Tuesday, September 5, 2023

SOLTuesday: An Adventure on America’s Deteriorating Transportation System

I was supposed to return to New York this afternoon on an Acela, after a lovely long weekend at niece Emily’s in Salem, Mass. Her husband drove me to South Station in Boston in plenty of time for me to pick up food for dinner on the train. However, when I checked the train board, I saw my 4:15 had the dreaded “Delayed” next to it.

            It was now just 4 p.m. I went to the information booth and the young man there knew nothing. “There’s a delay” was the extent of his knowledge. Around 4:20, there was an announcement: no Amtrak trains would be leaving Boston “until at least 8 p.m.

            Back to the information desk. A woman in a red-beige-white-black print had more information. It appeared that a tree or some trees had fallen on the track, maybe around Providence, and gotten entangled in the electric wires that power the trains. They had to be cleared out and hopefully that would happen before 8  p.m.

            I immediately texted my daughter and my niece, but they were both still at work and didn’t respond.

            For the next couple of hours, that announcement was repeated every 15 minutes, conveying no more information. It did, of course, end with the obligatory “We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

            Lolita, the woman in the print dress, was more forthcoming. At one point, with four young women and me huddled around her wondering what to do next, she pointed out our options: (1) rent a car from Enterprise because they would deliver the car to the station, (2) walk a block or so away to the bus station and take a bus, (3) get a flight and take the MTA to the airport, or (4) change your ticket for a train tomorrow. Or wait for that illusory train sometime after 8. How long does the station stay open? I asked; until all the trains have left, Lolita assured me.

            My niece was the first to call back. Of course, we’ll come get you and you can take a train tomorrow, she said. At the ticket window, my choices were either too early in the morning, or too late. My niece works during the day, her husband at night; their boys are starting school tomorrow. I’m an optimist—there will be a train tonight. I decided to stay at the station.

            Around 6:30, a young woman sitting near me pointed out updates on Twitter. Each tweet announced that “due to ongoing power issues” various numbered trains were terminating somewhere or originating somewhere not Boston. When I saw my Acela originating in Kingston, Rhode Island, I went back to the information desk. The young man had no idea who sent that tweet.

            However, a tweet that all service between Boston and New Haven was suspended “until further notice” alarmed me. “Until further notice” to me means not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe never. There followed a rather wild period of me rushing back to the info desk, getting encouraging words from one worker, but somewhat more measured comments from Lolita, who was besieged, but being as helpful as she could with the limited information she had. Maybe I should try to change my ticket for tomorrow again? But now the line at the ticket window was long. Had I missed my chance? Just in case, I called my niece, who was just sitting down to dinner, to see if she could come get me.

            Outside, I noticed Lolita in more conversation and I thought she might know something more. My daughter called just then and I had to tell her I’d call her when I know something more substantial. Then a new announcement about trains boarding, and my train number was 2173 was among them. Gate 8.

            Finally, I was in a line to get on a train. Texting my niece to say, “there is a train.” Getting on the train and finding a seat and calling my daughter to say, “I’m on a train.” I was in the Quiet car, but half the people there were on their phones to report: “we’re on a train!” The conductor gave us some leeway for maybe 10 minutes. We left Boston at 7:35.

            Somewhere between Providence and Kingston, we stopped for 20 minutes. We were at the disrupted area, which now had only one track open, and waited for three northbound trains to use that track. And tomorrow I will have to call Amtrak to get the Acela fare I paid reduced since I’m not on an Acela now.

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.


Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Job #16: The Village Voice, Part I: 1975–1976

            Technically speaking, I was still freelancing for a good part of 1975. The Voice was only one of my jobs, but it’s the freelance job that became permanent—and it was also a dream job. I’d been reading the Voice since I’d come to New York 11 years earlier.

            My time there could be divided into three parts. In Part I, I was a part-time copyeditor, first free-lance, then on staff. In Part II, I was full-time and helped to organize the union after Murdoch bought the paper. And in Part III, I became copy chief, then deputy managing editor.

