A Beacon of Light

I promise to write about something other than the security (or lack of) of our public transit system today. But first I have to point out the New York Times magazine Q&A this week with Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, in which he says: "Unfortunately, this administration is derelict in how it treats homeland security. They're not interested in spending the necessary dollars. We spend $7 for every air passenger on homeland security. But we spend one penny for every mass-transit rider."
Okay, 'nuff said.
Today Victor and I braved two forms of public transit--the subway and Metro-North rail--to get out of town. It's something NYC-ers try to do most weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day, three months when the weather in the city is typically characterized by the "3 Hs": hazy, hot, and humid (and often a 4th: Horrible smells, as the haze seems to trap all the city scents, including garbage, exhaust fumes, and often--on a weekend morning or near bridges or benches favored by the homeless--urine). And the city is filled with European tourists. My husband and I don't have a share in the Hamptons or a house on "The Shore." So we had to be a bit more creative this summer.
A couple days ago, we planned our Sunday getaway (Saturday was spent at my mom's in New Jersey). We debated between spending the day in Southampton or venturing up the Hudson River to check out the modern museum, Dia, in Beacon. After we compared round-trip fares and times, Beacon won. The train ride to Southampton would take more than two hours on the Long Island Railroad, and would cost $5 more than the hour-and-a-half ride to Beacon. And, according to a friend of ours who lived in Southampton, we'd need to take a cab--or a very long walk--to get to town from the train station. But the Dia:Beacon was only a 10-minute walk from the train station or a short (and free) shuttle ride. We opted to walk.
Victor wanted to take the 8:51a.m. train, which got us to Beacon at 10:21a.m.--39 minutes before the museum actually opened. But it took us 10 minutes to walk there, and the cafe and bookstore had opened at 10:30. By the time we'd visited the museum gardens, bookstore, and bathrooms, we only waited a couple minutes more before the doors to the galleries opened...onto Andy Warhol's "Skull" series: oversized, silkscreen prints of a skull decorated with neon splashes of color. In fact, the museum's current exhibition, "Dia's Andy: Through the Lens of Patronage," is all about Andy Warhol, from the perspective of patrons (of which Dia is high on the list) and other artists. It also includes a number of Warhol's works, both on canvas and on video, as well as four "time capsules" (numbers 5, 51, 68, and 237) that contain random paraphernalia from Studio 54 invitations to Polaroids he took of his assistants to a 91-page transcript of a conversation he had with Truman Capote (including many corrections he'd scribbled in). I find Warhol's portraits and "Screen tests" strangely mesmerizing. Maybe it is because I live in New York City, where I literally pass by thousands of people every day at close proximity. Yet how many of those faces do we remember at the end of the day? One, two, maybe three. And even when it comes to our friends, and certainly our colleagues, do we really study their faces? How often do we notice a distinguishing characteristic about someone from a photograph instead? To me, that's what is so striking about the screen tests. There is nothing to look at but the subject's face. And it's also so interesting to see how the subjects behave when they have nothing to do but stare at the camera for 2 minutes or more. One woman smacked her gum. Another woman alternated between smiles and sadness. The range of expressions he captured was amazing. I also noticed that the men seemed to stare straight into the camera as if to dare the audience to laugh. But the women, for the most part, squirmed uncomfortably, or--in at least one case--cried.
I have no doubt that Warhol was an intriguing and intelligent man. I wish I'd been able to meet him. And he grasped and exploited our fascination with celebrity in a way few artists of his era did. But I'm not sure if I would call him an iconoclast as much as he was a fervent follower himself, worshipping the celebrity idols that he helped create (and working hard to become one himself). If he had been born 50 years later, would he have been doing portraits of Paris Hilton and Kate Moss?
Of course, Warhol wasn't the only artist on display. Victor and I spent more than an hour and a half touring the 300,000-square-foot space. One of my favorite 20th-century artists, Gerhard Richter, was represented here as well. I didn't particularly like this piece, but I appreciated it. And I found some new favorites as well: Richard Serra, whose sculptures literally swallow you up in their awkward embrace; Robert Smithson, whose works incorporate both natural and manmade materials; and John Chamberlain, who used crushed car panels to make beautiful even delicate works of art.
After we made our way through the entire museum, my husband and I had planned to walk to Beacon's Main Street for lunch. There's been a concerted effort to spruce up the main street of town, but it appeared as if they had run out of funds after barely a block. When we first turned onto Main Street, it looked promising with three galleries, a tea shop filled with lace and antique furniture, and a sandwich shop that served paninis. But we turned a corner, and it was as if we'd stepped into a different (and decidedly downscale) neighborhood. Shop windows were broken or boarded up. The only place that was open and serving food was a fried chicken joint marked by a flashing neon sign. There were people standing or sitting on the corners staring at us as they smoked or drank from paper bags. Needless to say, we turned around pretty quickly. And we decided to hold out for lunch till we got back to the city.
So we caught a 1:50 train back to New York that put us in Grand Central at about 3:30. We were home by 4:15 with bagels and egg salad and a bottle of Australian shiraz. Next time, we'll eat at the Dia cafe.

