Michael Winship: As American as Apple Pie

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Michael Winship

We are a city of incongruities. So I guess I shouldn't have thought it odd when, early Sunday evening, I ran into two London bobbies, in full dress uniform, walking up Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, as if they were patrolling Piccadilly.

They and 65 other British policemen were here to attend a ceremony at Battery Park City downtown, representing the 67 UK citizens killed on 9/11. Their presence has become one of our new annual traditions, like the enormous American flag that hangs overlooking Ground Zero every year, the Tribute in Light memorial that for one evening illuminates the night sky of lower Manhattan, the reading of the names of the dead.

This year, I set out just minutes before the first moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower. For most, it was a regular workday -- over at the 6th Precinct on West 10th Street, the service remembering the two neighborhood policemen who died on 9/11 seemed briefer than in the past. At the ceremony's conclusion, after a minute of silence, a young policewoman piped up, "Well, back to business," and the gathering quickly dispersed.

Yet, everyone seemed quieter than usual as they walked to work or rode the buses and subways. Friends confirmed the feeling. And were more people wearing black, or was it just the usual, New York City fashion statement?

All seemed normal at the Christopher Street PATH train station. Five years ago, with the destruction of the PATH station at the Trade Center, Christopher Street became the southernmost hub and commuters silently lined up around the block to get in, like Londoners during the Blitz.

Traffic on the West Side Highway seemed normal, too. After 9/11, television microwave trucks had lined the road and for months, 24/7, an unending procession of trucks unloaded debris here onto barges docked along the Hudson. Now a man walked along carrying a painting of a blonde woman in a pink kimono holding a lily. A motley crew of eight or so gathered on a traffic island, veterans of "Point Thank You," the meeting place for folks who used to cheer the fire trucks, police cars and ambulances as they sped up and down the highway.

But as I got closer to Ground Zero, police had closed half the road and blocked off many of the streets leading into the site. I walked over to Church Street and worked my way through the crowds on the east side of the pit. There were fewer flowered wreaths and photos, but every year the scene seems to get a bit more zoo-like. A man dressed in a bird suit urged passersby to "Have a Kind Day." A group of Buddhist monks in saffron chanted and beat drums, but above the din, I could start to hear the families reading the names of their loved ones.

The inside perimeter of the site was lined with black tarps so those on the outside couldn't peer in, but the voices rang out. By the time of the fourth moment of silence, marking the minute when the second tower fell, they barely had made it through the first half of the alphabet. "I hope the golf courses are great in heaven," one family member signed off. "Baby, save a spot for me. I love you," said another. One woman recited the lyrics of an old popular song: "How far would I travel to be where you are? How far is the journey from here to a star?"

Across the street, four replicas of the Liberty Bell, trucked in from Wilmington, Delaware, tolled in succession, and scores of people, mostly young, clad in black tee shirts with the slogan "Investigate 9-11!" got in people's faces like Scientologists. They thrust out pamphlets and DVD's declaring the 9/11 Commission Report a fairy tale, the terrorist tragedy the work of a dark government conspiracy.

On this day, it felt wrong, disrespectful. Besides, believing in such a conspiracy assumes a level of competence not evidenced by this government. Just ask the denizens of Baghdad or the bayou.

It seemed as egregious as that ABC TV "Path to 9/11" movie this week, the one that posited a conspiracy of dunces, primarily in the Clinton White House, bobbling all attempts to get Osama before he got us. Not that dumb mistakes weren't made during those years, but the screenplay was factually, intellectually and emotionally dishonest, distorting truth beyond the precipice of libel.

Directed and written by men with strong, right-wing, evangelical ties, the film pilloried Clinton's administration but barely managed to reference such things as the infamous August 6, 2001, intelligence brief warning President Bush, "Bin Ladin (sic) Determined to Strike in US." (And, of course, made no mention of the president's dismissive response -- according to Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine" -- "All right, you've covered your ass now.")

I'd rather remember the pies. You heard me. Pies. Apple pies.

In the wake of the disaster, Pam Post, a woman in my upstate New York hometown, decided that what the search and rescue workers at Ground Zero needed was something as American as, well, apple pie. All the businesses, schools and churches joined the bakeoff. Volunteers chipped in with their time, ovens, ingredients and pie tins. Kids decorated the boxes and in the end, some 800 pies were loaded onto a truck and pointed toward Manhattan.

I got a phone call asking for help. The Red Cross and Salvation Army had turned the pies down -- charities were overwhelmed with contributions. I was useless, but eventually, the desserts made their way to the Episcopalian Church's General Theological Seminary and other appropriate downtown destinations. They were, one worker declared, "The best pies ever."

A small gesture, perhaps, but those pies are representative of the spirit we've lost. In the face of adversity, instead of undaunted and defiant hope, sacrifice and FDR's famous "warm courage of national unity," we're fed a recipe of recklessness, fear and hate that runs counter to the core values of our democracy. Is there an enemy out there? You bet. But many of our wounds are self-inflicted.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Copyright 2006 Messenger Post Newspapers

Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes a weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York.

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