The Anniversary of 9/11 in NYC: from Outside My Window

I made my way to work this morning being somewhat aware of what day in history this is. Though the weather is nothing like it was on September 11, 2001 - today it is grey, humid, and foggy - I did still bring my camera with me, figuring there would likely be opportunity for me as a photographer to document this day in New York City.

I work at 1 Liberty Place in Lower Manhattan, which - to those of you not familiar with the gnarled traffic pattern on the southern tip of the island - means that my building is one block away from the site of what was once the World Trade Center. When my train pulled into the station at Broadway Nassau, and I mounted the wet, crumbling steps toward the outside world, I was a little wary of what I might find myself amidst once I stepped foot on Broadway. The scene on the streets surrounding the World Trade Center site resembled what I had pictured in my mind: crowds of tourists, weaving and walking slowly down narrow sidewalks, consulting their plastic maps of the city; throngs of cops stationed at every corner of the blocks leading up to the WTC; and single-file lines of workers like me, who were forced to walk at a much slower clip than usual while they tried to make their way toward their jobs.

As I approached my building, the crowds thickened, and silver fences blockaded streets. The out-of-town wanderers wearing shorts and rain jackets, with cameras around their necks, tentatively ambled closer to the blockades, peering over the heads of the police stationed there to see if they could get a glimpse of the scene. On Cortland Street - the street that runs between my building and the discount department store Century 21 - a PA system was set up through which you could hear the voice of a woman was reading the names of people who had died during the attacks. In the greyness and light rain, her voice took on a ghostlike quality, and the combination amplified my feelings about the attacks on the World Trade Center. As I made my way closer to my building, the slow, somewhat monotonous reading of the names, which were followed by the solitary ringing of what sounded like a ship's bell, made tears well up in my eyes. I remembered how incredibly horrifying and awful it was on that day in New York City, six years ago, when the towers fell, and I wished that they were not performing this ceremony right downstairs from where I work.

There have been many articles in New York City newspapers, leading up to this "anniversary," debating the validity of having such large-scale, public ceremonies commemorating the attack on the World Trade Center. The opinions have been across the board, ranging from people who would like to move on, and not be bombarded with the situation, to others who feel that we must pay our respects to all the people who lost their lives on that sunny Tuesday in September. I did not lose any of my friends or family during the attacks, and I was in Brooklyn - not Manhattan - when the planes hit the towers. But everyone who lived in New York City during that time, and sat and watched this scene unfold - in person, from rooftops, and on TV - was deeply, deeply affected. After the first tower collapsed, I watched the remaining tower burn from the roof of my building. It was impossible to process the fact that what I had seen on TV – total chaos, flames spiraling out of windows, bodies flying through the air - was happening across the river in this tall edifice that from my roof, seemed solid, and unwielding. At that point, I couldn't call anyone to talk about it, because shortly after the second tower fell, all phone lines in New York City became so jammed that no one could get through on either cell phone or land lines. I had spoken to my family already, and assured them that I was ok, but the fear and trepidation that filled me, and everyone else that day, stemmed from not knowing if the people who you knew in NYC were themselves ok. I spent over two hours that day trying to call a close friend who had recently started a temp job someplace in Lower Manhattan, and it wasn't until four days later that I got a message from her.

One would think that six years would be enough time for this event to be processed through the minds and souls of every New Yorker, but I was surprised at how sad and heavy I became listening to the names of the dead being read over the load speaker. It's bad enough, sometimes, to be sitting at my desk and look out the window at my unobstructed view of Ground Zero. Though the site where the towers once stood merely resembles countless other construction sites sprinkled within a four block radius of my job, I often brood over how terrifying it would have been to sit where I do today, six years ago, and watch the scene at the World Trade Center unfold. I've wondered if people on my floor got evacuated as soon as the planes hit, long before the towers fell, or if they stayed at work and got trapped in the maelstrom of dust and debris. Did anyone who worked at 1 Liberty die that day? Thoughts such as these drift in and out of my mind like the smoke from a blown out candle, and are often easily stifled by the notion that the spot where I sit is now probably the safest place in the city. But to be trying to get to work, and be forcibly reminded of what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001, was not the way I'd intended to go about my day in 2007.

