Stragglers

"Don't think I ever sent you this"  was his email headline, when NY Board trustee and my Obi-Wan Kenobi mentor Sam Howe forwarded this story below to me.   I hope the spirit of Thanksgiving touches us all this holiday (and yes, we all want to spend Thanksgiving at Sam's house now!)

THE GENERAL

by Ben Ryder HoweDECEMBER 12, 2005

Thanksgiving began as a gathering of two tribes, the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims, and today that hospitable flavor remains in some dining rooms, where by tradition a few seats are reserved for guests who are far from home or otherwise on their own. This year, the Howe family of Westport, Connecticut, had several last-minute additions to their holiday table. One of them was an Iraqi general, a thirty-year veteran of Saddam Hussein’s army, in from Baghdad.

The general, along with seven other Iraqi government officials, was in the United States to observe security facilities along America’s borders. The tour, arranged by the State Department, had taken the Iraqis to Seattle, El Paso, and Jacksonville. Now it was finishing up with trips to American households to celebrate Thanksgiving.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, the general, accompanied by a State Department interpreter, arrived at the front door of the Howes’ 1850 Greek Revival. Sam Howe is a cable-television executive; his wife, Rebecca, had answered a notice in the Westport News, announcing that the International Hospitality Committee of Fairfield County was soliciting families to entertain foreign guests. “We were expecting a Fulbright scholar, or maybe a diplomat,” Rebecca said. The Howes had invited a dozen relatives, and had learned of their guest’s identity only thirty-six hours before they were to sit down to dinner. They were a bit apprehensive. “We were afraid that having him might alter the tone of the celebration,” Sam said. “We thought he might show up in uniform,” Rebecca added.

The general—who wore a corduroy topcoat, a maroon V-necked sweater, and a rep tie—turned out to be an ideal guest. Urbane and inquisitive, he spent much of the day on the living-room couch, sipping cranberry spritzers and sampling Wellfleet oysters, spiced nuts, and endive-and-blue-cheese crudités. The general was well informed about the issue of the day, the Iraq war, but he refused to dominate the discussion. “I would like to know what you think,” he said when he was asked for his political opinions. “It is a day for laughing, not shouting.”

The general, who is in his late fifties, is an old hand at courtly palaver, having visited every country in the former Soviet Union as well as most of the Middle East. This was his first trip to America. He’d been nervous about coming, because the America he’d seen in movies looked like a nation of bloodthirsty savages (a perception that Saddam’s propagandists had been happy to reinforce). It was a shock to him that he had not been shot at during his weeklong trip. “You are a civilized country,” he said over and over.

After the meal, the group (which included two academics, a therapist, and a folk-music teacher) retired to the living room, where the Howes had a fire going. The general described his tour, earlier that day, of the Westport police station. An officer there, “a very generous man,” had shown the general around the jail. “I said to him, ‘What is the biggest problem in your precinct, murder or robbery?’ Do you know what he said to me? ‘Neither.’ His biggest problem is traffic. You are a very civilized country.”

“When you return to Iraq, what will your biggest problem be?” a guest asked.

“Do I have to answer that question?” the general said. “I am enjoying myself too much to think about that right now.” He did admit that he was dreading the stomach-churning corkscrew landing that his plane would be forced to make at the airport in Baghdad.

Someone brought out a camera and tried to take a group picture. The general edged away. “I have to ask—is this for publication?” he said.

“It’s for a family album,” the photographer said.

“Good,” the general said, moving back into frame. “Because if certain people in Iraq were to find out I am in America . . .” He drew his index finger across his throat.

At the end of the afternoon, the general, declining a second serving of chocolate-chip pie, got up from the sofa and said it was time to go.

“I hope we have not made your wife work too hard,” he said to Sam.

The general planned to spend his last night in America in New York City, where he had a ticket to see “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway.

First Snow

The first snowfall has arrived in our region, beginning yesterday early afternoon, swirling outside my window at work, falling heavily to carpet the city streets.   Colleagues in Long Island and Westchester called with some weary dismay that the power they finally got back after nearly 10 days, was knocked out again.

I walked backwards from the subway home, to more easily navigate the route against snow blowing into my eyes.   Later in the evening I heard from neighbors that a tree fell down on Grace Court, crushing at least 2 cars, and I imagine more of that has been reported in the surrounding area.
New storm reports caused a sinking feeling in many of us, thinking heavily on so many people in the region who were terribly impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

Adding to the emotion of all of this was of course the Presidential Election.  As in the nature of our democracy and political system, there's ultimately going to be one winner and one loser.  Whether people were voting for someone or against someone, elated or depressed by the results, it's seemed that the tensions and emotions have gotten more extreme and even more polarizing in the past decade, and perhaps an amplification of that has been due to social media and the ability to share your view with hundreds sometimes thousands of people.  And for them to comment, agree or argue back.  A close friend of mine in LA  noted wisely on facebook that she was looking forward to the day after the election, when she would stop seeing and sharing all the views and thoughts.

We're all a bit weary from things.

Though, as I looked at the first snow this morning, dusting the pier-turned-into-a-soccer-field, I remembered a line from one of my favorite books, "A Prayer for Owen Meany" where the narrator John notes that his Grandmother always said snow was healing.  He commented that it was a very 'Yankee' point of view, as if there's a lot of something, it must be good for you!

