Midday Monday I heard the car would be accessible, so I left Bev watching TV in the hotel room and went up to Grand Central to hop on the Lexington Avenue subway for my latest downtown adventure. My route and mode of travel brings to mind the Comden and Green song:

since I travelled in "a hole in the ground" down to the Battery. Listen to the original song from Leonard Bernstein's “On the Town” on YouTube: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra: New York, New York

Downtown this line runs under lower Broadway, and when people visit us using this line and I tell them to get off at the Wall Street Station, it usually raises eyebrows. But although the Wall Street Station was open, it wasn't the route they allowed you to use, so I went one more stop and got off at Bowling Green as the train proceded under the East River to Brooklyn.

Coming up at the park at Bowling Green (where the Dutch used to play ninepins) things looked both normal and not normal. There were plenty of people, some rushing to the Staten Island Ferry a few steps away. Things had been cleaned up. But there were a lot of police, and police cars around the park, which is where Broadway begins, and a few huge generator trucks with cables running across the sidewalk providing emergency service. The huge oversize statue of the bull (=bull market) that glowers up Broadway had flags taped behind its horns and some signs taped to its huge backside, so it really looked funny to see a woman standing under the upraised tail intently reading these notices.

I went up Broadway a bit to the Bowling Green Station of the post office that serves us, and a notice said that mail delivery had resumed that day, so I did pick up a bunch of items that I had been expecting later on in our building mailbox. I just hope they remember to forward everything else.

Back at Bowling Green I cut over along Battery Park (in colonial times, a battery of guns had been there) and over to what is now the residents-only, pedestrian-only zone of Battery Park City. A guy in military fatigues checked my ID, and as I knew, I needed picture ID with a local address, so I had to show my Florida driver's licence with the Florida address along with my business card that has both addresses. After another block there was a second checkpoint.

I wanted to check out the neighborhood first. As I've said, the Regatta is at the lower end of South End Avenue, which is four blocks long, then turns one block at the upper end to the WTC. I was able to walk only three blocks up the Avenue to a roadblock, and couldn't see anything, so I backtracked one block and went down a sidestreet and between the trees I could see the rubble site about two blocks away. Where I was standing, a huge vacuum cleaner truck was running and guys were vacuuming ash off the street. Things were really quite clean, but in the park there the English ivy was still covered with ash. Shops along the Avenue were still closed, but some with signs saying when they'd be opening. Back in front of the Regatta, things were quite peaceful, but you could see in the blacktop the gouges caused by all the machinery that had been transferring rubble the week before. In our lobby I was approached by two somber-looking ladies from the Red Cross, but I told them I was fine and went to say hello to people I knew. Apparently, with all stores and restaurants closed nearby, the closest supermarket is a trek back to the subway and up to 14th Street, so there were signs up suggesting bringing back groceries for neighbors. On the subway, no less. It's going to be urban homesteading for a while.

All utilities were on, and the apartment was fine, just as we had left it. I stepped out on our tiny balcony and looked at our 180-degree view up and down the Hudson. Visitors have always enjoyed our view, but in the future things will be different. People will always want to know how things were here on September 11.

There was a cleaning service in the building, presumably called in by the board to clean up the public areas, but you could sign with them to do your individual apartment, and they would bill your homeowner's insurance directly, so I signed up. They specialize in cleaning up after fires, floods, furnace puff-backs. Curiously, their card also says they clean up crime scenes. Well, somebody has to do it.

I had thought our apartment was pretty untouched, but he ran his hand over our granite countertop and showed me the grit. They clean ceilings, even our cathedral ceiling, all walls, take everything out of every cabinet. Actually, we could use a good spring cleaning anyway.

Diagonally across the street I got the car out of the garage below another apartment building. The guy knew of at least one owner that wouldn't be coming back to pick up his two cars, wondering what good do his two cars do him now.

I slowly drove out of the area to the east side of downtown and went north. Activity seemed normal. As I drove through Chinatown, I saw memorials around the statue of Confucius in Chatham Square, some in Chinese. The car was gritty, so I stopped in a carwash, then drove by the memorials in Union Square.