When I got to the corner where I usually turn to head toward the entrance to my building, I realized the street was blockaded and foot traffic was being re-routed away from 1 Liberty Place. I had to physically move aside and sneak through a space in one of the fences just to get to the pavilion on which my building sits. A cop yelled out at me to come back after I had passed through, but I would have had to walk two extra blocks, and then go through a checkpoint just to get into my building, so I ignored her. Once I mounted the steps on to the pavilion, I walked to the western side and tried to get closer and see what the scene was like down on Church Street, and to maybe shoot a few photos; I couldn't get past the shrubs and planting boxes. I went through the north side entrance to the lobby of my building and then walked over to the south side. I asked one of the security guards if I could go out through the south entrance, which opens up on to the park where the ceremony was taking place. I said I worked upstairs, and was also a photographer; I just wanted to shoot a few pictures. He exuded a sigh that sounded empathetic, but said that the doors were locked, and "they" were guarding the exterior exit. I glanced at the men wearing suits who were stationed at the other side of the doors, and wondered if "they" were New York City cops, or even higher up the security command. Without a press pass, the closest I could get to the park was to peer through the windows of the lobby of 1 Liberty Place, and gaze at the tops of peoples umbrellas, clustered together, which formed a seamless sort of tent over the proceedings.

I gave up the notion of shooting photos, and rode the elevator to the twenty-second floor. Once upstairs, ensconced at my desk, the sounds from the outdoors became faint for a while, and I focused on my work. But then came the sound of a choir, sounding their lamentations into the thick fog, and I started feeling choked up again. With the grey sky and thick clouds, the music could not have been any more melancholy. Once the choir performance ended, it was quiet for a moment, and then a highly talented trumpet player did a rendition of "Taps." It was agonizingly sad and beautiful. A few people in the office went to the windows to try and get a glimpse of the scene below, and a few surprisingly carried on, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I glanced over at a co-worker across the isle, who was wiping her eyes. I then realized that tears were welling up in my eyes, too, and I looked back down at the work laid out on my desk, hoping the mundane details of a regular day would dispel the headache that was beginning to spread through my forehead.

I know there are people who appreciate this kind of spectacle, who feel like the lives of their loved ones and friends are being honored by this pageantry. Fox 5 news in New York tonight had what seemed like an "all about 9/11" program laid out for the 10 o'clock news, with their main anchor, Rosanna Scotto, encouraging viewers to contact the station by e-mail or phone with their "9/11 memories." 9/11 memories? She said it in a tone that denoted the memories would somehow be pleasant. I didn't quite get it. An event like that day is not the same as reminiscing about your summers spent at camp in the Catskills. It's not like fondly talking about a favorite past Christmas or Hanukkah, or even describing the details of a particularly memorable day. Anyone who lives here can attest to the fact that amongst family members and friends, there are still plenty of hushed, intense discussions of "where were you that day?" Isn't this enough? Can we not have the dignity and sensitivity to pick and chose the moments in which we are in the proper mindset to ruminate about an awful, frightening experience?

For me, your average New Yorker, what happened on September 11 still feels like a short time ago. The fear, sadness, and anxiety I felt that day, and during the months followed- when this city virtually came to a stand still, the economy crumbled, and many lost their jobs - is still a raw wound inside of me. I hadn't realized it was, until I was forced to listen to dead people's names being read over a loud speaker. It's hard enough living here sometimes, with the latent knowledge that New York City is still likely a main target in the event another terrorist attack occurs. It's a dull sense of dread that never quite goes away. And because of this, I, for one, wish that the city had chosen not to mourn the dead in such a somber way. We, the citizens of New York City, need to be allowed to heal from this experience, without such bombastic reminders awaiting us at every street corner.

Why Do Many Young Girls Dress Like Whores?

Everywhere you go these days, photos of some girl's naked boobs or thong-strangled ass burst out into your field of vision. From the pages of My Space and reality TV shows, to ad campaigns and music videos, girls as young as 11 years-old, all the way up to young women in their 20's - are being portrayed as whores. While I would like to blame this phenomenon a patriarchal stranglehold on the media, it saddens and perplexes me that a large cross-section of today's girls and young women advertise themselves on their web pages as being "hot" and liking to "party."

For some reason, girls as young as 11 are plastering their faces with layers of Jon-Benet Ramsey-style make-up and snapping digital photos of themselves dressed in bikinis to upload to their web sites. College girls, succumbing to the fantasy that letting complete strangers watch their every move is somehow going to make them loved and famous, think nothing of getting undressed and masturbating in front of a web cam in their dorm rooms. And let's not forget "Girls Gone Wild." Apparently, there are endless supplies of teenage and twenty-something party girls who clamber to show their tits, and make out with their best girlfriends on camera (for free!!!), full-well knowing they will be viewed by thousands of horny guys around the world looking to jerk off to a $7 DVD.