Freelance copyeditor

            From being a regular reader, I now had a chance to meet the writers whose names I knew only as bylines. My first three days there, I worked six hours straight without even noticing; I didn’t get hungry, I didn’t feel overburdened, I loved it. The part of the job I hated, though, was fact-checking. The Voice had almost no reference books, and many of the names and places referred to in Voice articles wouldn’t have been in mainstream reference books anyway. To fact-check, I had to call theaters, galleries, organizations, businesses, and ask, “Is this name spelled right?” I felt stupid doing it at first, but the people I called didn’t seem to mind, so I got used to it. But I never liked that part of the job. I wrote in my journal that I imagined there were hordes of people in the city who wondered who this dumb woman was who wanted to know how to spell names, like Buky Schwartz, a photographer, or the dancer Jana Haimsohn.

            The first article I was given to copy edit was by a writer I almost never read: Jill Johnston. Jill had a very idiosyncratic style, all lower-case letters and no punctuation. Reading her column was like coming into the middle of a conversation among people you didn’t know about people you didn’t know. Now, however, I had to read it from beginning to end. My boss the copy chief said that the new owner, Clay Felker (founder of New York magazine), insisted that Jill at least use periods, so it became my job to suggest where periods might go.

            The task turned out to be quite insightful. Reading Jill Johnston slowly, word by word, I began to understand what she was saying. It became a puzzle to determine where a sentence might begin and end. This was all on paper, years before computers became standard. When I was done, I handed the pages back to Jill’s editor, who would be responsible for calling her and passing on the suggestions. (A few years later I was briefly Jill’s editor and managed to persuade her to capitalize proper nouns and add paragraphs to a feature about the new agey Findhorn community in Scotland.)

             I was always surprised to see how people’s names rarely matched their appearances in my imagination. Leighton Kerner, the classical music critic, must, I thought, be lean and elegant, maybe even carry a cane; instead, he was average height and quite overweight; he shambled rather than strode. Robert Christgau, eminent rock critic and music editor, clearly enjoyed dancing, but his moves would not have gotten him into a music video. (Neither would mine.) Nat Hentoff was more grizzled than I had imagined; I sometimes saw him walking down 12th Street with face buried in a newspaper, much like people today are buried in their phones. Geoffrey Stokes’s appearance was more disheveled than his clean writing and open and sardonic personality. 

           At first I was a freelancer for two days, Friday and Monday, the days the weekly closed. After a couple of months, I was told they would have to drop me because the typesetting company they were using and perhaps partially owned had closed and they felt obligated to give the proofreaders at this plant tryouts as copyeditors. But a few months later, they called me back; the proofreaders hadn’t worked out.

            I had stopped smoking shortly before getting pregnant three years earlier, but from the moment I started working at the Voice, I was tempted. All the copy people smoked, and in those days it was still acceptable to smoke indoors in work situations. “I can’t do it,” I wrote in my journal, “but the temptation is getting stronger.”

            In 1975 the Voice was on the corner of University Place and 11th Street. In good weather, I walked across 12th Street from the subway at Seventh  Avenue. It was the middle of the gasoline crisis, and one day, as I watched cars moving down Fifth Avenue, those automobiles took on the aspect of dinosaurs, which I expected would soon vanish from Earth.

            Next door to the Voice was the Cedar Tavern, an old hangout for 1950s beats and artists, and now Voice writers, and further up the block was the Japanese restaurant Japonica, where I sometimes had lunch or ordered takeout. The Voice was in its own five-story building. Classified ads were on the first floor, making it easy for people to walk in and buy an ad for anything: selling, buying, jobs, even the “you were on the #2 train yesterday at 3 p.m., wearing a red dress” personals. Display ad salespeople were on the second floor, and administration (accounting, personnel, the publisher) on the third. Fourth floor had staff writers and space for freelancers who might need a typewriter or copy machine. On the top floor were the editors, copyeditors, art and production, along with the editor-in-chief and managing editor. In the basement was storage (a trove of back issues) and the mail room, presided over by a very young Jesus Diaz. A slow elevator at the front of the building was matched by stairs at the back, and those of us on the top floor only used the elevator to get to street level; stairs were always quicker to get to other floors.

