October 19, 2001
By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN
and DENNIS K. BERMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
David Feld says terrorism won't rule his life. He refuses to stop flying. "The best way to fight them is to go on like normal."
So why are the rituals of his everyday existence in such flux? Mr. Feld, a 42-year-old Dallas magazine editor, now avoids highways and underground parking. He gives his Lexus wide maneuvering room at traffic lights so he can swerve out of danger. He switched his morning workout from 11 o'clock to 8 o'clock, reasoning that the skyscraper his gym is in is less likely to be attacked before the workday begins. Says his personal trainer: "Maybe we should move the bench away from the window."
Invisible Enemies
As fear of terrorism mounts across the nation, many Americans are suddenly examining life's most banal routines, seeking to avoid invisible enemies -- and invisible weapons. People are doing "anything to get one iota of control," says Jerilyn Ross, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington, D.C. Self-preservation enters into decisions people used to think nothing about. Bottled water or Dr Pepper? Stairs or elevator? Cereal packaged before Sept. 11 or after?
"Only crazy people used to think this way," says Robin Wildes, a New York City artist, who now stands near exits while waiting for the subway.
Scott Schaffer thinks he understands why some people are behaving strangely. He is co-editor of the Journal of Mundane Behavior, a publication devoted to observing "the unmarked" aspects of everyday life. His magazine observed after Sept. 11 that terrorism "is not specifically designed to kill people or damage property ... but rather to destroy our common faith in the mundane world, instilling fear and dread, and destroying a people's sense of the routine as a haven from turmoil."
Acting Like Tourists
You can see it in Dr. Schaffer's classroom at Pennsylvania's Millersville University, where he is a professor of sociology. Students cluster at the front of the room in case they need to evacuate the building. Dr. Schaffer says people are acting like tourists in a foreign land who calculate every step they take, how they eat, how they speak.
In grocery aisles, "big-brand exposure" has become a concern among some of the 200 or more consumers to whom market researcher Burt P. Flickinger III has spoken since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "If someone in Libya or Iraq is to go after America's blue-chip brands, they're not familiar with Hydrox," says Mr. Flickinger, referring to the less well-known competitor to the Oreo cookie.
Even some organic shoppers are wary. Linda Somers, an Oregon sheep farmer, is confining her purchases to locally grown organic foods. "If you don't know the farmers, how do you know it hasn't been sprayed without them knowing it?" she asks. She also no longer lets her two Great Pyrenees, Magic and Moon, roam outside at night. The dogs sleep in the house. "You never know what's going to fall from the sky these days," she says.
Brown-bagging is in, too, as is calculating the distance to nuclear-power plants. Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association in northeastern Minnesota, "a safe 250 miles from the nearest nuclear-power plant," drove this week in a rented Volkswagen camper to a conference in California. Normally, he adds, "we would have jumped on an airplane. Now, we chose to drive and camp and carry our own food."
Eleanor Fusto, a lawyer who works near New York's Yankee Stadium, doesn't feel particularly threatened while at work, reasoning, "Who would waste their time bombing the Bronx?" But on her daily walk to the deli for frozen yogurt, she headed for the salad bar, scooped up sliced strawberries and the apples she always puts on top -- then dropped the spoon. "Euuhh," she says. "It's just sitting here out in the open for anybody to touch." She grabbed a whole banana instead.
Doralyn Norquist, 79 years old, canceled an appointment with her dentist on the 14th floor of the Medical Dental Building in downtown Seattle. She would venture only as far as her ear doctor on the seventh floor. "We try to stay away from that kind of stuff, and stay in our own neighborhood," she says.
This is a departure for a woman who as a riveter at a Boeing plant in the 1940s would jump into concrete bunkers beneath the assembly floor to practice for possible Japanese air raids. She and her husband, Bobby, a veteran of the North African campaign in World War II, believe they're in "more danger now."
Kent Zimmerman, a vice president in Chicago for Web designer Hubbard One has lately taken to eating in the old part of town, amid squat buildings. He wonders whether maneuvers like that are really worthwhile. "If terrorists were consistent, this would all be rational. But they're not."
Write to Ianthe Jeanne Dugan at jeanne.dugan@wsj.com1 and Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com2
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