What is it about growing up in the late 90's and early 2000's that has caused this generation of girls and young women to portray themselves in a style that used to only be employed by professional hookers and porn stars?

Back in my day (and yes, I'm thrilled I'm finally old enough to employ that time-honored cliché), being "hot" barely crossed most girls' radars. To be fair, most young people - both the girls and the boys - were aware of who was "pretty" or "cute," and there was a certain pressure to conform to a certain look or clothing style. In my early teenage years, that style was Izod shirts, button down oxford shirts, and Levi's corduroys, along with Nike sneakers and feathered haircuts. The girls and the boys, for the most part, dressed alike, and androgyny prevailed. I'm not sure if this was a result of my generation having come of age after the social movements of the 60's and the 70's, when there was a conscious rejection of the Barbie doll housewife image of the 1950's, but it's highly unlikely that I, or any other kid at that time, was aware of how our choice in clothing de-sexualized us. But even when the "Flashdance," Michael Jackson, Valley Girl, and New Wave crazes influenced girls to start dressing in a more feminine way – wearing mini-skirts, or off-the-shoulder Jennifer Beals sweatshirts, and later, big pouffy skirts and Goth wear ala Madonna – these more feminine outfits didn't trump the fact that us girls coming of age in the 1980's (at least as it seemed to me), cared more about who we were, and what we could do as people, than we did with how "hot" we looked.

It's now obvious to me that we were the first generation of young women who were fully able to reap the rewards of what the feminists had worked so hard for in prior decades. Though I certainly wouldn't have understood it like that at that time, I had no further to look than in my own home - where I watched my stay-at-home mother spend her every waking moment cleaning, cooking, carting us kids around, and waiting on my father - to notice the difference between what I was being taught in school, and what opportunities had existed for a woman who was a couple of decades older than myself. In my school, an idealistic post-1970's curriculum was practiced, in which both the girls and boys were required to take wood and metal making classes, as well as cooking and home economics classes. There was a newly installed girls sports program, and the girl's soccer and field hockey teams were more popular than the cheerleading squad. And as soon as I got to high school, I was very aware of the need to get good grades in school so that I could get into a good college. The mantra that seemed to be drummed into my brain from grade school onward was: make something of yourself.

In many ways, today's girls are making something of themselves. It's been well documented that universities all over the US boast more female than male students, with girls out-performing boys in almost every concentration. It's a given that young girls and women indulge in a plethora of sports and hobbies. Women have flooded the workforce, and there are plenty of women who have achieved success and positions of power in many fields. But with this kind of progress, I am that much more baffled by the fact that Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton get daily media coverage, and young girls and women feel like they need to look like whores in order to sustain anyone's attention for more than five minutes. Why is this happening?

I have a couple of theories. One is that these girls are living their lives as a post-post-post-feminist reaction to women of my generation, who for the most part, played down their femininity in order to be taken seriously in both the classroom and the workplace. Is it possible that today's young ladies think that things are so equal in society right now that they can both be taken seriously in school, or their fields of profession and be overtly sexual so that they will still be popular with the guys? Is this why, too, so many women my own age don't want to associate themselves with the term "feminist," and don't bother to speak up and wield the power they now possess in order to stop media outlets and mainstream movie studios from still exploiting and showcasing women's bodies and sexuality in order to sell products? Have these women ever stopped to wonder why, in our so-called evolved, enlightened society, mainstream magazines (outside of mags targeting gay men) never feature cover photos of guys striking a come-hither pose, displaying their cocks, and mainstream movies don't show full-frontal male nudity?

