A residential building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side blew up this morning around 9 a.m. The White House has been quick to tell everyone that this is not terrorism related. As of right now they’re saying it could have been a gas leak or something, not that that makes it all better or anything.
I don’t think I would do well living in the Big Apple these days. There’s too many variables; tunnels, subways, honking cars, skyscrapers, ships, boats, planes, automobiles; I’d have way too much to worry about. We live over three hours away near a city that has little to entice a terrorist organization and I’m jumpy enough with low flying airplanes, contrails that do U-turns and the like. I’d be worried about the couple of million people around me if I lived in New York.
When the fire trucks head through downtown, I wonder if they’re headed for the tallest building in the county, which clocks in at 16 stories. After hearing the news stories about how big of a target the local nuclear power plants are, I wonder about the planes I see flying over Lake Ontario. Right after 9/11 the local news agencies did everything short of marking a map with “Aim Here”. I’m afraid for our own stupidity.
We live near a former Air Force Base that has been converted to a “Technology Park”. One of the companies that moved in services various shapes and sizes of airliners. When a huge 747 looms over our house on approach for servicing (on one of the few runways long enough to accomodate a shuttle landing, by the way), I remind Earl that the plane flying over the house “is going in for repairs.” I’m happy when a wing doesn’t fall off.
I don’t strive to sound like a paranoid freak, especially since I believe what will happen, will happen, but with all the unrest in the world it’s hard to be totally at ease. There are too many crazy people running around. There are too many crazy people in positions of power. And I just have this uneasy feeling jumping around in the back of my head.
I hope it’s all for nothing.
