I just got back from standing in the rain, watching the firefighters march up Eighth Avenue from 14th Street to Madison Square Garden for the memorial service there. When I awoke this morning, the first thing I heard through my apartment windows was the sound of bagpipes.
There were only a few people standing on the sidewalks watching. The barricades that had been up since 5 last night seemed overkill.
They all seemed fascinated by the NYSC on the corner of 23rd and Eighth. Maybe there was a class with pretty women happening -- all of the ones I saw do that were men. The departments from Florida and Texas were notable for the amount of Latinos/Latinas in their groups -- a lot more than we have.
I saw men in kilts, bagpipe players having finished their march, carrying five cameras at once to take pictures for their friends that were still marching.
Most of them were Americans, but there were a lot of Canadians, and we saw one small group of Italians and one that was French. I'm sure there were more countries, but I didn't see the whole procession. A policeman standing near us was telling a neighbor from my building about going to Ground Zero to try to help -- "they were turning people away, there were so many."
I could hear the ceremony starting a little after ten on the loudspeakers that were set up along the avenue. I think Giuliani's living with a gay friend in his apartment for a while has been good for him. The first thing he said was that he wished that Father Mychal Judge were there to speak first. He also said that the people who died were trying to rescue people regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