My other theory is that some women of my generation, who were at best, encouraged to be protective of the self and her own interests, and at worst, encouraged to view motherhood as a situational ball and chain, are now the mothers of these pre-teens and teenagers. The mothers of now are so caught up in their own lives and their own dramas that they cringe at the notion of being a responsible parent, or a disciplinarian. Often, these mothers try too hard to indulge their daughters, and to be a "pal," instead of being "uncool" and establishing boundaries and instilling values. Also, the sheer number of divorces in this country means that there are many children who are missing one parent, and more often than not, that parent is a father, not a mother. It doesn't take a degree in psychology to see a correlation between a generation of girls without fathers, and the lengths that they will go to attract and secure male attention. Also, the fact that older women who are prominently featured in the media are cutting into their own skin, getting major plastic surgery done in order to "look younger" and appear more attractive, aren't setting a good example for younger women. You only have to have seen one magazine cover in the past year featuring a naked, greased up Janet Jackson - who, even though she's a successful singer and entertainer, seems desperate to get everyone to view her as a sex symbol at age 40 - to see what kind of message younger girls and women are getting. It's a sad and pathetic double standard, when you compare these women to how how older men play themselves off when they're in the spotlight. I was blown away a couple of weeks ago when the newsman Mike Wallace appeared on "The Colbert Report," and, at 88 years-old with sagging skin galore, came across as sexy, because of his voice, his energy, his humor, and his intelligence. Would a set of rock hard fake boobs and over-strecthed skin on a woman who was scantily clad honestly garner her the same kind of reverence, attraction, and respect?

I would like to think that this is a passing phase in our social history, yet another creepy outcome of living under the backwards Bush regime, during a time when flagrant superficiality and intense greed is on display for our young people wherever they look. I would also like to think that this problem - as I see it - of young girls and women exploiting their own bodies and sexuality to gain a sense of self and attention, is not as prevalent as it appears. I would like to think there is an angry mob of teenagers and twenty-something young ladies out there who are going to deluge my inbox with e-mails and tell me that these Paris Hilton wanna-bes are the minority, not the norm, and that they "don't do that sort of thing." But right now, I am horrified that these impressionable young women are buying into this joke of a stereotype that dictates: in order to be thought of as pretty or popular, you have to be "hot" and willing to show the world your pussy.

Coming Down with a Bad Case of New York City Subway Karma

I, like most New Yorkers, have grown accustomed to the regular annoyances and violations of personal space that occur during the journey to and from work on the subway. I've come to accept that some recent transplants haven't yet learned subway etiquette, and choose to plow their way into the subway car, as opposed to stepping aside and heeding the call of the irate conductor shouting "let the people off, let the people off!" I've acquiesced and put down my book in defeat when a bunch of teenagers get on the train at rush hour, and crank up a boom box with blown woofers to accompany an acrobatic hip hop show; why get annoyed with the deafening volume of the music, or the clapping and the flips? These young entrepreneurs are just trying to make a buck like the rest of us. I barely notice the spooky mumblers who slither through the subway cars whispering "Duracells, one dollar, Duracells, one dollar" —unless, of course, I need a battery, then the subtle sales mavens are nowhere to be found. This is all part of living in the big, bad city, and the easiest thing to usually do is to just roll with it.

But there are days, and thankfully they are few, when one's inadvertent proximity to the cacophony below ground can make one never want to step foot on an MTA subway car again. Yesterday, I experienced one of those commutes from hell, and wondered what might be worse: riding the MTA that day, or journeying across the Atlantic in the hull of a pirate ship?

It normally takes me about 45 minutes, door to door, to get to and from work. I left the building I work in at 5:15PM, and briskly walked down 6th Avenue. While dodging various people on their cell phones, and getting cut off by a slow-walking gaggle of tourists gazing gape-mouthed up at the Empire State Building, it occurred to me that instead of taking the B or D train at 34th Street, like I always do, and transferring to the A or the C at West 4th, it might cut down on my travel time if I walked the extra few blocks to 8th Avenue and caught the A train. I have the somewhat unhealthy habit of striving for petty efficiency, and often feel compelled to keep moving; I cannot bear being in a state of inertia, especially when it involves being stuck in enclosed places with other human beings plastered against me. As I approached the 34th Street subway station, I gave in to my own impatience; instead of walking the extra two blocks to 8th Avenue. I decided to duck into the 6th Avenue station and catch the B or D trains, which are usually fast and frequent.

When I reached the bowels of the station, I dodged bodies down the escalator; there was a downtown B train at the platform with its doors open. I hopped off the escalator and sailed into the car, breathing a sigh of sweet victory that I had managed to get on a train immediately. A moment like that, in New York, is respectfully referred to as “good train karma.” But, as I basked in the glow of instant gratification, I noted that the doors of the train had not snapped shut. And the F train across the platform was sitting there, wide open and idle. This was a bad sign. I didn't have to wait very long before a muffled announcement came over the MTA PA.

"The B and D trains are being held at the station, due to an emergency situation at Grand Street station."