            The copy department when I started consisted of Helena Hacker, copy chief, and two copyeditors: Susan Klebanoff and Rod Faber. After I’d been on staff for several months, Susan was on leave for health reasons, and I was given her four-day-a-week shift. When she returned, I went back to two or three days a week.

            While typesetting companies were beginning to use computers, the Voice editorial workers was still using paper. Writers typed their stories on typewriters, and editors marked up the paper, sometimes with the classic red pencil, before handing the story on to the copy department. Editing and copyediting at the Voice, however, were collaborative processes. Editors sat with writers and discussed changes, and copyeditors could only suggest changes, only correcting obvious mistakes. The Voice was a writer’s paper, we were constantly told, the writer’s voice to be preserved as much as possible.

            This sometimes caused logistical problems, as when a writer left the office after being edited but before the copyeditor had yet done their work on the piece. Late on Friday or Monday, when a package of stories had to be driven to the typesetter at specific times, it was frustrating to either hold the piece until the writer returned or could be reached at home, or send it off knowing there would have to be changes on galleys. This was long before cellphones, so once a writer had left the building he or she was unreachable for some time. This became such a problem that eventually, on Monday nights (which was editorial closing day), dinner was brought into the office from nearby restaurants, to keep all the writers on the premises until their stories were sent off to the typesetter. Veselka’s, with Ukrainian food, was a favorite, eventually prompting the joke that after eating Veselka’s food, a week later you were hungry again—a turn on the Chinese restaurant joke.

            I went on staff two days a week in late September 1975 (on the masthead as "editorial staff” in the September 29 issue), and my first Monday was a full day, which meant 13 hours, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. At the end of the day, I wrote in my journal, “My head feels very spacey.... I don’t know how Helena and Susan do this every week.” In the winter of 1976, Susan became quite sick and I worked more days, including my first time going to the typesetter in Mt. Kisco. After working late Monday the night before, I had to get up very early on Tuesday morning, and once we arrived at the plant, it all seemed very confusing, people working very quickly and not much talking. In March Rod, the other full-time copy editor, was fired; Helena didn’t think I was interested in that much work (it involved being in charge of the whole back of the book, meaning all the arts sections), but wanted to give me first refusal. I’d guessed he might be fired at any moment and had thought about whether I wanted his job, so I was ready to say no.

My own writing

            Writing was something I had been doing off and on my entire life. I’d keep a journal for a year or two, but rereading it, I’d feel so disconnected from the person who’d written those words, I’d throw it out. (I’m sorry now!) For an English assignment in ninth grade, I wrote an extremely derivative Zane Grey–style western, and in 11th grade a very teenagerish poem. At 20, I had the temerity to send that poem to the New Yorker; of course, it was rejected. Then, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Antioch Record, my college paper, and it was printed. What excitement to see my name and my words in print. About 10 years later, a Daily News column about the delights of vacationing with children prompted me to send them a reply about the work involved in vacationing with children, which they printed, to my surprise — but didn’t offer to pay me.

            Since the editing process was clearly visible when it took place on paper, it was easy to see how heavily some regular writers were edited, which gave me the confidence to think I could write as well as, if not better than, these writers being paid. I felt I could only write about something I was expert in, however, and at this point, the only thing I felt I was an expert about was being a mother. So when Jane Lazarre’s book The Mother Knot was published early in 1976 and K.D. was wondering about who would be good to review it, I spoke up. I felt in tune with Lazarre’s ambivalence about motherhood. She spoke to the book review editor, and by the time she tossed me the galley, I’d forgotten I asked for it—and was momentarily scared. But “I can do it,” I said, partly to convince myself, and K.D. replied, “Of course you can.” That was my first paid publication ($150; that's equivalent to almost $815 today. Does anyone get that for a book review?) — and I started a tradition of buying a new garment with part of my proceeds, in this case, a dark green cotton blouse with long sleeves ending in cuffs with three cloth-covered buttons, which I still own, though the cuffs are frayed at the edge. Eliot Fremont-Smith was my editor, and I didn’t learn until some time later that he had gone to my college, about 10 years earlier than me, where his nickname was “Hyphen.”

