Fire In The Hole. Again. A Rant

 

   

I can't hear you because don't do media beyond radio and newspapers and I shut off the radio, and I stopped reading the newspapers too.

 . . . .  Twenty-one years later, here we are again.

All the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same things TheyBlathered after 9/11, Afghanistan, the Middle East, terrorism, immigrants, and with Hurricane Ida and New Orleans, all the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same They Blathered after Katrina and oil in the Gulf and and and and, which brings us the periodic resurrection of recognition there is climate change, by golly, and it is here, it really is here! as with Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and NYC, Ida and New York. All discovered, like Madonna's virgin, for the very first time.  

Does anyone remember the blobmediaidiots blathering climate change and rising ocean levels after Venice's flooding, o way back in 2019. 

By month's end this all will be down the irrelevant-and-forget hole, until the next occasion for the Same blobmediaidiots to resurrect and rewind. 

The same politiciansidiotblobblather also.  Who in hell thinks bushwa qualified to say anything in 2021 about 9/11, terrorism and Afghanistan?

This time with Ida, somehow the same blobmediaidiots missed their blather about loooooooooooooooooooooooooooters!  Could it be that some of them heard from people who weren't able to escape to their second homes in the country what real looters are like?  O wait they saw it on NYC tv, they didn't need to hear.  Maybe they got their looter fix back last summer.  Funny how that event immediately got shoved down the irrelevant-and-forget hole. Will it return, ya think, around mayoral election time?

Do not confuse the criminal looting that we lived through here with the ongoing BLM protests, at which there was no rioting, no cruelty, etc. etc. etc.  Except from cops.  The same cops who just stood there and did nothing when the actual looters, organized and equipped by professional criminals, did the deeds for at least two nights.

The idiots are never more idiotic than times such as these, except the covidiots who are having Glory Times non-stop.

When we'll learn all over again it's all Biden's fault, every single every bit. Or it's the fault of AOC.  Or Obama. Or Clinton. All of them But somehow never Bushwa's 1 & 2, Brownie's or the orange shoggoth's or Bolton's or Cheney's or Gingrich's or or or or ....

O give it up.  We know all of it whatever it is is the fault of Others, not ourselves. Most certainly never the fault of faux noose and big tech and white supremacists, bigots, haters of all kinds. Who must be respected and catered to by blobmediaidiots at all times because reality and facts hurt their feelings and make them mad at us and then the advertisers go away.

In the meantime one cannot walk on the sidewalks or get through the streets from about 6th Ave and West 4th, down into our neighborhood below Bleecker because all firemen, all very very very drunk, without masks, smoking cigars.

And us, in the meantime?  The 9/11 trauma for us manifested into a phobia, a deep reluctance to be anywhere from whence we couldn't make it home on foot.  Fear of leaving the neighborhood, fear of leaving home. This lasted nearly a year. It returns again with every Something that takes place that affects us, even if we aren't presently there on the ground.  But never to the extent of 9/11.  Until pandemic. We really don't want to leave our familiar haunts, our comfort zone.  So much reluctance. Even though we're all overrun by those who leave their own haunts with greatest enthusiasm.

I Say, You Say, They Say, All Say "Abbott (Who Needs Costello)"

 

Why, yes, as we say, say we all, so says AOC

‘He is not familiar with a female body’

Cortez went on to explain the basic biology surrounding pregnancies, and that many pregnancies are often undetected at six weeks. She said: “In case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late on your period. And two weeks late on your period, for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”

Cortez added: “He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”

Recall the New York woman who waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day said, "If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament."? That was Gloria Steinem They (the blobmedia) was determined to tell us, but Steinem said it was Floryence Kennedy who said, she had heard it in Boston from an elderly Irish lady taxi cab driver.