Everyone on my train groaned. Emergency, in NYC MTA parlance, often means that someone has been pushed, or has purposely jumped, in front of the subway. It struck me as an inevitable byproduct of city living that myself and everyone on the B train felt more inclined to bitch about our commute being thwarted than we did to contemplate the horror of a person losing their life on a live subway rail. Since it would most likely be a long time before they got the B and D trains moving again, I got off the train and hopped on the F. I figured that even though it wasn’t moving either, it was probably just temporarily stopped at the station, perhaps waiting for the track traffic of rush hour to clear up ahead. No such luck. After a few minutes had passed, and several dozen people had jumped on to the B train, given up, and packed into the F train, the crackle and fuzz of the PA system intruded again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the F train is being held at the station due to a signal problem at Bergen Street. For customers traveling to Brooklyn, we recommend you get off this train and go upstairs to the N, R, Q or W train. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Everyone groaned a lot louder this time, and there was a mass exodus. I followed the crowd out of the train, and begrudgingly realized that if I had only taken my own advice earlier, I would've already been on an A train, headed home. I had already lost a precious 15 minutes on this excursion, and couldn’t take any of the other Brooklyn-bound trains at the station, so I now had to walk over to 8th Avenue anyway. I headed back upstairs, and figured I'd salvage the botched mission by getting a $2 refund on my Metrocard.

I tapped on the glass-enclosed window where an MTA worker stood. I told her my spiel, and asked if I could get a refund.

"I'm all outta refund tickets. You're gonna have to go across to the other booth and get one there," she motioned behind my back.

I turned, expecting to see another booth in eyeshot. "Where?" I queried.

"Go back in the station and cross to the other side."

"Go back in the station and cross to the other side?!" I asked, incredulous. That meant I'd have to go through the turn style and pay another $2, just for the privilege of being able to visit the other booth, which may or may not have refund tickets in stock.

I decided not to question the absurdity of the situation. It wasn't worth getting worked up over, because ultimately, there would be no opportunity for a self-righteous payoff. I'd eat the $2 and head over to 8th Avenue, and at the very least, I figured, get a shot at catching a train heading straight to the more tranquil milieu of Brooklyn.

When I arrived at the platform on 8th Avenue, I could not ignore the irony of the first train arriving on the local C & E track turning out to be a B train. Hmpf. I wondered if it was, in fact, the very same B train I'd gotten on earlier. It glided to a graceful stop and it's doors slid open. I stuck my head inside the car to see if there'd be an announcement about where the train was going. I waited.

"It's running on the C line," a guy said, hopping into the car.

"In Manhattan, or Brooklyn?" I asked.

He shrugged, and none of the other passengers offered up any information, so I decided to avoid taking the risk. I waited for a C train. As luck would have it, one arrived not five minutes later, so again, I was thinking: ok, now that I've gone to the right station, I’m finally getting to experience true good train karma. It’ll be a straight (albeit slow) shot from 34th Street in Manhattan to my stop in Brooklyn. I'll do a little reading, finish the short story about the Americanized Russian guy with the immigration problems in this week's New Yorker. I figured it would only be a matter of minutes before the stress of the work day, and the bullshit 6th Avenue lockdown, would soon be behind me.

It was indeed an uneventful, even pleasant ride for two or three stops. I was on a car filled with other weary workers who were intent on reading or taking a nap. No one's iPod head phones permeated my ear zone with the not so faint sounds of music I did not choose to listen to. There was no sign of the inevitable twosome of girls riding together whom I always seemed to encounter when I was most in the need of silence; one, or both of the girls would talk loudly, and non-stop, about the incredibly dramatic machinations of their 20-something lives. And no one sat next to me who was wearing either too much perfume or cologne, which saved me from having to give up my coveted seat to avoid having an allergy attack. I was thrilled at the notion of a tolerable train experience. But no sooner had the relaxation vibes take over my body than the train stopped. I looked up to see how far we had traveled, but it was impossible to gauge; we were not at a station platform. There was nothing to see but the dark, graffiti-strewn walls of the subway tunnel. I sighed in defeat. My symphony of movement underground was being crushed by circumstantial inertia.

Everyone on the train did the requisite shuffling of feet, of sighing loudly, of quietly murmuring to themselves about the efficacy of the New York City transit system. The conductor came on and apologized, but suspiciously made no promises about how soon we'd be moving. In an effort to thwart feeling claustrophobic, I opted to keep the focus on my reading. I was soon mildly distracted when, out of nowhere, a skinny, light-skinned African American, who's gender was indeterminable, wandered by me, with his/her hand extended.

"Anybody got $2 for a hero?" She/he said in a high-pitched voice.

