NEW YORK, Sep 11, 2001/ --- I think the sword was mightier today than the word.

New York City

A toll has just been levied against the city, in which those of us, who live, have always considered the center of the world. In fact, the eyes of the world have now been trained on New York, center of arguably the worst un-natural disaster in human memory. The horrific acts of terrorism are now seared into the collective memory of all humanity.

At ground level, there is no panic, there is wonder, anger, dismay and a unified willingness to help wherever possible, but there is no panic.

Lines are forming everywhere. At hospitals for blood donation, at grocery stores, for water, milk and matches. Lines and lines of traffic clog the streets where the steady sound of sirens has filled the air for more than three hours.

Cell phone communication went down with the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Many stations on cable TV are filled with static from having their feed from the highest point in the city terminated. ABC TV one of the major networks has no signal, along with about a dozen other channels. Back up transmissions and communications come from the top of the Empire State building, once again New York City’s tallest. Although now some thirty years after losing that distinction to the World Trade Center, it is a dubious re-appointment of status in architecture.

For a while this morning, the Twin Towers were ablaze, billowing smoke, falsely painting the New York skyline with the image of two chimneys of some industrial factory. They finally collapsed taking all that remained to the ground.

In a neighborhood more accustomed to counting and measuring gains in corporate and personal wealth, tomorrow they will be counting and measuring again, this time, the missing and the dead and the fortune of those who escaped entombment under the mass of rubble once known as WTC 1 and 2.

Rescue workers at the scene.

Rescue workers at the scene