And even further back than that in New York there were Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton.  The staging of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's opera re Anthony, The Mother of Us All in February 2020, was the last time I've been there.  Sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . .  Brain's been in a funk the last several days.  I hope I'm coming out of this state in which I just don't wanna bother because why bother?  A weekend without a hurricane, without a hurricane watch, without a hurricane, all of which were disasters to so very many of our near and dear, after three in row, has helped. El V insisted we Go Out to observe our Carnalversary, which is Labor Day Weekend (why yes, that was a date that lasted the entire long weekend!) helped too.  There's just been so much death, delta, destruction, voter suppression, and all around wickedness in the last few weeks that my processing capacitors seemed to have needed to shut down for a while.  All I want to do is watch old Poirets on Acorn tv and read novels.

Books, we have them.  I brought home two from the library this afternoon.

I'm going to re-read Sharon Kay Penman's second Plantagenet novel Time And Change (2002), now I've finished the re-read of When Christ and His Saints Slept (1995) -- well that one I listened to while working out.  This one I'll read with mine own eyes. Henry II and Eleanor have courted and married, he's become king.  In this second novel Henry and Beckett's alliance-friendship fails in murder; Henry and Eleanor's brilliant erotic, romantic, strategic marriage alliance of equals goes to hell yet with love abiding. Can there be anything more dramatic that that?

The second novel I brought home is The Personal Librarian (2021) by Mare  Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. This historical fiction is centered upon the mixed race, passing for white, brilliant woman, who was John Pierpont Morgan’s first librarian, in charge of his magnificent collection in the building that is now the Pierpont Morgan Library.  I've been looking forward to reading this novel since late spring / early summer.

Delivery brought three non-fiction books today too.  

Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells: West Africa From the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019) a history of the African slave trades -- not only the Atlantic slave trade.  I wish we'd had this book back when we were writing the bodies as money sections of The American Slave Coast (2015).  

We received Ada Ferrer's latest book, just released, Cuba: An American History.  We will not be suprised if she gets the Pulitzer for it. She's speaking tomorrow night at a NYPL event, but tomorrow night is Postmambo Movie Night, so we cannot participate.

September 9 and 16, 2021

NOLA Reconnect Sessions and Postmambo Movie Night present

 

Cuba and Africa: Ivor Miller and The Rumba Kings [Some serious Congo Guitar Godding going on' here! ]

The bidirectional flow of music between Cuba and Africa, with Abakuá and Congo perspective

And, a book that can't be more New York if it tried, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destablized America and Produced Trump (2021) by Spencer Ackerman. OK, so it's not just about New York, but it is stuffed with what we experienced up close and personal.

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      . . . . As for watching, I'm continuing with King of Boys (2021), Season 1, Netflix Original and the re-watch of The Last Kingdom, 4 seasons, the best 'period' television going. 

Brain, heart, soul in funk though, so bad has it been, that I missed working out one day last week, I keep wanting My Life Is Murder, season 2 (2021), in sunny, colorful Sydney, featuring Lucy Lawless as police consultant, Alexa Crowe.  In the latest episode we here learn that even if successful enough for Las Vegas, Sydney? New Zealand? drag queens cannot compare to the stunning, talented, spectacular drag beauties we are used to. Also, by time the drag duet was to go to Las Vegas, Las Vegas was closed, but they evidently didn't know that, even though Alexa's assistant, Madison called Vegas to learn for who rooms were booked. 

Thus -- I'm most confused.  Supposedly they are now somewhere in New Zealand ... for ... reasons? Family?  But it still looks like Sydney.

We  learn Alexa has a brother in prison and her father was something of a crook and con man -- just like Miss Fischer's dad!  The bro is played by the dude who plays Sam on Netflix's northern California soap opera, Virgin River. He isn't convincing as an Aussie, New Zealander, whatever.  

Alexa and Madison

They Say that Renee O'Conner will show up in one of the episodes, so Xena fan service, I guess? Alas, only a single episode released per week, just as with Vera's season 11. So I began re-watching the earlier BBC Suchet Poirots too. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . This afternoon I officially began preparing for the long cold winter ahead.  I have discovered REI Co-op, an outdoor activities store.  This means they carry some serious cold temperature kit.  I started with the over the calf heavy duty merino sox, with extra layers on the soles.  I'll pick up more items like caps and more sox, particularly for el V in the next few weeks, as it couldn't be more convenient to do so, located between here and one of the library branches where I pick up ordered materials.

