Thursday, July 31, 2008
Making fun of Presidential candidates
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Now that the furor over The New Yorker’soutrageous Obama family cartoon has died down, let’s look at the issue of sarcasm in the media’s coverages of presidential candidates. All three major players carry the status of belonging to minorities – race, gender, age. In the case of Sen. Clinton, the press has had no hesitations of making fun or worse of her on the usual Billary topics – memories of renting out the Lincoln bedroom to commercially interested contributors, donations to the Presidential library, collecting large sums from major corporate interests, Whitewater and directed investments that gained hundredfold. Such liberal source as Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes has whacked her practically weekly, at will.
Sen. McCain has no dearth of sarcastic detractors either. His age, mistakes in speeches such as occasionally mixing up Shias and Sunnis, and allegations of adopting his natural child, pandering to the religious Right, and waffling , waffling on issues and war and taxes on a major scale, draw quips as well as direct attacks. But both Clinton and McCain have had no hesitations to appear on the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows as well as their counterparts on cable, taking digs and trading quips in good spirit, establishing their good sportsmanship and thus trying to take the edge of the accusations. This is in substantial contrast to the current occupant of the White House, whose skin must have acquired elephantine thickness over the years, and who ignores most attacks, occasionally fighting back with heavy salvos.
Sen. Obama has no history and therefore very little baggage to make fun of. The NYTimes made an effort to see whether and why the usual suspect in the media who use barbed humor in celebrity interviews shy away from making fun of and with Barak Hussein Obama, whose very name has startled opponents, mostly of the Right, into camouflaged allegations of religious, terrorist and racist allegations. Letterman, Leno, Conan O’Brien and cable’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and other, lesser lights and their spokespeople claim inadequate funny material. Quite obviously, though behind all excuses is the fear of opening themselves to accusations of racism, if not by the candidate, who stands above all that (except when defending is wife), then from any number of surrogates.
In this atmosphere now steps the fearless New Yorker, a journal of established humor as well as well-researched political opinions. Their July 21 cover shows Barak in dashiki and Muslim gear and Michelle in a huge Afro, toting a machine gun, both slapping knuckles, every stereotype of the underground accusations. Newscasts and Drudge-type blogs had revealed the story, and every kind of racist accusations against the magazine started flying almost instantly. To us, the East Midtown admirers of the magazine, the revelation was that some 80-plus percent of Americans had no idea of wht the New Yorker is and does, a piece of information that no longer applies, after the brouhaha.. Even Ira Fusfeld, the sophisticated publisher of the nearby Kingston Freeman, admitted on the NPR Media Show that he took the story seriously. Both campaigns, Obama and McCain, found the cover tasteless and offensive.In response, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, attackedis detractors vigorously, proclaiming that the cover exposes to public light the distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas, claiming that the picture exaggerates and mocks, showing the absurdity of the images, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert.
This is not the first ime the magazine has shocked us with its cover. There was, a few years ago, the stark drawing of a Hassidic man passionately kissing a black woman, drawn by Art Spiegelman who also produced a cartoon history of the Holocaust. Founded in 1925, the New Yorker has always featured pointed social comment, e.g. Peter Arno’s socialites entering a cab : "We are going to the Sutton to jeer Roosevelt," and Saul Steinberg’s New Yyorker’s view of America, with skyscrapers, the Hudson, then deserted space and Hollywood on the horizon, The magazine’s humor has become a bit more arch and jaded, sometimes as hard to interpret as those seemingly senseless TV commercials understood only by hip people under 25, and not always.
Which puts the US in precarious position vis-à-vis printed humor. The precious weekly Onion presenrs spurious parody news articles in a mewspaper format, nowhere near the quality of Stephen Colbert, the established yardstick for with-it satire. The edge is hard to keep sharp, and consequently the Onion can soon become boring and tedious.
That leaves the ordinary household humor field to, would you believe, the Reader’s Digest, another 1920s creation that has lasted. Produced to give the reader reprints of the day’s best magazine and journal articles, it eventually shifted to pieces actually commissioned by the Digest, sometimes having them printed elsewhere first. Human interest stories of miraculous escaoes from nature’s disasters and human accidents became a feature, also health hints and revelations about food dangers, crooks in office and in everyday life. Four or five pages of jokes suitable for telling around the water cooler, alsoa vanished phenomenon, still carry the day, no Colbert there. One could almost believe that we are growing into a nation of 24/7 audiovisually fed dumbed-down sceptics and cynics.
