Island
Living 74: Fall Back
by A. D. Coleman |
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So much for the electorate looking to the economy
as a measure of the ruling party, and so much for
the Dems finding their spines. That party lost its
best and brightest when Paul Wellstones plane
went down. Wellstone held some positions with which
I disagreed (on abortion, for one), but he had the
distinction of never having become a made man in the
political arena. What a loss.
So the voters
here in New York and nationwide shuffled their feet,
moving a little bit this way and little bit that way;
the Dems, mostly concerned with spin control, spun
their wheels; and the Republicans spent enough money
to buy themselves a slim majority in the Senate, the
House, and Congress. My prediction: Watch Dubya and
Co. try to use this unexpected advantage to pack every
court, from the Supreme Court on down, with arch-conservatives
whose benighted rulings will haunt this country for
a century and more. Dont say I didnt warn
you when your train gets lost.
Speaking of lost:
It was a dark and stormy night. Purely by accident,
and mostly to stay out of the wet, on the evening
of October 16 I wandered into a special City Council
hearing at 126 Stuyvesant Place in St. George, called
by Council Michael McMahon, sponsored by the Councils
Transportation Committee, and devoted to the question
of increasing ferry service to and from the island.
McMahon and two other Council members have introduced
legislation that would require the NYC Department
of Transportation to provide free ferry service every
30 minutes on a 24/7, 365-days-a-year basis.
Definitely an
idea whose time has come, given the fact that the
island has become (in terms of population) the fastest-growing
borough in the city -- and an especially important
proposal at a moment when Mayor Bloomberg (who, trust
me, has never had to run for a ferry in his life,
nor to wait 59 minutes among the homeless of South
Ferry after missing a boat at 12:30 at night) has
begun to float the deeply dumb ideas of reinstituting
the ferry fare and privatizing late-night ferry service.
An organization
called The Ferry Riders Committee had staged a demonstration
in support of the 24/7 legislation on the steps of
Borough Hall during rush hour earlier that evening,
of which I was entirely unaware when I happened to
glance into the hearing room as they began to set
up. And, though a chilling rain had reduced the number
of participants in that event, the hearing room filled
almost to capacity by 6:30, when McMahon called the
meeting to order.
By then, on an
impromptu basis, Id signed up as one of several
dozen people willing to testify on behalf of the 24/7
proposal. While a Department of Transportation representative
read a prepared statement rejecting the proposal and
refused to answer any questions about the D.O.T.s
facts, figures, and position on this, I quickly scribbled
a draft of my thoughts, which, delivered before the
Transportation Committee an hour later and placed
on the public record, went something like this:
My name
is Allan Coleman. Im a freelance writer, teacher,
and lecturer. Under the pen name A. D. Coleman,
I write the Island Living column for
the Star Reporter newspaper chain. Im here
tonight as a private citizen and a long-time Island
resident.
Over the
past 35 years of my residency on Staten Island,
the Department of Transportation has proven itself
clearly and consistently incompetent to coordinate
the dependable schedule of the Staten Island Ferry
with the wildly erratic departure and arrival times
of buses and trains at the ferry terminals on both
the Manhattan and Staten Island sides of this crucial
transportation link. Notably, the D.O.T. refuses
to take any responsibility for this.
During
those three and a half decades, this failure of
the D.O.T. has proved itself the single greatest
problem that choosing to live on Staten Island presents
in both my professional and personal spheres. It
also represents the factor hardest to overcome in
persuading people I know to visit Staten Island
for socializing and cultural events, and of course
in convincing them to consider living here.
Since
I moved to Staten Island in 1967, I have cumulatively
spent literally months of my life sitting and waiting
-- late at night, early in the mornings, and on
weekends -- in the unspeakably ugly and badly managed
terminals of the Staten Island Ferry. This represents
an incalculable loss of both personal and professional
time.
One obvious
solution to a number of the concerns raised by the
D.O.T. spokesperson earlier would be to commission
and purchase two ferries one class smaller than
the current smallest ones, to make the night runs
as economical as possible.
For more information
on this proposal and the Ferry Riders Committee, contact
its chairperson, Theo Dorian, via email at tdorian@si.rr.com;
by phone at 917-903-9576; or c/o the St. George Civic
Association, POB 987, Staten Island, NY 10301. You
can reach Councilman McMahons office at 718-556-3730
to weigh in on this issue.
To my astonishment, at the beginning of the second week of November I still have raspberries ripening and tomatoes on the vine. The tomatoes surprise me in another way as well. This summer, I reconfigured my garden with new plantings and begun to harvest a bumper crop of basil and tomatoes.The latter have turned out to be cherry tomatoes, which isn't what I planted; I put in beefsteaks, or so I thought. As it became patently clear that these little globes would not get much larger than gumballs, I assumed I'd misread the label on the seedlings I'd bought -- until I read an account in the New York Times "Lifestyles" section by a woman who'd had exactly the same experience.
Somebody at the
seedling hothouse obviously messed up, though on what
scale I cant say. Do we have disappointed beefsteak-tomato
lovers contemplating admittedly pretty but vastly
smaller versions of this fruit all across the tri-state
area? And did this error involve merely the mislabelling
of these cherry tomatoes, or were batches actually
switched -- so that we also have an equal number of
gardeners staring in awe at bumper crops of the biggest
damn cherry tomatoes they ever saw?
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©
Copyright 2002 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
By permission of the author and Image/World
Syndication Services,
P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002
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