A Hot and Lousy Day in New York City

New English Review

Substack

New York City, where only yesterday the weather was 99 degrees, has deigned to drop to a merciful 95 degrees today. And that is not our biggest sorrow. Yesterday, one poor soul fell to her death because she stepped on an (illegally) uncovered manhole and plunged ten feet down; that ended her life in our once fair city. The subway is always late; it switches from a local to an express without warning; medical incidents and hostile, hallucinating men menace passengers daily, hourly. When the Long Island Railroad recently went on strike, people had to take to their cars and found themselves trapped in what amounted to highways turned into parking lots. Looting is commonplace. People dare not, and have been warned not to, stop the robbery in progress. People, both men and women, suddenly freak out and start attacking strangers on the street, in restaurants, everywhere, anywhere, but this is also happening all across our country. People also kill their relatives. Our mayor does nothing. That's not exactly true. He is very busy driving Big Business--our tax base--right out of the city. Individual Jews are being viciously attacked--as are synagogues and Jewish centers. Islamic pro-Palestine-chanting maniacs are on the loose here as in Europe; they pray in the streets, quite aggressively, yes, even when there are empty nearby mosques available. The other day a mob prayed right up against the building of a Jewish school for girls. What am I forgetting? Oh, yes. There's always the media coverage, which is even more virulent than the mobs themselves in terms of America and Israel. Today, I made the mistake of reading Bret Stephens's op-ed at the New York Times--an embarrassing and enraging piece if ever there was one. After first holding forth on Israel's alleged crimes, Bret finally got down to the dangerous Blood Libels published in the media--at least where Israel is concerned--especially at his own site. And yet, Bret failed to mention Kristof's libelous op-ed piece in the same Paper of Record. Iran? How much longer can this matter go on? Iran holding the entire world hostage? Alternate pipelines for shipping are possible and indeed already exist and/or are underway. But believing any agreement that Iran commits to is only a fool's prerogative. Our President appearing to submit to Qataris or Saudis or Emiratis is beyond the pale. A few weeks ago, I was scammed as were many other writers. I wrote about it. Now hear this. My own personal nightmare began last night when my email stopped at 5:30 p.m. EST. It seems that I (among millions of others) had been hacked by sites in Singapore, Florida, and possibly Virginia. Singapore! How exotic. However, it took a dedicated and expensive IT team to stop the hack in its tracks. But this also required me to work with them. They were spectacular, I failed every techie test (new passwords? 25-word passwords? Doing the same thing on all my "instruments"? Swiping up and swiping down? Dealing with new icons in every corner of the screen?) This all made me more determined than ever to return to a typewriter or even to a goosequill pen. I'm told that this can happen again; it's "what's happening." If I gave up my computer and the internet, I'd be disconnected from the entire world...actually, not such a bad idea, is it? Well, how's your day been going?