AM
The true impact of the events of September 11th continue to reverberate, like some kind of slow-motion shock wave.
Two weeks ago this morning the city cut through red tape in hopes of affording closure, and more pragmatic concerns like hastening insurance claims and other benefits. It offered the families of the nearly 5,000 missing the opportunity to file for death certificates without the usual necessity of a body having been found. So far, fewer than 2,000 applications have been made. The private anguish being repeated in thousands of families can only be imagined, and grieved for.
Yet there is another, smaller, group of families for whom the anguish may be more unspeakable still. This morning, the city believes there still could be dozens, perhaps hundreds of victims who have not been reported as missing because they were, or their relatives are, in this country illegally. The living, fear that filing paperwork with the government could lead to their deportation.
The problem was, anecdotally, thought to be so severe that last Thursday, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service came here to state that the INS would not even consider acting against undocumented aliens. The Mayor followed up by saying that even if the INS asked for information, the city would not provide it.
Yet there has been no upswing in new "missing" reports.
PM
This is Yankee Stadium, and New York's first war-time post-season baseball game since 1943. And it is being conducted in an atmosphere of controlled but palpable anxiety.
Some - but not all - fans were subjected to metal detecting wands as they entered. Security for the media, already heightened in the last month, was ratcheted up again. Want to bring a camera or a computer into the ballpark? You had better be prepared to prove that it is a camera or a computer.
And while much of the pre-game conversation was about visits to 'Ground Zero' by Oakland players like Jason Giambi, or about what security might have to do in the event of that New York tradition, the drunken fan running on the field, it is not all safety-consciousness.
A Bay Area television reporter left his bag, unattended, next to the Oakland dugout for a few minutes. A group of media types, unable to identify it, was about to wave over security when the tv guy reclaimed it and apologized for the inadvertent scare.