            The next piece I wrote also hinged on childcare. I proposed to K.D., my friend and editor, that I write “something” about daycare, but I felt very insecure about it. I hated interviewing unless I had specific questions to ask, and I was just learning how to start a conversation with someone I didn’t know. Remember, in my first job, as a salesclerk, at 18, I was so shy I walked away from customers approaching me at the costume jewelry counter. Finally, I decided to start writing with whatever information I had, then I could see what holes there were and where I needed anecdotes, so then I would have those needed specific questions. A couple of months in, Jack Newfield told me he was looking into daycare scandals, and he, K.D., and I agreed that, as I wrote in my journal, “he could do the story about the people doing the fucking, and I could do the story about the people being fucked.” This gave my story the focus I hadn’t yet found. And when the story was published, Newfield’s was highlighted on the front page, and so was my little story. How exciting.

            What would I write next? I proposed another daycare piece, then hoped it would be turned down because I would have had to write it quickly, and I wasn’t confident I could do that. My husband suggested I find an about-to-be-new field and claim it as mine. What might that be? Perhaps the fact that by 2030, old people would be 20% of the U.S. population, many of them well-educated women, women like me? Maybe I didn’t know how to imagine what it would be like to be old, as I never followed up on that possibility.

Changes at the Voice, and in the copy department

            I was still two days a week, and there was a new copy editor: M. Mark. One evening in June I had dinner with M. and Susan. The copy chief, Helena, was doing more editing and not copy editing as much, yet was still in charge of the copy department. This left M. and Susan feeling overworked. They thought it would help if there was a copy editor just for the occasional supplements tied to advertising; I wondered if I wanted to volunteer for that, and decided, no, a supplement editor would need to be concerned with who advertisers, and I’d be no good at that.

            More changes: in June, Judy Daniels, the managing editor, whom Felker had brought over from New York magazine, said she would return to New York, and another editor was leaving to work at a newspaper in New Jersey. This news prompted me to ask Tom Morgan, the editor-in-chief, about working full-time, then realized that was a bad idea. (I was always thinking first about what I wanted to do at the Voice and only later how that had to be worked in with the fact that I had a four-year-old and a husband and we would have child-care arrangements to adjust. My journal is full of my saying I was willing to take on some responsibility, then hoping they would say “no” because I knew it would cause complicated negotiations with Jack or problems finding a babysitter.)

            A few weeks later it became clear that the departing editor would not be replaced; her work was divided up among current editors, but Helena got most of it, though she would still remain as copy chief. All of these changes required me to work full-time. The next couple of days involved intense negotiation (and consultation with Jack) over the hours and the salary. (I knew how much Susan was paid, and I didn’t want to get less.) There was another personnel question: as a part-timer, I was due for a salary review in September. If my status changed to full-time, would I still get the salary review (and possible raise) in September, or would full-time be considered a new job, thus no salary review for another year? Judy Daniels saw this as “an interesting question” and after she consulted with others, it was determined it was a “new job.”

            I began working full-time — which meant four days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Monday — in mid-July. Now and then I’d go to the plant on Tuesday, then have Wednesday off. In August, Helena went on vacation, and I got to edit three columns, Press Clips, Scenes, and Culture Shock.

            A month later, we had a new managing editor, Marianne Partridge, from Rolling Stone, and she had ideas for reorganizing the copy department. She wanted M. to be copy chief and Susan to be head of a fact-checking section. M. felt uncomfortable being offered this as Susan had more seniority than she did and said she’d wait for Susan to decide. I wondered how this would affect me, of course, and whether I might have to work five days. M. did became copy chief.

            Howard Smith and I had a fight over an edit in which I’d made a factual error. Howard insisted he’d been writing his column for 10 years so didn’t need anyone to rewrite him, and claimed he’d been writing about “women’s lib” before anyone else had. “Bouquets and brickbats" piled up. Marianne removed some text from Scenes, which I had edited, that she thought was offensive, and at the plant I’d found the name of a man in a photo, but it was the wrong name. On the other hand, I objected to a headline at the plant, and my substitute hed was used for a national edition the Voice was then producing (and shortly thereafter killed). I began to wonder whether I could ever be an editor.

