Fan’s Complaint

On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - “They beat me and threatened to kill me,” he says - but there are benefits to this new world.

“You’re able to see the stars,” he says. “It’s wonderful.”

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times

“They’re housing us like animals,” said Iiesha Rousell, 31, unemployed after four years in the Army in Germany, dripping with perspiration in the heat, unable to contain her fury and disappointment at being left with only National Guardsmen as overseers and no information about what might lie ahead.

Once inside the dome, refugees were told that for their own safety they could not leave - the flood waters climbed four feet up the walls outside - and many likened the shelter to a prison.

Michael Childs, 45 and a housepainter, went a step further.

“It’s worse than a prison,” said Mr. Childs, who knew something about the subject, having spent three months in the Orleans Parish Prison on a drunken-driving charge. “In prison you have a place to urinate, a place for other bathroom needs. Here you get no water, no toilets, no lights. You get all that in prison.”

On Wednesday afternoon, federal emergency management workers and National Guardsmen began escorting the sickest residents out of the arena. By late evening, when the evacuation paused, 700 people had been removed from the dome. The authorities said they were being taken to other places in the state.

Officials said they hoped to resume their work on Thursday, using hundreds of school buses and municipal buses to take the rest of the refugees to the Astrodome in Houston, on a ride lasting more than six hours. Rest stops were planned at Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Beaumont, Tex.

If there was little comfort in the prospect of trading one sports arena for another, there was hope waiting in Houston, where Texas officials promised showers, food, medical care and perhaps most important, the freedom to come and go through a system of passes. At a news conference, Judge Robert Eckels, chief executive of Harris County, which owns the Astrodome, offered assurances that it was “not a jail.”

from the Times.

Please consider aiding in the relief effort, whether it is with your time, food/clothing donations, or financial assistance through Red Cross or other organizations. Red Cross accepts donations as little as $5 on their website.

Thank you for your time.

Best,
Lucy

from a friend.

I’ll be donating as soon as my next paycheck clears.

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

Yes, it’s the very South Bronx that had a reputation for grinding poverty, rampant arson, runaway crime and as the starting point of Tom Wolfe’s race-relations nightmare, “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which chronicles what happens to a Master of the Universe driving with his mistress in his Mercedes-Benz on a creepy Bruckner Boulevard.

Goodbye South Bronx Blight, Hello Trendy SoBro - New York Times

It would appear that the South Bronx, or “SoBro,” is now over. Maybe I’ll be lucky and Eastern Queens will be hip by the time I’m ready to move out–that way I won’t have to move out at all. We could call it EasQu or FluBa or something, and have a jolly old time downing PBRs and discussing the cultural relevance of electroclash. Oh right, that was 2003…

Flushing will never be “up-and-coming,” it’s just solidly boring and middle-class. I think that would probably apply to most of Queens, except maybe South Queens. SoQu?

I don’t know what the law is in other parts of the country, but in New York (Flushing, anyway), one can get working papers and start working at the age of 14. At 16, one can work without having to get working papers.

I’m not sure exactly what the procedure is, or whether it’s the same now as when I was 14, but getting working papers involved going to some office in the school.

I was the second among my friends to turn 14, and I remember a lot of my classmates were looking forward to getting their working papers. I had no such ambitions.

Reading the “Class Matters” article in the Times today, I came across this interesting idea that would perhaps explain why.

…the deterrents to a degree can also be homegrown. Many low-income teenagers know few people who have made it through college. A majority of the nongraduates are young men, and some come from towns where the factory work ethic, to get working as soon as possible, remains strong, even if the factories themselves are vanishing. Whatever the reasons, college just does not feel normal.

I guess I just did not have that “factory work ethic.” Too high-class, you know–that’s why I smoke cigarettes I find on the street.

***

I am in the process of re-examining my reasons for keeping this blog. Expect changes (or none at all) in the near to distant future.

“Well you’re in your little room
and you’re working on something good
but if it’s really good
you’re gonna need a bigger room
and when you’re in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started in your little room”

–White Stripes

Last week saw an article and an editorial in the Times about the Flux Factory’s “NOVEL
A Living Installation”. This week brings a Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker, where, among other things, we learn that one of the writers trapped in a box is cataloging kitchen items on her blog. The other two writers also have blogs. The writers are not allowed to watch television, and are allowed only ninety minutes a day outside of their boxes.

I do not know if I could handle that lifestyle for a month straight, but I would estimate that I spent 5 out of every 7 days in the past month under those restrictions. In effect, I am in my own little box, and have nothing more than this blog to show for it. Maybe if I had viewing hours like they do…

Anniemal.

In other news, the Times also has an article linked from the front page: “Why ‘Star Wars’ Is So Over,” which leads to a conundrum: Does the Times saying something is over make it not over? In this case, I don’t think so.

Posted in Words from or inspired by the Times | 1 Comment »