haikus in honor of the end-strike

This morning on the WNYC show hosted by Brian Lehrer they had a holiday greeting jam. I was too shy (imagine me shy!) and hyped up on too much coffee to call it in, and then I was, but I couldn't get through, so I'm sharing it with my public:

NEW YORK MORNINGS

I sip twice-sugared coffee
and turn a deaf ear
to the siren’s screams.


White shirt presses close—
no face attatched,
then, “Stand clear of the closing doors.”


This breath smelling
of sour sleep
creeps in as a lover.


The silence in a subway
through morning’s rush
rivals an abandoned desert.


We burst through turnstiles
briefly freed,
before the corralling begins.


I smile at the sunlight,
realizing the street’s joke
and jump into the lanes.

Peace and Joy on this Commuting Holiday!

strike or be struck

It's Day Two of the transit strike here in the city. Although I haven't had to go anywhere since yesterday, most of New York, including Tom, has had to deal with a complete dearth of public transportation. There is not a single subway or public bus running in any of the five boroughs. You realize how much you depend on something when it disappears from sight. Yesterday, Tom had to walk 19 blocks to 125th St., take the Metro North (which is not under the MTA) to Grand Central and then walked from 42nd St. to below Housten--a little less than four miles. When he came home he took a taxi. The taxi charged both him and a coworker who lives in the same complex as we do 20 dollars each to go nine miles. He didn't go to work today. We couldn't afford it. I'll have to deal with these same schenanigans tomorrow because I have to pick up medicine downtown and finish xmas shopping.

There's this little socialist part of me who cheers the Transit Workers Union on. Go for it, the little piece of me shouts, Stick it to the Man! But as I'm watching the news and seeing how it affects this (suddenly a lot bigger) city--businesses that only make a profit at this time of year, restaurants having to layoff waiters, people who live anywhere and are too poor to take taxis or have cars--I get pissed off. Mostly because these folks have a better deal with their jobs than many people. I knew a guy who made over 50,000 a year driving a bus. The transit workers have pension plans that require only a 2% take from their paycheck, a retirement age of 55 and health care.

What did the Metropolitan Transportation Authority want? A higher retirement age of 62 for all new workers, a 6% take for pensions and I believe a 2% worker contribution to health care. I felt that, at the very least, the retirement age was a little ridiculous. Because some of those jobs are a lot more physically demanding than others. They did drop that piece of the new three-year contract at the last minute before the strike, however.

It's not that I don't want these people to be paid well and have good benefits. They obviously do an important job for this city, even if they are jerks about it sometimes. It's just that they seem not to care that this does more than inconvenience people--it's hurting folks' livelihood.

What's so funny about this is the fact that there's a law in New York that forbids strikes by EMT workers, fire fighters, police, medical staff and public transportation operators. This law has a fine of 1 million dollars a day from the union plus two days' pay for every day from each individual. Basically, they're losing any kind of financial incentive through this strike. They say on the news that the hope is the city will "forgive" them when it's over and cancel the fines. I've heard Bloomberg talk about his feelings towards the union. I doubt he will do that.

laffy taffy

Today on the subway there was a group of girls, ages around 16 or 17, who were giggling up a storm and in general being loud. At first I was annoyed. But then they began rapping, saying something about "laffy taffy." One of the girls began shaking her generous booty, while the others egged her on. At one point she was swinging on the handrails. I couldn't help but laugh. There was one other white chick in the car, and she looked positively frightened, which made me laugh even harder. She looked like she'd stepped out of a Gap ad into a level of Dante's Inferno.

Later I was in a thrift store on 23rd St., and I overheard this conversation between two college girls:

Isn't this skirt cute-a-licious?

Totally cute-a-licious.

I'd say this top was cute-a-licious but I don't think the shoulder pads are very. Cute-a-licious.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

what would Linus do?

We had our first real snow this morning. I got up early and looked at the flakes wander down. It made the "courtyard" behind our building almost look pretty. But, by 10 a.m. the prettiness vanished beneath snowshovels and plows. Snow in New York is serene beauty for two seconds, maybe less, then turns into a slushy-dog pee-dog poop mess you have to pick your way through.

It's interesting to see how people dress for the snow around the city. Most people in Harlem seem to have sense. They usually wear enough coats and gloves. Down where we used to live, though, we'd see hipster chicks in tiny, and I mean TINY little skirts and little little coats and those horrible boots called "fugs." Tom and I call these wearers couchie-sicles. There's also the "professional hipsters" who think a sleek black unlined coat and a thin scarf and maybe gloves is all one needs against the winter winds around here. I've even seen some of the women wandering the slush with little high heels. I'm all for looking good even in the cold, but good grief.

