When Liam and Caleb argue it mostly devolves into some version of “did not did too” or “he’s wrong no he is” or “I hate you no I hate you“  and the ever-popular “I’m not listeningtoyou lalalala,”  which is usually accompanied by fingers in the ears (Caleb) or headphones clamped down (Liam). 

“Just behave” I say (and sometimes yell). And then I mediate, separate, adjudicate. Usually–not always but usually–a truce is brokered, concessions are made, apologies offered and (grudgingly) accepted.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the boys fight not only because they’ve been doing it a lot (god save us from long Augusts with no organized activities: familiarity truly does breed contempt, methinks), but also because their fights remind me of the attacks against Cordoba House, the proposed Islamic Community Center in downtown Manhattan.  So here’s Roy Blunt, running for Senate in Missouri (and why someone in Missouri feels he should weigh in on a Manhattan real estate deal is a whole ‘nother question), saying that building Cordoba House is the equivalent of Dr. Laura spewing racial insults on her radio show.  Or this memo from teaparty.org, asking if “blanket tolerance will be the downfall of Judeo/Christian society?” 

It’s as if the Tea Bag Brains are screaming at the top of their lungs with their fingers in their ears, “lalala I’m not listening to anything you say“  and anyone who opposes them is a commiepinkohippiefaggotlesbianliberalmusliminfidelsocialist, like, you know, that crazy-ass liberal Mike Bloomberg, whose support of Cordoba marks the first time I’ve been proud to call him “my mayor.” 

When Liam and Caleb bitch at each other, I don’t listen, and in fact, lately, I don’t even ask “what happened?’ because I don’t really want to know. What I want is for them to figure out ways of negotiating with one another that don’t involve screaming (accompanied by dollops of shoving).  And Tea Baggers screaming about the Muslim terrorist threat, or quoting the Koran out of context so that it sounds like a jihadist handbook, aren’t listening, aren’t talking, aren’t interested in any kind of conversation whatsoever.  Any religious text can be twisted out of context so that it sounds bloodthirsty–the Bible, for example, says that anyone who works on the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 35:2). A wildly funny satire  of what would happen if we took religious teachings completely out of context, the way Tea Bag Brains do with the Koran, has been circulating on the web: click here to read it.

How do we get people to take their fingers out of their ears and start listening to one another? Seems like that’s the question for our time.

One possibility emerges – and it emerges from the very hotbed of Muslim-ness, from a place that doubtless the Tea Baggers would say is seething with potential jihadi who despise all things Western and are incapable of acknowledging other perspectives (to which I’d say, “gosh, project much, folks?” )

Yeah. Out there in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi (the country that is not Dubai), they’ve started a college. A joint venture between the Abu Dhabi government and NYU; a college for incredibly bright students from around the world, including Russia, Hungary, Latin America, Africa, Canada, Asia, India, the US, and the UAE, who will live and study in Abu Dhabi, at a western-style liberal arts college. A college based on the age-old premise that without a free and open exchange of ideas, we cannot hope to survive as a global civilization.

The first batch of 150 students arrived in Abu Dhabi yesterday to begin their journey; they bring with them their own cultures and habits, their own flaws and foibles, their own expectations and interests. They’re going to share dorm rooms and classrooms and cafeterias; they’re arriving during Ramadan and so tonight, regardless of their own religious beliefs, they will all sit down together at an iftar dinner, the celebratory meal that happens after sundown during this month of fasting.

These kids, these brave 18 year olds, many of whom are half-a-world away from everything familiar, are the vanguard; they’re going to help break through the wall of people screaming, fingers in their ears,  lalalala I’m not listening.  They’re going to teach the rest of us how to use our words and stop shoving; they’re going to grow up, these pioneering Abu Dhabi kids, they’re going to build bridges across oceans of difference; and they’re going to teach the world how to behave.

Yeah, okay, I know that sounds all “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…” but do you have a better idea?

So I say, to all at NYU Abu Dhabi, marhaba (welcome). 

Let’s clarify, shall we?

