More English and Lots of MTA
Impacted: best used in the expression "impacted molar." Not as attractive when used in transitive sense, e.g., "How have the MTA 'We Live In A Scary, Scary World' announcements been impacting you and your ride?"
The MTA. Remember how encompassable its problems used to be? In the 1970s, you had to watch for leaning against fresh graffiti and had to endure forty-minute rides with frequent breakdowns and no air-conditioning. In the 1980s, you simply had to figure out how to squeeze into seats that were almost half the size of the old ones. (You also had to stand next to people who supported Reagan.) In the 1990s, there was just the old standby of decoding the public-address announcements and marveling how even the turn of the century hadn't yielded wheelchair access throughout the system. And every decade, there was the dread emergency cord non-emergency (spilled coffee, etc.)
Now we are told we're in the era of the suspicious package. It's just too bad the Bush team members don't come individually wrapped in brown paper.
Some days I flash back to the Giuliani days when MTA employees would stand on the platform at Fulton-Broadway and use a megaphone to inform grown people that they shouldn't lean too near the platform edge.
I knew those reminders would stop at some point. The problem with the See-Something-Say-Something approach is that it's unclear just how and when these thoroughly irritating announcements will end. Now they're also appearing in print, on the sides of phone booths. I dunno: Any time is terrorism time, isn't it? Historically speaking.
It would be nice to have the harried commute back, without the ominous announcements.
On a related note, I think it's too bad the former WTC site is called Ground Zero. Debatably, that phrase has almost singlehandedly recolonized our city as a military zone. (The arrival of McDonald's in the early 1970s was a different kind of recolonization.) Factor in the international Walk/Don't Walk signs and you've got a place that has become a new kind of old American city. Whether it's still New York any more is another matter. I suppose it's a new New York but you know: the old one had its good points. Real telephone booths, for one thing.
The MTA. Remember how encompassable its problems used to be? In the 1970s, you had to watch for leaning against fresh graffiti and had to endure forty-minute rides with frequent breakdowns and no air-conditioning. In the 1980s, you simply had to figure out how to squeeze into seats that were almost half the size of the old ones. (You also had to stand next to people who supported Reagan.) In the 1990s, there was just the old standby of decoding the public-address announcements and marveling how even the turn of the century hadn't yielded wheelchair access throughout the system. And every decade, there was the dread emergency cord non-emergency (spilled coffee, etc.)
Now we are told we're in the era of the suspicious package. It's just too bad the Bush team members don't come individually wrapped in brown paper.
Some days I flash back to the Giuliani days when MTA employees would stand on the platform at Fulton-Broadway and use a megaphone to inform grown people that they shouldn't lean too near the platform edge.
I knew those reminders would stop at some point. The problem with the See-Something-Say-Something approach is that it's unclear just how and when these thoroughly irritating announcements will end. Now they're also appearing in print, on the sides of phone booths. I dunno: Any time is terrorism time, isn't it? Historically speaking.
It would be nice to have the harried commute back, without the ominous announcements.
On a related note, I think it's too bad the former WTC site is called Ground Zero. Debatably, that phrase has almost singlehandedly recolonized our city as a military zone. (The arrival of McDonald's in the early 1970s was a different kind of recolonization.) Factor in the international Walk/Don't Walk signs and you've got a place that has become a new kind of old American city. Whether it's still New York any more is another matter. I suppose it's a new New York but you know: the old one had its good points. Real telephone booths, for one thing.
posted by Elizabeth Manus at 7:35 PM
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