Apparently there's evil in the world that's trying to take the "Christ" out of Christmas. Groups are boycotting stores that have signs that say Happy Holidays as opposed to Merry Christmas. Holiday Trees are oh so heinous compared with Christmas Trees. (I've been told that the whole existence of a Christmas Tree (not to mention the holiday used to be pagan but was changed over to Christian when things began leaning that way) comes from a pagan source--I need to consult with Lev, my Jewish Pagan friend from SLC.) Some even say that writing "Xmas" is from the devil--never mind that X stands for Christ, I believe in Greek. I seem to remember a philosopher who lived at Menno House sometimes signed his name: Xtopher.

What makes this all so funny is the fact that Christmas has been manhandled long before now, and it has nothing to do with the names of trees and so forth. I won't bore anyone with the whole materialistic, gift-obsessed society that we now call this holiday diatribe. Everyone knows it. It's funny that church-related groups are obsessed with these superficial trinkets of a holiday that is supposed to be about hope in winter, that the truest thing in the world is salvation born in an animal stall instead of a palace. In my high-falutin' mind they're the ones ruining Christmas for everyone. It's just like the whole Passion-Mel Gibson-style. It focuses on what's not so important. We'd rather cringe at the blood and gore and ignore what happened later that made Easter so miraculous.

The other day I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV. (Thank you, Cable Gods!) I nearly wept when Linus got on the stage and quoted part of the birth of Christ from the New Testament. It wasn't so much the good Bible talk he shared as the attitude he shared it with. Seems to me he was just sharing what it meant to him but he didn't seem to care whether anyone else had the same idea. We need to be more accepting of things. If it means that some kid or adult who didn't grow up in a Christian heritage feels out of it when somebody says Merry Christmas, then we don't need to say it. It doesn't change what it means to us.

staple power

I realized yesterday how much our penal system depends on dopes who cling to their little seat of power in the big cog they call justice. We went to Valhalla to distribute the anthologies of the women's work. Although we had been told at the beginning not to bring any paperclips to the prison, since they can be used as weapons, nothing had been said about staples, and one of the teachers had seen things stapled to a bulletin board in the Unit, so the anthologies were bound with staples. Well, The Big Policeman at the front desk said No. Never mind that the anthologies have always been stapled since SLC started the program. Today TBP said No. We kept pushing the point, several guards congregated around the contraband, even the warden was called. He said No. So, we could either leave the anthologies behind or remove the staples by hand. We chose the latter. TBP, feeling good about his power play, granted us two staple removers to remove the staples from 60 anthologies. Once we finished there was only 30 minutes left for classtime. We hurried to the Unit, handed them out and had a reading then had to leave.

When I told one of the women why we had been so late, she laughed. The thing is, she explained, when they give us our mail, they have the letters stapled to the envelopes. We get staples all the time.

washers from hell

So, I had the fantasy of getting the laundry (that was piling up for over a week) done today. Apparently the gods of washing machines decided to play with me. Two of the triple loads were down, leaving only one of them operational--or so I thought. I loaded up this damned machine and went back to our studio for more. When I came back, the machine had stopped mid-cycle, and what I had to deal with was a pile of soaking wet, soapy jeans. Now, most of you are familiar with the weight of jeans when wet--especially wet ones. I had to lug these to the single load machines--one of those was out, but for some reason Delancey Village believes people need single loads more than triple loads, so there are six--and spend four-fifty on three loads, if my math is correct, PLUS the two-fifty from the broken machine. And this isn't counting the drying at one-twenty-five for thiry minutes. Grrrrrrr.

Once again, an operation that should have taken an hour and some change at most, is going to be an all-afternoon affair. (This has happened more than once, understand.) I know that these washers are being used by 17 floors of people, but you see laundromats chugging away just fine, and there has to be as many people using them. And the catch is, it's Friday--which means they won't be fixed until Monday, if we're lucky--but I'll be busy all day Monday and Tuesday, so Wednesday I'll have to face more laundry, including three sets of sheets and a huge pile of towels.

Now, I'm not a very good housewife; I don't really cook that much, Tom does that beautifully, I clean if I must, we have no children, but more and more I see how housewifing is a job in itself, and any man or woman who says it isn't I'd like to bust their balls or teeth, depending, of course, on gender. And, of course, I write this would only happen in my mind, but I would like to do it.