If the Feds won't help...

At least I know that the NYC mayor and the NYPD chief are well aware of how formidable, expensive, and utterly important the task is of defending our public transit system. Three days after my rant, I read an excellent piece in the New Yorker about the NYPD's anti-terrorism unit.
Before 9/11, the N.Y.P.D. had fewer than two dozen officers working the terrorism beat full time. Today, there are about a thousand.
Did you know...
...the N.Y.P.D. is almost twice the size of the F.B.I.?
...David Cohen, who is the N.Y.P.D.’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence, spent 35 years at the C.I.A. (and rose to become director of operations there)?
...the N.Y.P.D. has detectives stationed in France, Britain, Israel, Canada, and Singapore? (Singapore? I wondered the same thing.)
...On the morning of the London bombings, four N.Y.P.D. detectives were on a flight to London by 9 a.m.?
...NYPD officers have visited more than 20,000 businesses since 2002, enlisting most of them in the "Nexus" program, which keeps tabs on, among other things, terror-sensitive businesses and merchandise? (Business owners basically have a direct # to call if they see suspicious customers or activity).
... and the most surprising, impressive (in regards to Mayor Bloomberg's priorities) and depressing (in regards to the fed's) fact about the NYPD's anti-terror efforts:
The bill for the city's anti-terrorism budget is roughly $200 million a year. And it is footed, for the most part, by the city itself.
As William Finnegan reminds us in his story, in fiscal year 2004, Wyoming received $37.74 per capita, and North Dakota $30.82. New York got $5.41.
Among the fifty states, New York’s per-capita allotment was forty-eighth.
If the federal government isn't willing to ante up, I think we should slap a 5-percent tourist tax on every hotel room and earmark it for anti-terror funds.
And I wish that it was written somewhere in Michael Chertoff's contract that he must take public transportation. Every day.
(And especially when he comes to NYC).