Now that the furor over The New Yorker’soutrageous Obama family cartoon has died down, let’s look at the issue of sarcasm in the media’s coverages of presidential candidates. All three major players carry the status of belonging to minorities – race, gender, age. In the case of Sen. Clinton, the press has had no hesitations of making fun or worse of her on the usual Billary topics – memories of renting out the Lincoln bedroom to commercially interested contributors, donations to the Presidential library, collecting large sums from major corporate interests, Whitewater and directed investments that gained hundredfold. Such liberal source as Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes has whacked her practically weekly, at will.
Sen. McCain has no dearth of sarcastic detractors either. His age, mistakes in speeches such as occasionally mixing up Shias and Sunnis, and allegations of adopting his natural child, pandering to the religious Right, and waffling , waffling on issues and war and taxes on a major scale, draw quips as well as direct attacks. But both Clinton and McCain have had no hesitations to appear on the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows as well as their counterparts on cable, taking digs and trading quips in good spirit, establishing their good sportsmanship and thus trying to take the edge of the accusations. This is in substantial contrast to the current occupant of the White House, whose skin must have acquired elephantine thickness over the years, and who ignores most attacks, occasionally fighting back with heavy salvos.
Sen. Obama has no history and therefore very little baggage to make fun of. The NYTimes made an effort to see whether and why the usual suspect in the media who use barbed humor in celebrity interviews shy away from making fun of and with Barak Hussein Obama, whose very name has startled opponents, mostly of the Right, into camouflaged allegations of religious, terrorist and racist allegations. Letterman, Leno, Conan O’Brien and cable’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and other, lesser lights and their spokespeople claim inadequate funny material. Quite obviously, though behind all excuses is the fear of opening themselves to accusations of racism, if not by the candidate, who stands above all that (except when defending is wife), then from any number of surrogates.
In this atmosphere now steps the fearless New Yorker, a journal of established humor as well as well-researched political opinions. Their July 21 cover shows Barak in dashiki and Muslim gear and Michelle in a huge Afro, toting a machine gun, both slapping knuckles, every stereotype of the underground accusations. Newscasts and Drudge-type blogs had revealed the story, and every kind of racist accusations against the magazine started flying almost instantly. To us, the East Midtown admirers of the magazine, the revelation was that some 80-plus percent of Americans had no idea of wht the New Yorker is and does, a piece of information that no longer applies, after the brouhaha.. Even Ira Fusfeld, the sophisticated publisher of the nearby Kingston Freeman, admitted on the NPR Media Show that he took the story seriously. Both campaigns, Obama and McCain, found the cover tasteless and offensive.In response, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, attackedis detractors vigorously, proclaiming that the cover exposes to public light the distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas, claiming that the picture exaggerates and mocks, showing the absurdity of the images, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert.
This is not the first ime the magazine has shocked us with its cover. There was, a few years ago, the stark drawing of a Hassidic man passionately kissing a black woman, drawn by Art Spiegelman who also produced a cartoon history of the Holocaust. Founded in 1925, the New Yorker has always featured pointed social comment, e.g. Peter Arno’s socialites entering a cab : "We are going to the Sutton to jeer Roosevelt," and Saul Steinberg’s New Yyorker’s view of America, with skyscrapers, the Hudson, then deserted space and Hollywood on the horizon, The magazine’s humor has become a bit more arch and jaded, sometimes as hard to interpret as those seemingly senseless TV commercials understood only by hip people under 25, and not always.
Which puts the US in precarious position vis-à-vis printed humor. The precious weekly Onion presenrs spurious parody news articles in a mewspaper format, nowhere near the quality of Stephen Colbert, the established yardstick for with-it satire. The edge is hard to keep sharp, and consequently the Onion can soon become boring and tedious.