This is a mosque, people:

This is a community center:

Anyone notice a slight difference in scale? The Cordoba Building will be about 13 stories tall and in downtown Manhattan, it will look like that white guy who used to play basketball for the Utah Jazz, remember him? John Stockton:

A big guy, but on the court with those other really big guys? Not so imposing. Ditto Cordoba House. It will be surrounded by tall buildings filled with capitalists busy making sure to preserve the financial loopholes that allowed our economy to mimic the record of the Knicks last year (and the year before that, and the year before that, ad infinitum). 

You’d think that perhaps leaders of the Tea Bag Brains would worry about financial malfeasance, huge unemployment numbers, and stuff like that – you know, the stuff that really hammers middle America.

But then…on second thought? Nah. Economic despair and financial unrest create anxiety, which with the right words can be turned into fear. And all those Tea Bag Brains are steeped in it: a thin bitter brew of fear, anxiety, and ignorance, with a little fame-mongering thrown in for good measure.

If John Stockton and Karl Malone can create one of the most formidable pick n’roll plays in basketball history, surely an ugly 13-story community center and worship space can co-exist with the steroidal slabs that already exist downtown?

Jitney season is winding down. If you live in New York, you know those big green “motor coaches” that rumble along the avenues, collecting weekenders and second-homers and hauling them east: the tonier south forkers towards the Hamptons, the rusticating north forkers towards Orient. (Long Island splits at its tip into two “forks,” north and south, with Shelter Island in the middle. The north fork is Long Island Sound; the south fork is the Atlantic. Thus North Fork and South Fork).

We’ve been to both forks in the last month–double-forkers, that’s us–and so we joined the throngs of jitney riders standing on the corner of 3rd and 40th. And that’s when I noticed: there were no kids waiting for the bus, other than my own squabbling pair. The first time, I sort of understood: we were riding the so-called “luxury liner,” which despite the overtones of White Star Lines, means only that you get a plug for your computer, and bins in the back of the bus filled with individual packets of cheez-its and chocolate chip cookies. 

On our way back from the East End, again on the luxury liner, and again: no kids but ours. Some truly sophomoric men (usely the term loosely) sat in front of us and cackled about cute girls on facebook, but there were no actual chronological children on the bus.

Then, on a subsequent weekend, we were again waiting for the jitney–the regular ol’ green bus jitney–to go to the North Fork. A definitively more down-scale crowd all-round, and no bottomless bin of chocolate chip cookies, much to the boys’ disappointment.  But again: they were the only kids. Going out and coming back. 

Friends who ride the jitney report the same thing: they are a seemingly child-free zone.

And yet, I see children on the beaches of both forks.  How’d they get there? Are they shipped with the baggage (and why didn’t I think of doing that)?  Is there some unwritten rule that people traveling to one or the other fork with kids must do the train-switch sprint, kids in tow, through the hellishly crowded train station in Queens?

It’s a mystery. Because let’s face it: unless you’re traveling on, like, Beyonce’s motor coach, a bus is a bus is a bus. I don’t care how many packets of cheez-its you give me, it’s still a bus. Not a glam way to travel. Those jitneys should be crawling with kids, while the glam-forkers whisk out east on the train, or the ferry, or some other more eleganza conveyance.

Clearly, our friends on the forks should continue to invite us out for visits on a regular basis (I’m thinking weekly) so that I can continue this jitney-based research.

Then this summer, just across 4th avenue, next to the newly opened (and badly stocked) Nordstrom Rack, a Duane Reade opened. A huge Duane Reade, practically midwestern in its sprawl. It’s clean and light and filled with all kinds of whatnots, including frozen pizza and expensive shampoo. Everything a gal could want.

So you’d think that this Duane Reade is designed to put the old grimy Walgreen’s out of business, right?

Wrongo, batman. Seems that Walgreens, last February, bought Duane Reade. For about a billion dollars.  That’s a lot of toilet paper and aspirin.

And as so often happens, when the spiffy new kid shows up, the wallflowers try to gussy up.  Our grimy Walgreens has undergone a transformation and now seems almost Duane-like in its spiffiness–and it’s stocked with the same stuff. 

