I’m back at work. It took longer for me to get here to the East Village from the Upper East Side than it did for my co-worker to get to Manhattan from Philadelphia by Amtrak this morning. The smell is still here this far downtown, an acrid odor of burning plastic. I noticed it hanging over the city yesterday as some friends and I went to Central Park to play frisbee…

I caught myself laughing for the first time since the attacks last night. It startled me what a contrast it was, even though it was only some little joke I was laughing at. I am still sick as a dog, coughing and sneezing and the whole bit. But I really, really feel grateful for the chance to whine about having a cold. I look around, and some people on the streets here (and I mean people, there are no cars this far south, it looks like a bad sci-fi movie…) are wearing face masks. A woman here in the office has a bag and is offering them to people. Now, it’s been less than a week since the two Michael Jackson concerts here, and I can’t help but think that, ordinarily, I’d have a pretty good joke about that.