The Race for Mayor

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The Race for Mayor of New York

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The Race for Mayor

I'm working on a graphic illustration of "The Race for Mayor." It's not yet complete, but here's a snippet of what it looks like.

11/28 Town Hall

On Monday, November 28, a University Town Hall was held in response to the student occupier’s vandalizing the Kellen Gallery. Three University Student Senate senators acted as mediators and facilitators of the informal town hall. The main objectives were to discuss the New School occupation and how to continue going forwards. Melissa Holmes, one of the senators, started the three-hour meeting at the Kellen Gallery by asking, “How did you experience this week?”

The first speaker was A. Rodriguez, a Parsons student and a worker at the Kellen Gallery. He talked about his unease at the offering of the gallery as a new space for the occupiers. He also elaborated on his role in helping take down the current exhibition on Thursday and then cleaning up the spray painted gallery on Sunday after the occupiers had left. Besides Mr. Rodriguez, three other student gallery workers, their employer and the gallery curator spoke at the town hall.

The initial model of having an open forum where seated attendees could simply shout out quickly became disorganized and argumentative. The student senators then asked all attendees who would like to say something to form a stack on the side of the room. Speakers took turns voicing their concerns. Various speakers repeated a few specific opinions throughout the meeting.

Some emphasized the lack of disrespect the occupiers showed towards the gallery and their horror at seeing 90 Fifth Avenue and the Kellen Gallery treated so badly. Others spoke about their role in the occupation movement and their sorrow at seeing the actions of a few uncooperative dissenters ruin the opportunity for students to have a space to congregate in. Both students and faculty from various schools of the university spoke.

When the student senators took a temperature check of the room an hour and a half into the meeting, many of the audience had already left. The response to the question, whether or not students want a space, was tepid. Near the two-hour mark, it was decided that a vote could not be taken now on whether or not the Kellen Gallery should continue to be the space offered to the student occupiers. It was also impossible to decide whether the students should be given a space at all. The student senators asked repeatedly for suggestions on how to move forwards.

11/21 Links

Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street Raided
by the Mother Jones news team
Occupy*Posters
Occupy Wall Street: How Should It be Covered Now? and Who is Occupy Wall Street?
by Arthur S. Brisbane for the New York Times

Op Eds on Sandusky
Let's All Feel Superior
by David Brooks for the New York Times
The Devil and Joe Paterno
by Ross Douthat for the New York Times

Opinion
Thinking Outside the Box
by Lisa Margonelli for the New York Times
Generation Sell
by William Deresiewicz for the New York Times

Leadership Issues
The Force Isn't With Him
Chris Smith for New York Mag
On the Ropes with Herman Cain
by T.A. Frank for The New York Times Magazine

Food Related
The First Served
by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker
Crunch
by John Seabrook for The New Yorker

Keeping New York a Culture Capital

"Splotch 15" a Sol Lewitt structure on view at City Hall Park sponsored by Public Art Fund which is supported by the DCA. Photo: Jason Wyche

A tourist in New York might visit a few museums, such as the Museum of Natural History or the Met; wander around one of the three botanical gardens, in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens; and take in a showing of the New York City Ballet or New York City Opera. All of these institutions and many more well known, highly frequented establishments are city-owned and city-funded.

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) supports the 33 members of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG). All of the mentioned institutions are part of this group. The support the DCA offers the CIG includes the city-owned property these institutions are located on and the capital needed for basic security, maintenance, administration and energy costs. It has two other funding units: Program Services, which supports 881 nonprofit cultural organizations, and Capital Projects, which provides funds for design, construction and equipment. The Department of Cultural Affairs also gives grants for small capital projects initiated in lower income neighborhoods or that target lower income audiences.

Faced with a small DCA budget when sworn into office in February 2002, current Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs Kate D. Levin said, “It will be my nonstop effort to see that the cultural community is made whole to the extent that it’s possible.” In Levin’s 9 years as Commissioner, the Department consolidated two separate funding streams into the Cultural Development Fund, supported the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s new 82,000 square-foot wing, launched a new program called The Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts aiding art education in public schools, and received the then largest budget in the agency’s history in 2006.