At first, I thought this wispy beggar had come up with a clever sort of wordplay, asking for $2 because she/he had performed some sort of gallant deed in the past. For a second there, I even thought it was kind of charming—anybody got $2 for a hero? Then I noticed that the guy sitting next to me had his sweater pulled up over his nose. I glanced back at the humble stumblebum and looked at her/his bonny ankles, which were sockless, and crusted with dirt and blood. My gaze traveled up her/his spindly, stretch-pant-clad legs and noted they were camouflaged by several brown tinted stains, the largest of which was spread out over the meager cheeks of her/his behind. I gave the air a sniff, and wondered why the guy next to me was so intent on shielding his schnoz; I couldn’t smell a thing. But then as the vagrant slowly ambled away from our section of the train, the full fumatic glory of her/his poop-scented pantalones reached my quivering nostrils—it was one of the worst homeless person aromas I had encountered in a while. I grabbed at the collar of my sweater and pulled it up around my face. Everyone else around me had done some form of the same; one guy employed the fashionable “scarf wrap” around his nose, a lady across me was pinching her nose closed with two fingers, and a younger guy a couple seats away had pulled the hood to his sweatshirt up and yanked the strings tight so that the opening for his face closed up, barricading him from the aroma. With this shared act of bracing ourselves against the odors trailing the begging hero, a bit of camaraderie started to develop.

A woman with a Caribbean accent started chatting with the Italian-looking, New York accented guy sitting next to her; they made a contradictory, but somehow congenial couple—she a primly and impeccably dressed, middle-aged black woman, and he a casually, somewhat sloppily attired, middle-aged white guy. They had a lengthy conversation, and the air was punctuated with their hearty laughter. I slipped my sweater down away from my face, and tested the air, and was shocked that our area smelled just as bad as when the beggar had been standing right in front of us.

“Oh no, here she comes again!” called out the Italian-looking New York guy. His jovial tone somehow struck a chord with everyone in the train car; what had been a train full of individuals, shielding their noses and staring down at their laps in shame, suddenly became a clan—New York City transit riders—whose eyes met each other, starting to realize the humor in our predicament.

The beggar, who I could now see was indeed a female, did another drive by and got no results, so she hastily beat tracks to the other end of the car. A gaggle of people from the other end of the car suddenly migrated to our end of the car. A younger guy, wearing glasses and totting a brown, leather rucksack tried to go through the door leading to the next car, but his attempt was for naught, as the MTA had come up with a new rule that prevents riders from passing through the doors between subway cars unless a train is stopped in a station.

“No luck, huh?” The New York guy said.

“I already moved from a different car at Canal, ‘cause she was in that one,” the younger guy, who had a German accent, announced, “and now I come here, and she’s back!”

It was at that moment that the New York guy decided to do his fellow subway riders a public service; he whipped out a small can of Mexx cologne and sprayed a wide arc over our area of the subway. For some reason, this struck me as hilarious, and I burst out laughing. The girl sitting next to me started snickering too, which egged New York guy on, causing him to stand up and give the area a generous covering of cologne. His Caribbean buddy next to him clapped her hands in glee. The guy sitting on the other side of me, who had been muffled and stoic up until this point, let his sweater slip down off his nose, and he took in a deep breath of the sweet, sexy air.

The beggar did one more round of inquiry, sticking to her tried and true “anybody got $2 for a hero?” and it finally dawned on me that people in New York, unlike in my native Massachusetts, where we call them “subs,” refer to large sandwiches filled with cold cuts as “heroes.” I guffawed over my linguistic misconstruction. That set the girl sitting next to me off again, which New York guy interpreted as a call for more Mexx. As he shot his last wad of fragrance toward the ceiling, there was a jerk and a scrapping sound, and the train finally started moving again.

The beggar decamped for more lucrative possibilities at Broadway/Nassau, and as the train made it’s descent under the East River to Brooklyn, I had to marvel at the strange dichotomy that exists in all New Yorkers lives: On the one hand, we see or experience things that are disturbing, sad, or reprehensible, and on some level we feel deep sympathy for the people we observe or experience in difficult or horrific situations. But because of our inadvertent participation in, or proximity to these people or situations, we more often than not end up feeling annoyed, or emotionally drained by them.