Keep on truckin' all we all!  

9/11 Commemoration Within Pandemic Times

     . . . . Another 9/11 anniversary commemoration has come around, an event that helped the arrival of even worse time we're having now. 

9/11 was our Big Break of Before and After in our lives (there are others too, but this covered it all from public-political, to economic-cultural, as well as personal).  This tore the gates off all our safeguards and protections for everything, allowing the full flood level of 1927 of cruelty, corruption, pillaging and oppression to take-over with no questions asked, as even frackin’ dems and libs bent over for it, behind the utterly transparent veil of patriotism and religion.  IOW, enabling the shoggothdeathcultmurdererinchief and the horrors he's unleashed and broken out from under the rocks to do murder and mayhem and hate with impunity.

To those who say, "I'm so over 9/11. So many are alive now who weren't even born then," I say, FUCK YOU.  You're just like all those who think we should allow everyone who isn't under 50 to die of the pandemic because, you know, move over, you're over, you are nothing, nothing at all compared to us who are under 40.  

Also, SHAME ON YOU. You have revealed yourself to be a self-centered, narcissist pos, like so many, which is why this country can't have nice things.  We're always all about oneself, never about a community, much less, you know, a nation.

9/11 On the Heels of 9/11 + TASC On Television

     . . . . This is a weekend I would like not to experience again.  My stomach is just starting to unclench.  Mostly, relatively, the news is good about our friends in the Caribbean and Florida.  The people who have had it hardest in our circles are the Cubans.  This includes Havana, in which swathes were pummeled by the wind and flooded.  For some time el Malecon entirely disappeared under water, lashed by waves over 36 feet high. This doesn't usually happen to Havana, which is on the north, the Atlantic side of the island.  The juracan usually loses power and / or goes around Havana after hitting the unpopulated  southern, Caribbean coast -- unpopulated for this reason, because this where the storms make Cuban landfall. 

Today, after spending so much of the previous four days glued to my computer, trawling constantly for updates and news I have a headache, and my skin feels too tight, as if I have a bout of flu coming on. And it is the anniversary of 9/11, which does not help matters.  Gads, I hate this time of the year.  So many anniversaries of catastrophes.

But, for pete's sake, Fox, come on! This is nothing compared to what the people who really went through all this and are now facing trying to put their lives and homes and communities back together.

Still, even though none of this is about me -- who was spared this bullet from barreling right up the Atlantic Coast and hitting my home -- this was welcome news --

     . . . . From CRP's marketing manager:

In the fourth episode of the second season of Tig Notaro’s show, One Mississippi, Tig’s step-father, Bill, has a collection of books he's reading to educate himself more about race in America. Included in the stack of books is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between The World and Me, and Ned and Constance Sublette’s The American Slave Coast.

The book isn’t mentioned by name — he’s listening to the audiobook for The New Jim Crow when the scene happens—but the TASC spine is very easy to spot in the picture I took below.

The American Slave Coast in a scene from the television series, One Mississippi.

We can see it's a recent purchase, because The American Slave Coast is this year's trade paper edition.

Last Evening

Not quite dark, sky a blue velvet curtain against which the lights of One World Trade Tower and the planes banking out of LaGuardia were bright and sharp.

Ahead of me on the sidewalk are five young African Americans, only one of whom is female, talking animatedly with each other -- not on phones -- and entirely blocking my way, as I'm heading home and walking much faster.

Unlike the vast majority of the hordes who come down here, who clearly are not of the neighborhood, these younglings had spatial sense -- and pay attention to their surroundings.  They notice I'm behind them and blocked, and smile, apologize and move to make way for me.