That leaves the ordinary household humor field to, would you believe, the Reader’s Digest, another 1920s creation that has lasted. Produced to give the reader reprints of the day’s best magazine and journal articles, it eventually shifted to pieces actually commissioned by the Digest, sometimes having them printed elsewhere first. Human interest stories of miraculous escaoes from nature’s disasters and human accidents became a feature, also health hints and revelations about food dangers, crooks in office and in everyday life. Four or five pages of jokes suitable for telling around the water cooler, alsoa vanished phenomenon, still carry the day, no Colbert there. One could almost believe that we are growing into a nation of 24/7 audiovisually fed dumbed-down sceptics and cynics.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
World politics turning upside down, for the better
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
In the past few weeks politics have seen 180 degree turns, nationally and internationally. To begin at Topic A, Sen. Barak Obama has surprised if not angered his left-wing supporters with his stand for death penalty for child abusers, expressing objection against a Supreme Court decision. Further, he has voted to protect the telephone companies against potential major fines for letting the government use their files in monitoring the phone traffic of probable terrorists and their supporters,, another civil liberties heavy-duty cause. Also, he is not a gun control standard bearer. It is therefore understandable that some conservatives might find him to their liking, and some National Review editors have formed an Obama support organization.
t
On the telecom company issue, talking to people I find that even ACLU supporters, well aware of the terrorist threat, do not want to overly burden the government’s capacity to track terrorists and their money by blocking the capacity of monitoring their phone call history. As a compromise,for the future, a 24/7 system of judges to produce instant authorizations is the answer. The thinking here takes us back to quoting Justice Jackson to the effect that we must not let the enforcement of the Bill of Rights become a tool for destroying our nation. This also goes to the question of protecting the due process rights of purported terrorist detainees. Bad governmnt decisions regarding military rules of conduct, including those from the Department of Justice and the President’s and Vice President’s legal advisors have been used to justify torture. On the other hand, there isthe question whether the Geneva Convention that rules the treatment of prisoners of war should explicitly be the book of rules considered in determining our treatment od detained terrorists and suspects. The Convention is applicable against illegal acts of governments that live by law, and it protects legitimate prisoners of war, but the terrorist organizations live outside of law and blow up civilians, use human bombs against innocent targets and murder their prisoners and political opponents. The legal systems, which exist to protect our rights against tyrannical government and other criminals, are not yet ready for the terrorist subcultures, which are using the hallmark institutions of democratic governance and the same laws which they are determined to destroy, to claim illegal detention. Lawyers for terrorists warn us of transgressing international law and endangering our hallowed civil rights, and the Supremes are wavering this way and that way in their decisions. We need to find clearer paths, sometime soon.
That brings out the twists of conduct of official Washington. Apparently following the concern of Iran’s Shia government about American withdrawal in 16 months after the January 2009 US government change, premier al-Maliki has demanded a withdrawal schedule, as of now. The Bush people are paying attention to the request, and there is a distinct indication that they will change their Iran strategy in the next six months, and use troop withdrawals from Bagdad to reinforce our presence in Kabul. The re-emergence of the Taliban as a coherent power in Afghanistan is daunting. First of all, they have occupied regions and specific villages in Northeast Pakistan that were never governed, neither by the British in the 19th and 20th cnnturies, nor by their successors, the independent Pakistani governments in power since 1947. The Taliban/alQuaida leaders have used the areas as training camps, too independent for the Pakistani army to reach and not accessible to the US air and ground forces for national souvereignity reasons. Pakistan has been our ally since 9/11/2001, its friendship paid for by billions of dollars to President Pervez Musharraf, who used us to stay in power and deter the radicals from taking over a country that has nuclear power. Despite the turnaround in government and his fall, we are still holding, but so are the Talibans, occupying more villages, and organizing the local economies by managing the neglected marble quarries.
Another turnaround was prompted by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, organizing the Mediterranean countries and inviting the Syrian President Bashir Assad, despite the fact that Syriasn terrorists have killed French troops in its pawn country, Lebanon, since the 1980s. Both the Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas were photographed together, reminiscent of President Clinton’s efforts at Camp David in 1999. Opening talks with Syria was a main thrust of Secretary Powell’s Undersecretary Richard Armitage in the mid 2000s, not accepted by the Bushites.
Finally, the administration has found that talking to Iran should start and Secretary Rice has sent an undersecretary to work towards strenthening an American interests office in Teheran. This shoud quieten our nerves vis-à-vis the potential that US air power might be used to destroy the recalcitrant Iranians’ nuclear power development facilities, which the Revolutionary Guard has countered by flexing its muscles and exhibiting some rockets, capable of reaching Tel Aviv. The Israeli radicals in the government coalition, who ostensibly threatened the US that they will do their own bombing unless the Americans did something, may also have relented, as exhibited in the exchange of Hezbollah prisoners for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, whose capture prompted the 2006 Lebanon war.
Things look better in politics. Now we have to worry about the economy, here and abroad.