According to a report by the Center for an Urban Future made in 2005, “New York City’s budget for arts and culture nonprofits and individual artists is unrivaled in the country.” In fiscal year 2006, the DCA had an expense budget of $131 million (larger than the National Endowment for the Arts’ annual budget) and an $803 million capital budget for 2007-2011. This June 2011, Mayor Bloomberg initially proposed cuts of $50 million to the Department of Cultural Affairs budget, continuing the trend of the Departments slowly declining share of the city budget. He later restored $30 million to their budget, bringing it to the final $149.5 million.

Out of this budget, the 33 members of the Cultural Institutions group receive $110.2. The remaining 26.3% of the budget is split between the Department’s other two funding divisions, the grants it awards to applicants and the two programs it runs, Materials for the Arts, which provides materials to organizations, and Percent for Art, which supports the creation of public art in New York City.

The Department of Cultural Affairs, in existence in some form since 1869, has a large role in the city’s cultural atmosphere. It serves as a conductor of finances to city-owned and non city-owned institutions and nonprofit cultural organizations across the five boroughs. The amount of funding it receives impacts the support it can give to large establishments and the many small arts organizations throughout New York. The preliminary fiscal year 2012 budget for the DCA is $49 million less than the 2011 budget, coming out to $101.3 million.

In July when Mayor Bloomberg restored $30 million to the 2011 DCA budget, Randall Bourscheidt, president of Alliance for the Arts, said to The Arts Newspaper, “I think that the restoration of the cultural budget is nothing short of heroic and it represents a very strong commitment from the city council and the mayor to the arts in New York.”

Candy Chang - Before I Die Brooklyn

Before I Die - Brooklyn from charis poon on Vimeo.
Shake Shack used Candy Chang's Before I Die toolkit to turn the construction walls around their new location in Brooklyn into a point of interest and activity.

Located at the corner of Fulton Street Mall and Adams Street.

Read more:
http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-brooklyn/
http://civiccenter.cc/before-i-die-in-brooklyn/

Music:
Hadoken by Nullsleep

The Unisphere Then and Now

Postcard of the New York World's Fair

Taken on November 01, 2011

The 140 feet tall, 700,000-pound Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park is a fifteen-minute walk from the Mets-Willets Point subway station. For the first three to four minutes it is visible among the trees before disappearing into the park. Sitting low in the horizon, the stainless steel globe blends into the sky during the day, but at night, illuminated by ten floodlights and twenty lampposts, the Unisphere shines brightly. Hidden by leaves when approaching, the structure suddenly looms above visitors coming on any of the eight pathways leading there.

Originally designed and created for the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, the Unisphere is an official landmark as designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and an unofficial symbol of the borough of Queens. The Unisphere is in the second largest public park in New York City bordered by neighborhoods with a total population of around 344,000. It is visible to drivers on the Van Wyck, Grand Central and Long Island Expressways as well as passengers flying into La Guardia and JFK. Those who see it may not realize its visibility and their constant sight of it is a small part of the legacy of Robert Moses—New York City Parks Commissioner, head of multiple public authorities and shaper of New York. The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair was a financial failure and many of the buildings erected for it are gone or unused. Today, Flushing Meadows Corona Park and its focal point, the Unisphere, have been given new purposes and meaning. Many have reinterpreted the globe as a symbol of the diversity of Queens and a look at the ethnicity of park goers quickly confirms this to be valid. (According to the 2005 American Community Survey, 47.6% of Queens residents are immigrants.) However, this current understanding of the Unisphere isn’t the one the designer originally envisioned.