Insecurity

I'd planned to post an entry on Thursday after the failed bombings in London. But this week has been super busy at work (I was in the office from 10am to 11pm Friday with just 2 short breaks to run out and upstairs for lunch and dinner).
I never got a break to post until today. But there is still evidence of the city's reaction to London's attempted attacks throughout New York. For the first time, I noticed a police officer stationed on the sidewalk between the stairs to the subway station and the entrance to my office. There were cops on the subway platform and posters announcing that "As of July 23, all large backpacks and bags are subject to search." (Though I have yet to witness an actual search, except on TV). The ACLU is all up in arms about the move, as expected, but I think it's a good idea. Mayor Bloomberg says the searches are "random"--every 20 people or so. Fine. At this point, I'd support airport-like security in which every bag is searched or X-rayed at every subway station. Though that's unlikely anytime soon.
In 2002, New York's Metro Transit Authority said it was committing nearly $600 million to improve the security of the NYC subway and rail system. But as of March, only $30 million had been spent, and nearly all of that on consultants and additional study, according to one of the subway unions.
Frankly, even if $600 million was spent, it wouldn't come close to the federal funds that have been spent protecting our planes. An American Public Transportation Association analysis found that, since 9/11, the federal government has spent $18 billion on aviation security, compared to only $250 million on security for mass transit nationwide (which includes, subways, rail and buses).
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff tried to justify the decision by claiming that aviation disasters would result in more casualties than a mass transit attack. "The truth of the matter is, a fully loaded airplane with jet fuel, a commercial airliner, has the capacity to kill 3,000 people," he said. "A bomb in a subway car may kill 30 people."
Obviously Chertoff has never ridden in a fully loaded NYC subway. If he did (and I truly hope he does), he might rethink his estimates. If a bomb went off in a subway car at a station during rush hour, there would easily be several hundred--if not 1000s--of casualties.
But while Democrats--particularly those from New York and New Jersey--criticized Chertoff's ignorant (and inaccurate) explanation, senators ended up rejecting one proposal to spend more than $1 billion in federal funds on mass transit security measures, favoring instead a competing $200 million proposal (though that was better than the initial plan, which would have actually cut spending on mass-transit security from $150 million to $100 million). In April, William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, testified before a Senate committee that transit agencies around the country had identified more than $6 billion in transit security needs.
So where does that leave the estimated 29 million people who take commuter trains, subways and buses each day in the United States (one third of them in New York City)? Out of luck. Or, more precisely, unfairly dependent on luck--that the terrorist will be the 20th person to pass the police inspector, not the 19th. That the detonator will go off, but the bomb won't. That a passenger might notice something suspicious and report it before the potential murderer boards the bus or the subway car. That an unattended bag will be whisked away by bomb squads before it can explode. That we won't be on the car or bus that's targeted.
That's not what homeland security should be. "Homeland security" should not depend on an astute passenger, or an overly cautious cop--or luck.
I'd hoped that the London attacks would serve as a wake-up call for Chertoff and for Congress. The London "tube" system was more secure than our system is because British authorities have had decades of experience dealing with threats to the public transit system by IRA terrorists. And it's been breached twice now.
What will it take for our government to realize that we are equally--if not more--vulnerable here? I hope it's not an attack on our own soil.

Moving Images

In the newspaper today there are photos of the dead. I'm struck by how young they seem. On the front page: Anthony Fatayi-Williams, a 26-year-old Nigerian engineering executive whose father, a doctor, is Muslim; Sharaha Islam, a pretty, 20-year-old, second-generation Bengali immigrant who worked as a bank cashier; Jamie Gordan, 30, who spent his early years in Zimbabwe; Shyanuja Parathasangary, a 30-year-old Sri Lankan who worked for the postal service.
Inside, there are four more photos: Mohammad Sidique Khan, also 30, a former counselor at a primary school; Shehzad Tanweer, a shy-looking 22-year-old sports science major at Leeds Metropolitan University; Hasib Mir Hussain, an 18-year-old who studied business at a local vocational School; and Lindsey Germaine, a 19-year-old who was born in Jamaica but lived in Leeds.
All 8 of them--and at least 47 others--died on July 7th in the London bombings. But unlike the four whose photos graced the front page, the four listed above knew they would be dying that morning. They deliberately carried bombs onto three subway trains and a double-decker bus during the morning rush hour and detonated them, blowing themselves up along with any unsuspecting passengers on the three trains leaving the Edgeware Road station (7 killed), the Liverpool Street Station (7+ killed), and the King's Cross station (27+ killed) and a bus near Tavistock Square (at least 14 killed).
The four were captured on video outside the Lution railway station. Donning beards, baseball caps and backpacks, they looked like so many other passengers boarding the train that morning. Their faces bely nothing of their intentions. I studied the close-up photos that have now been released, looking for some clue. But they look no different than those they murdered: Germaine smiles in his photo, his face pressed up against a white man's (the photo is cropped so only the friend's left eye and cheek are visible); Tanweer's shy smile and doe-like eyes make him appear far younger than his 22 years; Hussain has a close-cropped beard and darkly intense eyes; Khan has a round face, his eyes gaze left, avoiding the camera lens.
Who would know, by looking at them, that they were murderers? Even their families were shocked (or so they say). These were not men without food or futures, without hope. Two were students, one a school aide. They had families and friends, and lived in middle-class neighborhoods. Though three of them had Pakistani parents, they were born and raised in England.
On the subway this morning, I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers. There were two pale girls in tight pants and tee-shirts speaking in Polish; a round-faced woman with a multi-colored skirt and a Jamaican accent; a tall, black man in a basketball jersey; a slim Asian woman in a white peasant skirt and black sandals; a heavy Hispanic woman speaking Spanish to a chubby little girl with pigtails and pierced ears; and a dark-skinned man who could have been of Pakistani origin--or Indian. He wore a tee-shirt and kept his face down, reading the New York Times magazine.
What was it like for him now? I wondered. His face may have resembled those of the murderers, but his thoughts were different (or so I guessed--or hoped). Still, most of us on the train would look at him and see only his dark skin and close-cropped beard and wonder.
Because we cannot see what goes on in his mind or others'. We can only judge by what we can see. And pray that his backpack is filled only with books.

