More ruminations, rambles, rants and raves from the downhill side of the mountain.
Just so you know exactly where I stand vis-a-vis today's polarized politics, let me recommend this organization to you.
And I also recommend my gentle employer to you as well. The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Network, which seemed to have stopped working, is back in operation, so the links and banners are working again.
Now, go buy some books.
And I also recommend my gentle employer to you as well. The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Network, which seemed to have stopped working, is back in operation, so the links and banners are working again.
Now, go buy some books.
Links:
Fox Den: Creative (i.e. Fiction)Writing
A Pilgrim's Progress
Ian's Knowledge Modelling Weblog
Future Scan: Future Studies Department University of Houston at Clear Lake
PLSJ (aka Anne, the Anthropologist)
link
Lost in Transit
link
Coffee Grounds
Traveling in Style
Slacktivist Recommended with a bullet!
Hoofin To You: Bridgewater, NJ politics
Inadmissible Evidence
Big Black Van
Overflow
In Spite of Years of Silence
Metamorphosism (Mig's new blog)
Real Live Preacher
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Alas, A Blog
A Fistful of Euros
BuzzMachine
Eschaton
Pedantry
The Poor Man
Barefoot and Naked
Boing Boing
Craigblog
Fafglob
The Road to Surfdom
link
E-Mail Me
My Other Blogs, Journals and such
Fox Den: Creative (i.e. Fiction)Writing
A Pilgrim's Progress
Business/Economics/Future Studies and other Social Sciences
Ian's Knowledge Modelling Weblog
Future Scan: Future Studies Department University of Houston at Clear Lake
PLSJ (aka Anne, the Anthropologist)
link
International
Lost in Transit
link
New Jersey New York Pennsylvania and Delaware
Coffee Grounds
Traveling in Style
Slacktivist Recommended with a bullet!
Hoofin To You: Bridgewater, NJ politics
Inadmissible Evidence
Personal/General
Big Black Van
Overflow
In Spite of Years of Silence
Metamorphosism (Mig's new blog)
Real Live Preacher
Blogs with Attitude
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Alas, A Blog
A Fistful of Euros
BuzzMachine
Eschaton
Pedantry
The Poor Man
Barefoot and Naked
Boing Boing
Craigblog
Fafglob
The Road to Surfdom
link
E-Mail Me
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And finally, here are a few books I might recommend for your edification and amazement.
What's the Matter with Kansas?
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
I see the transit workers in NYC are beating the drums for a strike. This is a major concern for those of us who live and/or work in the New York metropolitan area. Without the buses and subways, NYC will, of necessity, come to a grinding halt. I stumbled across a little book the other day that listed the 10 most populated cities in the world. Tokyo came in first and NYC was second with something like 21 million people in its metropolitan area. I remember an old, old TV show called "The Naked City" which began with the announcer stating that "there are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This is one of them." Last I looked, the city limits of NYC were pretty much the same today as they were when that show was made. Which means that there are more than twice the numbers of people living in the same physical space. So, where a transit strike in the middle of the 20th Century was a major inconvenience, it was not outright crippling. Today, it is.
The transit workers put a face on a major problem that confronts our society. Very often, those people who work in jobs that are vital for the functioning of our society are the lowest paid. We pay athletes and performers huge sums of money to entertain us; people who shill for that grand casino called Wall Street make (or made) big bucks; but the people who teach our kids, who clean up after us, who wait on us in our shops, stores and restaurants make a comparative pittance. Every day the transit workers see all those hugely affluent people who live and work in Manhattan, and they want a taste of the living large life. I don't blame 'em, because I want a taste too. (Well, actually, I've had a taste and I want more, but that's for another entry...) We moan and groan because teachers, those people who have more contact with our kids than we (who are working 60 hours a week plus to pull in that 100+ thousand a year,) want their investment of 4 to 6 years of higher education to be worth as much as our investments in college and graduate school.
No, the quality of life, for all the benefits of advances in technology and medicine (to name just two fields of endeavor) and the rest has not, I think, gotten better over the past 50 years. If anything, on the whole it has eroded some. When I was young, we expected the work week to continue shrinking, as it had for the preceding 50+ years. Instead, for the vast majority of us, it has expanded; if not in our primary job, then in the hours we put in at that second job which we need to make ends meet. And we are not, on the whole, living large, as the saying goes. We are, in fact, swimming as hard as we can just to keep our heads above water, and sometimes (we all know someone) we are not successful in that effort.
Bloomberg wants New Yorkers and those who commute into the city to take up hitchhiking and ride sharing to make up for the millions of souls moved hither, thither and yon everyday of the week by the mass transit system of his city. He has said that he’ll take up riding his bike to work (yeah…in NYC…in the winter…this I have to see!) or, if he has to take his SUV, he’ll pick up riders. I hope that, should the strike happen, a large number of New Yorkers plant themselves outside both Gracie Mansion and Bloomberg’s co-op so that they can fill the mayor’s ear with some observations from the rest of us. Maybe he’ll actually learn something…
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005