As recorded in “Remembering the Future” by Marc H. Miller, on March 6, 1963 at the ceremony during which the first support of the Unisphere tripod pedestal was placed, Robert Moses said, “We looked high and low for a challenging symbol for the New York World's Fair of 1964 and 1965. It had to be of the space age; it had to reflect the interdependence of man on the planet Earth, and it had to emphasize man's achievements and aspirations. It had to be the cynosure of all visitors, dominating Flushing Meadow, and built to remain as a permanent feature of the park, reminding succeeding generations of a pageant of surpassing interest and significance.”

It may satisfy Moses to know the Unisphere is still a permanent feature of Flushing Meadows. Even if few visitors may recollect the World’s Fair or know that the Unisphere was intended to remind them of its significance.

Aerial photograph of FMCP, 2006. Credit DOITT, NYCMAP-2006 Series

Notes on University Town Hall

The New School's University Town Hall meeting last Wednesday, October 26th was a survey of the latest developments at the school and forward looking in regards to necessary changes. Several successful projects under the school's "service initiative" as discussed by Provost Tim Marshall are the student conversion to Gmail (faculty to come), orientation for all new faculty, and the dining dollars debit system. As for integrated academic support, there is focus on making The New School a more collective whole, showing consistency across the different schools.  There is a new bell schedule that will be used starting fall 2013, an integrated course catalogue online in time for spring 2012, and an expanded digital library, created by joining new consortiums. In order to visually illustrate improvements being made, President Van Zandt showed a series of before and after photos of physical changes made across campus in different locations.
The topic of most needed change that President Van Zandt spent a substantial portion of his presentation discussing was the dependency of The New School on growth and how that dependency is not sustainable. While addressing how the past academic year's growth was more modest than previous years, -5.1% from 2010-2011 throughout the university and less growth than budgeted for, Van Zandt treated the fact as neither starkly bad nor good. The New School is very reliant on tuition, 90% of its revenue comes from student fees. The lower growth rate does affect university spending, but President Van Zandt said this is the direction the university is planning for. He suggested there is a "negative impact of quick growth on the quality of academic programs," and that the school had an "obligation to make it worth it to students to invest in higher education."

Four Hour Wait to Save $42

To acquire standing room tickets for a Friday 8:00 PM showing of “The Book of Mormon,” my two friends and I began standing in line at four. At 7:00 PM they would start sales for 24 tickets costing $27 each. As time passed, the line grew to around 30 people—the last six purely hopeful. Mezzanine J-L tickets, the seats right in front of where I stood, cost $69. Standing room tickets are only available when the show is sold out, but “The Book of Mormon” is sold out everyday.

Joan Wong, my “Book of Mormon” companion and a senior at Parsons The New School for Design, has watched about 30 different Broadway shows (all musicals except for two plays) and, if you count repeated shows, she’s watched 50. Ms. Wong paid full price for only one—“Lion King”. She acquires discounted tickets mostly through student or general rush and also by joining ticket lotteries and waiting for standing room tickets to sold out shows.

Student and general rush policies vary depending on the show; “Follies,” a revival that opened on Sept. 12 and due to its popularity has extended its engagement to Jan. 22, offers 30 student rush tickets ($37 a ticket) per performance. According to a box office employee, there are always “More people than tickets…Hard to gauge, about fifty per performance.” “Wicked,” which celebrates its eighth anniversary on October 30, 2011, has a lottery for 25 front row seats prior to each performance. The lottery winners pay $26.50 for seats that could cost up to $312.25 for a Saturday night showing. The “Wicked” box office employee said at least a hundred people join the lottery per performance. Ms. Wong has won the lottery for different shows about 10 -15 times. “If I had to put a percentage on it, it would be probably be 75% of the time…It’s weird.”

