My last day at work

today is!

Yay!

Strike!Strike!Strike!

The New York mass Transit Authority (MTA) is on strike.

No busses or trains are running in the city. Lines that run from Long Island, NJ, and Westchester County (north) are going on weekend schedules in solidarity.
New York has this awful law -- the Taylor Law -- that states that mass transit workers (along with cops, fire fighters, and a few other positions) can not strike. It makes striking against the law, and severely punished. Mayor Bloomburg has been heard frequenly over the last week of negotiations referring to the "illegal strike" a-brewing, and now underway.

"The mayor was referring to the state’s Taylor Law, passed after the 1966 transit strike, under which workers lose two days’ pay for every day on the picket line. This penalty was imposed after the 1980 strike that shut down the subway system for 11 days. In 2002, Bloomberg was seeking the renewal of an even more draconian injunction obtained in 1999 by his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, that would have imposed individual fines of $25,000 a day on each worker, with the penalty doubling for every additional day on strike."

Here's what the mayor's office says about the Taylor Law.

Here's what a local teachers' union says about it. (yeah -- teachers can't strike in NY either!)

Here's what TWU local 100 pres Toussaint writes in calling the strike.

So, right now, him and the other TWU union leaders are being threatened with jail terms, and each worker is getting fined two days pay for every day off! All this while Bloomberg and stupid stupid Koch keep talking about the "illegal strike," and seek further penalties.

It's nuts. What an awful, awful law.

Good that they're striking.

The sidewalks this morning were filled with north-bound walkers. All quite aimeable. It was cold, but three layers of long underwear will do you good, i tell ya! And the streets were very friendly.

The word out is that most people are pissed about the strike. That has not at all been my experience. And im not even hanging with the radicals these days. These are midtown office cogs from NJ, The Bronx, Queens, Westchester Cty. People empathize with the worker very strongly and at a very human level in this city. It's great. And, though its strong within, it's not just the blue collar workers with the blue collar workers, white collar with white. Lots of very vocal solidarity. The media are on crack. Corporate flavored.

While im not gonna get a chance to zip about the city running errands and to-dos today (or for a little while, it seems), walking a bit more my last week seems like a pretty good plan. And, holy moley, if that's my part right now in supporting the effort for the people to have the power to negotiate with the big, faceless, bad-accountant-totin employers, im all about it.

Fuck the Taylor Law, the phasing out of pensions, and the ever-increasing blame of "letting down Americans/American soldiers" that big buisiness keeps putting on larger efforts for human rights. 8 percent increase in wages is hardly over the standard of living increase, dammit.

Cmon.



Here's the letter i wrote to the maya before walking home tonight:

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I am extremely disappointed by your office's inability to successfully negotiate the contract requests of TWU Local 100.

New York City relies on public transport. The city has let us down by failing to come to terms with transit workers, and forcing a transit strike.

The union's request of an eight percent wage increase over three years barely tops the cost of living increase. And city's willingness to cut their public servants' pension benefits hardly shows they are looking out for their best interests.

Also, I must note that it is reprehensible that the New York transit workers are being forced to pay monetary penalties for their strike.

Those deemed as "essential" city workers deserve the right to collectively bargain, and to exercize serious measures aimed at protecting their jobs. Fining them for a union strike responding to poor contract terms you offered them is rediculously unjust. New York workers deserve much better from you than adherance to the Taylor Laws, which are draconian and against the people of New York. I ask your office repeal them, and to show much better faith at the bargaining table in upcoming negotiations with the Transit Worker's Union.

As an East Villager who works in Midtown, I am preparing for the first of what might be many long, cold walks home after a long, cold walk north this morning. I hold the city directly responsible for this inconvenience.

Sadly, your office's hard-lining of very uncharitable contract terms to valuable employees caused this transit strike. I look forward to seeing you negotiate in better faith with the TWU in the hours and days to come, and returning the transit workers to their important positions quickly.

Once that is handled, I also eager await the repeal of the absurd Taylor Laws.

Thank you for your work.

Sincerely,


xxx E. x Street, #x
NY NY 100xx

December 7, and cold has come

"It's 27 degrees? No shit - my nipples are fucking hard." Someone was talking on the phone next to me outside of the Lotus tonight. I was evesdropping. In NY, it's hard not to.

It's really cold now. Finally, i guess, being December. Not as cold as in some places, from what i hear from Tornadia in Champaign with seven below last night, and midday temperatures of three (oh...). But it's still pretty fucking cold.

And, uh, to be honest, i'm not minding it too much yet.

Since getting back from PR with my nasty savage burn, pulling out all my long underwear and space-aged polymered winter-weather gear, along with my space heater Tornadia and S-A-Double Lizzy got for me last winter (best present EVER), i've been able to find the cold pretty darned -- get this -- refreshing. Never thought i'd say that. Especially in outdoors-all-the-time, carless, nowhere-to-hide NYC. But it's true.

With a whole layer of skin peeled off of my face, my cheeks feel kinda like an obstinant stream in some artic tundra refusing icy sprawl to, instead, bask in the sunshiney rippling of its surface by crisp winds, lusty salmon, and polar bears. It feels really primal. And really good.