Now I'm ahead of them I can hear what they're talking about.  They're talking about 9/11.  The young woman says, "I kept hearing the towers, the towers but I had no idea what the towers were.  Just something awful happened."  One of the young men says something about the school he was in when it happened and the little kids in his class who were Muslims and how scared they were.  She returns, thoughtfully, "I've never understood who the guys were who did that.  Osoma Bin Laden -- was he really a Muslim?  Was he an Arab?  Because when I got old enough to understand anything there were all these crazy people on tv talking about our president is a Muslim and an Arab and an African, and I'm going, "What?"

By then I'd arrived to the door of my building.  In the course of putting down my bags and getting out my keys, the group caught up with me.  On impulse I addressed them, "I apologize, I don't want to be rude, and I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but are you all from out of town?"

They stopped, and all of them responded, "Yes!  We're from L.A.  This is our first time here.  We're on spring break and trying to visit places that have to do with the history of our life."

They were on their way to Memorial and Ground Zero site.  One of the guys -- I learned his name was Zach -- exclaimed, "I've seen this block, this street, that sight (pointing at the One World Center Center, its lights sparkling, its spire bright red tonight, like and art object designed out of the school of gigantism.

Exchanging names, hesitantly, Dominique asks, "Were you here then?"

So we talked for nearly forty minutes, out there on the sidewalk as night fell on NYC, about that day, what 9/11 meant for NYC, what it meant for el V and I, personally.  And what it had all meant to them.  That was a lot of why they were on this trip.  Young as they were on that day -- one of them in pre-school -- they sensed the world had changed forever, and they wanted to know how and why.

Then Katrina was in the conversational mix.  All of them had relatives who lived through Katrina.  They'd been to New Orleans often.

They said how glad and lucky there were to have met me, as they went down to the Ground Zero Memorial site.

I was so glad and lucky to have met them.  These are the young people who are going to fix some of the greatest messes the earth has ever experienced since she evolved homo saps.  They were just splendid in every way.

But there was more to why they were so impressive, beyond their excellent manners and courtesy, their sense of being comfortable in their own skins and with each other, their obvious intelligence and their articulate language.

But, it wasn't until waking up this AM I understood why I felt such confidence in them.  Not once during this whole experience with them, which was about an hour, did I see or hear a phone among the 5 of them.

They surely have those phones.  But they were entirely involved all this time in the material world, the world they see, hear and touch, and not the virtual world.

That is what makes them special.  How many people their age (and alas, so many more of us too, who are much, much older) who forego the virtual world of their devices for that long?

9/11 Brings the Results of NYC 2013 Primary Election

To the surprise of many, not least Billionaire Mayor and his anointed successor, Quinn not only did not walk away with the nomination, she came in a  distant third. None were more surprised than me that my candidate of choice, who was considered by one and all, a long shot, came in on top, perhaps even enough so, once the paper ballots are counted and processed, to avoid a run-off with the second highest vote.

De Blasio is standing with 40.6 percent, and Thompson with 26 something percent, so de Blasio should be certified with that necessary 40%, one would think. But this is NYC and New York state politics are not only corrupt but already in the colonial era, of an intricacy rivialing those of the Byzantine Empire.

I am disappointed that Jenifer Rajkumar,

my choice for City Council representative candidate did not defeat Margaret Chin -- another hand-in-glover with the behemoth real estate power that rules us all. Since my chosen lady is Indian American, and running in our gerrymandered to make predominately Chinese district, it's not a surprise.  But Rajkumar's dedicated, diverse campaign team worked tirelessly and effectively. She's also young, so she can keep going.

This year NYC's Bold Face Names are posturing with less hysteria than in the past our annual 9/11 observances. At the same time things seem eerily alike earlier years, with so many New Yorkers protesting, as they did Bush's invasion of Iraq, Obama's stupid declaration of killing innocent Syrians to punish their ruler for killing innocent Syrians and Kerry howling. Gads, why didn't Kerry stay in that hole into which he crawled in 2005, when we needed him to fight back against the warmongering repugs stealing the election? Hopefully, international mediation between Obama’s stupid red line and Assad will keep us from leaping sans plan, will or funds into starting yet another one. If this strike is to be so eeensy teeensy we won’t even know it happened, as Kerry bleats THIS ISNT WAR at the top of his voice to show that he really is a Tough Guy, not a gutless wonder who lets the repugs take anything they want away from him -- since killing women, children and men and destroying parts of a city so ancient that it is a world heritage site is such a miniscule action -- tell me, then, what eff is the point -- and don't say it is stop chemical warfare -- because, guess what? There are hordes of Americans who are not convinced it even happened and who keep remembering Iraq, WMD and Yellow Cake. And you cannot order us not think about that.   Surely we can do better than Kerry for Sec of State?

