BAKERSFIELD, REALLY
There aren't many days when you expect New York City to be a safer place than Bakersfield, Calif., but today is one of those days. Bakersfield, the oil and ag town where I grew up, today hosts its annual business conference, with a line-up that's almost scary considering the red-alert for terrorism. Today's speakers include Ehud Barak, Gerald Ford, John Major, Ernesto Zedillo, Larry Summers, William Cohen, John Glenn, Andrew Cuomo, James Carville, Bill O'Reilly, Cokie Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Young. Really. I got to go a few years ago, when I was a reporter at the LA Daily News, and was totally blown away by the magnitude of the event set up on the soccer fields at the college. George and Barbara Bush were the featured speakers, but Colin Powell was possibly the most impressive - though at that time, the questions in the press tent leaned heavily on whether he would run for president, and if so, for which party.
- posted by Amy @ 10/13/2001 10:52:00 AM

 

A DEMOCRACY OF PHOTOGRAPHS
I walked down to SoHo this afternoon (after voting in the run-off election) to see the impromptu photo gallery/fund raiser the New York Times covered. The place was packed with people and images of New York coping with disaster. In some ways, it seemed like it happened years ago, that we've been living with this for a very long time. But the funerals are still going on, major streets are still closed and the flowers are still fresh out in front of the police and fire stations. And on some days, like today, the wind is from the south, and the smell of the still-burning fires serves as a non-stop reminder that something is wrong.
- posted by Amy @ 10/11/2001 06:25:00 PM

 

YOU GONNA DRINK THAT?
I spent part of the weekend at the excellent Gotham History Festival. There was a very good panel on the history of New York City's water supply. During the question and answer part, one man asked if the city has ever considered the possibility of a terrorist contaminating the city's reservoirs. Al Appleton, the former commissioner of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection laughed a little and said the city has considered that "ever since the '60s, when people started talking about putting LSD in the water supply." The city consumes a billion gallons of water a day and with that volume, it would require a terrorist to back up a couple trucks to make any impact. "The thing that lowers the risk is that there's probably easier and better places to hit," he concluded.
- posted by Amy @ 10/10/2001 03:15:00 PM

 

15 MINUTES IN EMERGENCY MODE ON THE 1 TRAIN
On Monday I was on the No. 1 subway train uptown, headed for Times Square to meet a friend for lunch. The train just pulled out of the Penn Station stop when we came to an abrupt halt. The woman came on the intercom: "Ladies and gentlemen, this train will be stopped in emergency mode for an undetermined about of time." I whispered a profanity, and looked over the top of my New York Times - the one with the headline that said the U.S. just started bombing Afghanistan the day before. The funny thing was that no one moved, no one else said anything, and there were only a few initial glances around the train, filled with about 30 people. I was thinking about WWIII going on above us, how neither my cell phone nor Palm Pilot could save me with news of what was going on. I expected the train to jolt, or to see the tunnels fill with smoke. And I was trying to gauge why it was that I was apparently the only person on the train having these thoughts. The woman next to me fell asleep, and at least two others did too. People read their books and magazines and waited patiently. After 15 minutes, we started up again and proceeded to Times Square without incident. I got off the train, had my lunch, and took the No. 1 train back downtown.
- posted by Amy @ 10/10/2001 02:43:00 PM

 

THE LONG TRIP HOME
Computer was on the fritz for a few days, but now I'm back. Here's the story I wrote for the hometown paper about my bus trip back to New York from California just after the WTC thing.
- posted by Amy @ 10/10/2001 02:31:00 PM