Taxi Maps and many other things

New York is getting on with life. Every day, things get a little more crowded, a little more normal. But, at the same time, everywhere you look, there's something that draws the mind back to Septemebr 11. You step in a taxi cab, and there, somewhere on the partition, or more likely, pasted to the back of the front seat is a sticker with a really patheric map of the city. I mean it's a joke. The perspetive's skewed, the places indicated are not really all that close to where they belong. And yet, when you look at this map, there, at the southern end of the map the twin towers sit, with the usual text, "World Trade Center." So we look at it, and think. How can we not. Eventually, the maps will be updated, replaced by newer ones, presumably without the towers on them. Yet, that, in its own way, will be just as jolting, as much a reminder of those days.

Several times a week, I end up on the south bound FDR drive, delivering the Wife and Daughter to work and pre-school. My daughter loves the boats on the river and the chance to spot the Roosevelt island tram as it floats over the riverscape. Of course, the boats these days always include Police and Coast Guard units watching over the UN, and almost no pleasure craft.She doesn't care, the pretty blue lights mean nothing to a three year old. We sweep past the UN, where long lines of cars wait to be inspected by the security folks before entering the garage, and we come to the curve where the drive follows the shoreline out around the back edge of the Bellevue hospital campus.And there, in silent homage, where there used to be a staff parking lot, sit the trailers. Nothing special. Just the everyday refrigerated truck trailers you see on the interstate every day. Only these trailers are flag draped. NYFD, NYPD, State and American flags drape the outer trailers, the ones facing the highway. Tucked in among the many bits of medical functions that Bellevue provides the city of New York is the City Coroner's office. These trailers one realizes, will be one of the last stops for the remains which are being recovered at ground zero They sit, in near rows. I've yet to try and count them, but there seem to be quite a few. Quite a few, that is until one counts the missing, and considers. And then, again, perhaps more than are needed when one considers the pace of things at ground zero. Three weeks it will be tommorow, and how many have been recovered? Three hundred and fourteen. That's fifteen a day. Over 250 days at that pace, before they come close to all. A sobering thought. But perhaps more sobering is how many will probably never be found.

A thin veneer of normal life is developing on the surface, but it will be a very long time before things are normal.