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

It’s been a few days since I took these pictures and now when I look at them, I am not quite sure which is which. I think exhibit 1 is Duane Reade, which means the other one is the newly gussied-up Walgreens.

These two stores exist about 100 yards from one another. They sell pretty much identical merchandise at identical prices. Who benefits here? I guess the people who got jobs at the new DR, but I’m not sure about anyone else. How many epsom salts, shampoos, condoms, aspirins, and ace bandages does one really need in a square block radius?

Is this like some kind of expensive “survivor” type game? Whichever store becomes more profitable will stay open and the other store will close down?

It’s a little bizarre–we’ve gone from having one kind of scurfy store to having two positively gleaming emporia within a stone’s throw of the front door. I can’t figure out how on earth it makes any business sense, but I do know that both stores carry Frederic Fekkai’s new “Glossing” line of shampoo in a three-pack (shampoo, conditioner, and something else) for 27 bucks. YES I know that’s 9 bucks a (small) bottle, but it smells sooo good and comes in such a pretty package.

And isn’t it all about the package?

It’s green here at Camp Grandma. Grandma’s house is surrounded on three sides by trees that look like children’s drawings: brown trunks topped with puffy green circles. Judging from the noise, each tree houses about a gazillion cicadas, which the boys and I have occasionally found on the ground, legs waving helplessly in the air.  The boys are fascinated by the bugs but they don’t ever want to get too close–it’s pretty clear than a career in entomology is not in anyone’s future.  Because I am a complete lily-livered coward when it comes to bugs, I totally encourage bug-scrutiny from afar, and I admit that we’ve been responsible for cicada death: flipping the bugs (using a very long stick) into the pond across the street from Grandma’s house.

Except for the cicadas, it’s quiet here, and so still you can hear the ducks flapping in the pond. We’ve had a few huge midwestern thunderstorms, which I just love: the air gets incredibly still and even the cicadas shut up for a minute or two; the sky gets sort of purplish gray and then the wind whips up, flipping the leaves to their silvery undersides–it’s like everything is holding its breath and then whap! lightning! and wham! thunder!  Total drama. The picture at the head of this post is from the beginning of one such thunderstorm. Even though it looks like evening, it was in fact about 8 in the morning. After the rain, the air was clear; it smelled like earth and grass (and corn from the corn processing plant).

We come to visit my mom every summer and I love it: the quiet, the green, the fact that we do pretty much nothing other than walk to the pool and watch the kids play. Mom has all the suburban pleasures: a yard, a deck, a garage, an upstairs. Everyone has room to spread out and although the boys do their best to be the Bicker McBickersons, it’s harder for them to keep it up when one or the other of them can do that thing called GOING UPSTAIRS.  There are lots of closets out here in flyover country, and an entire room dedicated to laundry. There is even–wait for it–a pantry.

Earlier this year, Husband and I were recruited by a large Midwestern university–a big-name place in a small post-industrial midwestern city, but not one of those “cool” midwestern cities like Madison, Ann Arbor, or Columbus. The offer was sort of tempting–a bit more money and the idea that we could have one of these houses with all this damn space–but ultimately, we said no. The schools for the boys were problematic (public schools with absolutely no art program–none. No music, no art, nada nothing zilch. It made NYC public schools look good, in comparison, and that’s saying something); the jobs themselves didn’t quite make sense; we’d be giving up a lot in New York…  We felt bad about saying no to the nice midwestern people (and gosh almighty they are nice out here), but said no anyway, and so now here I am in flyover country, once again a visitor.

Mostly I am sure we made the right decision; New York at this point makes sense for us. We’ve lucked into two good public schools; we have amazing friends; good jobs. Furthermore, in a blind taste test our kids could distinguish Two Boots from Totonno’s from Postos from Patsy’s, and god knows that’s an important life skill. They can also hail a cab at ten paces; they are intimately acquainted with any number of museums; and they understand that the world is comprised of lots of different kinds of people.