Good Charlotte

I was never all that active in my sorority. But I was fortunate enough to meet three of my closest friends in the house. Mayumi, who lives with her boyfriend in San Diego (and with whom I may collaborate on a book); Liz, who married her college sweetheart (whom she met at a frat party the first weekend she was at school) and is now a mother of two in Manhattan; and Nicole, who spent a semester abroad with me in London and, after several years living near D.C., got married, moved to Charlotte, N.C., and gave birth last fall to a baby girl.
Considering the geographic distance between the three of us, we still manage to see each other pretty often. Mayumi and her boyfriend came out to NYC and stayed with us in February. Liz lives just across the East River and I see her at least once a month (she is often at the Shore during the summer weekends). Nicole came up to NY, along with Mayumi, last year for my wedding (all three were part of it).
I've visited Mayumi a few times--in part because my sister used to live in San Diego and my husband's sister still does. And we also have friends in L.A. and San Francisco. So we can visit both friends and family whenever we go to California. And we love it there. (A quick aside... When Victor and I made a list the other night of cities where we'd be happy living in the U.S., here's what we came up with after 20 minutes and a beer each: #1 New York #2 L.A. area #3 the San Francisco Bay area, and #4--well, there was no #4).
But I had not been to visit Nicole since she moved to Charlotte a couple years ago, despite her continued requests. And then--seemingly out of the blue--I got a freelance assignment to travel down there. And the editor was cool with me just going down there on a weekend (I was concerned about missing a day of work). So not only did they pay for me to travel to Charlotte, but I would be paid to do a story, and I'd be saving them some money since Nicole insisted that I stay at their home at least one night while I was there.
On Friday, I went straight from work to the airport, where I spent the next three hours waiting for my flight. It was scheduled to leave at 7pm. But the remnants of Tropical Storm Cindy had passed over New York on Friday and dumped several inches of rain, so the FAA ordered my flight--and several others--to remain at their cities of origin until the rain let up. I didn't mind the wait so much. I spent more than 2 hours of it on my cell phone with Mayumi, catching up and talking about our potential book collaboration. Then my battery died mid-sentence. So I ate an orange scone that I'd bought at Au Bon Pain and started reading "Nice Girls Don't Get Rich." (So that's why I'm not rich yet!).
Our flight finally took off at nearly 9:30. It was 12:30 by the time I reached the Marriott hotel in Charlotte. I showered and went straight to bed. The next morning, I woke up around 9 and headed to the fitness center downstairs. Fox News was playing on the television and the only other person in the room had turned up some R&B station so loud that I couldn't even hear my CD with the headphones on. When she left a few minutes later, I turned off the radio.
I checked out just before noon and went to meet with two of the four people in Charlotte I had to interview for my story (I'd done several other interviews by phone). Then I got lost on the way to meet Nicole and her husband and daughter for lunch, and ended up in a beautiful old neighborhood. Tall elms curved into each other, creating a canopy over the winding road. Stately brick houses, guarded by painted gates and tall columnades, lined the street. When I finally found my friends, they told me that I'd veered off into one of Charlotte's nicest neighborhoods and had probably driven past the Bank of America CEO's home.
