Time bomb

It seems the only thing over which we have no control is time.

It's hard to believe that just two weeks ago I was sitting with my friend Jim in the garden of his house in London, directly across the street from King's Cross. Our friends Niamh and Jan are about a 10-minute walk from King's Cross. One of the blasts, near Tavistock Square, was close to where Luis dormed as a student at University College London. Niamh and Jan are safe; I have not heard from my other friends, and I can only hope they're OK.

During our recent trip I often wondered if there might be a terrorist incident. Like New York's subway system, traffic on the Tube is fluid and access is easy. We even half-joked with Niamh and Jan that it seemed logical given what happened on their trip to New York in 2001. They were on their way to Las Vegas on the evening of September 10. The next morning, when the entire U.S. air traffic system was grounded, they were stranded in Cleveland. They had to stay there for the rest of the week before making it to Vegas and then on to New York to visit us.

I hope I hear that my friends in London are safe. Historically they're better equipped to deal with this sort of thing, having lived through World War II and decades of IRA bombings. I hope Tony Blair has something more intelligent to say than "[i]t is particularly barbaric that this has happened on the day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long-term problems of climate change in the environment." The best comment I read, though, was on a TV news message board where anyone can post: "[W]hen I first heard about the bombs this morning, I was sure it was France who did it because they didn't get the Olympics." Idiocy at both ends of the spectrum.

A little while ago I was looking out the window of my 51st-floor office, watching helicopters frantically circle the open harbor and the gaping hole at Ground Zero, most likely for suspicious activity. I have an amazing view of the Statue of Liberty, Governors' Island and the tip of Manhattan where the East and Hudson rivers meet. I treasure this view, but my admiration is unseated by seeing Ground Zero from above. Hearing about the attacks in London brought back to me the surreality of 9/11. From my vantage point on the 51st floor I can look 700 feet below to the very spot I was standing in that day when large chunks of the first tower started raining down on me and countless others and the sky turned black.

As a woman interviewed in the aftermath of the bombings said, the most disturbing part about the threat of terrorism is the feeling of powerlessness to do anything about it. I have to agree.