As I know from my non-conservative mother, living in this conservative state (that briefly flirted with progressivism by going for Barack in the election), would be tough. And I don’t regret saying no to Large Midwestern University.

But as I sit here writing this, soaking in the stillness, listening to the sound of the cicadas and the tree frogs and the little creek that burbles behind the house, it’s hard to imagine resuming my regularly scheduled life in that loud, sweltering, cement-box of a city.

Clearly someone will need to buy me at least one cocktail to ease the pain of re-entry. Or a country house. Whichever.

Susan at Three-Corner Farm (great lamb sausage, cheese, and wool) explained to Liam (very gently) where sausage came from; the “bee man” as we call him, patiently explains all the different flavors of honey (and offers tastes of each); the pretzel guys give free pretzels with every purchase (best bet? a bag of broken pretzels, which fit more easily into lunch boxes). It’s endless, the Greenmarket, and if I ever were to move out of the city, it’s one of the things I would miss most.

Today at the greenmarket, I dropped off the compost (if you haven’t seen it already, go see “The Kids Are All Right,” if only for Annette Bening’s inspired rant against organic food, loca-voring, composting, and acai fruit)

then the textile recycling (those socks with a hole? the ripped sheets? the shorts that are too raggedy for Goodwill? Textile recycling turns the fabric into material for rugs, insulation, and god knows what else). 

Then? Did I want wool for some pre-season knitting? 

Zucchini and summer squash?

Sunflowers?

 Eggs?

Peaches and a honeybee? 

Or did I want just to listen to someone playing the harp?

Or maybe just more peaches?

Or maybe take a minute and write whoever you like to write to in support of passing H.R. 5504, which advocates better nutrition (and better funding) for school lunch programs.  Because every kid should get a chance to eat an actual peach, instead of peach ”slices” in high-fructose corn syrup from a 10-quart can.  (Yes, of course, as Rep. Cynthia Davis points out, “hunger is a great motivator,” but should that really apply to kindergartners? And if you’re thinking, oh, school lunch isn’t that bad, click here, for a day-by-day account of school lunch in one midwestern public school.)

So ignore Annette and start composting, send a letter to your representative, contemplate harp lessons, and yes, dare to eat a peach.

As if  New York’s freakishly hot weather isn’t bad enough, New York Magazine is adding to our woes.  Under a golden-hued cover photograph of a mother holding her winsome baby, there is this depressing koan: “I love my kids. I hate my life.”

So what the hell are we supposed to do with that little tidbit?

I thought the article was going to be another of those ad mominem attacks, in which mothers are once again held up as targets for trying too hard/not trying hard enough; being too organic/too processed; working too much/opting out of the job market.

No, moms more or less come out unscathed in this one—or rather, it seems like all parents are screwed, not just mommies.  The article summarizes all the various studies that show, one after another, that parents experience lesser degrees of happiness than people with no kids.

No shit. You mean that assuming ownership of these black suck-holes of financial need won’t make our lives easier, tons and tons more fun? Well duh. Unless you have more money than God or David Tepper, once you become a parent, you’ll be staring at the pretty Laboutins through the window, sweetheart; and you can kiss good-bye the season tickets to sports/culture/Gstaad.

The experts who study these things have found that mothers seem less happy than fathers (I know, you’re shocked shocked); and then in descending order, parents with one kid are sort of happy, parents with more than two kids not so happy, single or divorced moms even less happy, and alas, single fathers are pretty much scraping the bottom of the happiness barrel.

The author of the article points out that some of this shift in parental de-happification has to do with changes in attitudes about parenting, which makes total sense. First of all, let’s just consider the very concept of “attitudes about parenting.” Parenting didn’t used to be a skill set; it was just the noun that described those who had spawned and not eaten their offspring.  Now, however, in a certain demographic swath, parents are made to feel guilty—or at least inadequate—if they aren’t sweating every detail; and children have become these infinitely calibrated projects that magazines and books and television experts tell us can be perfected, honed, refined.