In the past few weeks politics have seen 180 degree turns, nationally and internationally. To begin at Topic A, Sen. Barak Obama has surprised if not angered his left-wing supporters with his stand for death penalty for child abusers, expressing objection against a Supreme Court decision. Further, he has voted to protect the telephone companies against potential major fines for letting the government use their files in monitoring the phone traffic of probable terrorists and their supporters,, another civil liberties heavy-duty cause. Also, he is not a gun control standard bearer. It is therefore understandable that some conservatives might find him to their liking, and some National Review editors have formed an Obama support organization.
t
On the telecom company issue, talking to people I find that even ACLU supporters, well aware of the terrorist threat, do not want to overly burden the government’s capacity to track terrorists and their money by blocking the capacity of monitoring their phone call history. As a compromise,for the future, a 24/7 system of judges to produce instant authorizations is the answer. The thinking here takes us back to quoting Justice Jackson to the effect that we must not let the enforcement of the Bill of Rights become a tool for destroying our nation. This also goes to the question of protecting the due process rights of purported terrorist detainees. Bad governmnt decisions regarding military rules of conduct, including those from the Department of Justice and the President’s and Vice President’s legal advisors have been used to justify torture. On the other hand, there isthe question whether the Geneva Convention that rules the treatment of prisoners of war should explicitly be the book of rules considered in determining our treatment od detained terrorists and suspects. The Convention is applicable against illegal acts of governments that live by law, and it protects legitimate prisoners of war, but the terrorist organizations live outside of law and blow up civilians, use human bombs against innocent targets and murder their prisoners and political opponents. The legal systems, which exist to protect our rights against tyrannical government and other criminals, are not yet ready for the terrorist subcultures, which are using the hallmark institutions of democratic governance and the same laws which they are determined to destroy, to claim illegal detention. Lawyers for terrorists warn us of transgressing international law and endangering our hallowed civil rights, and the Supremes are wavering this way and that way in their decisions. We need to find clearer paths, sometime soon.
That brings out the twists of conduct of official Washington. Apparently following the concern of Iran’s Shia government about American withdrawal in 16 months after the January 2009 US government change, premier al-Maliki has demanded a withdrawal schedule, as of now. The Bush people are paying attention to the request, and there is a distinct indication that they will change their Iran strategy in the next six months, and use troop withdrawals from Bagdad to reinforce our presence in Kabul. The re-emergence of the Taliban as a coherent power in Afghanistan is daunting. First of all, they have occupied regions and specific villages in Northeast Pakistan that were never governed, neither by the British in the 19th and 20th cnnturies, nor by their successors, the independent Pakistani governments in power since 1947. The Taliban/alQuaida leaders have used the areas as training camps, too independent for the Pakistani army to reach and not accessible to the US air and ground forces for national souvereignity reasons. Pakistan has been our ally since 9/11/2001, its friendship paid for by billions of dollars to President Pervez Musharraf, who used us to stay in power and deter the radicals from taking over a country that has nuclear power. Despite the turnaround in government and his fall, we are still holding, but so are the Talibans, occupying more villages, and organizing the local economies by managing the neglected marble quarries.
Another turnaround was prompted by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, organizing the Mediterranean countries and inviting the Syrian President Bashir Assad, despite the fact that Syriasn terrorists have killed French troops in its pawn country, Lebanon, since the 1980s. Both the Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas were photographed together, reminiscent of President Clinton’s efforts at Camp David in 1999. Opening talks with Syria was a main thrust of Secretary Powell’s Undersecretary Richard Armitage in the mid 2000s, not accepted by the Bushites.
Finally, the administration has found that talking to Iran should start and Secretary Rice has sent an undersecretary to work towards strenthening an American interests office in Teheran. This shoud quieten our nerves vis-à-vis the potential that US air power might be used to destroy the recalcitrant Iranians’ nuclear power development facilities, which the Revolutionary Guard has countered by flexing its muscles and exhibiting some rockets, capable of reaching Tel Aviv. The Israeli radicals in the government coalition, who ostensibly threatened the US that they will do their own bombing unless the Americans did something, may also have relented, as exhibited in the exchange of Hezbollah prisoners for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, whose capture prompted the 2006 Lebanon war.
Things look better in politics. Now we have to worry about the economy, here and abroad.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Touring the Bedpan Alley North - by bus
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
XWe are all involved in healthcare, personally and politically. Locally, it involves thinking about local hospitals: the loss of Cabrini Health Center and Bet Israel’s becoming part of the Continuum Health Partners conglomerate, along with Roosevelt and St. Luke’s... We do live in a bedpan alley, and to see how far it extends further north, one just has to take the M15 express buss and watch the passing scenery. It is a good excursion, even for those of us who take it for health reasons, such as traveling to the East River Medical Imaging Center on 72nd Street, for MRIs, X-rays, sonograms and such.