After lunch, we spent a couple hours at Nicole and Dan's two-story house--part of an 800-home development that includes a lake and a large outdoor pool, located in southern Charlotte. I stroked their dog's head and watched from a chair at the kitchen table as Nicole cut up cheddar cheese, avocado, and green beans and spread them out before her daughter Kelly on the tray of her high chair. "She loves avocado," Nicole told me. She tried to sneak in spoonfuls of stewed carrots in between and Kelly, who had bits of avocado all over her bib by this point, seemed surprisingly receptive.
After Nicole finished feeding her daughter and cleaning her up, we drove to a nearby mall. I bought a black shirt and a white embroidered skirt from Ann Taylor, a store I never visit in New York. I'd gone in because Nicole was looking for a shirt (she bought a floral, sleeveless shirt with ruffles), and ended up buying more than she did. We went home and changed our clothes then drove with her husband and daughter to a new sushi restaurant in a nearby shopping center. I wasn't impressed with the white tuna, but they made a good 7 spice crispy salmon roll, served in a martini glass. Then Nicole came with me (as "the navigator") to another interview for my story. She was afraid I'd get lost in the dark, and was nervous about me meeting sources "so late" (I was meeting them at 9 o'clock since they'd had guests all day). I spent an hour with them and then we drove back to her place, where we stayed up another hour talking.
Charlotte is a beautiful city, but it seems so small. It's hard, once you've lived in New York, to imagine yourself living in a city of just 700,000 (even if it is North Carolina's largest city). I don't think I'd be happy living in Charlotte, but I was happy to visit. And it was wonderful to spend a day with Nicole and to meet her daughter. She has created a nice life there and there are parts I envy (a walk-in closet, a home and a car she owns). But I always ache for the city when I am away for even a day or two.
On Sunday, we had just enough time for a latte at Starbucks and a trip to Babies R Us (Nicole needed extensions for her baby gates) before I left for the airport. The trip by car and plane from Nicole's home in Charlotte to our apartment in Brooklyn took just three and a half hours. But what a world away. As the plane descended, I smiled when the little boy in the seat behind me (who had never been to NYC) asked: "Mommy is this all New York?" He added, in awe, "It's SO big!"
And it is. When we took off from Charlotte, I was struck by how green the city seemed--the city is surrounded, almost dwarfed, by the woods and dotted with golf courses. But as we flew into New York City, I could actually identify most of the green spots--Central Park, Yankee stadium, the strip that lines the East River. New York is not green so much as silver. It sparkles--the skyscrapers' millions of window panes reflecting the sun. And there were rows upon rows of homes and lines of cars as far as your eye could see. I couldn't wait to land.
We actually arrived 15 minutes early, but the line for the taxis was four deep, so I figued I'd spend at least that long waiting for a cab--until someone told me there was a new taxi stand two lanes away. I rushed over and got a cab right away. My driver was a large African woman wearing beads and a headdress. She insisted on carrying my suitcase to the trunk of her cab. She was also the first woman whose cab I'd ever ridden in, and she got me to Williamsburg in less than 20 minutes. I called my husband, Victor, en route. And he was waiting on the sidewalk for me with a big grin when the cab pulled in. I smiled when I saw him. It was good to be home again.