And that, of course, as anyone who has kids knows, is complete crap (and I suspect the experts know it too). No matter how much Mozart you pump into that kid’s toddler brain, he will pass through a phase where the only thing that satisfies his pre-adolescent soul is METALLICA or WHITE SNAKE (please god, anything but White Snake) or some equally loud, equally thumpy, equally hairy band. And for all the talk about “choices,” and “consequences,” and “let’s find some other behavior now, shall we,” that sweet-faced 7th grader is going to tell you to suck it, on probably more than one occasion before all is said and done.

My mom, who had three kids before she hit thirty (amazingly, she’s still 30. The woman is a miracle), says she was pretty happy doing the mom thing. Maybe it is easier to have kids younger, because who the hell knows anything in their twenties, much less whether or not they’re happy? I think she had fun with us, most of the time, and when she got fed up, we all had to go upstairs (ah, the psychic space of upstairs. I think the next happiness study should be among parents with an upstairs space and parents in apartments with no upstairs space. Parents with an upstairs would win hands down).  Was Mom happy zooming around in her huge wood-paneled station wagon, smoking, with her three unseat-belted children rattling around in the backseat pinching each other?  Yeah, I think she mostly was, and I think we mostly were too. Mostly. Except when someone DIDN’T STAY ON HIS SIDE OF THE SEAT.

But now? It all seems a lot harder, as if the stakes are higher, because everyone else is trying to be perfect.  Just like now we all have to carry snacks and water around with us, because god knows in the hours between after-school and dinner, our kids might die of malnourishment. I swear that somewhere in Witness Protection is the parent who started carrying snacks-and-water at all times, thus making it a lot harder for the rest of us. Now we all individually fret about Being Good Parents, instead of advocating as a group for changes in society that would make it easier for all of us, as Judith Warner points out in her book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, a really important point that the NY Mag article sort of buries in mid-read.

After Liam was born and when he finally got home from the hospital, I was filled with anxiety—and who wouldn’t be, bringing home a new baby not much bigger than your average cantalope? But at the same time, I remember being surprised, almost weekly, by the fun I had playing with him. I used to call my mom with that revelation (and like the truly good mother she is, she listened patiently every time): “I didn’t expect to laugh so much.”  But even with two kids, which the article says is the kiss of happiness death, there is laughter and goofing around, and giggles at the dinner table. 

Giggles or no giggles, though, who among us doesn’t love that moment in the evening, before we go to sleep, when we tiptoe into our kids’ rooms (upstairs, if we’re lucky), and shrug the covers back over their sleeping bodies, untangle the knots of sheets and pillows, smooth the hair back from dreaming foreheads?

That’s the thing, isn’t it? My kids are black suck-holes of financial need; they do leave legos around everywhere; the apartment is beveled with a thin layer of fingerprints, pretzel crumbs, and Very Important Sticks; their crap is stacked in every available corner; and the stench of their Keen sandals could raise the dead.

But without them? Well, to paraphrase Kelli Clarkson, my life would suck without them.

It’s a nonsense word that I think perfectly sums up the state of public school education in NYC:  an indecipherable log-jammed system.

Here’s the latest WTF moment from the annals of New York education:

The first day of school for the 2010 school year is set for Wednesday, Sept 8.  But because Labor Day is late this year (and how does that happen, anyway, that holidays just sort of float around the calendar? ) the school start date bumps up against Rosh Hashanah, which means that the schools will be closed Sept 9 & 10. 

That means that kids have exactly one day of school that week, smack in the middle of the week. How’s that for convenient?  Let’s not even think about the nightmare of arranging childcare that week or the difficulty of trying to help kids who are starting kindergarten. Let’s just think about the zoo-like quality of the classrooms, filled with kids who are still bouncy from summer and even bouncier at the prospect of a long weekend. Would you want to be the teacher in that room? I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Parent groups have petitioned Joel Klein to change the calendar, pleading with him to make this starting schedule slightly more sane and yesterday, we got  our response: a letter from our pal Joel, putting the blame for his inability to change the calendar squarely on…the teachers’ union, that always handy scapegoat. Klein’s letter reads, in part, “the UFT refused our proposal and therefore we are left with no choice but to keep the calendar unchanged.”