Nevermind. Thank goodness it's less 9/11 Redux today than it is July Redux.

As well I have a beautiful new sombrero vueltiao from Barranquilla.  Made for this sort of weather, I shall wear it when taking the subway up to the libary in todays' high heat and humidity. 

Sidebar: both candidates who lost office due to being central figures of sex scandals, failed in their, alas surely only first, attempt to get back into public office.

Boston -- I Am So Sorry For This Terrible Thing That Happened To Your People And Places

Ironically, I was out of the house all day, at the 9/11 clinic, where we continue to be assessed for the physical damage that may or may not have been caused by prolonged exposure to the toxins thrown up by the blasts, and the fires that continued for months.

So I was in a 9/11 state of mind, for the physicians always go over everything about that moment you learned the Tower -- Towers -- had been / were hit, what you did, where you went, immediately, thereafter, and then the days and weeks afterwards.  I hate this process with all my heart.  El V has to force me to go these check-ups and appointments, which he insists I do, as I've developed a mysterious cough and shortness of breath subsequent to (note -- I am NOT saying consequent of -- still too soon to know) the 9/11 event, days and weeks and months thereafter.

So I hadn't heard a thing about this terrible, bloody event in Boston until unlocking my door, when my neighbor -- who also, needless to say, went through 9/11 as well -- rushed to ask what I thought, and then told me what had happened.  As it turns out a close friend of hers was at the Finish Line when it happened.

I have nothing else to say.  But it was a weird day, consumed with images and memories of catastrophe, bewilderment and numbness.  For us, at least, at our stage of life, 9/11 is a huge demarcation of our lives'  before and after, and not only for us personally, but for our neighborhoods, for our City.

And then -- this news.

The huge difference is that the emergency rooms and services were all primed, ready and waiting to do their work.  There wasn't any. There wasn't even any blood.

In Boston today there is a great deal of blood, a great deal for the EM tams and Emergency Room team to do.  Too much to do.

Where The Squirrels Play: The Memorialized Immortal 9/11 Dead

Unlike ten years ago, today was cloudy, cool and clammy.

I thought I was going to the subway and head uptown to Grant's tomb since the bushwa and O touring companies had left town for appearances in other parts of the country. Just knowing b2 was here brings up the hatred and contempt we felt about him that day and for days after -- and will feel forever. He was pusillanimous, hiding in a hole somewhere, so that even Guiliani, trapped by his own arrogant idiocy and thus couldn't go anywhere else, looked good in comparison. b2 never came to NYC until over four days later. No Fidel is b2. And then b2 lied and lied and lied and lied us not just into war, but into the wrong war, in which our people are still being wounded and killed.

Anyway, my feet kept going when I got to the corner of Spring and Ave. of the Americas. Once on that path I continued to the Hudson, as I do so often. Down there is my back yard. The traffic, either pedestrian or vehicle, was light, which probably had a subsconscious effect on my feet. Maybe I'm still trying to reclaim the River Walk and the park, as still has not been possible for me to do since that day, when so much of what was rightfully mine as a citizen of NYC, who lives in this part of it, and helps pay for it, was taken from me by this, that and the other organizations, institutions, the military, the police, Homeland Security -- as it was taken from all the rest of us to whom it rightfully belongs.  It is still not entirely given back to us, ten years later.

