Ringing the Changes - 4 January 2002

We had the warmest fall in recorded - meteorologically recorded - history.

A mainly frostless system crossed the whole state through New York city in the south to the Canadian border - remember New York state is exactly the area of England.

On Christmas Day there was a now-famous photograph of two comely girls - I suppose for the libbers I must say young women - sunbathing on a bench in the most western city, Buffalo, heretofore famous for having been settled three generations ago, mostly by Russians, and for having more and earlier big snowfalls than any place in the state.

Well last week Buffalo paid the price for that very late and continuing warm spell.

The usual icy Canadian wind came hurling in from the west, collided with this strange layer of warm air that we were basking in and in four days deposited seven feet - 83 and a half inches of snow, to be precise - on good old Buffalo, provoking loud choruses, in every pub that had candles to see people with, ribald variations of the famous song urging Buffalo gals - gals, worse than girls - "Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight?"

So the winter bore down on us like a wolf on the fold.

Down in the city here it's been so far too cold for snow but the days have been as bright as diamonds.

And I look down to a meadow in Central Park and see tiny, muffled moppets frisking around like children in a Dutch painting.

It's a very peaceful scene and only the occasional ripping of the sky by a fighter jet reminds us who keeps it so.

Well I couldn't keep up this reverie all the short day long. Back to the telly and a review of some of the stories we'd forgotten.

Some we're only too happy to have forgotten.

Three million animals destroyed in England.

That plane that mysteriously was lost off Long Island.

Better forgotten as soon as possible were three topics, so shocking at the time that we may never forget them.

Mr Clinton's pardoning of the convicted felon and campaign contributor Mark Rich and the Clintons' subsequent departure from the White House with a load of furniture, an exit the mildest critic called "tacky" and which former President Carter called simply "disgraceful".

And there was, I'm afraid, the indelible memory of those awful weeks during which there was no president-elect.

Most memorable of all was the still debatable intrusion of the Supreme Court in a matter that the Constitution leaves to the state courts of any state whose tally is disputed.

And after that, the 24-hour panic of the United States Supreme Court, so uncertain how to act that they reached the most unsatisfying verdict they ever can - a split five to four decision.

Which meant, in a presidential election, that a president was elected not by the recorded 70 million or so, not even by the nine justices of the Supreme Court, but by the one vote that broke a tie of four to four - the swing vote of one person.

In a phrase, Justice Sandra O'Connor appointed the president of the United States.

There is one man not forgotten yet and perhaps never will be forgotten by anyone alive and sentient on September 11.

Time was when Time magazine published on its New Year's cover its main story with a photograph entitled "Man of the Year" - it's now, need I say, "Person of the Year" - and that person, who is also a man, seems to have met the general national choice of a human being most deserving the title.

He was, he is, Rudolph Giuliani, who for seven years was known to New Yorkers as the most active, crime-busting, ruthless and best-hated mayor since the late, great Fiorello la Guardia.

I never met any New Yorker who was in two minds about Giuliani, just as I never met an adult American during the 1930s and 40s who was in two minds about President Franklin Roosevelt - you either worshipped or loathed him and that was true till the day he died.

The eerie thing about Mr Giuliani is that during his seven year and a half reign as mayor even New Yorkers who decided he'd become a good mayor did so grudgingly.

Yes, New York city was orderly again, race relations were at least subdued.

And you had to admit that the drop in crime was really dramatic. A final figure appeared on the last day of the year, the last day Mayor Giuliani was in office.

The year he came to City Hall the homicide rate for New York city for the year was 2,400. Last year it was just over 600.

All this made Mr Giuliani admirable but his transformation into a man greatly admired but also loveable is the mystery story of 2001.

It induced in a few serious people serious discussion about whether redemption is possible all at once in a lifetime.

Once a year, at least, we all enjoy Dickens's happy absurdity of taking a tough, malicious, shrewd businessman and making him over overnight into a genial, gregarious, almost saintly figure.

And no matter how much A Christmas Carol may be dismissed as a rollicking good story but a deeply sentimental one, I believe it has stayed alive for 160 years because in even the most cynical, rational, irreligious human there is, from time to time, a twinge, even an unacknowledged wish, to be a better person.

From 11 September and on till the moment he said farewell to the city, Rudolph Giuliani was no longer merely the impersonation of a successful mayor.

He was acknowledged throughout America to have been a good man who behaved finely through an appalling ordeal.

Never wordy, never sentimental. Inhumanely patient and attentive. Striking exactly the right emotional tone, totally unaffected. Open for 24 hours to any help he could give to every victim in sight.

At the very end, on his last day, he was asked if he was not sad to be leaving the mayoralty.

"Of course," he said, "but when like me you've seen real sadness all around you, day in and day out, you're just grateful to have had the privilege of serving."

I no sooner had these solemn thoughts than an appropriate sound put an end to the them. It was the sound of a tolling bell - very familiar to me.

If you were here with me and wondered why it is so loud and clear you could climb a staircase and go up on our roof and look straight to the north and east, no farther than 30-40 yards away, and you'd see towering above the adjoining apartment buildings five onion domes and below them two huge, shining, gold crosses.

You might well believe you were in Moscow but no, you're just off 5th Avenue, and you would be looking at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas.

Such are the mind-your-own-business habits of many New Yorkers, there are people who live in the same block as the Cathedral and don't know it is the largest, the most prestigious, the central Russian orthodox church in the United States.

It's been there for all and more of the 51 years we've lived in this apartment and in all that time I never heard its bell or bells ring out merrily.

Always at twilight two melancholy tollings at intervals, bemoaning, it always seemed to me, the enslavement of the church, of all churches and church goers, for 70 years and more under the tyranny of the Soviet regime, which, you may remember, in the very beginning called religion "the opiate of the masses".

Well only a few weeks ago something most remarkable happened at the cathedral round the corner.

The bell tolled continuously. Evidently something was going on.

Across the street from our entrance were two police cars and a cordon closing off 97th Street and all its approaches.

This little ceremony, whatever it was, lasted the shortest time. Whoever the big shot was he must have prayed briskly and was gone.

And I was very sad. If I'd known I would have padded round the corner and raised my hat to the slim little man who emerged and stepped swiftly from his devotions into a car guarded by two men in dark suits.

I can tell you who it was in a short sentence no listener would have believed for 60 years at least.

The president of all the Russias had just been to church. Yes, Mr Putin had been round the corner to the cathedral.

So on New Year's Eve the Saint Nicholas bell tolled in its usual way but it sounded a new note to me, as I watched one of our networks tour the festivities in all the capital cities that are well ahead of us in time.

We saw a positive blizzard of fireworks from New Zealand to Paris.

But from Moscow there was a note more dazzling still - more dazzling than any firework display - a national poll in which 78% of all the Russians declared their best friend to be the United States.

Now, bearing in mind our ignorance of Mr Putin's deepest motives, but allowing for his saying in a private interview that he had developed a close and trusting relationship with President Bush, and not too much should be made of the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the prospect, at least, of a genuine alliance between Russia and the United States could be the brightest light to shine from the ashes of 11 September.

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