I spent part of the New Years last night around the corner watching the guys at the Fire House setting off bottle rockets over the East River. Was that illegal? Do firemen get special dispensation to play with matches?
Anyway it looked great!
After a while they had to go out on a call,...alot of fires on the holidays.
I love firemen.
Their 'whole' job is to save you, your family,..and ya beloved junk. I loves'em. They're cool. I admire their sense of brother, and lately sisterhood. All that "Band of Brothers" stuff.
However what I especially likes about these neat folks is that they don't shoot you.
Naw this ain't a back handed diss on cops,..mostly. I mean police folks go into harms way 'everyday' for us. They're hero's too. It's just that being a cop, like firemen, is an 'extraordinary' thing, and calls for extraordinary people.
Not just any Moe, Larry or Curly.
A police person besides everything else holds the direct power of life or death over us. So perhaps only the very 'best' of us should be cops.
Remember I cynically said that we'd be completely recovered from the downtown 9/11 attack. We'd be back to "normal" as soon a cop, probably Curly, gunned down another unarmed Black guy.
It took six days.
However in those six days we were a united community of human beings. We openly spoke, and cared for each other.
I miss those days.
I'm not alone in that. I've found over the years that many New Yorkers would speak wistfully of those too few days as well.
How is it that so many would thoughtfully remember out of all the mayhem of this past decade those 'few' days.
Maybe it's because these were the best hours of this whole traumatic era. Maybe our true selves finally shined through at last.
May this New Year, this new 'Decade' give us more "Human" days.
More Humanity.
(Btw, the sweet kid above looks like Obama at his first job.)
6 comments:
Hey, I was doing something else and thought about this post so came back to it.
It`s not always good to rehash the past especialy something like 9/11
but...
I wonder if you know how all of us felt about you folks back then ?
Even as I write this I feel the tears welling up...
I felt sooo bad for all of you...
What you must be going thru...
God, I really don`t want to talk about this you know? Sorry.
Just know that our prayers were with all of you both those in the Towers and ALL of NY Citizens.
Yeah, those post-9-11 days were interesting. I've traveled a lot through the U.S. and there is a lot of anti-New York City sentiment out there, but it was all put aside for a little while.
I also remember radio stations asking for this or that to be donated to the rescue workers and half an hour later asking that no more be given, they had such a wonderful response.
I've noticed that umpires tend to rule on close plays against New York teams, especially in the National League, but when baseball came back after 9-11, the New York teams got the close plays for a few games.
Sidney, have you ever read the blog/essay/article I did on my web site? I was absolutely driven to write about it, yet I couldn't write for too many hours in a row so it took a few days to complete. http://www.comicbookradioshow.com/kenwtc.html
Have fun, Sidney,
Ken
Hi John, and Ken. Ken did I leave my site open at the office?
Anyway thanks for your words, and friendship over the years.
Thank you John for your heartfulness as well.
Peace to you both.
Btw I'll post a link to your site Ken.
I also hope you finally gets your comic book radio show back.
Ken does "Ecologic" an environment show on wbai.org.
However he used to do a swell comics, and graphic novel program as well.
Hi, Sidney,
I was amazed to hear the Barbie ad because of the constant references to "I'll look like this when I grow up." I've read articles saying that that is why the article writer hates Barbies, but none of the Barbie collectors I know ever had that thought (and none of them look like Barbie, I might add, but have their own kind of beauty). So the ad was what some account executive thought would sell the doll, but girls had their own reasons for wanting them.
I've had several people threaten to give me a Paleontologist Barbie (that's the kind of friends I attract), but luckily, no one ever did, realizing I didn't need one more thing like that in a crowded NYC apartment.
However, Sidney came up with a good idea for a Paleontologist Barbie (probably now long out of print, or whatever they call out-of-print for toys). And by the way, I saw one and it was actually rather well-done. She was dressed appropriately and had the right tools.
Be seeing you, Sidney,
Ken Gale
Eco-Logic and 'Nuff Said! host/producer, WBAI-FM, NYC
Well the idea was to have a future Paleontologist Barbie digging up a 1950's fossilized suburban Barbie family,..including their dog, and tv dinner trays.
This is why I want to be cremated.
Btw please make sure I'm stone cold before anybody breaks out the matches.
Being 'not quite' dead when they lights me up is a is a bit of a worry.
Anyway I wants to get cooked so my fossilized bones ain't picked over by some bored 30th century grad student.
This distracted slacker, probably french, would be chopping my skull out of the Brooklyn bedrock.
Through in fact he'd would rather be fucking some Martian clone in hyperspace.
Anyway yeah it's getting on time to customize some of my Barbies. I'll start by putting wings on my Lingerie Barbie®.
If that works out I'll try making up a 1972 Lesbian Separatist Barbie. I knew alot of them gals back in the day.
Odd they all ended up marrying guys from New Jersey, and having a house full of kids.
Go figure.
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