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Sep. 12th, 2003 01:03 amI think I'm coming to like being woken up by bagpipes playing a wobbly "Amazing Grace" outside my windows twice a year, instead of just on Memorial Day. (Some philanthropist should render a service to humanity and buy the FDNY Emerald Society Pipers a few proper lessons.) I brought some roses down to the Firefighters' Monument, red and white; their colors. And listened as the 343 names of the firefighters were read, and the firebell rung for each, and then the Five Bells, rung three times. And then a fireman played "Taps" veryverybadly on a cornet, which somehow was better than if it had been pitch-perfect and professional.
A small ceremony, not grand and national like the one downtown; not televised; not swollen with the rhetoric of righteous wrath and Christian myopia.
It's a pretty spot on a late-summer morning, on rising ground above the river, with the fountain spilling into its wide basin (for the fire horses to drink from, back in the day). It's where I and my neighbors sat, hours on hours, those first sad nights two years ago.
The firefighters in their dress uniforms looked wonderful, as always, and brought their kids this time, so there were lots of little ones running around in "Rescue 3" and "Ladder 22" tee shirts.
I hate everything that has happened and been done in the name of 9/11: more innocent dead to fill more futile graves; more ruined cities; more bitter anger breeding in sooty corners. But I'm glad that New York has found a way to make this memory belong to the city, as it should.
A small ceremony, not grand and national like the one downtown; not televised; not swollen with the rhetoric of righteous wrath and Christian myopia.
It's a pretty spot on a late-summer morning, on rising ground above the river, with the fountain spilling into its wide basin (for the fire horses to drink from, back in the day). It's where I and my neighbors sat, hours on hours, those first sad nights two years ago.
The firefighters in their dress uniforms looked wonderful, as always, and brought their kids this time, so there were lots of little ones running around in "Rescue 3" and "Ladder 22" tee shirts.
I hate everything that has happened and been done in the name of 9/11: more innocent dead to fill more futile graves; more ruined cities; more bitter anger breeding in sooty corners. But I'm glad that New York has found a way to make this memory belong to the city, as it should.