There may be over a hundred people at the Gershwin Theater hoping to get lucky and see “Wicked” for a steep discount, but there are also about four hundred to a thousand people waiting in line at the tkts booth everyday. Every ticket sold there is discounted at 50%, 40%, 30% or 20%. Jordan Feltner and Mark Curry, tkts representatives working at the Times Square tkts booth, said the majority of people in line are tourists. According to Mr. Feltner, he “fields a lot of questions…What are people in line for? What are people doing? Two-thirds get in line afterwards.” The general rush and lottery tickets offered by theaters are typically cheaper than the prices tkts offers. “In general, of course tourists don’t know,” Mr. Curry responded, “We do tell people. They think instead of worrying about that, maybe we’ll just stay here. They’re not that knowledgeable about how the theater system works.”

Still, the popularity of waiting for discounted tickets through rush, lottery or for standing room has grown. Ms. Wong said, “Even if they start selling when the box office opens, I used to be able to get rush tickets in the late afternoon. But now, there are lines for hours before the box office opens for almost every show that offers rush.” Her conjecture as to how people are growing aware of these opportunities is, “Word of mouth? All these discounts are still kind of a “new” thing…I mean the people who do this are usually students and young people are likely to talk more.” The “Follies” box office employee suggested, “Websites…They have their own kind of thing. I get that feeling sometimes.”

There is, in fact, a website for Broadway goers with message boards. Some of the forums discuss discount tickets for shows. The “ANYTHING GOES Rush” forum has 24 replies and 13,165 views. User ColorTheHours048 (a reference to “Spring Awakening”) posted on August 4, “Rushed this morning. Got there at 6:20 and was first in line. The line picked up steadily from 6:40 on.” The “Anything Goes” box office opens at 10:00 AM. Deciding whether or not waiting for rush tickets, joining a lottery, or hoping for standing room is worth it is a question of whether you want to save time or money.

Brad Lander and the 39th District - Edit

IBM's Invitation to THINK

The IBM THINK Exhibit celebrating the company’s centennial, open until October 23 at Lincoln Center, aims to teach visitors “how to make the world better.” The exhibit discusses using technology as solutions to problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution and airport efficiency just to name a few.

Bruno Bagala, an “IBMer” at THINK wearing an “Ask Me” badge around his neck, explained that the exhibit was “not to tout IBM for our centennial, but to talk about technology” and how that technology can solve problems people didn’t recognize as problems or always thought were too expensive to tackle.

THINK is open to the public and inviting due to its prominent position on Broadway between 64^th and 65^th Street. Visible from the road is the first part of the exhibit, a 123-foot digital data wall that dynamically draws information from New York City and visualizes it in aesthetic patterns and moving infographics. One THINK employee explained how the solar energy visualization worked: there were sensors on the roof of the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center that calculated how much potential energy could have been generated in the last 24 hours if there were solar panels installed. Opposite the digital wall is a series of panels that explain certain portions of the display in detail and discusses real ways technology has been put to use to improve the world. Bagala explained that there is no mention of IBM on these panels and that some of the technology is from their competitors.

While the outdoors portion is constantly on view, there are also timed sessions that include a ten-minute film and a twenty-five minute interactive session within the space under the Lincoln Center Plaza. The ten-minute film is easily the most attractive and awe-inspiring portion of THINK. Another “IBMer” within the space said she met a visitor who had come from Atlanta to see the exhibit. What really moved her was when a man who works with at-risk kids in the city came and told her the film had given him hope. For ten minutes, surround sound and 40 screens show a film that outlines the history of human innovation and looks at the areas of food, medicine and transportation to discuss current and future technological solutions. With close-up portraits, detailed shots of nature, a sequence on outerspace, and a 360 view of Chicago—this film is a creative, beautiful work of art.

After the film ends, each of the 40 screens turn into interactive touch screens focused on one of the five approaches THINK defines as the pattern of progress: Seeing, Mapping, Understanding, Believing and Acting. Each screen displays the information differently; Seeing is a long illustrated timeline of human inventions and Acting is a movable globe pinpointing ways things are being done “better” around the world. Perhaps the only section with obvious injection of how IBM is a part of this global movement for betterment is in the Believing display, where visitors can choose to hear specific “leaders in world changing initiatives.” The exhibit employee explained that some of the projects are IBM affiliated and at least two of the leaders are “IBMers.” 