At 14th Street, where I board the Express or Limited M15, we are in the Beth Israel territory. Starting in 1889 as a dispensary on Henry Street, it gradually moved to Stuyvesant Square. There are some key BI construction dates, in 1929 and the 1940s. . NYU’s Hospital for Joint Diseases and New York Eye and Ear (another Continuum entity, 150 years in this location, old buildings redesigned by Stanford White in 1890s) are BI's neighbors.
Moving along, we reach 23rd Street, home of the VA Hospital, frequently under threat of closing. A transfer to M23 will take you to Chelsea Peers, for fresh air, sports and river watching.
At 27th Street we have the Bellevue/NYU Medical Centers, stretching for several blocks. At 30th , visit the gallery of murals painted by Russian-American artist David Margolis in 1937-41, depicting agriculture, industry and family life. They were covered up during the war years, various attributed to using the hall for storage, but also probably because of a reaction to Diego Rivera’s frescos in Rockefeller Center, destroyed when discovered that they prominently depicted Lenin and Trotsky. Margolis (1911-2005), in the mid-1990s was able to uncover and refresh the paint on his allegoric and politically non-aggressive murals.
The 34th Street stop is good for transfers to M16 for Port Authority Bus Terminal and M34 for Javits Center. At 42nd Street stop exit to visit the United Nations, and transfer to M104 for the West Side. At 50th Street you can transfer to M27 for Port Authority, and M50 for 42nd Street Pier, and at 57th Street to M31 for Hell’s Kitchen and M57 for West End Avenue.
Our hospital tour resumes at 67/68 Streets, Memorial-Sloan Kettering, Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on York Avenue, and Rockefeller University nearby. Sloan-Kettering started 1880s as NY Cancer Hospital by a group led by John Jacob Astor. Its present site was donated by John J. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1939. In the 1940s two General Motors executives, Alfred J. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, funded the present institution, and in 1960 it merged with the next-door Memorial Hospital. It is the world’s oldest and largest private cancer research and treatment institution.
Next stop on the Limited brought me to 72nd Street and the East River MRI center. Magnetic Resonance Imaging first involves signing off that you do not have a pacemaker, defibrillator, brain or aneurysm metal clips, implanted coils, catheters, prostheses, joint replacements, limbs, magnetic dental implants and similar metal gadgets in your innards. Reading this, one almost begins to see bionic people as a reality. Then, dressed in a hospital gown, one slips into a shallow tray, ear plugs in place, knees raised and head secured against injuries, and glides into the big white sound barrel for 25 minutes, in my case. The resonance test, involving banging the barrel, is initially mild, like a hast heartbeat, soon overlaid by high-speed electric drill noise, with further additions that feel like the Doppler effect of a train rushing towards you. After this first series , a more regular long hammering sequence begins, finally followed by a set that feels like getting a strong shower while lying in a tin washtub, with someone drumming against the tub’s sides. These sequences were repeated several times, each after my body had been moved an inch or two forward.
There are rewards for going through the MRI torture, the main one hor me being a chance to visit Sotheby’s auction galleries’ building on 72nd and York. There is always an exhibition – currently a show of early folding maps of this continent, assembled by Charles J. Tannenbaum, a major collector. Maps are frustrating to collect, every time you show your treasures to a friend, you have to unfold and fold, which eats at their hinges. But even when Sotheby’s has no rewarding exhibition, there is their 10th Floor rooftop cafeteria, closed or open air. Get a cup of coffee, a salad or sandwich ($7) and admire the rooflines of downtown condos and a nearby impressive environmentally sound three-stage rectangular smokestack, like a modern sculpture, rising high above the city.
About the rest of the trip on the M15 Express. The remaining stops, on 79th, 86th, 96th, 105th , 116th and 120th have no direct medical sites to offer (except maybe a walk west, over to Lenox Hill at 77th Street and Mt. Sinai around 100th Street), although the end stop, 125th Street, offers an intriguing transfer to Bx15, to visit Fordham Plaza and check the exotic shopping and medical opportunities of the Bronx.