Working in midtown, i get to walk by the red velvet-roped department store windows in transit. Decorations are part of my commute these days, as are crowds of familes walking in Red Roverish rows down the streets pushing urban baby strollers filled with tykes tightly zippered into over-downed, faux-fur-hooded, emmense jackets. When the kids are taken out of their carriages and put down on the sidewalks to walk on their own for a while, they are all jacket and hood and spindley legs. Little gravity defiers. Wrapped so snugly with snaps clasped to their pushed-up chin, all land with a flat-shoed sturdiness basing a wide sway, and each of them looks exactly the same to me this winter -- like disgruntled sumo wrestlers ready to hurl. And i find that really, really great.

Also, with my new non-travel schedule, i've been making myself jump on the subway at night with my ipod (that continues to kill my computer), and get off in random places to wander about and find my way eventually home. A couple nights ago, i was on a brooklyn-bound J, got off at Church St. (i think), and walked through a hallowed-out Wall Street. Passed a really amazing pair of electronic billboards with red neon street-crossing-like line drawn computer generated characters of a woman and a man on opposite sides of a museum's stairway just walking in place. Kinesthetically so phenomenal.

Just after passing this, a woman coming up the block paused to me to ask me something. She was older, bundled up in a big coat and a kinda jaunty warm-looking winter hat. She was a bit laden down with bags, but not too much, like everyone these days in NYC, i guess. i say this cause, on these empty streets, she really did look just straight-up normal.

Yeah, so she asked me a question, and i took my earphone (stupid stupid! my earphones are idiotic. i do NOT at all dig em) out, to listen. "Do you know where the McDonald's is?" she asked, kinda loudly. But it was freakin cold. And lips work poorly in cold weather. So loud talk didn't register much. i stopped next to her, "No, im sorry, i don't."

"I looked down that street" she pointed to that street "and that street" she pointed to another street, "and couldn't find it. i know there's supposed to be one here somewhere."

Now, i don't know if she first started walking past me, or if i first started walking past her, but, somehow, we were no longer face-to-face, but walking away from each other. i called to her, "Well, i came from that direction" i pointed past her in the direction she was walking "and didn't see one there. Hope you find it!" and i put my earphone back in as i turned around and walked on.

We were now about 20 feet apart, and, in hearing something, i turned back around to find that the noise was her. She had, at some point, stopped cold and was just going off crazy-person style yelling ferociously and waving her arms, eyes wide and head thrown back and shaking something fierce while still looking in my direction. Since i was the only one around on these dark streets, i do believe she was yelling at me. But she was also yelling past me, through me. i don't really know. Uh, yeah. So i kept walking. Didn't feel that stopping for clarification on the problem was the thing to do in this particular sitch. But i did think, "uh, hey lady, maybe taking the subway to closed down parts of New York City after midnight just to get a little winter tolerance and maybe make yerself start to wander again isn't the wisest of things to do." Then i kept wandering. Danced some in the streets as i approached a familiar Canal Street (random play on the ipod is brilliant), and had a really nice walk.

It did make me think some, though. Exploring new stuff's good. Especially potentially scary new stuff. It's really important, i think. But it's its own thing for its own purposes. Can't expect others to be helpful or even not-unhelpful along the way. And to get thrown by this easily threatens to ruin the whole thing. Crazy McDonald's woman as exibit A, maybe. Also, like, the station worker at the stop i got off lost and asking for general directions "north east" at was really surely. She just grimaced and just pointed up. Ok, then! It might be somewhere up either of the stairs! Down any of the sidewalks up there on street level. Well, alright then!

Um, like anything, luck does come in play too, it seems. And metaphors, schmetaphors. But the wander, she just makes life bigger. And if she's also assisting me in appreciating the cold weather, we're talking some really big stuff.

Yeah, so, wandering, she has been good. Lightened winter's narcissism some. Brought back some curiosity, lessened some aversions, had me meet some of the locals. Good stuff. And, can i just say geniuses, GENIUSES!, who invented Terramar long underwear and space heaters. Straight up saintly fucking geniuses. i owe someone big. BIG!

"You're walking? You're drinking beer while you're walking?"

i'm inside the bar now, but evesdropping still.

Happy winter from NYC, y'all.



p.s. - Admittedly a little trepedatious for the move ahead, but, like the wander, open to whatever the hell might be next. And pretty excited to see what that is. Or at least trying to be. Just get warmer, ok?

ok.

Puerto Rico Good Stuff

* Winter = 87 degree days, 71 degree nights.

* 82 degree water. Wow.

* Four pineapples cut up and bagged as roadside snacks on the highway from Rincon to San Juan

* Friendly, friendly non-pretensious people with crazy stories

* Rainforest and beach, causing daily sun storms, and daily rainbows over the water

* badass tostones and seafood. oh my

* undeveloped coast line

* Rincon Surf & Board, with warm and lovely pre-surf guest house group coffee and breakfasts outside in the open dining area off the open kitchen

* Medalla

*Coqui, the teeny frogs that sing at night. "Co-quiii! Co-qui!" It's really lovely.

* That little bar we drank thanksgiving dinner in in San Juan (what was that place called, Sand?)

* San Juan ceviche

* Guy beating the shit out of the truck at the end of the road we decided not to take home thanksgiving nite.

* Papaya