Editorial
Re-visiting New York City
by David Ortmann, November 2001
In 1976, my Aunt Stella Shamah showed me the lights of the Empire State Building from her high rise Hoboken apartment. It was the year of the Bicentennial and I marveled as they twinkled red, white, and blue. The lights were still red, white, and blue when I was in New York last week, but for different reasons.
As a frightened gay kid from New Jersey, the New York skyline was a constant reminder that there was more to life than my small town. It spoke to me of a wider world than the one I lived everyday and each time I saw it, I smiled.
Last Wednesday I burned the candle as I watched the skyline that had always kept me going as a child. She looked like an old friend I hadn't seen in years, a friend who'd had her two front teeth knocked out, but smiling anyway. I smiled right back. Even after 911, New York has a light that won't be dimmed.
The city was somber in the shadow of senseless tragedy, and quietly unified. There was no shoving in the Starbucks line and less horn honking. People seemed kinder, more reflective, especially when passing the countless memorials spilling into the streets, in every borough, for those needlessly lost on September 11th.
It's the holiday season again and I reflect on the world's religions, and their basic principle: treat others as you would yourself. This guiding tenet is called many things: karma, the rule of three, the golden rule. I think of the importance of religious freedom and the price of fundamentalist thinking, be it Christian or Muslim. I remember that we are all Americans, regardless of our individual identifications. I think of all the things beautiful about America: freedom, spirit, diversity, and that which we must continue to work on: hatred, poverty, and indifference. These are difficult times, but we are truly in it together, as a country, and as a global community.
Holiday music is beginning to play. I hear, "Peace on Earth, Good Will To All" and realize it is not only a song, but also a reminder of humankind's ultimate interconnectedness and a much-needed wake up call for the expansion of our individual, national, and global consciousness.