Does anyone else find it surprising that the Chancellor of Schools doesn’t have it in his power to change the school calendar? Given that he can close schools pretty much at the drop of a hat, you’d think something like moving the start date on the calendar would be a finger snap.

In response to Klein, UFT President Michael Mulgrew blamed the calendar problem on… Joel Klein (I know, you’re shocked, shocked that he’d do such a thing).  Mulgrew noted that the teacher contracts allow for different schools to choose different start dates, and suggested that different boroughs might start on different days, which Klein said would be “chaotic.”

I’m sure Mulgrew is indulging in some spin of his own, obviously; no one likes to be a scapegoat (and he laid out an interesting pattern of Kleinian blame: when things go wrong, it’s the fault of the teachers and principals, and when things go right, it’s because of Klein’s masterful handling of the system).  But the teachers I know think this starting calendar is ridiculous and all of them voted to change the date–and in fact, none of them know any teachers who voted to keep the calendar as it is. So then you have to wonder: who, exactly, voted to keep the calendar?

For any of us who have encountered the implacable force that is the DOE (thou shalt not get a variance; thou shalt not take anything other than scores into account for gifted-and-talented programs; thou shalt not get special services for your kid unless you sue the shit out of us first, and so on), Klein’s letter, which claims powerlessness in the face of the almighty union, strikes a patently false note.

But Klein blames the union and the union blames Klein, and round we go, swing your partner and do-si-do.  The only people not enjoying this blame dance, with its intervals of finger-pointing and chin-wagging, are the thousands of families who have to deal with this idiotic schedule. And of course, we will deal with it, just as we deal with all the other DOEUFT nonsense, but what a waste of time and energy when there’s such a simple solution available (no, not firing Joel Klein, although it’s a lovely thought).  Just move the start of school to Sept. 13.  Easy-peasy.

But in the world of UFTDOE, easy-peasy doesn’t work.

And they wonder why people move to the ‘burbs.

I started John Burdett’s Godfather of Kathmandu a few weeks ago. I liked the other books Burdett wrote—Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo—and thought Godfather would be a nice thriller with which to start the summer (nothing, of course, will measure up to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. RIP, Steig).

Wrong. I read about sixty pages or so and decided it wasn’t spending my precious pre-sleep minutes wading through Inspector Jitpleecheep’s thoughts about crime, punishment, and reincarnation. Life is too short to finish books I don’t like, especially now, when my reading time is usually the twenty minutes or so before my eyelids come crashing down at day’s end. (For the record, I also feel free to skip articles in The New Yorker, which I know some people consider a kind of heresy.)

So you know what I did with the Burdett book? I returned to the library.

Can you imagine how freeing that is? Now I don’t have to find room for a book I don’t like on my overcrowded shelves; I don’t have to foist it off on an unsuspecting friend.  I’m sure Burdett would have preferred that I spend 18$ for his book on Amazon (or $14 for the Kindle edition), but I’d prefer to keep that eighteen bucks and spend it on something important, like bacon-peanut brittle at The Redhead. I guess you could say that I’m a big believer in read-and-return (sort of like catch-and-release, in fly-fishing). Besides, at the risk of boasting, without a library, I couldn’t afford my reading habit: in a good month, I crank through almost a book a week, which is way more than I can afford to buy (digitally or actually).

As my jammed bookshelves attest, we still buy books—sometimes it can’t be avoided—but mostly, I put books on reserve at the library and then anywhere from a week to a couple of months later, the book appears in my local branch. Yes, it means that my literary repartee at cocktail parties is always a bit belated, but that’s okay – I don’t get invited to many cocktail parties. (Of course, if my repartee were more up-to-date, maybe I would have a more active social life. Hmm…)

Husband points out that I could be reading everything digitally and thus avoiding the jammed-bookshelf problem, but storage is not entirely the issue. As I’ve said before, I like books, the physical thing that is a cover and pages in between. When I was a little girl, maybe seven or eight, I was allowed to start riding my bike alone to our village library. I’d pedal over there on my green Schwinn, and spend hours in the stacks. It seemed impossibly generous to me that I could check out anything I wanted! (Or, at least, as many books as would fit in my basket.)