The Museum of the New York Fire Department though, here on Spring Street, was packed with visitors coming in and hanging out, whereas it has been closed almost all the time since the 2008 financial crash budget cuts. There were many firefighters in their dress uniforms with medals galore. When I returned from my three hour peregrination down to the end of the island, the sidewalk was packed with firemen, who were hung on by young women dressed in what they thought was hot. They were not of the professional Fashion Week sets who currently are having their annual autumn NYC rendevous. Vomit was also present.

The Hudson river is still excrement brown, browner than we've ever seen it, though not as high as last week. All that that Hurricane Irene rain and flood run-off, and the run-off from the following rains out of Lee, is still running off.

The yacht marina at the World Financial Center was full up. Their owners displayed themselves to each other and to us little people who pay taxes, while they drank wine and champagne and scotch, chatted with each other about their planned winter cruises down into the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Why, yes, we could hear them. Why, yes, the billionaires are partying like it's 1999 because this day ten years ago threw them one windfall after another, all at my / our expense as little people who pay taxes.


Lots of young fellows wearing t-shirts that declared NYPD and NYFD, who were not cops, were not firefighters, rolled along the shoreline paths marked "Pedestrians," "Bikers," "Runners." Again, not so many people as I expected (though the bikers still did their best to kill me on the clearly markes Pedestrian Only paths, when right next to it was the clearly marked, much wider bike way ... do bikers dislike and fear their fellows as much as we pedestrians do?). Police vehicles in vast herds parked all along the way to Battery Park, with clusters of their riders hanging out around their mounts.

I'm not sure it was a good idea to have gone down there or not. I wept to the music of a military brass group playing at Battery Park, which is now flag grove after flag grove, memorializing the immortal 9/11 dead. Squirrels played gaily among the aisles of the flags that proclaimed "we will always remember we will never forget." Each plastic fiber flag has the names of all those who died that day printed on it.

I don't know if I was crying because of Kris -- it’s the anniversary of my baby sister's death too this week -- Mom, Dad, Lou, Fernando, Ronnie and all those dear others who we lost along the way, or because it is more than ever clear how our lives broke that day to before and after, even though we have other befores and afters, and we've had them since that day as well,.  Maybe was I crying because My Person wasn't here to elp me keep the terror of the unhopeful future at bay.

Maybe I cried because this is NYC and nothing is immortal here. My first professional work as an historian was at the Fraunces Tavern Museum, and my study was the history of the city. I can name you city disasters that killed more people than 9/11, and each time it was solemnly vowed "We will never forget. Your names will live among the stars forever." Now nobody even knows the disasters occurred except some historians.

On the way back I watched the Paul Taylor dance company's performance with the Orchestra of St. Luke's -- Bach -- titled Brandenburgs. There was a whole program of  dancers and musicians, sponsored by the Joyce Dance Theater in the meadow. Evidently the Joyce was one of the few representatives of the arts here in NYC to receive any of the appropriation$ for the 9/11 observances.  If any artists should be included in this it seems to me that the dancers and musicians are them ....  The arts all together were obvious by their absence in the lists of activities for this weekend. The audience for the program was almost entirely white, despite the opening Prelude of selections from Mande epic songs and poems. Nor did you see any Mande people anywhere, which often on Sunday you do in this place.

What was most obvious by absence on this journey into the convergence of the nation's, the city's and my own past and present was any women in hijab, or -- despite the Joyce Theater's Prelude -- anyone who seemed Muslim or even Middle Eastern. This is a Sunday, the Nelson Rockefeller park, and that long recreational shoreline to the end of the island. Most days you see as many hijabs among the mothers and kids as you see of any other mothers and kids – southeast Asian, hispanic, Africans, African Americans, Afro-latins, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. Not today, not even an African patriarch in his robes, of whom you usually will see at least one or two on a Sunday afternoon. Yes, I was only there for three hours. But when there were so many recreating families even today, I wondered what that absence meant.

What I fear this absence means, when I myself have been apprehensive of getting around the city these last days because of the crazy number of guns and dumbeating everywhere, is that many of our city's residents were too afraid of the rest of us to come out.