            More personnel changes at the top (Marianne became editor-in-chief) and in the copy department (Susan left for a business magazine). I became mildly envious when masthead titles changed, Helena becoming a senior associate editor and M. an associate editor, while Linda Perney moved from editorial staff to join me as an assistant editor.

            Work was infecting my dreams. One morning I woke up with the headline “Strike It Kitsch on Staten Island.” (What was the story? who knows.) When I told someone at the Voice when I reported for work, I was told, “Go back to sleep.”

Social life

            This was the ’70s, and sex was everywhere. On top of that, Jack and I had decided, when we got married and without much thought, that sexual fidelity was not that important, so long as we were honest with each other. We’d gotten married young, at 22, and, in a sense, dating sort of continued.

            I went  to my first Voice Christmas party in 1975, at the Fifth Avenue hotel. I had bought a floor-length dark magenta dress with halter top and backless to the waist—I think I only ever wore it at this Christmas party. The party itself didn’t have much dancing, but I felt quite sexy in the dress, dancing or not, and got invited to a New Year’s Eve party because of it. After the official Christmas party was over, some of us crowded into a taxi and went to a disco club at 111 Hudson Street, known as the Ones. Alex Cockburn was quite drunk and romancing all the women. As I was getting ready to leave, Alex said, “Let’s have one dance before you go,” so we danced, with a lot of touching, hugging, and a few pecks of kisses. Was it the dress? or the situation? or the drink? And when I got home Jack was annoyed that I was so late, even though I had done exactly what he did when he was out drinking: called once to say I’d be home in an hour, then an hour or so later, called again to say I’d be home in an hour. (Funny, I didn’t note this similarity in my journal at the time or say it to Jack.)

            In the winter of 1976, I developed an intense crush on the art director, which, according to my journal, took over my psychic life and caused a (temporary) rift between my editor friend and me. Seems she and the art director were having a secret affair (while he was living with someone else), and the fact that he seemed also interested in me led to all sorts of complications. Even once I decided not to pursue my urges, I continued to write about my attraction in my journal for months. All we ever did was have dinner once and a drink another time, when he asked what my sex fantasies were, and I said I didn’t have any. I think he lost interest then; maybe no sex fantasies meant I was boring?

            My journals are full of fantasies about men at work I was interested in, but rarely made any advances to. There was one affair with B. in production that lasted a couple of months; he was in his mid-20s, but easy and sometimes fun to talk with. But this “adventure” didn’t have the intensity of the affair that never happened with the art director, leading me to muse in my journal about the difference between “romance” (why I pursued the art director) and “lust” (why I pursued B.B.).

            Jack came with me to the Christmas party in 1976. When we first arrived and Jack went off to find us drinks, B. wrapped an arm around me from behind. “My husband’s here,” I whispered. “That’s cool,” he said, unfazed and not moving. And was still there when Jack returned with drinks, so I had to introduce them. Then B. rapidly vanished. After saying hello to some people he knew, Jack pronounced it “the tackiest scene” he’d ever seen and left. I spent the rest of the evening dancing (music courtesy of the D.J. from the Anvil). The copy department had planned to bring candy commas to give to Bob Christgau (was he a writer who used only the commas absolutely necessary and didn’t like to see the optional commas added by copy editors?), but decided against it. (Maybe too hard to find, too hard to explain to a candy maker what a candy comma should look like.) At midnight, the music stopped abruptly and we were all supposed to leave. Like last year, we piled into cabs and went to Ones, where I engaged in some light necking and petting with J.P. At one point I had a flicker of wondering what he was thinking of me, and then, that I didn’t care. I was enjoying myself and liked what we were doing.

Big changes about to come

            In the fall of 1976, Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post, and in late December came the first hint that ownership at the Voice was about to change again.

SOLTuesday: Gas Leak?!

            Last Friday evening, there began a terrible drilling noise nearby. At first, I thought it was construction on the building directly across the street, a former SRO (single room occupancy) that had been vacant for at least 20 years until it was bought by Columbia University and it being renovated to become a dorm.

            But no, this was in front of the private school next door to my building, and some Con Ed workers were breaking up the sidewalk. Why? There might be a gas leak. Of course, a gas leak has to be investigated—immediately. The drilling went on for a few hours, and then a truck with a generator ran for another few hours, at least until 1 a.m.

            Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and today, the drilling has stopped, but workers are digging down under the pavement, and piles of dirt, brick, and miscellaneous debris were first shoveled onto the adjacent sidewalk, and then onto the street.

            A long stretch of sidewalk has been closed off (in addition to the street being closed to traffic since Sunday), with a sign at one end saying “Walkway closed Use other side” — except you can’t use the sidewalk across the street because that’s where the Columbia University renovation is being done.

            Today, I saw workers sawing a large pipe, maybe three or four inches in diameter, which I’m hoping will be replacing the pipe that’s leaking. Any gas leak needs to be fixed ASAP, before some careless person creates a spark. So glad that many fewer people smoke cigarettes these days. And school doesn’t open until after Labor Day, so there's a few more days left.

            This all made me think of David Macauley's wonderful book Underground, with many drawings of what is under our feet in the city. I wonder if any of the Con Ed workers read that book as children.  

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

 

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 25

Heed my words. There is no choice a

Voter can make that isn’t political.

Protect your home and your family

Before the dangerous one rises

And attacks our land again.

 

Source: A Political Family Rises Again

NaPoWriMo April 24

When I was a child I wanted a bed

To sail me off to fairy land. My bath

Was the ocean, linked by a heavy chain

To the bed. My dreams rose in clouds to

Shake the heavens, They do not start

To tell a scary story until there’s a process

That relaxes my mind into summers of

Magnolias and gauze dresses. The door’s closing

Leaves me in the dark, afraid to shop.

 

Source: Bed Bath Chain to Start Process of Closing Shop

SOLTuesday: My First Encounter with an Internet Scammer

Back in February, I began receiving e-mails from someone I do not know. What follows are his e-mails (punctuation and spelling exactly copied) and my two replies. I wonder where he really is. Have you ever gotten e-mails like these?

 

Feb. 16

1. HIM: How are you doing, I am Dr Patrick, A widower and looking for love , can we have a chat?

 

2. ME: All I want to know is how you got my e-mail address.

 

3. HIM: Nice to hear from you Sonia,

Well, I was looking on google and saw your name and email, I hope you are fine and family is doing well, I want you to understand that distance is not a barrier okay, I am from the Miami ,beach, in Florida and presently at work here in Syria, I hope you don't mind,I am a general surgeon under the UN medical team, I have traveled to Afghanistan on medical duty and have made up my mind to locate someone like you to settle down and a hospital clinic and orphanage home with production company after I return .


 I am 56 yrs old and have no children. My wife passed away.
I lost my parents during the 9/11 bomb attack, and since then I am alone, I am the only child, my duty will end here in Syria soon and I will return back home and come over to meet you, I hope I am welcome to your homeland to be a good friend for a long term family relationship.

Life is a journey and I hope meeting you will take us to a better way to meet each other face to face and be glad about it, I am one man for one woman.
I am a good Christian and you? Hope you tell me a little about yourself and send me a photo of you.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Bless you.
Dr. Patrick.

 

Feb. 18

4.Waiting to hear from you dear Sonia, All the best.

 

Feb. 19

5. Hello I guess you are not interested in the partnership with me, tell me please you are not the only beautiful woman on earth.

 

Feb. 22

6. Madam Robbins , Good evening and how are you, I hope you are fine. Sending prayers

 

April 24

7. I am alive ,I survived terrorist attack, I was so surprised to have not heard from you  ,I need your assistance to receive and secure my funds while I return soon and come over to meet you please.

 

I will give you 20% of the funds for your kind assistance.

Let me know what you think.

Best always

 

[I replied to this one: I am 100% sure you are a scammer. Do not respond. Goodbye.]