The largesse of a library still amazes me. Do you have an overdue book? Well, that’s okay, they’ll let you check out books anyway and you can pay next time (or the next or the next or the next).  Or perhaps you’d like to check out a laptop and use it in-house for an hour, or use the desktop terminals and printers? Do you need language instruction, tax help, or job search advice? Looking for a census form or a neighborhood map? Need a toddler reading group or a kids craft activity, a poetry reading, or a movie night? Or perhaps you’re just one of those errant urban wanderers who needs a place to sit quietly and mutter while you read the paper (and occasionally use the bathroom).

It’s all there. And it’s all free. (Even the bathrooms.)

But if Bloomberg and the city (not to mention the budget geniuses in Albany) have their way, the library budgets will be cut by $37 million bucks.  Some branches will close altogether; others will have their hours of operation reduced from six days a week to four; and let’s not even think about the list of services that will go out the window.

Why is it that when government officials want to save money, things having to do with kids (schools, libraries, parks) are always first on the chopping block?  What does that say about us as a society, that we would let this happen?

And once again, I have to turn to my default answer for New York’s money woes: let’s call that guy who got the 4 billion dollar bonus last year. With money like that, he’s gotta be BFF with Mayor Mike, so why not just agree to rename the library system the David Tepper Libraries in exchange for a big ol’ check? About forty million ought to cover it – chump change.

In case Mr. Tepper doesn’t step up to the plate, you can click here for more information about library budgets and where to send your letters of outrage.

After all, Caleb just got his very own library card, and while he seems to have learned to read, we’re going to need our local branch to stay open because he’s clearly going to need some spelling help. 

Seems a cautious Con Ed worker (perhaps with visions of a segment on the morning talk shows?) saw a suspicious car parked in front of the Con Ed building and called the police to report a possible car bomb. Bomb squads were called in, the car was examined (car windows were smashed) and – several hours after all this police action began—the decision was made to evacuate surrounding buildings.  Why it took two hours to decide we were in danger, I’m not sure, but there it was, 12:30 at night, with the fire alarm going off in our building and our neighbor calling to say that in fact, no, this was not a joke, we did need to rouse the boys and get out.

We live in an NYU building, so when we shuffled down to the street, we were told to go to another NYU building that had apparently been deemed out of bomb radius, if the car were in fact a bomb.  We made the boys comfortable in our make-shift bomb shelter (a TV lounge in the building) and tried to figure out what the hell was happening: apparently this car, a 1991 Cutlass (suspicious looking under the best of circumstances) had gas cans in the back seat, which in these tense post-Times-Square days, must mean a bomb.

Couldn’t possibly have meant that the driver of the car was just at the Buzzcocks show at Irving Plaza, reliving the glory days of punk rock, could it?

Which, in fact, is exactly what it was.  No bomb, no terrorist, not even stupid kids dicking around with explosives. Just a guy who works as a landscaper and keeps gas cans in his car so he can put gas in the lawnmower—and who had the misfortune to park on the wrong block. And who is now the proud owner of a 1991 Cutlass with blown-out windows, courtesy of the police who wanted to scan the car’s interior.

So Mr. 1991 Cutlass was unlucky, but for the rest of us, it wasn’t that bad. No real bomb, just a real scare and a seriously real lack of sleep.  But what must it be like to live in (fill in name of just about any country in the world here) and have bombs be a regular part of your existence?

Today, as Liam and I walked to school, bleary-eyed and groggy, he said “you know, mommy, that was a little scary last night.”  And it was scary, but for more reasons than he knows. Scary for the obvious reason: a fucking car bomb across the street from my apartment? 

But also because it means that someone saw something innocent (a beat-up old car with a gas can in the back) and assumed the worst: assumed guilt, assumed malice. And isn’t that scarier still?