Can’t Anyone Fix Anything?

Did you ever wake up in the 5AM dark and say with a snarl, “Why can’t ANYONE fix ANYTHING when so much is wrong?”

No, I didn’t just wake up on the wrong side of the bed (does any mother still say that to her kid?).

First there was the business news. You’ll pardon me for starting there; I work in business news. I have to pay attention. So this morning – when we still have 14 million people officially unemployed – and probably 14 million or so more who’ve given up or are underemployed or in the black or underground economy – all anyone on the business cable channels wanted to talk about was whether the Federal Reserve would announce “Operation Twist” when its 2 day meeting ended this afternoon. Which sure enough – since I am writing this toward the end of the day – the Fed did. (It didn’t help to give Wall Street what it wanted; the market tanked big time anyhow).

And what is Operation Twist? Well – you can be sure it’s not the Fed’s name for a rather complex monetary policy. In very simple terms (which is all I understand anyhow) the central bank will sell some of its short term treasury holdings – and buy more long term ones. Which should push long term interest rates down even more than they already are. Which supposedly would make mortgages and other longer term loans more attractive. Thus magically resuscitating the moribund housing market – without doing anything to change bank policies which have made it almost impossible for normal people to qualify for mortgages. Or, in many cases, restructure old ones.

Nor is Operation Twist likely to improve consumers’ sour attitudes about the economy. So they will buy more stuff again. So small businesses can start hiring again. Even with lower interest rates, how many small business people do you know who will go running out to their local bank for a loan now – so they can hire the additional workers they don’t need to keep up with the non-existent growth in demand for their products?

Which brings me to the next issue – also part of the morning’s business news set up. Companies like Oracle –which makes software – are doing just fine, thank you, because big businesses are continuing to increase productivity by buying more complex software --- so they won’t have to hire any more people. Maybe ever. And maybe can even lay off a few more employees.

Which sent me out into the fog – wondering how all those jobless Americans can EVER find decent paying work again. And how the 90 percent of Americans who do have jobs can ever again feel confident about keeping them.

Then came the real downer. My customary early morning walk around a section of northern New Jersey which was badly flooded by Irene and then a week later - flooded again by Lee. Darling little houses with proudly tended flower gardens. Now stripped of all personal goods. Stripped, actually, down to the studs because plasterboard tends to crumble and dissolve in 5, 6, 8 feet of dirty river water.

Whole streets in normally vibrant neighborhoods are just dead now. No one living in the stripped-down houses. No kids biking to school. No one going off to work. Just – nothing.

One big cardboard sign scrawled in red saying it all – “FEMA – BUY ME OUT”.

How I wish I were still reporting local news. There’s a follow up story at every ruined house. Maybe even a business story in local contractors suddenly “flooded” with new work. But the microwave trucks are long gone now – on to the next big – or small -- story. My blue funk turns black.

Then on a pile of newspapers waiting for pickup I see a photo of Texas Governor Rick Perry – now a GOP Presidential candidate -- wearing a suit and tie and a big grin – and brandishing a pistol for no apparent reason. And later, on the car radio, some analyst opining once again that all those tax increases President Obama put in his debt reduction plan are just red meat for the Democratic base, not a prayer of passing the GOP-controlled House in gridlocked Washington as 24/7 electioneering takes over. Welcome to Greece.

I drive 10 miles out of my way – again - because Morris County is waiting for federal funds and design approval to rebuild a tiny bridge on a heavily travelled road that got washed out by an Irene-swollen, raging stream. More than 3 weeks ago. On a regular basis - multiplied by hundreds of car trips -- how much extra greenhouse gas does that add up to?

Why can’t ANYONE fix ANYTHING?? Does it seem to you that anyone – anyone at all with a name you can recognize – is living in the real world? Or even living???

No wonder I’m peevish.

Perspective

It’s been a week of putting things in perspective. And it’s only Wednesday.

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 went a long way toward reminding me what really matters in one's life and one's world.

Then there is the ongoing cleanup from the double flooding endured by so many financially fragile homeowners here – and in so many other places. Some of those sad people flew flags on 9/11 from gutted, stench-ridden homes. An acquaintance offered one explanation. These people have lost everything - yes - but what they’ve lost are "things". “Things” can be replaced. The people who died on 9/11 can never be replaced. The flood victims recognize that much greater sadness -- honor it and remember it -- because they are beginning their journey back.

Finally (I can only hope it's finally) -- today I opened an Email from a dear, now retired friend on the other side of the world. After his usual update on weather and his wife's garden - complete with smiley faces - came the real reason for the email. I am ill, he said simply. I have pancreatic cancer. All our plans are over. I must go to the hospital for chemotherapy.

Not just cancer -- bad enough in any form. But pancreatic cancer. One of the most deadly. Very few people survive for more than a short time. Of course I thought of Steve Jobs — but he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer, later had a liver transplant and has now said he can't run his beloved Apple any longer. There has been no update on Jobs' health ... but he's looked thinner and thinner in event appearances.

As I said at the beginning --- a week to put things in perspective. How bad is life if you are healthy and solvent, with an intact house and furniture – and someone who loves you?

So please, the next time I bitch about some inconsequential, stupid, perceived slight or annoyance or dislike – someone please hit me. Hard.

You don’t know what a charmed life you really lead, until you see what can happen when the luck runs out.