This concept was glaringly illuminated on the final stretch of my subway ride—from Jay Street to Clinton/Washington. After being held captive on the New York City subway system for one hour and fifteen minutes (a half an hour longer than my usual commute), I had to endure the loud, screechy whines of a five year-old boy, and his mother chatting loudly with her girlfriend. This lasted non-stop, through 3 subway stops. Was I overcome with maternal instincts and the Nanny 911 desire to help this mother better control her child? No. All I really felt like doing was yelling: “Will you please shut the fuck up?!”

"Supergirl," by Rosie McCobb, Copyright 2005

"Three Decades After Roe..." and the Fellas Still Don't Get It

I was doing my patriotic duty by reading the Op-Ed section of this past Sunday's New York Times, and I came upon two essays about Roe v Wade, both written by men, which made me suspicious of a NY Times conspiracy to keep the ladies in diapers:

"Three Decades After Roe..." By William Saletan, New York Times, 1/22/06

"States of Confusion" by William Baude, New York Times, 1/22/06

So I wrote a letter to the Times, which reads as follows:

To the Editor:

After reading William Saletan’s piece (“Three Decades after Roe…”) in the January 22 New York Times, I was left seeing exactly how and why this issue is still not at all understood by the men who serve as the political voice in this country, whether they be members of Congress or the media.


Mr. Saletan suggests that women who affiliate themselves with the Pro-Choice movement – whether they be staffers at Planned Parenthood or your average woman on the street – should start talking about how “bad” it is “to kill a fetus” as a means of courting those who want to outlaw abortion altogether. He also infers that pro-choicers alienate pro-lifers because the pro-choicers “never faced the question of abortion’s morality.”

You don’t think so, hmmm?

Talk to pretty much any woman who has ever contemplated having, or gone through with an abortion, and I would be willing to bet she would discuss the morality of having an abortion. It is a huge part of female culture, and I find it naïve on Mr. Saltan’s part to offer that women don’t discuss these issues. But, to reiterate a truth most women know without having to broadcast it: Every single woman who walks into a clinic – especially these days, when her path is blocked by screaming pro-lifers who wield huge signs showing bloody, mangled fetuses and who assure her that she will “Burn in hell” – feels the weight and sadness of this incredible moral dilemma on a very deep, personal level. And what Mr. Saletan, pro-lifers and many conservatives refuse to concede is the fact that both girls and adult women spend a great deal of time grappling with these issues long before she makes the decision to walk through that taunting picket line and into the clinic.

It is insulting to ask women who have mustered up the courage to make a very serious, personal choice to pander to pro-lifers and the conservative, political majority by scolding ourselves publicly. Can women not be granted the dignity to make tough, emotional choices, like our politicians do, and then stand behind those decisions without publicly denigrating our actions, and therefore ourselves? Mr. Saletan is asking us to revert to a state of being that could easily be construed as bipolar: one minute you’re a cold-hearted woman having an abortion, the next you’re repenting in public?

There is a real danger in asking pro-choice women and abortion clinics to get on the anti-abortion bandwagon, because it sends the message that women should be ashamed of themselves if they have an abortion. It also does, as abortion-rights advocates have argued, shift the focus away from interpreting the laws under the Constitution, to re-creating them based on religious morality; if Samuel Alito can evade answering questions about his own personal morals in the Supreme Court hearings, why can’t pro-choice women do the same if they are lobbying for a constitutional right to have an abortion?

Why not entirely shift the debate away from morals anyway, and focus on ways in which the rest of society can contribute to preventing unwanted pregnancies? The first thing I asked my gynecologist when I visited him last was: “Have they come out with the Pill for guys yet?” He said this was the number one question his patients asked him. What does this tell you? Women are tired of shouldering the entire responsibility for enforcing prevention. Instead of asking women to bond on the “My bad!” ticket, why not ask us to band together and demand that scientists get the lead out and come up with a male birth control pill?

Secondly, why aren’t people like Mr. Saletan and the pro-lifers asking our government what it is offering as an incentive for a woman or a couple to go through with a pregnancy if they are physically or financially unable to provide a stable life for the child? Is it truly any more moral to advocate bringing a child into the world during a time when Americans are stuck living below the poverty line, many members of the middle class have huge credit card debts and only manage to stay afloat by applying for more credit cards, and child abuse cases are so rampant in a city like New York that a seven year-old child needs to be sexually violated and beaten to death before the local government admits that their child welfare office is overwhelmed and understaffed?

