Wall Street

Depending on your point of view, I am either in the safest or most dangerous place on earth.

As I lie here in my hotel room bed, I can look out my window down the street and see the New York Stock Exchange.

It is surrounded by a pointy metal fence — it looks like souped up version of the Victorian fence my Auntie Fran had around her apartment house in Brantford, Ontario in the 1970s.

On the street between me and there is a phalanx of extended cab GMC 4x4 pickup trucks. This truck seems to be the model of choice in the neigbourhood for mobile roadblocking. All the trucks look new. Their engines are running. And I imagine their odometers read less than 100 miles apiece.

You can’t actually walk up to the New York Stock Exchange because only members and invited guests are allowed through the security fence. You can’t use the subway entrance beneath the New York Stock Exchange because it is closed.

The street is lit up almost brighter than daylight. It would be hard to get up to no good.

I didn’t feel queasy about walking from the Wall St. subway station to my hotel tonight at 10:00 p.m. because I knew I had at least 10 pairs of uniformed eyes on me at any one time.

At the same time, the notion that I’m 300 feet from a target worthy of such an obvious show of force makes me pause.

Off to the terrorist-free woods of southern New Hampshire tomorrow.