She, like Bagala, repeatedly said that THINK “downplayed the IBM thing.” The purpose of THINK, according to her, was to “see what people think about technology,” and she pointed out how each interactive screen included a poll visitors could take. The portion of the exhibit that discussed IBM at length, as she promoted it, was the last section, which showed 100 IBM icons in a timeline of how the company has been a part of social and technological change in the last century. Visitors, after exiting the film space, filed past this portion quickly. Key moments in IBM’s history that Bagala mentioned were the company being one of the first to hire women engineers and to have an equal opportunity policy prior to the passage of the Us Civil Rights Act. Bagala, saying again that THINK was “not to tout IBM,” explained the company’s rationale for the exhibit as being a “celebration” and though at times they had strayed, this was a part of their history as “a company about change and breakthrough.”

Covering the Occupation

The CBS camera-man filming and interviewing protestors at Occupy Wall Street last Wednesday declined answering questions three different ways, “I could get myself in trouble,” “I’m not trying to blow you off,” and “I can’t really comment.” When approached, five members of the CNN news crew sitting in a parked truck on the south side of Zucotti Park shook their heads and said, “We’re not allowed to.”

Gary Anthony Ramsay, the reporter of a two-man team and carrying a microphone with the words PRESS TV on it, was willing to speak candidly after interviewing Mark Bray, a volunteer media spokesman for the movement.

Ramsay, a former NY1 reporter, was dismissed from the network in 2007 after working 15 years there. The reason for his dismissal was calling Jon Schiumo’s evening call-in show under an alias and criticizing the host’s statements regarding Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner. He is now head of Great Pitch Media, a communications and media company he founded.

When asked for his opinion on Occupy Wall Street, Ramsay said he is “surprised at the resiliency” of the protests and that it is different from similar groups that assemble every few years and then go away. He had been at the park everyday for the past two weeks at the time of this interview. “I can say I was there,” Ramsay said, after comparing being at Zucotti to reporters being present at Tahrir Square.

On this particular day, Ramsay is talking to people who consist of the park’s own media, the people who handle the flyers, newspaper and online media.  stated that “rather than continue asking [the protestors] what they want,” he asks them to “reflect what’s going here.” Gesturing behind him to the crowded park, he talks about how it has “turned into a city” and that “everyone has something to say that’s enough to be a story.” Faced with the large variety of protestors the occupation has drawn, Ramsay’s tactic for finding good interviewees is “anyone who can put coherent thoughts together.”

When asked to comment on the news coverage of Occupy Wall Street, Ramsay speaks about the content, “It’s not like it didn’t happen. It’s not like there wasn’t a half dressed woman in burlesque.” He states that for the first two weeks of the occupation, protestors accused the media of ignoring them. Zucotti Park is filled with members of the press now.

Future Times Square Has Dark Flooring and More Seats

On September 26, Snohetta Design, an architecture firm, revealed its $27 million preliminary plan for renovating Times Square's ground surfaces and seating to Midtown Community Board 5's Transportation Committee. 

All the sky blue, orangey-beige and shades of grey that make up the ground between 42nd Street and 47th Street will be transformed into a darker concrete flooring with small metal rivets. The plan will eliminate haphazard pavement and evidence of the old roadways, making the expanses of pedestrian plazas permanent. 

A large component of the proposed redesign is additional seating. Tourists and residents can be seen surveying Times Square from the TKTS booth's stadium-like seating area. There are typically vacant seats available. 

Five different types of custom benches as well as movable seating will be added. The current kinds of seating in Times Square are red metal chairs, sidewalk curbs and anything else visitors can park themselves on.

Rosa, a New York resident (fourth from the left), said she had no real complaints with Times Square and was apathetic about the plan to add more permanent seating.

Snohetta's vision for Times Square includes a bike lane that would switch from Broadway to 7th Avenue and then back to Broadway between 47th Street and 42nd Street. 

