Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Visiting World Trade Center, ten years after 9/11 On the first relatively cool day after the July heat wave this family visited the 9/11 Memorial site, in homage to the 3,000 men women and children who perished in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. It was a sobering experience, coming as it did, only two days after another psychopathic terrorist's attack on the men, women and children of Aurora, CO, with a booby-trapped sequel, promising to extend the attack to many more. One begins to lose one’s civilized perspective, wishing a painful death to the perpetrators, to partially balance the suffering they handed out to their innocent victims. The WTC is a complex place to visit, and I am providing a step-by-step description to ease your trip, should you choose to make one.We took the #4 Lexington Ave express to Fulton Street, exiting on Broadway, filled with visitors and tourists, many too young and from too far away to have had an actual mind-crushing experience, as felt by us the locals. In our case it was personal; the lights from 2 World Trade Building were the comfortable night light shining in our bedroom window, and its top floor restaurant, Widows on the World, was the place to take visitors for dinner. Walking downhill, west on Fulton, we came to Church Street, with St. Paul's churchyard on the side, the junction offering a full view of the high fenced site, several blocks long. The majestic tapering 1 World Trade Center building was in front, 1776 feet tall, with the #7, remembered as the government site, on its right, and a row of other new structures, # 2, 3 and 4 to the left. So it was explained by one of the wandering sellers of memorial booklets ($19, marked down to $5). There was a big sign on Church Street, marked Path, with an arrow to the right, and we followed the crowd, to the next corner, Vesey Street, turning left. Vesey led us further downhill, along the fence to the PATH entrance and an information booth, with a helpful attendant explaining that we should walk back to Church Street, cross, walk a building or two east, obtain free passes to view the WTC site from another information desk, and proceed on Church Street/Trinity Place, going a few blocks south, to Liberty Street, and the entrance of the locale for the free WTC viewing (there is another, the Tribute WTC Visitor Center indoors on Liberty, with a $10 admission charge.) We did as ordered, and were booked for a free visit to the WTC site, time stamped in 90 minutes. That gave us time for lunch. With no restaurants available, we clambered upstairs, to a pizza parlor (nice room, food and service) and had a leisurely review of events to date. The walkway to Liberty Street was chockful with people and baby strollers, and a control person checked our passes and opened the way for us through several turns on local streets, with several fast food parlors and souvenir stores, to the south side of the re-cast World Trade Center site, leading to the Memorial museum, still under construction. Hundreds of us scheduled free visitors, passes in hand (a security requirement) were fed through a zigzagging access path, which, through the net of the ever-present wire fence, provided a majestic view of the site. The fence was covered with information placards, giving some history and a list of the dignitaries, from Mayor Bloomberg down to local contributors, followed by the honorary leaders in the Memorial fulfillment, several past Presidents, Mayors and Governors. Again, security prevailed, not quite of an airport intensity, and visitors had to shed their coats and backpacks for a quick peek. This long passage led to a brief viewing of an open free Visitors Center, with pictures and posters. Then, through another long pass, we ealked to the open-air World Trade Center plaza, with two huge rectangular pools, quite deep, set in the footprints (basements) of the original twin towers. They are bordered by high waterfalls, the water descending into the pool, then flowing into large square drains. A guard explained that the falls symbolized continued existence, and the drains stood for the loss of life. The permanent stone railings around the pools carried engraved names of the victims of the 9/11 attack (electronic directories help find the names you might be looking for). The half-finished glass Memorial building stands between the pools, with a Survivor Tree nearby, a leafy tree that survived from the original destruction of the Plaza, and was brought back to bloom in a Botanical Garden nursery. The green Plaza, crisscrossed with marble tiled paths and punctuated with stone benches, is a pleasant experience in the somber world of the Memorial. One is reminded at every step of the original horror. The Memorial will most likely be filled with the notes, photographs of missing people posted by relatives and personal items found in the ruins, that one remembers helping collect in Union Square Park, a month after the 9/11 2001 attack, for posting in a then envisioned central site. Our Union Square was the central point for information in that month, and pilgrimages from all over the US brought visitors, who brought memorabilia of the victims, and messages, with Never Again the theme. Traveling back to 14th Street from the Wall Street station on Broadway - the site nearly spans two subway stops - one found the hustle and bustle that helped overcome the somber cast of the day. There were the shoppers with bags from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and on 17th Street and 3rd Avenue a Con Ed truck manned by dignified men d in brand new blue overalls struggling with street parking reminded one of the utility's strike /lockout. A discreet inquiry brought a reply that they were really the supervisors we read about in the papers, and that the three weeks of street work in the abnormal heat were getting to be too much. But that is another story. I also have an inquiry for fracking proponents and opponents. What is known about using guar, a bean grown in India, as the only water thickener in hydraulic fracturing done by gas drillers? Would that stop the poisoning of the world’s water supply?

PolLOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Global warming revisited; also, an election of national and personal significance This article was written upstate, in picturesque Hudson Valley, hiding from the powerful sunshine, and completed during a brief heavy-duty downpour, little late to help my plants. So be it. Anyway, this summer has been disastrous, climate-wise. We East Midtown cityites were minimally bothered by the heat, being able to escape it behind air-conditioned walls, but up here in the North Hudson Valley the country garden produce, local and commercial, ripened early and badly, and ran out fast. Mowing lawns was easy if you did not mind brown foliage; the grass turned color and did not grow.. Agricultural America was in trouble, 27 mid-country states, the breadbasket, suffered the plagues of destroyed crops, cattle died for lack of fodder and water, and prices for food essentials grew alarmingly, Republicans could not blame it on President Obama, along the recession and 42 months of eight percent joblessness, since denial of climate changes as human handiwork has been a basic element of the GOP and tea party philosophy. However, finally, an impotant reversal of scientific opinion, Professor of Physics at UCAL Berkeley, Richard A Muller, who discovered and made public three years ago some climate change findings misstated by overanxious savants in Britain that threw doubt on climate change and gave impetus to the deniers' outbursts, reverted a year ago.. Growing doubtful of the magnitude of the errors, he and a dozen other scientists in 2011 reviewed the data and found that the conclusions if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN project, were correct. This project in 2007 reported that much of the warming in the past 50 years was attributable to human activities, with earlier years' damage shared by humans and nature. Prof Muller now founded a Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, and thoroughly reviewed all prior research and more , and found that facts substantially fault human activity The Muller group finds that the 3 1/2 degree F temperature increase in past 250 years is due to human emission of greenhouse gases, with2 ½ degrees due in the next fifty years. There is a July 30 summary on the op-ed page of the NYTimes, that you should read for details, if you are still doubtful. Apart from the horrible impact on this year's agriculture product growth throughout the world, the political ethicists must re-address global warming as the long term impact on mankind, China's 10 percent annual economic growth , which may accelerate the expected global heating from a 50 year slot to 20 years. Also, also the question of how the people of the Appalachia’s four key states will earn a livelihood without coal. , listen up. This said for climate change and morality, we want to turn to a really significant upstate political campaign, that of Democrat Julian Schreibman for Congress, in the much re-divided 20th CD, which from 1913 to 1983 cove red part of Manhattan and Bronx., actually some of T&V territory. In the 1970s this family actually campaigned, as Charles Kinsolving's Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club (now defunct) members, for William Fitts Ryan (D, 1961-72), who died in office , a young man. He was followed by Bella Apzug(D, 1973-77), and Theodore Weiss (D,1977-83), after that Manhattan split away into the 17th CD, and the 20th CD's southern border moved north to Duchess County. It is now a skinny strip north of Putnam County, stretching to Canada, encompassing hunks of 10 counties, touching four states. It was, at times, part of the 17th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, or 19th CDs , once represented by Fusion’s Fiorello LaGuardia 1923-33) , intermittently ALP’s (near-Communist) Vitoand Marcantonio 1935-45), liberal Bella Abzug; and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (D,1949-55). After the spliting away of Manhattan, notable congresspeople were Nita Lowey (D, 1983-93) and Ben Gillman (1993-2003), more recently current Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.. Since 2010 it has been held by a Tea Party representative, Col. Chris Gibson (R, 20 year military vet and West Poin’s Professor of American Politics) supporter of the Paul Ryan budget (now he’s recanted, sees the military chunk too high), also supporting the turning of Medicare into a coupon program and for reducing Social Security, for weakening Fresh Air Act, for defunding Planned Parenthood, for cutting Broadband budget for rural areas by $21M and for providing $2B tax break for big oil companies. Julian Schreibman, Yale grad (two degrees, paid from scholarships and summer jobs, son of a small businessman and an immigrant mother who at 75 still teaches ballet for a living) protects Med and SS coverages, defends environmental legislation (is anti oil fracking), is for job creation ( broadband is a necessity), and for women’s health . He was an Assistant General Counsel at the CIA, (prosecuted terrorists who in 1998 bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam), then fought crime as an ADA for Ulster County, and a federal prosecutor, Schreibman, from conversations, shows a deep fund of cross discipline knowledge and understanding of the economic prblems, here and abroad. What makes this 20th ED election special is the fact that it is one of eight, that Dems Central expect to win it back. What can New York cityites do? Well, my intuition based research says our splendid rainbow of East Midtown citizens points to many apple knocker transplants who have upstate roots and interests. . One comment re good jobs from broadband access.. I have heard of a developer who refused fed funds, because that carried with them union rates, and he would have to raise his current employees, well compensated by local standards. It is ugly but here it is. GM unions had to accept rate differentials. Should Obama compromise for this ugliness, in the interest of jobs? Look, the golden age of US supremacy of everything is over, we have to live on less to compete in the world. Europe is getting a beating, and we are close behind. More anon from upstate, about how politics undermine basic principles of behavior we learned in kindergarten. itical dogs & catsPolitical dogs & cats