R.i.Pod

	A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. [theistore.com]

Last week, walking to work one morning, in the first 30 seconds of "Big Wheel" by Tori Amos, my iPod suddenly shut off. When I turned it on, it had registered half battery life, so I tried firing it up again. But it wouldn't start up. It just cycled through the reboot and never got through to the menu screen. The battery had been acting up for well over a year, so I assumed it would shut off on its own, as usual, and I would just charge it up again at work.

When I pulled it out later to charge it, it was still running. It was still rebooting. Over and over and over. And it was hot to the touch. I held the Menu and the Play/Pause buttons to reset it, but it never got past its opening screen. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause.

I began to panic and went to the Apple Web site, but I couldn't do anything about it with my work PC. I needed my Mac at home. Eventually it puttered out and stopped spinning. Safe ... for now.

That night I couldn't even get it to mount to the desktop; nor could I get iTunes to recognize it — so I could do absolutely nothing to reset or restore. No amount of troubleshooting would help.

After five years, my iPod's number is up. His little ticker has finally gone out. Long will I remember the countless hours of Madonna, Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper, Indigo Girls, Gorillaz, '80s playlists, the Wicked soundtrack. I will be forever grateful for years of encouragement on the Bally's treadmill with Ultimate Kylie and Confessions on a Dancefloor. Those days are over.

My iPod was Generation 3, the last model before the display went color. Before the click wheel. Before the 30GB model. Before video.

He filled my heart with joy, but at 20 GB — five times the size of my first Mac G3 desktop machine, mind you &8212; he had not yet been filled with music.

Now he has gone to Abraham's bosom. He's bitten the big one, the biscuit, the dust. He's kicked the bucket. He's bought the farm, cashed in (or cached, for the geeks) his chips, checked out, climbed the golden staircase. He's cooking for the Kennedys. He is passing over Jordan. He is gathered to his fathers. He has met his maker. He has joined the ancestors. He's croaked. He's snuffed it. He's toast. He's dead meat. He's given an obolus to Charon, crossed the river on the Stygian ferry — to the undiscovered country, fallen into the dreamless sleep. He is at journey's end. He is sailing on the grey ships. He's done like dinner. He's flat-lined. It's curtains for my poor iPod. It's Taps. He is information superhighway roadkill. He's feeding the fishes. He's worm food. He's going home feet first, toes up. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for my iPod. He's shuffled off his mortal coil. He's shit the bed. He's gone to his just reward, his last home, his rest, his last account, the last roundup, the sweet hereafter, the happy hunting ground. He is sowing the Elysian Fields. He's met the grim ferryman, the grim reaper, the great leveller. He's hung up his tack. He's picking up his harp. He has left the building. He has been launched into eternity. He's on the road to nowhere. He's paid the piper. Pegged out. Pulled the plug. He's given up the ghost. He's pushing up daisies, singing with the angels, sleeping with the fishes. He's six feet under.

I'm gonna miss you, little guy.

(Special thanks to Dead & Buried.)

Song Poison

With one more day left at what I am now beginning to think of as my "old job," I find myself with a certain song from Les Miserables stuck in my head.


Of course my getting a new job doesn't have nearly the same weight as France's 1832 student revolution. Neither does the Broadway show that prominently features it, despite its stubborn refusal to fade from public consciousness. Nevertheless, that soundtrack is still gaily playing in an auditorium in my head somewhere, stuck in an endless loop, echoing mercilessly.

I have been song poisoned.

In a way, I'm glad, because it managed to push out of my head another song that held me hostage yesterday: "Grace Kelly," by Mika. Since (perhaps unwisely) purchasing Life in Cartoon Motion, I've been hooked. Despite a rash of stupid lyrics in half of the songs, I have to acknowledge that most of the album is clever, ironic, funny, moving and of course ludicrously catchy.

However, the three-thousandth time I heard Mika screeching "I could be brown/I could be blue/I could be violet sky/I could be hurtful/I could be purple/I could be anything you like," I kinda wanted to hit my head against something hard and blunt. Repeatedly.

OK, despite my kvetching, I have to admit to still kinda liking most of Les Mis. (At least I didn't say Cats.) My only hope is that the next song to invade my brain doesn't leave me worse off than this one.

Simple Things, Important Things

In a conversation I had once with my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Przeslawski (so many teachers in the Detroit suburbs had ponderous Polish last names), I observed that the bell had just rung and that several students in the hall would be late to class.

"They'd better run," I said to her.

"Oh no," she said. "No. Never. They're seniors. These are all seniors' lockers around here."

I didn't follow.

She squared her face toward me and gave me a serious look. "Seniors never run."