Bikers currently travel alongside traffic and cut into the pedestrian plazas when necessary. 

Craig Dykers, the Snohetta designer who presented their plan to the mostly approving Committee Board, said the renovations aim to make the billboards even more of the focus in Times Square. The vision is that a unified ground level that's darker in color with more organized permanent furniture will create a sense of spaciousness.

Currently, the largest billboard is American Eagle and Aeropostale's corner of light. (Pictured above is Cintia Dicker, a model for Aerie lingerie.) Dykers suggested that the ground level is competing for attention—“What we have today is essentially a situation where there’s a great deal of activity on all the surfaces,” he said, adding that it “is kind of sucking the energy out of the marquees.”

Another motivation for this project that was stated at the presentation is to create spaces for tourists and allow New Yorkers to navigate the crowds more easily.

A crowd of pedestrians stand and watch the trailer for Real Steel playing on the large screen across the street.

Video Tutorials

Lynda.com is essentially a site of video tutorials. It's a paid site and members have access to all the videos. However, they also have a good selection of free videos that will at least get you started. I would recommend looking at editing in Final Cut Pro and in iMovie.

Another great site filled with video tutorials is Adobe TV. You can learn Premiere Pro or you could also give After Effects a go (the software I used to create the community board video). I've linked the tutorials for the latest versions (since school has the latest versions), but you can also find tutorials for older versions of the software on Adobe TV too.

Final Cut Pro X is Apple's latest version of Final Cut. You can get a free trial of this and the Adobe software for a month if you're interested in working at home. The recommended tutorial sites from Apple for Final Cut are: Mac Pro Video and Ripple Training.

EDIT /////////////

Turns out that Mac Pro Video and Ripple Training both allow limited previews but cost money to view the whole tutorials so I did some more hunting for free introductory videos: see below.

Apple actually has an entire host of iMovie tutorials and lessons online that are easy to understand and follow. Just click a lesson and there are video tutorials as well as written instructions.

This site (Izzy Video) has a good list of videos. 

And here's one of a list of videos from Lynda.com teaching Final Cut. (Click link below to go through.)

Initial setup

Final Cut Studio Overview | by Damian Allen

View this entire Final Cut Studio course and more in the lynda.com Online Training Library®.

Pepper Spray Follow Up

Found this follow up to the Occupy Wall Street pepper spray incident on The Daily What. Also learned that the NYPD officer has been identified. Below, Chelsea Elliott, 25, tells her story. You can also read the Village Voice's interview with her.


Interview with Pepper Sprayed Protester Chelsea Elliott from ANIMALnewyork.com on Vimeo.

Queens Community District 07

Airport Security Involvement in Smuggling Case

U.S. Connecticut attorney David B. Fein announces the 20 smuggling related arrests
image credit: Douglas Healey for the New York Times

“Do you desire to protect American interests and secure our Nation while building a meaningful and rewarding career?” After this opening appeal, the job summary for a Transportation Security Officer (TSO) goes on to state that working for the Transportation Security Administration is working “to safeguard the American way of life.”

After the 2001 September 11 attacks, Congress chose to create the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a new agency handling security for transportation, by allocating responsibility and funds from the Federal Aviation Administration. Airlines or private contractors previously handled this work.

This past Tuesday, September 13 three TSA officers, Christopher Allen of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; John Best of Port St. Lucie, Fla.; and Brigitte Jones of the Bronx, N.Y., were arrested for assisting in interstate drugs trafficking and the transport of cash proceeds resulting from the sales of these prescription pills. The narcotic oxycodone was transported from Florida to Connecticut by way of New York. The resulting cash profit was then transported back to Florida. Two police officers, Michael Brady of Westchester County, N.Y., and Justin Kolves of Florida state were also charged as well as fifteen other civilians involved.

