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Return to the mold farm, part 100

July 8, 2005 By pia

It’s raining big time today. My brain is in rare mold farm form. To be allergic to mold is to be allergic to rain, unless it’s over 80 something degrees, and the humidity is tropical. Then I thrive.

Almost did the ultimate New York thing this morning and called a coffee shop just for coffee as my Cuisinart combined grinder/coffee maker (thermal carafe) revolted, and didn’t want to be taken apart and cleaned. Every section of that machine has to be thoroughly cleaned after each use. In high humidity that includes the grinder, and it didn’t want to be seperated from the mother ship. However….

Went down to The Village yesterday to meet fave sis for an early dinner. Po’s is a very popular Italian restaurant; we could only get a 5:30 reservation. However the restaurant was almost empty at first. Fave sis didn’t understand as they accept only X amount of reservations, and only save your table for ten minutes. Usually there are lines out the door, and it was a summer Thursday when everybody is out.

Fave sis lived in The Village for years, then she was a pioneer (sort of) in The Far West Village (meat market district), then when married and planning on making a baby, they moved to Battery Park City, where they lived in the building closest to The World Financial Center until fave niece was two, and they moved back to Long Island five years before 9/11.

Fave sis’s been a deperate housewife, for awhile now, and couldn’t understand why the restaurant and Carmine Street, itself, were kind of empty.
“Well, sis, it’s early for summer, it’s July 4th week and a lot of people are away. But don’t you understand, people stay home on nights like tonight to watch TV, and they just don’t want to be out. Brings back many memories.”

The restaurant did fill up, and enough tourists and natives came out to make the street look less desolate. I wish that I had bought my real camera, as opposed to my camera phone. Across from the restaurant, hung from an apartment window, was an American flag with a peace sign where the stars should have been. Looked like it had been hung up last summer before the convention, when everybody was on edge and tried to do everything they could to stage peaceful protests.

The subway was empty for eight PM, and a cop who looked distinctly seasoned stood in front of my seat. Couldn’t help but notice that his hands were slightly trembling. And I said yesterday that the NYPD is the best trained? Will continue believing that, but I this morning I read in The New York Times this statement by James K. Kallsttrom, a senior advisor to Governor Pataki, and the former head of the NYC FBI office:

the attacks should be a wake up call to the command in Washington.

He and (reps for) The American Public Association which represents 1,500 nation wide transit agencies believe that not enough money is being set aside for public transportation.

I find this ironic because people are always being urged to leave their cars at home and use public transportation. Why should they if they have a choice? When I arrived at the West 72nd Street subway stop, there were police cars filling the Broadway mall where the stop is located. While I did flashback to that night almost four years ago, when I took a young girl to make the first subways leaving Manhattan for Brooklyn, I have become far too used to seeing this sight, and have had too many free subway rides, as police will stand near the metrocard booths while looking for whoever. It’s really not something a person wants to become used to.

One high ranking New York law enforcement official had this to say:

If you absolutely wanted to, you could do it. My feeling is, it’s a matter of time.

In New York most of us don’t have a choice. We rely on public transportation for everything. We also rely on each other. Most of us enjoy being alive very much. This isn’t an anti-war speech though I believe that the horrific public transportation bombings in London drove home the point that we are going after the wrong enemy. And if you want to argue that point, please go to that other blog Bring it on! where any one of us will be happy to talk about it.

My point is simple: wherever you live, whenever you see a bag on the street without an owner, tell a police person. The life you save might be your own. I have said this many times and am probably the only person in the world who some people will argue this simple possibly life saving point with.

I was on pins and needles last night because of the attack, and for a more personal reason dealing with my apartment that I will discuss tomorrow. Not being able to sleep, or do anything productive I went to my friend and fellow Bring it On! member, Cranky Liberal’s site and made the weirdest comment in the world. Cranky was one of the first people I met on the blogging circuit, and he’s a great and original thinker, but don’t tell him I said that as I don’t want to boost his ego further.

We do think the same about Karl Rove who did come into my city and say that liberals wanted the terrorists to have therapy which is the furthest thing from the truth. This liberal wants terrorists hung from the conjones; just can’t help remembering when Bin Laden was the enemy. Why was his family allowed to leave the country when nobody else (except for Dick Cheney who was permanently in the sky) allowed to fly? Won’t even say what I think about Rove and Valerie Plame. Again, Bring it on!

I hadn’t planned to make this post at all political, but when I see an obviously experienced policeman with his hands trembling….

Filed Under: 9/11, New York Stories Tagged With: 9/11, New York Stories

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Comments

  1. mrsmogul says

    July 8, 2005 at 9:55 pm

    A friend emailed me today and said, don;t worry the English said they would put more police in the streets, You what I did? I replied to her and laughed!! there are no police here, You know how many times I have called the police for help only to get ringing forever, or get put on hold and then hung up on?? It’s a joke! the english laugh at the police, at least you got police on NYC trains, here they are no where to be found! They hide in their cars and look like wimps! they dont’ care here, no law and order here, it’s a doomed country!

  2. Doug says

    July 9, 2005 at 2:19 am

    Your segue from the restaurant to the security situation reminds me of the scene in the movie version of Failsafe, when there’s a montage of New Yorkers going through their normal lives just before the bomb falls.

    By the way, there’s a great conversation going on at Sar’s site on this topic as well, By the way, I’m not sure about the etiquette of posting a link to someone else’s site here. If I’m wrong for this feel free to delete and just let me know and accept my apologies.

  3. Pia says

    July 9, 2005 at 3:49 am

    Funny I was just reading the conversation at Sar’s site.

    Up to five inches of rain here today. can’t think.

    Your site’s becoming increasingly too challenging for my addled brain ;-)–hate that. Keep on doing it!–and that. not me. Not a smiley face and ! type person.

    Somebody should give me a book contract just to stop me. Anybody, book contract?

    I’ll even stop telling people who write self-described cute pieces about not reporting beautiful unattended bags to stop feeling so great about that. Though I assume that they learned.

  4. Jen says

    July 9, 2005 at 6:01 am

    Ugh, mold.

    I like the way you’ve described the interrelated lifestyle of New York here. It’s easy to ignore that in a lot of other cities.

  5. Random Personae says

    July 9, 2005 at 7:09 am

    Is the wrong enemy the one that fights back? (When I’m at Bring it On next time, maybe I’ll take part in the discussion.)

  6. cooper says

    July 9, 2005 at 8:28 am

    OT but I love Po’s.
    Close to my campus and not too far from where I lived.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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