It is a lesson about pride I have carried with me through all my life. Better to come late to class quietly and calmly, with dignity, and suffer the consequences, than to arrive sweating and breathless.

To this day, for example, I never run for a bus.

I will turn a corner and see my bus barrelling through the green light toward me, careering toward the stop ahead. There are enough people at the sign that the time it takes for the bus to stop, for a few people to exit, and for those people to enter, I could easily make it in time to board myself. Only if I ran. Which I never do.

Once, and only once, since moving to New York did I run for the bus. And when I got there, the doors closed in my face, and the driver blithely drove away. New York bus drivers are merciless, but I can't argue. If he stops to let me on, it could give others behind me time to reach the bus and further delay all of us.

So the bus comes and goes. I continue walking to the next stop, glancing back over my shoulder, coolly, calmly, knowing another will come soon, and I won't have to break a sweat on my morning commute.

Other people, however, do run. From a precarious stance in the aisle, hovering over a woman with too much luggage or a man with halitosis and a dripping umbrella, I often see out the window someone tearing around the corner at a desperate gallop, panting toward the closing doors of the bus. They creak shut just as he or she arrives, and the best the hapless commuter can manage is an impotent bang-bang-bang on the windows all the way down the length of the vehicle, staring in with wild eyes and gaping mouth, or sometimes shouting something rather rude to the driver. I can empathize, but their effort is wasted: They are stuck at the stop anyway despite their run. They could easily have spared themselves the trauma.

Earlier today, as the Q33 was pulling away from the station at 74th and Broadway in Jackson Heights, a woman similarly reached the closed doors. She visibly chastised herself, or the driver, or fate, or the slow people on the stairs in the station a minute back — but she gave up the fight honorably and resolved to stand there, smiling, watching us take off.

The driver, a benevolent soul, glanced around him and decided it was safe to hit the brakes and open the door. He called to the woman, who was looking in the other direction.

"Hey. Hey, you! Come on. Get on!"

She snapped to attention and in one swift motion, she all but leaped aboard as the doors folded shut, and she was safe and on her way home.

She smiled radiantly, incredulously. She could not believe her luck — like a child who had just found the last Easter egg. "Thank you!" she said, dipping her Metrocard. She took a few steps in and grasped a pole at the front of the bus as the driver continued off the drive and the bus lurched onto the street.

Her reacton completely arrested me. It was so real and humble and grateful. I have never seen a driver stop like that, but it was ultimately a small, simple gesture, like holding a door. And she would have waited no more than 15 minutes for the next bus. But it obviously meant so much to her. I was totally charmed to see something so small matter so much and deliver such delight.

Saving Quarters

The days are lengthening through these cool spring months, and afternoons are warming up slowly in anticipation of summer's full force. Families up and down Henry Street and East Broadway have begun to hang their laundry out their windows to dry. Wire hangers clatter against the fire escapes and iron grates along the tenement facades, and the damp clothes flap like prayer flags in the breeze that whips across Lower Manhattan and the East River.

Greening

I could never live in a place where there is no autumn or winter. It makes springtime all the more miraculous. Do I have such a bad memory that new leaves are a delight for me year after year? Or is it truly amazing how, over the course of three days, a bright green parasol unfolds from nowhere over a drab streetscape? Even this place is beautiful.

Happy Birthday, Minnesota!

	I think I can see my house from here. (Map of Minnesota, c. 1910) [U.S. Digital Map Library]

From today's Writer's Almanac:

On this day, in 1858 the state of Minnesota was admitted into the Union. It was from Minnesota that we got the stapler, water skis and roller blades, Scotch tape, Bisquick, Bob Dylan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Spam.

Mmm... Spam. I do so like Spam.

Minnesota also gave us Garrison Keillor, the creator of The Writer's Almanac and much more. Can't forget Loni Anderson, also a Minnesotan. Or Jesse "The Mind" (née Jesse "The Body") Ventura. Judy Garland. Winona Ryder. Prince.

Apart from Scotch tape, Scotchguard, Post-it Notes and various and sundry other 3M products are all from Minnesota. Kitty litter was invented in Minnesota in 1947 by a guy named Edward Lowe. And where else but in the Land of 10,000 Lakes could teenager Ralph Samuelson have invented water skiing in 1922.

In Like a Lion, Out Like A Lamb

	XOXO

On June 27, 2007, I will die inside just a little. On that black day, Tony Blair will step down as Prime Minister of the UK.

I've had a crush on Tony Blair from the beginning. He's smart and I'll even say cute. Then he got even hotter when I began associating him with Bill Clinton, who I would vote for in an instant if he could run for president again. But that's not what I mean by "crush."

People alternately make fun of me or express horror that I have an autographed photo of him on a bookshelf at home. Yeah, he's not the man who was elected in 1997. He was Bushwhacked and hijacked and dragged into compliance with America, into a war his people will not forgive him for, and I hate that. He stands by his decisions, says he still thinks he did the "right thing," but he acknowledges he may have fallen short of expectations and trusts his people to judge his performance.

The "right thing" may well have been to side with the States. Maybe he'd be equally reviled if he had not stood with our vindictive president, weakening the UK in the process. It was an untenable position for any British PM, and I think he heard the air leaking out of his own credibility the moment Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on that aircraft carrier off the coast of Florida.

However, I still have a lot of respect for him as a politician who isn't afraid to also be an intellectual. I can't imagine most American congressmen going up against a British MP in a debate. American politicians don't even debate anymore. They cram as many talking points into 30 seconds as they can, whether or not it actually addresses or counters their opponents' points. And, shame on us, we don't call them out on it. We accept it. But these are the people we have to choose from, so one of them wins and is rewarded for bad behavior and intellectual laziness.

One of the questions at the first Republican "debate" last week was, "What is the one thing you hate the most about America?" I think it was Mitt Romney who paused for a long while and said something like, "I'm at a loss. I love America," and then went on and on about rolling hills and streams and the hard-working and innovative American people, bla bla bla...

Too bad so many of those hard-working American people can't afford to keep themselves healthy — to enjoy the mountains and the streams, and to continue being hard-working and innovative. Our ridiculously lopsided and unfair health care system is one of the things I like least about America, but not one of the candidates would dare say something so substantive or meaningful.

But I don't have a bratty constituency to placate, and I don't have special interest groups and lobbyists to appeal to, so I can say those things. I don't have to promise to fix America's problems even as I paradoxically pretend that America is so great that it has no problems.

Tony Blair has also been accused of being a master of spin. He has been accused of governing like a center-of-attention, American-style president instead of a British prime minister. But I'd trust him before I'd trust many American politicians to carry out good policy. He can function simultaneously and seamlessly as a leader globally, nationally and locally; he can work with or against another president, he can defend Labour policies in his own Parliament, and he can speak to any issue in his home constituency of Sedgefield.

I think he lost more sleep than I did the night of November 7, 2000. And imagine his dismay on the night of November 2, 2004, at the prospect of getting back into the sandbox with us! (Myself, I had a "Tony Blair for President" bumper sticker on my car that year.)

Like most politicians, American or British, I am sure, he started out as an idealist and was driven to realism, even perhaps cynicism, by the forces of the world. I still believe that he has something salvageable of that old pre-Iraq Tony. He can return to idealism after leaving 10 Downing Street. He can run off with Bill Clinton and marry him. (A guy can dream.)

There will be talk ad nauseam of his legacy now. Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, of course. (Great Britain doesn't exactly have a great record when it comes to Iraq, by the way.) He weakened the House of Commons. He was a hero in Northern Ireland. He has admirably managed the transition of devolution in Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. He did nothing to reform the House of Lords. He had over-reaching domestic policies and didn't keep his promises. His foreign policy is a disaster. Economic gains made in the last decade are down to Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair. I know little about politics in general and even less about British politics specifically, but whatever your opinion of Tony Blair's performance, I think it really comes down to this: Is the UK better off now than it was 10 years ago? The general consensus from anyone except a British Conservative seems to be: "Yeah, sure. I guess so."

He may soon no longer be prime minister of the UK, but he will always be the prime minister of my heart.

Happy Night Shift Workers Day!

Believe it or not, but Wednesday (yesterday) was National Night Shift Workers Day. Working late nights can suck, but there is more to consider than the obvious problems of having a wonky schedule.

Someone dear to my heart went around the city Tuesday night to talk to people working the third shift and produced an awesome video story for ASAP, The Associated Press' service of innovative and original multimedia stories: Night workers get their day

Ironic, I think, that this national day of commemoration could not be observed by the folks for whom it was intended. They were all sleeping.

Crazy Guy on Henry Street

There's a crazy guy I used to see every evening when I walked down Henry Street on the way to the East Broadway F train stop after work.

He's always stationed outside a particular tenement building — if it's not too cold, if it's not raining — fussing around in a storage shed right out front. It took me some time to figure out that he lives there. The building, that is, not the shed — though at one point, I did think maybe he lived in the shed. At first I thought he was a homeless guy who just sort of camped out there. I think he's the building's super.

I wonder what he does with himself all day. He seems to be outside from morning to night, just sort of waiting, sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, maybe talking to someone, maybe just standing there silent and still. Sometimes he lightly sweeps the sidewalk. Sometimes he's not there at all.

