The recent Times Square bombing attempt, and the police reaction a few days later when a cooler and then a shopping bag were left unattended in the Square brought new worry to Americans. While they tell us that the more stringent security methods employed at airports makes an attack on the level of 9-11 almost an impossibility, the danger now comes more from the lone terrorist, possibly operating without any direction from groups like Al-Qaida.

Like the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber fortunately failed more due to a crude attempt than due to security screening that picked up any danger. It did seem that air security was getting lax, until Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab attempted to set fire to bombs in his skivvies on Christmas Day (resulting only in unfortunate second degree burns to his private parts– hey, it could have been worse). It was rapidly beefed up, as travelers have experienced over the last couple of months.

But how do you really protect against bombs crudely put together in a neighbourhood garage, driven on normal streets to populated places and then set off? Largely, other than by attempting to monitor the ingredient purchases, you can’t.

It’s a state of worry for Americans (and to a lesser extent to people of other countries, like Canada), that they find they ultimately have to live with. Present Islamic extremists are not about to go away, and all signs indicate they are having good success recruiting others, in spite of some demands that the new faithful be a personal part of any explosive debris.

Humans seem to have a way of managing worry, coping with fear, even if it gradually takes a psychological toll. I suppose in the final analysis, we learn to “live with it”, to ignore it.

It’s much the same as the danger (“The Troubles”) that people in Northern Ireland lived with for decades, and many other nations still experience daily. One walk down the wrong street, one trip to the wrong shopping centre, to the wrong theatre, could be the ultimate wrong place at the wrong time. Most North Americans haven’t had to experience that, though some have. Certainly an error navigating some of the neighbourhoods of America’s larger cities could put a traveler in more danger than a stroll in Times Square now. Residents of these neighbourhoods know the well the fear of being in the wrong place, wrong time, finding themselves inadvertently between the Bloods and the Crips, but that’s not something experienced by the usual Times Square tourist in checked shorts, toting a camera.

But you can’t stay home forever.

I’m not one for the carnival rides, but will go on a Ferris Wheel, the higher the better. I limit my roller coaster rides to ones that stay relatively upright. Perhaps I would learn to love ones that spiral upside down, but somehow I doubt it. I don’t mind the jarring, jerking ride around the Tree-Topper coaster at Upper Clements Park, even if some people are put off by the possible fragility of a wooden roller coaster. One day there I noticed a fellow walking the catwalk around the track, hammer in hand, pouch of nails on his waist, stopping occasionally to fire a spike or nail into a board that was coming out of place. It wasn’t a comforting sight before a wild ride on the wooden structure.

I know enough about mechanics to visualize the situation with travelling carnival rides: the taking apart of the machine every few days, the reassembling with nuts and bolts, pins and shackles. I suspect some of the operators are into liking the drink, if not the drugs that you read about in stories of being “on the carnival road”. Having a machine broken down for a week while you wait for a part to arrive from Ohio is not an ideal situation in a slow summer. It’s likely a “that will hold it for a few days” kind of world for a carney.

But I ride it– OK, just the Ferris Wheel– like I ride aircraft: both with the belief that sure, this thing is going to go down one of these days, and take a few people along with it— but just not today.

It’s that kind of philosophy that the Americans have to adopt, like it or not. If a terrorist bomber gets lucky with his self-concocted explosive device and the propane tanks he stole from behind the diner, he might take out fifty people who had the misfortune to have been in that famous “wrong place at the wrong time”. The other Americans will wipe their foreheads and say anything from, “I had just left there not ten minutes before,” to “Gee, I’m glad I live in Cleveland.”

In the list of dangers in life, from the drive to work in traffic to the being served by a seriously over-tired pharmacist who samples his own wares, lies the new ones of the exploding Nissan Pathfinder, and the mysteriously ticking Coleman cooler. Unfortunately, the almost total absence of this fear in the back of the mind is a luxury that North Americans have enjoyed for a long time– but no longer, at least in the major cities.

No doubt it will stop a few people from wandering around Times Square, but eventually that will fade, and people will, like me, take the only safety view they can: the airplane engine might flame out, the cotter pin holding the coaster on the track might fall out, this crazy speeding Dominican bus might blow a tire, that cooler clutched by the funny looking fellow with the perspiration on his forehead might contain more than just Moosehead on ice–

—but just not today.

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