Featured White Papers
- Oct. 14th: Simplified IT with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (ZDNet)
- PCI DSS therapy for the smaller retailer (McAfee)
- The rise of Web commuting (Citrix Online)
Content provided in partnership with
Faces on the Walls - Brief Article
Cross Currents, Wntr, 2002 by Kenneth Arnold
We packed two trash bags with old clothes we did not need anymore and wheeled them over to Bellevue for the Gifts of Love campaign, walking like the homeless with all of our belongings past the rescue staging operation on First Avenue. Police and fire fighters stood uneasily at intersections waving all the traffic on, checking faces through the windows. Stacks of sodas, Poland Spring, and candy under tents--the smells of hot dogs cooking on the grills--gave the street a picnic air, but there were no families, children, no delight, no gorging on the goodies. Sirens played in place of radios. Everyone we passed looked tired and wary, glancing up in shock when overhead a fighter jet crossed over. The pictures of the missing taped on plywood walls began a block before the hospital -- a few and then a gathering crowd of faces, names, descriptions, people who last week were riding on the subway with us down to Fulton Street and Broadway. Have you seen my husband, wife, or child--my father, mother, friend? Have you seen this missing person who was in the tower when it happened? Who was sitting at a desk when everything stopped dead? Have you seen this person who for me was all the world and now is all of grief and loss? We walked along the wall, scanning for faces we might know. The wall went on forever, there and at so many other places in the city. Turn a corner and there might be another ghostly crowd at a bus stop, on a diner's window. After awhile, we start to recognize the faces. She's still missing, we saw his picture at the armory. They smile at us from holiday living rooms. They hug their children, pet the dog. They wear their wedding clothes, their bathing suits. They are from everywhere. And now are here, waiting on this endless wall for you and me to come and see that they have lived among us, that once like God they were invisible and now are not.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
Find Research Guides for:
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »