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October 7, 2008

Island Living 79: The Return of Island Living
by A. D. Coleman

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I'm back. And so is this column.

I stopped writing and publishing it in June 2003, when the last "Island Living" column appeared in print in the North Shore Star Reporter, a local giveaway paper here on Staten Island that accepted some editorial content, my column included. In the paper's February 5, 2003 issue my next-to-last column (see "The Fire This Time") came out juxtaposed to a piece by Shavana Abruzzo headlined "America Can Do Without the Allegiance Of the 'Frogs' & the 'Krauts.'"

Until then, I'd found ways to rationalize my presence at the Star Reporter as the sole liberal-left voice amid a chorus of right-wing lamebrains. Terminally disheartened by the fundamental stupidity of whoever wrote that headline, and by Abruzzo's saber-rattling gung-ho militaristic nonsense, I just gave up. To what end, I asked myself, did I bother to produce carefully considered op-ed pieces for a small-circulation advertising rag that could descend to that level of discourse?

I drafted a response (see "Jingo and the Xenophobes"), but never sent it in. I turned in a final column and quit, in disgust. That publication's now defunct, its last issue having appeared as Vol. 40, no. 16 (Aug. 25, 2004), so far as I can determine. My bowing out went entirely unnoticed by the editor and all but a few of whatever readers I had.

Before that, I'd made it a practice to post the columns online here, in the "Island Living" section of The Nearby Café, some time after they came out in print. Since I'd let go of my print outlet for the column, I didn't start using the readily available online space as a platform. I didn't even post the last several years' worth of published columns from the Star Reporter. (I'll make up for that over the next few months. And I'll add a piece on the tragic crash of the Staten Island Ferry in October 2003, written not for the Star Reporter but for Long Island Newsday.) Instead, I just turned my attention elsewhere.

It's been a remarkable five years since then. I've married, for the third time, acquiring a teenage Chinese stepson and an extended mainland Chinese family in the process. I've spent a lot of time in China, for reasons both personal and professional. I've reconfigured my professional life dramatically. And I've given serious thought to both leaving the New York area and moving out of the country.

Yet here I am — in the same house, the same neighborhood, in the same borough, in the same city, in the same country. Recommitted to them all, and with the same access to the same space at the same website.

Meanwhile, the economy has gone to hell in its Reaganomic handbasket. The war in Iraq has, as I feared, turned into a disaster. George "Dubya" Bush's popularity ranks below that of any president in recorded history, and he will clearly end up rated as one of the worst presidents to ever head this nation. The disaster of his two terms in office has only begun to become clear; wait till he's out and the real inside stories start to become known. The Republicans offer us a doddering, ailing old soldier and a Barbie-doll moose hunter as their idea of competent leadership.

Things elsewhere don't look much better. The global economy is shaky. The Middle East has never seemed more of a powderkeg, with Iran ready to light the fuse. China is riding a wave of successes in its space program and the Olympics while struggling with a succession of crises including the ghastly school collapses of the spring earthquake and the appalling tainted-milk scandal of the early fall.

Closer to home, the borough has approved a major renovation and expansion of the Stapleton branch of the New York Public Library, just a few blocks from my house, while the city will break ground shortly for the conversion of the Stapleton homeport site into a new waterfront residential, commercial, and multi-use public-access outdoor space. Both ferry terminals have undergone complete and (to my mind) mostly successful and appealing makeovers. The Snug Harbor Cultural Center has installed disastrously archaic and clueless new management. In short, no shortage of local subject matter, and the national and international scenes continue to evoke my commentary. Might as well put it on paper as shout at the walls.

	On September 17, 2008 I served a day's worth of jury duty, without getting called to sit on an actual case. Richmond County's County Clerk, Stephen J. Fiala, stepped in and gave the juror pool a richly meaningful and genuinely resonant talk on the constitutional centrality of trial by a jury of one's peers. It remnded me of what I believe in about this country at its best.
He may just have seen us as a captive audience and a chance to practice his oratorical skills, but he so impressed me that, should he decide to run for Congress to replace the disgraced Republican Rep. Vito Fossella (which he's reportedly considering), I might break the habits of a lifetime and cast a first-ever vote for a Republican.

Be that as it may, according to the court officers who excused me at the end of the afternoon I'm ineligible for the next six years, at which point I'll be 70 and thus able to opt out if called. I don't know what I'll elect to do if and when my name comes up again in the system, but between now and then I'll exercise my citizenly duty by making my voice heard regularly in this space.

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