He's one of those people you see every day. They are part of your routine. They're like landmarks. You can measure your commute by them. (OK, I'm at the crazy guy in the shed, so I've got about four minutes before I hit the front door at work. Enough time to get a bacon, egg and cheese from the deli?) Some of these people you greet. Some of them you don't greet. Either way, you recognize each other. You have to. It's every day.

This guy, I decided, I would not greet.

I'd see him from about a block and a half away. Eventually, because I'd be looking looking forward, I'd see him look up at me. I'd look down immediately. I'd usually have my iPod on, so there was no reason to speak; I couldn't hear him anyway. Just maintain the pace, don't run away, but don't look up — and don't speak.

I'd pass him, and that would be it.

It felt ridiculous to make eye contact with a person but remain silent and expressionless. I should just say hi to him one of these times, I thought. Just some non-committal gesture, like any neighbor. But what then? New York is rife with people for whom a simple nod of the head is an invitation to a conversation, a rant or an opportunity to ask for money.

I could feel him looking at me as I passed. He wasn't longing for me to look at him, but rather, it seemed he was incredulous that I so studiously avoided looking at him. I could see him out of the corner of my eye aggressively watching me, his head turning slowly to follow me as I passed him. It was creepy and scary and totally justified.

Then I started avoiding eye contact altogether, hoping to discourage him. I'd time my pace with other people on the sidewalk so there would be someone between him and me just as I passed him. Usually he'd be distracted, talking in an excited, raspy voice to someone, always male: a teenager, someone his 20s, someone in his 50s. What could these people have to talk to him about? I assumed they were residents, too. Were these actual conversations, or was he just the annoying weird guy taking advantage of their lag time or their smoke break? He must be lonely.

One day, with no pedestrians between me and him, and no iPod to shield me, I decided I would say hi. No big deal, right? Smile and nod and continue. So, I tried it. We made eye contact from a ways back, and I looked away. As I approached him, I looked up again and met his stare. Maintaining my gait, keeping my hands in my pockets, I nodded and grunted, "Eh," with a submissive little smile. He cocked his head to one side and, as I passed, he broke into an impassioned, incoherent rant. I seriously do not know what he said, but it was loud and it was angry and it lasted for at least a block.

A-ha! See? This is what I was trying to avoid. That'll learn ya, I thought.

I convinced myself that he was yelling at me for being rude or stuck up or something, but for all I know he was just telling me about something he'd seen earlier that day.

So, I changed my route. I'd walk around the other side of the block to avoid him. (The unobstructed sun on Henry Street hurts my eyes, anyway, this time of year. And it's a more direct route to the subway.) But sometimes I'd forget, and I'd find myself on course with the old man.

I tried it again. And this time, instead of lambasting me, he simply nodded back. But with a different expression that, to my mind, said Yes. Thank you. Thanks for looking at me. See? It's not so hard now, is it?

I walked back around the the other side of the block the next day.

Guerilla Catholicism

Sometimes religion comes at you from the unlikeliest of places. We are accustomed to the subway preachers and the greeting card sermons of certain American heads of state and stumping political candidates. I see South Americans in my neighborhood cross themselves whenever we pass St. Joan of Arc on the bus. However, there are some places you just don't expect to find it.

For example, the other day, my husband was paying for an Ambien prescription and was leaving the counter when the pharmacist asked him, "Are you Catholic?" Apparently she was tipped off by his last name.

Yes, he said, he was raised Catholic.

"Oh," she said, "Well if you pray, you might try praying to the patron saint of sleepers."

It was a sweet gesture, to be sure, meant in all earnestness and out of a sense of neighborliness, but I thought it a bit odd and maybe even ironic. I don't consider it a resounding endorsement of the drugs she is dispensing when a pharmacist suggests dosages of prayer as treatment. I can imagine, in a generic way, that prayer and meditation might help bring the body to a calmed, centered state, better able to sleep than the stressed-out, jittery creatures we have become. But from the medical profession it sounds kinda like: Give it up, buddy. Better start saying your prayers.

It was a saint he had not heard of. (There are so many of them.) After a little bit of research, all I could find was the legend of St. Dymphna. Her name is occasionally invoked, apparently, in matters of sleep disorder.

Hers is another one of those heartwarming tales of human misery so popular among we Catholics. Family values stuff. Her mother dies, and her father is unable to remarry to his satisfaction. He takes a fancy to her, she being the next best thing genetically, and tries to rape her. When she refuses him and fights back, he kills her in a rage.

I guess what we learn from these stories is that it could always be worse. That must be where we derive the comfort of prayer. I can't sleep, but it's not like my dad is trying to do me. So ... who am I to complain? Let's just see what's on TV.