It is entirely logical, and smart, as Mr. Saletan suggested, to insist that the government take the Prevention First Act seriously, and to require that sex education, and not unrealistic “abstinence” programs, be mandatory in our schools. I would even go so far as to suggest “Scared Straight” –type programs where pre-teens and young teenagers visit an abortion clinic, or witness what life would be like if they had to raise a child before they were at an age where they could even support themselves. But instead of making abortion an even dirtier word by talking about how “bad” it is, why not entirely focus on the positive ways in which the pros and the cons can bond, and demand accountability from our local and national government, and lobby for real, viable options for a better life?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Why the Raging Optimist?

Welcome, racefans.

This being the very first blog I have created, I feel introductions are in order; I'm sure you are all dying to know - who are you, oh Raging One, and from where did this somewhat silly yet confrontational moniker evolve?

Well, as any lady is taught (and yes, I will reveal that much about myself right off the bat), one should never give away too much about one's self at the beginning of any relationship - so I shall not ruin the air of mystery and intrigue in this burgeoning interconnection. But here are a few bits of background about yours truly on which you can chew: I was once a creative writing undergrad at a small, New England college for punk rockers and rich filmmakers' kids - I falling into the former category, though later on wishing I had been from the latter - and was under the youth-induced impression that I would become a famous, published novelist and a household name by the age of 24. Suffice to say, this did not happen, and I - like many clueless, arrogant young adults coming of age in the 1980's and early 1990's - ended up yet another frustrated artiest who had never been taught how to hold down a real job while trying to pursue the literary holy grail.

Some of you will be disappointed to learn that I all but gave up my dream of becoming a more fun-loving, female version of any one of my favorite novelists (who were all suspiciously males, but that's a topic for another day) however, I have never lost that desire to open my trap. I am one of those unfortunate souls who seem to have been bred specifically to comment on, complain about, or critique life and everything in it. On my bad days, this ever-running dialogue might spew forth in some particularly un-PC-like remark (which, where I live, might have something to do with bad hip hop and $1000 rims). On my better days - I might entertainingly elucidate on the things I have seen, heard, or experienced in my life with the sincere hope that my doing so will somehow touch, inspire or educate my fellow women/men.

And this is where the Raging Optimist thing comes in.

When I was younger, everyone assumed I was a pessimist - in fact, this is what my high school classmates named me in the "Superlatives" section of our graduating yearbook; "Class Pessimist." I always accepted that tag with mixed emotions - on the one hand, I was proud that I had made a big enough stink, writing in our high school newspaper about the things that appalled me, that everyone knew who I was, and at least gave me recognition for something more serious than being the "Best Kisser." On the other, I carried this burden - of people assuming I was a cynical mistanthrope who would never be satisfied with anything this world had to offer - with me for years .

I don't know how it happened - maybe around the time I stopped wearing black and listening to aggresssive, hardcore punk - but it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't, actually, a pessimist at all. I didn't believe that people and the world sucked, and I actually had a tendency to romanticize things, and to focus on the good (sometimes blindly, to my detrement). I realized that though I spoke out about things that I thought were unfair, harsh, or stupid, the inspiration for doing so came not from the desire to prove that once again, everything in this world was doomed, but to whine in a fit of disapointment: "Why do people allow themselves to behave like such schmucks, and to settle for so much less?!"

I have come to realize that people (myself included) get themselves into trouble over and over again because they assume the worst about other people - about life - and make moves based on pre-determined, negative assumptions. And most people (myself included again) are also very, very lazy - if we think we can take a shortcut to getting something we really want, we will - even if it hurts ourselves or others. It's a sad thing to witness - someone having a kneejerk, negative response to a situation that could so easily go the other way, had they only chosen to proceed openly, logically, earnestly and without preconceived notions. Corny as it might sound, I honestly believe there is always a bright side - if you look for it, and choose to pursue it. I believe that everyone should aspire to be nice, kind, helpful and empathetic, not to mention honest, logical and diligent.

But.

As fervently as I believe that everyone is capable of "rising above," and that the world really doesn't have to be such a horrible place, I know the converts are few and far between, and we are all subject to human foibles. I am hopeful that both I and the world around me will grow to be better than what we are today, but I am deeply disappointed when people seem to be dooming us all in the opposite direction. And because of that disappointment - I get pissed off. Whether it's over minute infractions like the ghetto drycleaning shop that always lies to me about the return date for my clothes, or larger violations like the test prep company I've been working for who seems to want to brainwash our nation's children, I feel obligated to once again offer opinions and occasional bon mots about these and other transgressions.

It is with great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, that I shall hereon in share the thoughts and misadventures of...

The Raging Optimist.