Columns, pieces and posts
“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” the old hymn says and children still sing. This Thanksgiving some of us have felt a greater than usual desire to gather, and ask. Our first big national coming together since the attacks on America has taken on a heightened feel. There’s a lot of tenderness out […]
He walked into history an obscure, flat footed, bantamy little fellow in a light gray suit, the inhabitant of an eloquence-free zone who gave boring speeches in a flat voice. He was not compelling. This was more obvious because he followed a charismatic leader who did big things and filled the screen. He was quickly […]
That was an interesting speech President Bush gave last night in Georgia. Its subject was homeland security, and in terms of content, style and tone it seemed to be, essentially, nothing new. And yet by the end and after reading it, I thought: He’s telling us a great deal here. The terrorists “want to kill […]
On Halloween I had one of those days that veered from scene to scene. In the morning, in the waiting room of a Manhattan eye doctor’s office, I watched and listened as a young secretary who was dressed for the day in a Morticia costume—all in black, white powdered face, black eye makeup, black pointy […]
I found the words on a yellow Post-It I’d stuck on the side of the bookcase in my office about a year ago. It had gotten covered up by phone numbers and pictures and doctor’s appointment cards, and yesterday, looking for a number, I found it—a piece of yellow paper with the words “His delicious […]
It was Sept. 14 at 9 p.m., and I was on Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I was standing, that is, directly in front of the statue of Atlas holding up the world, at the entrance of Rockefeller Center. I was with my 14-year-old son. We were waiting for friends […]
A few weeks ago I wrote a column called “God Is Back,” about how, within a day of the events of Sept. 11, my city was awash in religious imagery—prayer cards, statues of saints. It all culminated, in a way, in the discovery of the steel-girder cross that emerged last week from the wreckage—unbent, unbroken, […]
Forgive me. I’m going to return to a story that has been well documented the past few weeks, and I ask your indulgence. So much has been happening, there are so many things to say, and yet my mind will not leave one thing: the firemen, and what they did. Although their heroism has been […]
God is back. He’s bursting out all over. It’s a beautiful thing to see. Random data to support the assertion: In the past 17 days, since the big terrible thing, our country has, unconsciously but quite clearly, chosen a new national anthem. It is “God Bless America,” the song everyone sang in the days after […]
This, for me, is the unforgettable image of the day: the fine gray ash that covered everything downtown, all the people and buildings and cars; the ash that flew into the air in the explosions and the burning and that settled over half the city. It was just like Pompeii, which also was taken by […]