," she prophesied that "we're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country," a prophesy she is empowered to help fulfil. I wish I knew what she meant. Other than our freedom to fly and our freedom to build and be in tall buildings, which of our other freedoms, if restricted, would have prevented the tragedy?

I've always had a cheery interpretation of Robert Frost's end-of-the-world poem, "Fire and Ice." In my view, it points out that there are too many ways to die to spend time worrying about it. I do not, therefore, fear being killed by a terrorist. But I am very fearful of any reduction of our freedoms. They're what I love most about America.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer doesn't seem to agree with me. He was commenting on the brouhaha that arose over Bill Maher's comments on a recent episode of "Politically Incorrect." As a result of those comments, at least one TV station and at least one sponsor have dropped the program. That's their right (though it DOES seem kind of foolish to me to get upset about something you consider to be politically incorrect being said on a program called "Politically Incorrect").

Fleischer's comments were scarier. He said, "The reminder is to all Americans that they need to watch what they say...." He wasn't referring to classified or strategic information. He wasn't even referring to hate speech or anything sexually obscene or indecent. He just wanted never to be heard a disparaging word.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It sounds like something one of the founders of the United States might have said, though it's usually attributed (sometimes in a different form) to Voltaire. What we DO have in the U.S. Constitution is this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That's the complete text of the first amendment. It doesn't seem so hard to read. I can't find the "watch what you say" part.

As soon as I get a chance, I plan to make (and wear) a T-shirt with "BILL MAHER MAY SAY WHATEVER HE WANTS TO" on it in red, white, and blue. Bravo to ABC for standing behind Maher!

A few days ago, I described how I reconciled myself to all the American-flag flying in New York and elsewhere (a correspondent reports that Old Glory is also being flown all over Tokyo). I can still believe that most of the flags here were put up in solidarity with the victims of September 11, but I think I was too hasty in comparing them to the menorahs of Billings, Montana. There may be nothing wrong with flying the flag here now, but there's nothing brave about it either.

I heard an amazing story of post-attack, non-rescue-related bravery right here in New York on the radio today. New York is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, and Queens is our most diverse borough. An Egyptian coffee house in Queens was attacked by four young men at 3 am five nights after the fall of the World Trade Center. They smashed everything they could get to.

Amazingly, the police rapidly caught the perpetrators and brought them to the coffee house. Amazingly, the owner refused to press charges. It wasn't that he was scared of future retaliation; he said he could understand their feelings. He wanted to do something to "bring the anger down." The story's not over yet.

Amazingly, an hour later, in the middle of the night, the four men returned to the coffee house. They wanted to thank the owner for not pressing charges. They apologized for their attack and said they would clean and repair everything, which they did. They also paid for drinks all around. Then they all -- vandals, owner, staff, and customers, sat around tables for four hours, drinking Egyptian coffee and talking until morning.

Today I saw about a hundred foreign visitors who had bypassed the usual border-crossing controls congregating near the Harlem Meer. That's the northernmost body of water in Central Park. The Canada geese have noticed the drop in temperature and are heading south.

Today I also saw thousands of people in Central Park, all on a mission, with signs and banners. The signs said "Share-A-Walk," a benefit for breast and ovarian cancer support. There were no American flags. The color of the scarves wrapped around their arms was pink.

Today we went to see "The Mikado" at the New York City Opera. As best I could tell, the house was packed. At the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, I was told the house was nowhere near full. But maybe that just has to do with the fact that "Wozzeck" isn't as crowd pleasing as "The Mikado."

There's no accounting for taste. I'm glad I live in a city that tries to satisfy them all. Television permits are being issued again. Tomorrow I work on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam." It should be interesting.

The "Styles" section of today's New York Times has a short piece called, "When Only a Burger Will Do." It quotes consulting chef Aaron Bashy as saying, "People want simpler, more comforting foods right now." Chef Daniel Boulud of DB Bistro Moderne said his burger has been helping people "reconnect with their pasts." It has "foie gras, black truffles, root vegetables and wine-braised beef" and goes for $26.

Welcome to New York.

TTFN, Mark