 

April 25

8. You are not correct Sonia,I am not a scammer,I am a medical doctor working here in Syria , I guess you have been scammed before that makes you think I am the same.

Well ,we have an organisation who is specially on the mission of tracking those scammers dawn .

If you can tell me about them who scam you before and provide there details.

All the best.

 

April 25

9. Sonia who scam you 100% that you are sure of? Answer my question

 

[How long will he persist, do you think?]

 

 

 

 

Sunday, April 23, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 23

After the hearing officer makes her ruling,

We return singing to our tent homes on

The open plain. Our sweaters pill

After washing. Our mother puts

Them in a trunk. Is it prudence

To hold ourselves together above

Simplicity, or a nasty grab for power?

 

Source Ruling on Pill Puts Prudence Above Power

NaPoWriMo April 22

The room shaped like a pentagon

Holds secrets that cannot leak.

So many glowing secrets began

Their life in a universe earlier

Than stars were born, earlier than

Light was born, earlier than any thought.

 

Source: Pentagon Leak Began Earlier Than Thought


NaPoWriMo April 20

Golden gladiolas glimmer at a social

Gala, gifting gladness through the media.

Carnelian carnations cower as

Clouds convey the conscience we

Avoid. Ruby roses riot when they knew

Revolution readied the world. For it

Can’t escape the gardener that she is

Hostage to wind, sun, rain, all long

Needed, yet climate emergency gone.

 

Source: Social Media as We Knew It Is Long Gone

Saturday, April 22, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 19

She has given up on the network’s

Offering anything but a deal

That benefits them and avoids

Royalties to her. They’ll say it’s a

Work for hire. She will fight

For the royalty contract, but

Expects their lawyers will not

Come around without leaving scars.

 

Source: Network’s Deal Avoids a Fight, but Not Scars


Wednesday, April 19, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 18

What is wrong with the old man

Who shoots on sight a teen who

Only rang the doorbell? He was shot

For ringing the wrong doorbell, a teen

Sent to pick up his little brother on

A play date. The teen stood on the porch

And lucky he isn’t dead. His face is the faces

Of all Black boys living with imagined charges.

 

Source: Man Who Shot Teen on Porch Faces Charges


Tuesday, April 18, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 17

We are hoping to find the fox

Tonight. Reports on the news

Yesterday exclaimed it goes

Running down Fifth Avenue on

Trippy paws. It cannot go on trial

For eating park pigeons or for

Claiming its attacks are falsities.

 

Source: Fox News Goes on Trial for Falsities


Monday, April 17, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 16

There was no warning of leaked

Oil at the factory. Company intel

Hinted that records were altered.

Workers said safety was of little

Concern to supervisors. Workers in

The field studied organizing strategies.

 

Source: Leaked Intel Altered Little in Strategies

Saturday, April 15, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 15

There will be a revolt, I suspect,

by young people seeking justice in

this world. Old racist tactics are like leaks

in a canoe. The old system faces

its young people and can imagine only two

choices, win or lose. Youth charges

ahead, knowing it’s in the right over

the long run, with or without documents.

 

Source: Suspect in Leaks Faces 2 Charges Over Documents


Friday, April 14, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 14

We had tickets for two

In the balcony of the new

Arena. We despaired at rulings

That meant we wouldn’t hear Muddy

Water tonight. Muddy Waters

Sang of real life, hard as it might be, over

Dreams. Did he ever sing of abortion?

 

Source: Two New Rulings Muddy Waters Over Abortion

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 12

Some support legal abortion, while some

Oppose all abortion. Support outweighs opposition in

Polls, even among Republicans. The G.O.P.

Seems in thrall to extremists, who urge

A national ban. Will there be flexibility

Among Republicans to compromise with

Base and center, or only most extreme position on abortion?

 

Source: Some in G.O.P. Urge Flexibility with Abortion


Tuesday, April 11, 2023

NaPoWriMo April 11

The stolen stash contains dozens of bitcoin.

They shimmer in their coats of hydrogen that devours

Air. The thieves lack the energy

To keep bitcoin alive and

The thieves slowly suffocate in dead air. Others

Will find their bodies and pay

For a death notice. Bitcoin vanish into a

Space where they exist beyond price.