We had a dental appointment on Long Island Tuesday, and I was wondering why the midday traffic was slow entering the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, then saw that the police were pulling aside all trucks for inspection. Later, we saw how the line of trucks waiting to go up to the Throgs Neck bridge went on forever. Then the dentist told us he heard that because of a bomb threat they were checking all cars as well as trucks and it had taken his wife two hours to get out of Manhattan, so when we stopped at my mother's for dinner, we stayed later into the evening until things cleared up.

I told my Mother I couldn't find the smaller sized flag I'd been looking for, only larger ones. She had the right size, so now Bev's wheelchair flies the colors at knee level.

Coming back, approaching the tunnel, the midtown skyline was perfect. The Empire State Building in red-white-blue, the Chrysler Building with its crown of icicles. The skyline's just fine.

Everyone's seen the ads in newspapers by various organizations regarding the attack. I particularly liked the city-to-city ones. I liked the full-page solidarity ad in the Times by the City of Los Angeles, and was particularly happy with the one from the City of Berlin, with a picture of the Brandenburg Gate.

For the second week of our stay, the already special rate our hotel had given us was further reduced by 30%. They jokingly called it the "refugee rate".

As for Broadway, actors have taken a 50% cut in pay for the duration, and the other unions took a 25% cut, plus a 25% sum going to buy tickets of the given show, to be distributed free to rescue workers. "Kiss Me, Kate", which was to have been the fifth show to have closed last Sunday, managed to rescue itself in this manner, and the producer tore up the closing notice on stage before what was to have been the last performance. I think we're going to do a bit more theatergoing this weekend, our last, and help pump up the economy. They say there may be 100,000 jobs (of all kinds) lost in New York.

Here is an editorial I like and agree with from Tuesday’s New York Times:

Trains Need Help, Too Stranded travelers made a fortuitous discovery when the airlines shut down.... The country still has an intercity rail system.... Congress ... should also make a commitment to improve passenger rail.... Air travel is still projected to grow in the long run, intensifying gridlock. The current slowdown should not blind Congress to the need to upgrade the passenger rail system.

When the WTC opened in the early 1970's Paul Goldberger, the Times' architecture critic lamented its minimalist, severe style, saying it came at a low point in the minimalist period. But beyond style, I recently found a statistic I found remarkable. I had said that the Empire State Building, and most other skyscrapers, were not only not as tall as the twin towers, but they also taper as they rise, so there were far fewer people at great heights. But I didn't realize exactly how much more massive these towers were.

The statistic said that the loss of the WTC was the equivalent of losing the office space of fifteen Empire State Buildings. Now that includes the space in the 3-4 low-level buildings as well as the towers, but of course, it's mostly the towers. Having that many people that high off the ground, and expecting firefighters to run up the stairs of those vertical deathtraps, in full gear, to those heights, is an affront to reason, an affront to humanity, and an affront to civilization itself. Fifteen Empire State Buildings, indeed.

Replacement discussions abound, usually with a memorial included. The owner wants to put up four 50-story buildings. Well, those would at least blend into the neighborhood. There has been a suggestion to move all the stock exchanges to the site, New York, American, and Nasdaq, maybe with a branch of the Guggenheim Museum. Rail and subway lines might be extended to help the continuing rebirth of Lower Manhattan.

In any case, the site is no longer a location of just New York interest. It now has, and will always retain, both national and international significance.

Here is a historical fact you might not be familiar with. In 1835, the City of New York consisted of what is just Lower Manhattan today. North of this area were forests and fields. In that year the Great Fire of 1835 broke out. It started in the east, near the East River, and burned across to the west. When it reached Broadway and Bowling Green, the width of Broadway acted as a firebreak, and it spread only minimally to the west side. About 60% of New York was destroyed. The fire was so intense, and burned so brightly, that it lit up the night skies in Philadelphia, so that one Philadelphia fire company deployed its horse-and-buggy fire wagons, thinking it was a local fire in Philadelphia.

New York rebuilt. And then just ten years later, with not all the reconstruction finished, there followed the Great Fire of 1845, taking down old and new, but not quite as extensively. And New York rebuilt again. You can't keep a good town down.