Many Changes, One Cause

Television and radio writer Leslie A. Fuller experienced the jitters that have afflicted the world since Tuesday when she left her midtown Manhattan apartment to buy gasoline for her car.

She was stopped by police on her way back. Alarmed by the sight of a person carrying a can of gas on the ash-covered streets of Manhattan, they questioned her at length. And while grilling her, they noted the book she was carrying.

“Isn’t that the Koran?” one officer asked, pointing to a book of poems by William Butler Yeats that she carried for company in case she had to wait for the gas. The officers’ suspicions were aroused by Yeats’ initials, WBY, rendered on the cover in Arabic-style lettering.

Still suspicious, the police continued to question her for two hours, then followed her to her car and watched as a garage attendant filled the tank.

They then took away the red plastic gas container.

It was Yeats who in “The Second Coming” wrote the famous lines: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

They’re Imprisoned, Poor and Patriotic

They are convicted murderers, armed robbers and kidnappers, many with little hope of ever getting out. But this week, inmates at Folsom State Prison shared something with the rest of America: patriotism. “I guess your right to be patriotic survives incarceration,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

When told they could not donate blood because of their exposure to infectious diseases, they approached Warden Diana Butler and offered to collect money for the Red Cross.

Butler gave the green light, and on Thursday, correctional officers began accompanying pairs of prisoners as they walked down the tiers, soliciting pledges to be drawn from their accounts and pooled in a single check.

By noon, they had collected $900 in one building alone. If that sounds paltry, then consider that inmates typically earn between eight and 12 cents an hour at their jobs.

“If you make $30 a month in here, you’re doing great,” said Lt. Tom Ayers, a spokesman at medium-security Folsom, which houses 3,862. “So if these guys are giving $10 or $15, that’s a lot.”

Other inmates are using hobby supplies to piece together bits of paper and cloth into replicas of Old Glory. Hanging the flags on the bars is a rules violation, but officials are tolerating it for now, Thornton said.

Nothing like this has happened since World War II, when prisoners gave blood, repaired shoes and made steel nets to protect submarines. Ayers, a 21-year veteran, said he asked one inmate, in for armed robbery, what had stirred him.

“I may be a scumbag, but I’m an American scumbag,” the man said.

Grief Mingles With Anger at UCLA

A UCLA ceremony to mourn the victims of the terror attacks divided participants into strongly held camps--mirroring emotions that are being expressed across the country.

“What happened on Tuesday, Sept. 11, was an attack on all humanity,” Chancellor Albert Carnesale said to a crowd estimated at 5,000. But Carnesale urged the crowd not to make “the tragic error of assuming guilt by association.”

Just feet from Carnesale’s podium, Bob Zirgulis held a handwritten sign reading, “Liberate Afghanistan, Bomb the Taliban.” He urged the crowd to chant with him, but got no response.

One student who did join him on stage was Adin Egid, an economics major who held a sign that read: “Mourn the Innocent.”

“I’m just upset by the lack of anger out here,” Egid said. He said his father survived the Holocaust and that America must avenge Tuesday’s attacks.

“There’s really nothing else we can do,” Egid said.

In quiet contrast, law student James Lam wore a tiny white ribbon pinned to his T-shirt to show support for the families of the victims. Lam’s family, natives of Vietnam, lived through that war. But this is different, he said, his voice trembling.

The mission now, he said, is not to divide people but rather to unite them. “The real problem here,” Lam added, “is whether we can get rid of terrorism.”

A Witness of Disasters --and of Heroism

Army Brig. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn’s job is to direct military aid in the wake of disasters. This week, he watched one unfold in front of him while driving to work at the Pentagon.

A jetliner flew over him, fast and low. He was still watching when it hit the fortress-like American military headquarters.

Then he witnessed another thing that lifted his heart, maybe only a millimeter or two, but something. The disaster expert watched average human beings respond in the best tradition of disaster relief.

“What I saw after that was an unknown number of acts of personal courage and heroism,” he said.

People carried others out of the building. The wounded were tended by two, three, four people each.

“They cared for these people with burns on their skin, limping, shaking,” Vaughn said. “They cared for them in spite of the tremendous danger that was right there on the other side.”

High-Tech Community Feels Another Blow

An industry believed to be one of the chief signposts to the future was already reeling from the deaths of two preeminent figures when terrorism struck America and claimed a third.

On Aug. 27, 64-year-old Michael L. Dertouzos, described as a computer visionary by Bill Gates, died of heart failure. Dertouzos had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science.

Last week, William M. Bluestein, 44, president of Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research since 1990, died after suffering an apparent heart attack while on vacation with his family. He wrote an acclaimed report a decade ago outlining the potential effect of the computer industry on the economy.

Then, on Tuesday, 31-year-old Daniel Lewin, a founder of Akamai Technologies Inc., was killed by terrorists en route to Los Angeles. Lewin was still a graduate student at MIT, but, as the chief technology officer of Akamai, which offers technology designed to reduce the complexity of the Web, he was also a billionaire, at least on paper.

He was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the World Trade Center about 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, the first calamity of that violent day.

Janet Daly, communications director at a company that develops technical standards for the World Wide Web, expressed the industry’s shock at the three deaths so close together--and of three men all tied to the MIT.

“Considering the sense of loss across this community, and the links they have to each other,” she said, “I can’t even begin to fathom the impact.”

They Are Grounded but Headed Home

In the desolate plains of northern Nevada, halfway from Winnemucca to Elko, Debbie and John Ackerman pulled their rental car into a rest stop Thursday afternoon. They had made 254 miles from Reno and had only 2,114 miles to go.

The Ackermans were vacationing in Yosemite and found themselves stranded when all air travel ceased after Tuesday’s attacks. But they wanted to get home to Middletown, N.Y. So they gave up on United and rented a car.

They were hardly alone. Interstate 80, the highway across middle America, was full of rental cars as Americans caught away from home took to the asphalt.

The Ackermans’ drive was an anxious one. First, they feared for their son, who worked in New York’s financial district. He called to say he was OK. Even after that, they had worries, because their town is a favorite of police and firefighters.

“I’m sure when we get back home, the local papers will be filled with obituaries,” Debbie Ackerman said.

A few miles west, Chicago businessman Tom Westerkamp also paused on his way home. He too was hurrying across country, to a daughter having brain surgery. Starting at 6 a.m. with one of the last rentals available in Sacramento, he made Battle Mountain by lunchtime.

Only 1,519 miles to go.