Remembering 9/11 - the Sequel

I thought there would be a lot more flags flying from homes and poles and mailboxes in the hugely Republican towns where I live. Without provocation many of these folks fly flags all year from their trucks, often forgetting to replace them when they become tattered and torn. They line their driveways with small flags on major holidays. They talk constantly about who is – and isn’t – a “real” American. Patriotism, seemingly, oozes from their pores.

So where were the flags today, the tenth anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks?

We don’t fly a flag on a regular basis. But this is the tenth anniversary of a day none of us who lived through it will ever forget. So my husband and I were determined to pay our respects. To the people who lost their lives and their families. To the heroes who searched for the dead and missing, some sacrificing their own lives after inhaling the toxic dust on “the pile” for months. To this country we call the United States of America.

We finally found our little flags, late last evening, at the one store that sells flags in the entire region. At 9:30 last night we drilled holes for them to stand tall -- in the structure which holds the rural mailboxes on our road. It was the very least we could do.

Today I walked and ran and drove through our town and several close-by towns. Expecting to see every house with some kind of a flag as a memorial, as a statement of solidarity, of nationhood. But where were the flags on this tenth anniversary of 9/11? Where were the flags as the commemorative ceremony was unfolding at the Twin Towers site?

Oh there were some. A house here and there. A Wendy’s on the highway where workers had climbed on the roof to make the flags visible to all. But in front of the grandest, most expensive homes I saw – there were no flags. Nothing. Just perfectly manicured lawns and bushes and flowers. All the more startling in a town where large sections had been devastated by both Hurricane Irene and the rainy remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. Perfection for your lawn, big house. But nothing for the worst terror attack in U.S. history.

Among the homes actually flying flags from formal flagpoles, a surprising number flew them from the top of the pole, as on a normal day. Perhaps not realizing that on a day where we remember the dead, the flag should be flying at half mast.

But then I saw the house that has now been seared into my memory. It was just a little, unadorned house. On a small piece of land. It had been severely flooded by Irene; its insides were already gutted and a For Sale sign was prominently displayed in the front yard. And yet its owners – who had already lost everything else – had found a flag. A good sized flag. Which was tacked up carefully across the siding for all the world to see.

That flag says so much. It says we who live here have lost a lot –but not so much that we can’t remember those who lost so much more. And it says something else that is perhaps purely American. It says we are down but we are not out. We will move on and rebuild our lives. As the 9/11 families have done. As Americans always do.

How much more does this flag say about the America we hope we live in than those grand homes with the perfect lawns I saw today?

It says everything.

Remembering 9/11

We went to find a flag today – my husband and I. A small flag or maybe two to fly from the rural mailboxes on the county road where we live.

Not that we don’t HAVE a flag. We have two. But they are oversized flagpole flags. We can’t even hang them from the straight-out short pole attached to our house. That’s made to push through the spine of today’s smallish decorative house flags – not for a FLAG-flag with grommets for ropes to raise and lower it. Although far too many people who profess to revere the flag of our country insult it every day by leaving it tattered, waving forlornly in the wind and rain. Or leave it flying at night, unlit and unremarked.

We wanted the small flags because tomorrow is September 11th, the tenth anniversary of the terror attack on New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Flight 93’s heroic demise in a Shanksville PA field. We want to fly the flag of our country once again as we did after that terrible day. Fly it to remind ourselves and everyone else that despite the political paralysis these days in Washington, we ARE one nation and we DO stand for the most important principles on earth. Fly it because the nearly 3000 people who died after the attacks, and the heroes who tried to save them, were and are unique and special. Fly it because they- and we - belong to a nation which can’t be so easily vanquished.

Of course every human being is unique and special. But the United States of America is also unique as nations go –a nation built on diversity and determination, our people springing from almost every other nation on earth. In an eerie echo, people from many countries who just happened to be at the World Trade Center were killed on September 11th, not just Americans.

Well, back to the small flags. We didn’t find them at any of the chain stores on our local highway which have put smaller, perhaps more patriotic stores, out of businesses. We will have to find the one store, miles away, which sells only flags and related merchandise – the one I did a story on along with a local, New Jersey flag factory after that first September 11th. And it seems to me that if for no other purpose than to sell merchandise – and why else do these big box stores exist anyhow – the management of these stores missed a major marketing opportunity in a down economy.

Until today – and our unsuccessful effort to find the flag of our country – I was trying to avoid this tenth commemoration of September 11th. I didn’t WANT to remember. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and just stay in bed all day – hiding from those terrible memories. But of course you can never hide from memories.

As reporters we have to separate our personal emotions from what we are covering. Otherwise it would be impossible to do the job; one would spend one’s professional life dissolved in tears. But that takes its toll in other ways; you spend a lot of time later remembering. The images and voices play over and over again in your mind, coming out of the little closet you try to lock them into when you least expect them.

Not that it would be really possible for ANYONE who lived through it to forget September 11th. Or for that matter, its precursor and warning – the initial attack on the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. Which I also recall vividly, having arrived on scene with my cameraman soon after the truck bomb exploded. Had someone somewhere simply paid attention to convicted conspirator Ramzi Yousef’s own words – the second attempt to take down the twin towers might never have succeeded.

So now it’s the eve of September 11th, ten years later. I am determined to find that flag and show anyone who passes by that with all our divisions – the flag is still there. Along with our country. Our grit. Our derring-do.

We need to remember. And remember how we came together as a people, as a country, political and religious differences forgotten. To fly the flag of the United States of America from virtually every home – ten years ago tomorrow.