XWe are all involved in healthcare, personally and politically. Locally, it involves thinking about local hospitals: the loss of Cabrini Health Center and Bet Israel’s becoming part of the Continuum Health Partners conglomerate, along with Roosevelt and St. Luke’s... We do live in a bedpan alley, and to see how far it extends further north, one just has to take the M15 express buss and watch the passing scenery. It is a good excursion, even for those of us who take it for health reasons, such as traveling to the East River Medical Imaging Center on 72nd Street, for MRIs, X-rays, sonograms and such.
At 14th Street, where I board the Express or Limited M15, we are in the Beth Israel territory. Starting in 1889 as a dispensary on Henry Street, it gradually moved to Stuyvesant Square. There are some key BI construction dates, in 1929 and the 1940s. . NYU’s Hospital for Joint Diseases and New York Eye and Ear (another Continuum entity, 150 years in this location, old buildings redesigned by Stanford White in 1890s) are BI's neighbors.
Moving along, we reach 23rd Street, home of the VA Hospital, frequently under threat of closing. A transfer to M23 will take you to Chelsea Peers, for fresh air, sports and river watching.
At 27th Street we have the Bellevue/NYU Medical Centers, stretching for several blocks. At 30th , visit the gallery of murals painted by Russian-American artist David Margolis in 1937-41, depicting agriculture, industry and family life. They were covered up during the war years, various attributed to using the hall for storage, but also probably because of a reaction to Diego Rivera’s frescos in Rockefeller Center, destroyed when discovered that they prominently depicted Lenin and Trotsky. Margolis (1911-2005), in the mid-1990s was able to uncover and refresh the paint on his allegoric and politically non-aggressive murals.
The 34th Street stop is good for transfers to M16 for Port Authority Bus Terminal and M34 for Javits Center. At 42nd Street stop exit to visit the United Nations, and transfer to M104 for the West Side. At 50th Street you can transfer to M27 for Port Authority, and M50 for 42nd Street Pier, and at 57th Street to M31 for Hell’s Kitchen and M57 for West End Avenue.
Our hospital tour resumes at 67/68 Streets, Memorial-Sloan Kettering, Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on York Avenue, and Rockefeller University nearby. Sloan-Kettering started 1880s as NY Cancer Hospital by a group led by John Jacob Astor. Its present site was donated by John J. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1939. In the 1940s two General Motors executives, Alfred J. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, funded the present institution, and in 1960 it merged with the next-door Memorial Hospital. It is the world’s oldest and largest private cancer research and treatment institution.
Next stop on the Limited brought me to 72nd Street and the East River MRI center. Magnetic Resonance Imaging first involves signing off that you do not have a pacemaker, defibrillator, brain or aneurysm metal clips, implanted coils, catheters, prostheses, joint replacements, limbs, magnetic dental implants and similar metal gadgets in your innards. Reading this, one almost begins to see bionic people as a reality. Then, dressed in a hospital gown, one slips into a shallow tray, ear plugs in place, knees raised and head secured against injuries, and glides into the big white sound barrel for 25 minutes, in my case. The resonance test, involving banging the barrel, is initially mild, like a hast heartbeat, soon overlaid by high-speed electric drill noise, with further additions that feel like the Doppler effect of a train rushing towards you. After this first series , a more regular long hammering sequence begins, finally followed by a set that feels like getting a strong shower while lying in a tin washtub, with someone drumming against the tub’s sides. These sequences were repeated several times, each after my body had been moved an inch or two forward.
There are rewards for going through the MRI torture, the main one hor me being a chance to visit Sotheby’s auction galleries’ building on 72nd and York. There is always an exhibition – currently a show of early folding maps of this continent, assembled by Charles J. Tannenbaum, a major collector. Maps are frustrating to collect, every time you show your treasures to a friend, you have to unfold and fold, which eats at their hinges. But even when Sotheby’s has no rewarding exhibition, there is their 10th Floor rooftop cafeteria, closed or open air. Get a cup of coffee, a salad or sandwich ($7) and admire the rooflines of downtown condos and a nearby impressive environmentally sound three-stage rectangular smokestack, like a modern sculpture, rising high above the city.
About the rest of the trip on the M15 Express. The remaining stops, on 79th, 86th, 96th, 105th , 116th and 120th have no direct medical sites to offer (except maybe a walk west, over to Lenox Hill at 77th Street and Mt. Sinai around 100th Street), although the end stop, 125th Street, offers an intriguing transfer to Bx15, to visit Fordham Plaza and check the exotic shopping and medical opportunities of the Bronx.
