Now we move indoors for the Newpaperman's Bar picture, where faceless nightmares float between stools.
Busy day: two pieces due. One is a defense of the skyways, which I never thought I'd have to write. I am disappointed to see old allies in the Downtown Co-Prosperity Sphere come out for skyway moratoriums, and elimination of anything other than service retail from the second floor system. They want to put it all back on the ground floor. It is not going to happen, anymore than I-95 will be covered with a park, or the streetcars will return to tie the Metro together. It’s more likely that the skyway commercial ecosystem will just die, and this great urban marvel - once a source of local pride, once noted by urbanists who came here to study cold-weather cities - will devolve into miles of empty corridors, and all the New Urbanists who decry the lack of shopping downtown will rumpletstiltskin themselves over the continued existence of cars.
The other piece was about personal grooming substances that smell like Girl Scout Cookies. So I'm working both sides of the street here. Now on to the third piece, which concerns inexplicable corporate decisions to make their product unusable, as in the case of SiriusXM. Did I mention that I canceled? And how my life has been actually better for it? Later, perhaps.
Worked out, still feeling like I'm just doing rote things for no reason, but on we plod and grunt, hoping that Soloflex modeling contract comes through soon. Listened to the Song of the Day, which is part of the 2024 regimen - as noted before, I listen to something from a group I don't know, and listen all the way through. In this case it was some twee prog group from the early 70s, all fluttery flutes and wordy lyrics. The main songwriters eventually got a hit, sort of, when they regrouped as The Korgis, and wrote a perfect 80s song I loved at the time. And still do, I suppose.
Did a week of BTFs for 2025. Had a meeting. Left. Grocery shopping! Absolutely nothing to report about that, alas, except that I got a great deal on some chicken on the verge of expiration. One day left before it must be used or frozen? Four dollars off? Jump on that clucker, jake.
People who are in the United States without explicit permission, who arenon-citizens, have an extensive set of rights. The people who are paying for them have an extensive set of obligations.
This puts things rather clearly:
Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.
The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.
The school’s neighbors were not keen on the last-minute decision.
LOL, as they say, at that last one. As if that's going to make a difference. You could have a majority - say, 51% - of the locals disagree with this, but going along with their objections would be mob rule, not Our Democracy.
The students will now “attend” “class” “remotely,” which consists of completing an assignment given by the teacher. No actual lectures.
As a thought exercise, imagine another era where A) there wasn’t a constant stream of unvetted people entering the country and being distributed around and given benefits, because it was difficult to enter the country illegally, and those who did so were not facilitated in any way by the government, and B) the idea of suspending school because non-citizens need the building would be met with incomprehension by people of many political opinions. Not the Reds, who would regard any largess given to non-citizens as useful and just, but everyone else.
I’m trying to imagine Ed Koch reacting to the proposal.
The area's current Congressional Rep's website has a press-release section on immigration:
Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (NY-09) released the following statement after the Biden Administration announced it would end the Trump-era Title 42 policy.
“As the daughter of immigrants and a lifelong advocate for their fair chance and access to the American dream, the Biden Administration’s decision to lift the harmful, malicious, and discriminatory policy that is Title 42 is a welcome blessing and one that I have long awaited. While this policy endured, countless hopeful migrants suffered under its authority as we circumvented our obligations under international and domestic law.”
That’s the last thing she said about immigration, in 2022. (Title 42 was not ended. Long story not relevant here.)
Since Title 42 was intended, in part, to keep people out during a pandemic, does this mean she believes the United States was morally and legally obligated to admit an undetermined number of people with COVID in 2020, and let them go wherever, and have access to the US health system? I’m thinking, yes.
As for the people who were advocating denial of health care to the unvaccinated, would they also deny health care to immigrants who came into the country and got COVID? I don’t think so, because the former were villains with moral agency, and the latter are victims. It seems like a special moral status attends the “undocumented,” and hence it seems like their priority in the Marshall High School situation is a reflection of their particular set of right - which, being Universal and International, trump the archaic “citizen-based” rights of nation states. Or neighborhoods.
The stories don’t mention whether the Document-Deprived will be required to return to the tents when the storms pass. If that’s the case, you suspect the number who return will not equal the ones that went to the school.
Anyway.
It’s like a lot of things.
Not good.
But there’s just nothing that can be done, is there? I mean, where do you start? It's a big foggy mystery, all of it.
It's not like climate, where we know exactly what must be done, and how to do it, and how we need to start doing it yesterday.
It’s 1918.
“Published in the interests of Arcanum and Vicinity.” Wonder how the town of Vicinity is doing these days.
There’s a war on, you know.
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"Trouble in the office" is a mild way of putting it.
I do like that news in general was scarce is appended to the sequence of explosions and train cancellation. |
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Come shop in our storm-proof building!
Makes it sound as if shoppers are regularly sucked out of the doors and windows of other stores.
The building does not exist today, based on a Google Street View visit. Pity: that was a nice emporium, and perhaps the pride of the town.
I’m not entirely who’s speaking or who’s speaking to whom, but it’s interesting to note that there was, for a while, a debate about this.
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Selected slacker feigns rupture
People had a lot of ruptures in those days. You never hear of anyone having a rupture now.
Straight to boot camp for you, slacker. Wonder if Clem made it out alive. |
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Ha ha Strudel’s an idiot
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24 below! Better head to the storm-proof store.
I love the idea that a particular man was in charge of the thermometer, and that they gave his name. Credit where it’s due, I suppose. |
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Given the gas and storm situation, it’s likely he wasn’t alive by the time this found its way into subscribers’ hands.
Perhaps they could’ve waited. |
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That'll do! See you hither / yon.
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