 

Source: Bitcoin Devours Energy, and Others Pay a Price

SOLTuesday: In Banking and Credit Card Purgatory

             On April 5, I spent two hours on the phone with my credit union and American Express about a check I had sent American Express. The ensuing conversations were so bizarre that I need to share with others. My daughter suggests this is why the banking system is such a mess.

            After getting an e-mail from American Express that my most recent payment, for March, had been rejected by the bank, I called PenFed Credit Union to find out why. The woman I spoke with said there was no record of ever having received the check (#226), and she even checked with a supervisor. (In addition, she said the most recent check they had a record was in January (#224), and there was no record of their receiving check #225. This was odd, since I’d never gotten any notice that that check was rejected.)

            I then called American Express, who assured me that the e-mail I’d received was an authentic e-mail from American Express. This customer representative also said the check had been presented, through an automatic process, three times to PenFed, and it was rejected with the message “Cannot be processed. Please refer to your financial institution.” (It appeared these words came from Amex, since PenFed wouldn’t use the words “your financial institution,” would it?) When I told this person that PenFed had no record of the check being presented to them, he said he would set up an investigation, which could take a maximum of 30 days, and I would be sent the results.

            Okay, back to PenFed. Here I spoke to a young man, who had no idea why there was no record of my check being submitted and wanted to know what the reason for rejection was. When I read him what the e-mail from Amex said, he asserted that couldn’t be the reason from PenFed because “the bank wouldn’t be processing its own check.” When I mentioned this was a check, he said with much surprise, “You sent a physical check?” He was the first one to suggest a conference call between PenFed and American Express, but I didn’t know how to do that, and he didn’t suggest any way

            Back to American Express. This time I spoke to a woman named Sarah, who was very encouraging. When I asked where the physical check is, she said it went to the payment center, where they verify that it’s a check from me, and it is automatically submitted. I wondered whether she could see the check, and she said, no, and there was no way for her to contact the payment center. And she knew nothing more about the reason why the check was rejected. Talking with her, she used the term “process” and it began to seem to me that there was a problem with semantics, that “process” meant one thing to Amex and another thing to Pen Fed. When I asked about a conference call, Sarah said there is an account services team, and they could take part in a conference call. She even gave me a phone number: 1-800-441-0518. I asked who should initiate the call, and she said PenFed.

            So, back to PenFed, this time a woman named Alice. I had to give the same long story to each person I spoke to, and each time added the number of people I had already spoken to at each company. Alice said it was impossible for her to call Amex for the conference call, and she checked with a supervisor and reported it was impossible for the supervisor to do that either. And she also couldn’t find any notice of check #225.

            So I called American Express again, this time to verify that they had been paid by my check #225. And they had. So why is there no record of it at PenFed? This was beginning to make me nervous about the PenFed system. Maybe I shouldn’t keep a checking account there. And it seemed I had been shunted, by the recording that always answered the phone both for American Express and for PenFed, to Credit department, not the same department wherethe previous people I’d been speaking to were. Why?

            This was getting weird. Back to PenFed, this time a very enthusiastic man named Anthony. I told him both of the problems — why was check #226 rejected? why no record of check #225 in the PenFed system since PenFed had sent American Express the money? — and he seemed quite taken by them. He also said he would have to do some research, and it would take more than five minutes. He would call me back tomorrow. He had a very joky manner; we had some back and forth about the Giants, football or baseball, and saying I was a Jets fan gained me his deep sympathy.

            That was almost it for the day. A total of an hour with each company. But what about the money I owed American Express? The payment is due April 11. What if this isn’t settled before then?

            The last person at Amex I spoke to suggested I pay online, and if the check is finally unfrozen and paid, I’d have a credit at the end of the month. So I went to the American Express website and tried to set up an account. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, it first told me I’d put in the wrong password or username, then I was blocked because I’d tried to log in too many times, and I was repeatedly told to change my password. Enough of that. I quit. Still haven’t paid, and have no desire to call American Express again. 

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