As stated on the TSA website, the duties and responsibilities of a Transportation Security Officer (TSO) are to “implement security-screening procedures that are central to Transportation Security Administration objectives” and to “protect the traveling public by preventing any deadly or dangerous objects from being transported onto an aircraft.” For around $500 a trip, Allen, Best and Jones coordinated with drug couriers to allow them passage onto commercial flights with large amounts of oxycodone and cash. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) five-month investigation revealed that the civilians carrying the drugs to sell the pills for profit in New England would make several trips a week. It has not yet been released how long this drug ring has been in operation, but it is possible that it has been in action for at least a year amounting to more than 65 flights from Florida to New York. One man arrested in April that triggered the investigation said he paid Brady more than $20,000 for unhindered passage.

Brady, a police officer working for the Department of Public Safety in Westchester County, could have been earning an annual salary of around $53,000 to $62,000. A Transportation Security Officer like Allen, Best and Jones is in the Transportation Security Administration’s D or E pay band, which ranges from a minimum of $25,518 to a maximum of $44,007. In a written statement TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said, “TSA holds its security officers to the highest professional and ethical standards and has a zero tolerance policy for criminal activity in the workplace. The actions of a few individuals in no way reflect on the outstanding job our more than 50,000 security officers do every day to ensure the security of the traveling public.” The key requirements for a potential Transportation Security Officer is to pass a background investigation including a credit and criminal check, a drug screening and medical evaluation, and no defaults over $7,500, delinquent debts or taxes. And, of course, a Transportation Security Officer must “desire to protect American interests and secure our Nation.”

New Yorker 9/11 Interviews

The New Yorker has a number of interviews with New Yorker contributors on how their lives and work were changed by the September 11th attacks. I found the interviews similar to our assignment for this past week. Linked above.

9.11

Cindy Kong tells me that her first reaction when hearing that a plane had hit the World Trade Center was shock. “I never even thought that could happen. One building and then both buildings.”

September 11, 2001 her coworkers were all watching the news on their computers. Several people were on the phone with loved ones. Cindy’s first reaction, like many others’ on that day, was to call her spouse, a pastor at a church in Chinatown at the time. After being unable to reach Ben, she contacted the church and was told that Ben’s train had been stopped on 42^nd street and that he was headed back home. Before leaving work to pick up her two sons, ages one and four, Cindy watched the first tower fall on the television in the lobby of Columbia University’s business building.

Accompanied by a colleague unable to return to her home in New Jersey, she walked to the daycare and found that inside “it was like nothing was different…They were all getting ready for their nap. The lights were off. It was really quiet and they were oblivious.” She recollects how it was clear that all the teachers and parents were thinking about the morning’s events, but no one wanted to talk about it in front of the children.

That day was the first time Cindy “really felt scared. Scared about security.” She stresses the word “ever” when telling me emphatically that “having been born here and grew up here, I never ever thought about there being war here or there being something bad that could happen.”

September 12, for many New Yorkers, was the uneasy first day of the resumption of their lives. Cindy and Ben stayed at home and accepted an invitation from other parents at the daycare to go to Central Park for a play date. While the parents exchanged their stories, in the background to the south were distinguishable plumes of smoke. Cindy recollects how one dad cried when remembering his clear view of the World Trade Center from his office in the Metlife building.

This past Thursday, September 8, 2011, while watching “Big Brother” with her husband and now eleven-year-old son Evan she felt a flash of her fear from ten years ago when the words “Breaking News” interrupted the program. After watching Mayor Bloomberg speak about the upcoming weekend and the heightened security alert, Evan began to feel nervous. Cindy tried to answer his questions and reassure him. “I was trying to explain to him, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll protect you no matter what and God will protect you no matter what.’” She admits to me that, “I think when it’s this real, sometimes that’s not good enough.”

She continues to hold on to two things she discovered as a result of 9/11. One, that the law enforcement and fire department has a “core good that you hope these professionals go into” these situations with. Two, that “when bad things happen [New York] can really pull together and that is something I think is remarkable.”