From Triumph to Tragedy

There were grim faces and extra police officers on the NYC subway this morning. The bomb blasts in Britain happened too late to be reported in this morning's papers in New York, but many of us had seen the news before we'd left home. And there was a sad irony now to the photo that covered most of the top half of today's New York Times cover: thousands of Londoners celebrating after hearing yesterday that their city would host the 2012 Olympics. As I scanned the smiling faces in the photo I wondered if any of them had been at the King's Cross, Edgware, Russell Square, or Moorgate stations this morning when the explosions happened.
My heart dropped when my train stopped in the tunnel under the East River. It was a normal occurence during weekday rush hour, when trains tended to stack up, but my mind raced with alternative scenarios. I couldn't relax until we started moving again and emerged from the tunnel at First Avenue. Even then, I caught myself watching the digital clock in the subway nervously. The first of the four bombs in London had gone off at 8:51 am, London time, the height of rush hour, and the last blast occurred nearly an hour later. It was 8:41 when I got off the train at 8th Avenue. I felt some relief knowing that I would be at the gym for the next hour.
Almost every television at the sports club--both the large sets mounted on the walls and the smaller screens attached to the exercise equipment--were turned to CNN. Images of bloodied and bewildered British commuters filled the screens. I plugged my headphones into one of the sets to hear an update. At the time, only two people had been confirmed dead in the blasts. But there were more than 160 injured. And 'several bodies" had yet to be recovered.
I only have two friends in London: Kris, a high school friend, and Iris, a friend from college, who had been preparing for a move to Germany anyway (if she hasn't moved already). So the chances of either of them or their spouses being on the bus or trains that were targeted are pretty slim. But watching the images on TV, I was overcome by a wave of emotion. I could barely hold back the tears. Perhaps it was the memory of living in London for nine months in 1993, during which time the IRA set off a series of bombs. I remember being stranded twice in central London after bomb alerts shut down the "Tube" stations I normally used. (Although in those cases, the IRA almost always called ahead of time with a warning, so there were few if any fatalities. In this case, it seems, the terrorists were hoping for as many casualties as possible). Or, perhaps, seeing hundreds of commuters running from smoky subway stations brought back memories of 9/11. Whatever the reason, I had to turn the channel.
Now that I'm at work, the news is unavoidable. We've been getting regular reports from our London bureau, and the television in my office has been covering the attacks non-stop since I arrived here an hour and 20 minutes ago.
The death toll has now risen to 33. Reports say seven were killed in a first explosion in an underground railway tunnel near Moorgate on the edge of London's financial district, 21 in a second near King's Cross and another five at Edgware Road station in west London. No figures have been released yet on the bus blast near Russell Square, but it's likely that some passengers were killed as the blast ripped off the top of the double decker bus. The terror alert in New York has risen as well--as have the anxiety levels of all those who live here. Everyone is on edge. No one talks about it, but we know that it could just as easily have happened here--and still could.

God Bless America

It's July 4th, Independence Day. All afternoon long, our neighbors have been setting off firecrackers that sound like gunfire. I jumped the first time I heard the rat-tat-tat outside the window. But by mid-afternoon, when Victor and I took a break from writing our respective book proposals to toss the Frisbee at the neighborhood park, I barely flinched when some kids set off sparklers on the park's perimeter, just a few meters from where we stood.
En route home, I took Victor up on his offer to buy me a round at Pete's Candy Store. We squeaked in just before happy hour ended. So Victor got a Brooklyn lager for $2. Of course, I ordered a Campari, which apparently did not qualify as a "well drink," so it cost my husband $6 and earned me a long why-can't-you-just-order-a-cheap-vodka-tonic look. But he paid for the drink and threw in $2 more for a tip, and we carried our drinks to the garden behind the bar. There were a few guys in T-shirts and flip flops at one of the long wooden tables drinking draft beers from pint glasses, a dark-haired guy sharing a large bottle of Zyviec (Polish) beer with a girl in a lime-green tank top nearby--and one leering, leathery old man in an open shirt and gold chains, sitting alone across the garden staring at the girl as he smoked a cigarette and sipped a cheap well drink. But he didn't stay long.
We sat a few tables away and downed our drinks. Then we walked to the grocery store so Victor could pick up a steak (he had a craving for red meat; I had a black bean burrito waiting at home). Back home, we split a bottle of Pinot Noir and watched the fireworks exploding over the New York City skyline--on TV. I know, I know. It was a bit ironic that we chose to watch the televised version of what was happening right outside our door. But we'd turned down an offer to meet up with some friends who live further out in Brooklyn so we could work on our books. And we didn't feel much like dodging bottle rockets to catch the show from our street. Plus, we'd seen it before. And the NBC cameras had a damn good angle for the fireworks display (at least, when they weren't focused on Mariah Carey or the multi-racial mix of military men and Mariah fans singing along to her songs on the pier... Was that the price of admission, we wondered--military service or the ability to recite her lyrics on command?).
I actually got a little misty-eyed watching the show. After the New York Pops played "America the Beautiful," we toasted our good fortune to have been born in this country, and to have found our way to New York and to each other.
Happy Fourth.