Perhaps the one remaining untold overarching story of the city on this 18th day... is anger.
Tonight, a new 'Battery Park City' Residents Association will meet at a downtown college auditorium. Its members are angry, and on top of the original emotion, they are freshly angry that others here think they should swallow that anger and replace it with patience.
Lost in the nightmare, not as horrifying as the smoking monster of The World Trade Center, not as heart-rending as the families of the 6300 victims, are 8,000 or more residents of the area who have still not been permitted to return to their homes, nor given even the broadest idea of whether it will be a day or a year before they will be.
There has not been this kind of mass displacement here since the draft riots during the Civil War, or the epidemics of the decades that immediately followed it.
And on top of these, another twelve thousand live in and around the so-called "Frozen Zone." They must bypass checkpoint after checkpoint... to go buy food... to take their kids to temporary schools... to find supplies with which to clean the coating of ash that has painted the area. They often find one set of rules on the way out of their homes... and another set of rules on the way back.