Passionate About Feeling Dispassionate About Katrina

I guess having been so close to 9/11 and having had my whole life turned upside down (and not in the good "flip it" kind of way) in its aftermath, I might not understand how the rest of country felt, acted, and continued on immediately following those events.

But as I'm sitting at the very trendy (and yes, in Meatpacking District) Bumble & Bumble salon today getting my haircut by a very attractive woman looking out on at a beautiful view of downtown NYC and, frankly, enjoying myself, I kept wondering if people were doing this on September 16, 2001. To be clear, it is extremely important for our economy that we do continue to do these things, but it does make me feel strangely dispassionate and uncaring.

As I'd run from the WTC back on that fateful day in 2001, I, along with so many other people, was just hearing snippets of the newsflow -- the Pentagon was hit, the Prez is hiding, etc etc -- and I was sure that the US had gone into war and that I'd soon be off to fight it. When I finally got to midtown and secured a bike rental (not that the guy was open, I traded my credit card itself for a bike -- which was later stolen from me off the street in midtown, but that's another story) and rode into midtown off of the West Side Highway, I was absolutely flabbergasted to see stores open and people milling on the streets, and sitting at bars. Again -- that is the right thing to do, it's just that I was shocked to see it.

In so many ways this tragic Katrina event is far different from 9/11. But as I'd noted in the "Commercializing Katrina" post below, I'm having a hard time understanding all the differences in the aftermath.