When I lived in Michigan, Evanston or New York City part 1 and part 2,  waking up to a carpet of snow always gives me that New  Years Day feeling, a sense of a blank slate, a reset, the promise of a new day ahead.   May it give the same to you.

Tuning Out, Tuning In

My office officially opened today,  a week after Sandy struck the East Coast,  and the city slowly lurched back to 'normal life.'  While I was very happy to put something on other than yoga pants and  travel into "Big Town", it suddenly seemed like a different season,  chilly and dark by 5 pm, a foreshadowing of winter months ahead.

Most of the subway lines were now working but service was crowded and a little slow.  Many offices didn't have heat, many people in the area still didn't have power or gas for their cars.  Shattering reports of the loss of lives and homes continued on the news, thousands of people in flooded areas who've lost so much and have no place to go.   The other lead news story has been the Presidential election, slogging out for several months now, and taking its tole on many.

I've found myself selectively tuning out the national and metro area discourse yet tuning in to what I would call the "micro conversation' happening at a hyper local level here. The one where we're staying very much in touch, and helping each other out through the collective trauma of the past week.  The one where we're quickly responding to grassroots calls for volunteers or critical supplies needed in some of the most impacted areas that haven't been reached by FEMA or Red Cross.  The one where we're a little humbler and kinder than we usually are, or at least complain a little less.

 "Humans of New York" , the 'photographic census of New York' site, with the pitch perfect tenor for the city, shows me the story of the storm that I really want to know...

"These kids made me laugh. Despite their predicament, they were pretty excited about being on HONY. When I walked up, they were in the process of dismounting from the boat. But they helped me out by piling back in for the photo op."  
https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

"We ordered a bunch of pizzas for the firefighters. And when we came to pick them up, they refused to let us pay for them."

https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

"I discovered these four on a devastated street in New Dorp. They were cleaning debris out of a flooded house. The couple on the left is from Harlem. The couple on the right is from Ireland. They met this morning on the Staten Island Ferry, and decided to spend the day volunteering together."

https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

Firefighters from FDNY Engine 228. When I was taking the photo, a bystander leaned in and whispered: "They aren't even on the job. It's their day off."
https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

"America was a great force in the world, with immense prestige, long before we became a great military power. The power has come to us and we cannot renounce it, but neither can we afford to forget that the real constructive force in the world comes not from bombs, but imaginative ideas, warm sympathies, and a generous spirit."  

- Robert F. Kennedy, "Make Gentle the Life of This World"

We're going to continue to hear a lot about what went wrong, in the storm, in our city infrastructure and response, in our country.  Don't forget what's happening that's right.

Dark City

The wake of superstorm Sandy has provided the world with devastating images of loss of lives, homes, submerged cars, wrecked businesses and coastline destruction of the Northeast.  

There are also many who have lost much less, yet four days later, are having a very tough week.

As the news media has shared, thousands of people across the greater metropolitan region are without power - lights, water, heat - and basic connectivity with the outside world through phone or other electronic devises.  Uptown, life is as it was a week ago, unchanged.  Downtown it's the 19th century, with hundreds of thousands of people traveling nomad like many blocks north to charge phones, get water for flushing toilets, visiting ATMs, eating, sitting in warmth for a few hours, then returning home before nightfall. It's devastating on a wholly different level to look across the harbor and see the bottom half of Manhattan in the dark, like the heart of darkness in Gotham City. 

Some friends in Manhattan and New Jersey without power I've stayed in touch with via quick texts and facebook posts.  When you read the posts you have a sense of them reaching out from the abyss, and you can almost feel the pure desire to connect, with somebody, anybody, even through the cold and impersonal nature of facebook.  You can imagine how cold and lonely it must feel, and scary too when winter darkness arrives at 5pm and the light has drained from the day, and there's many hours until bedtime.

No one really wants to complain. They feel bad about it, they know this is temporary, they haven't lost their home or a child or a husband - and they know they live in the 21st century, in a first world country, in New York City aka "The Center of the Universe" no less.   They intellectually know that millions of people all over the world have to walk miles for water, never have electricity, heat, indoor plumbing, hot showers.  Still, this is not what we are used to here, and it's really very difficult to sit in your home at night, in the cold and in the dark, and try to remain positive. 

A close friend in TriBeCa who has been living in Dark City with her husband, teenage son and sick dog, sent a joyful text and image today - a Duracell truck parked in Lower Manhattan giving away free batteries and charging stations for all people who needed it.  She and her husband walked across the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon to come to Brooklyn Heights for grocery shopping, showers, phone charging and hugs and we proclaimed Duracell PR heroes and that we'd never buy another brand of battery again. 

Soon the time came for them to leave, to travel back to Dark City before night fell, to walk the dog, take care of their teenage son, and then sit in the dark and try to sleep.    She sent another image walking across the Brooklyn Bridge of Manhattan Bridge and said how scary and lonely it was to walk across the bridge in the dark.

Everyone is hoping that power will be restored by this weekend, and eventually flooded subways will be drained and functional, and soon we'll be back to 'normal.'     In the meantime, a lot of people are trying to remain positive, and waiting for our bright lights to return.