The PTA Ladies

They called them the PTA ladies.

They weren't actually in the PTA. There wasn't, actually, a PTA to belong to. It was a PTC or something like that in their kids' school. But, they were 40-ish and had deadlines to meet to pick up kids, so to the firemen to whom they brought baked good and lunches for a year after 9-11, they were PTA ladies.

The firehouse on Duane Street in Tribeca was the closest to the site still open. Engine 7, the Magnificent 7, Lucky 7.

Its big bays lead into a spacious kitchen and behind that are two rooms with tattered couches, a big table and a television near one wall. Up metal stairs, the firefighters sleep between shifts.

Proximity and size of the old Engine House made Engine 7 a gathering place in the sad days after.


Two female cops selling t-shirts for a fundraiser stand near one of the dusty memorials that appeared sporadically on the gritty sidewalks. Fire marshals walked over at lunchtime from the impromptu morgue set up at City Hall. Out-of-town firemen would stop in looking for a meal and a shower and some sleep after driving all night to see if they could help. Or to attend a funeral.


A Japanese TV crew, led by a slender girl carrying a mic asked awkward questions through a nervous interpreter.


And, the "PTA ladies" brought lasagna and good bread and homemade brownies and motherly smiles.


The leader of the group was Dawn Nordstrom who jumped in her Ford truck a few days after the planes hit with her daughter Kim and drove to Lower Manhattan because there had to be something they could do. They found their mission on Duane Street.


Country people bring food when someone dies. 


Dawn made phone calls and her friends made phone calls and announcements in church and soccer coaches and costume designers and hair dressers jumped in their station wagons and vans and compact cars with someone riding shotgun to make sure nothing spilled and often with babies in the car seat in back.


Fueled by Dunkin Donuts's coffee -- these were not Starbucks suburbanites -- they drove down Route 80 and cut over to whichever tunnel was moving less slowly on the particular day, entertaining toddlers with Sesame Street tapes as state troopers pulled boxes our of panel trucks and German Shepherds smiffed the shoes of unhappy drivers.


Once in The City, it wasn't ever clear which avenue to take into the gridless labyrinth that is un-numbered Manhattan. Streets were closed haphazardly to accommodate the search, and , later, the clean-up. Cops from precincts in The Bronx or Queens pointed randomly down one-way streets and shrugged, accepting brownies and smiling sheepishly.


Squeezing around delivery vans and edging past bicycle messengers, the PTA ladies navigated the blocks below Canal, still smoking and choked with a smell of charred sheetrock and concrete. The smell of death. A smell they would never forget.


The firemen sneaked them into semi-legal parking psaces and greeted their new favorite aunts with hugs and smiles. With not much to smile about, they cheered as Dawn's 1-year-old, Tucker, climbed onto the engines. Tucker would celebrate his 2nd birthday, Sept. 10, 2002, at the firehouse.


In the kitchen, the "ladies" turned the big ovens to warm, spread out plates and tossed salads. One day, a  serious fire marshal remembered he and his colleagues were supposed to be at the heliport to greet the Vice President. But, there were two Italian ladies in the kitchen with vegetarian lasagna. Dick Cheney or veggie lasagna? No contest.

Leaving in the afternoon, the PTA ladies noticed an eerie streak of sunlight streaming unfettered up Chambers Street. 


Finally, as things moved back to something resembling normal, the trips to the city waned and the firemen began working out harder to burn off the pounds provided by pasta and baked goods.  


But they wouldn't forget their benefactors who would never forget their boys at the firehouse on Duane Street.

 

Four Dead in Ohio

No matter what the context is, when I hear the name "Ohio," my first thought is Kent State.

I have a friend who went to Kent State many years after May 4, 1970 and part of me can't figure out why. Maybe by the 1980s the impact was different, but to me Kent State will always be, well, Kent State.

It was the defining "where were you" moment of my generation.

So, the name of a state with two perfectly respectable baseball teams, the hometown of Corporal Klinger from M.A.S.H., the setting of Glee and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is never just "Ohio." It's always "four dead in Ohio."

It was the moment the war, which was never far away, came home.

The Death of PC

A friend of mine was trying to describe the lunch ladies at her kids' school and couldn't find the proper adjective that met the current politically correct criteria.

That was because there were no PC adjectives.

The lunch ladies in question had passed a size point at which kind words like "heavy" or "chubby" or "plus-sized" no longer had any meaning. My friend settled on gargantuan, although it calls to mind the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Her other choices were Moby Dick, Shamu, massive, gi-normous, hu-mongoid. . .

Unfortunately, it is also an un-PC choice to use the most truthful description: unhealthy. As in "you are increasing everyone's health insurance premiums." Or, more to the point considering these were the ladies serving lunch to elementary school students: "Look at the example you're setting."

The Death of "Died"

Nobody died anymore.

Oh, they stop breathing. Their hearts stop. Their brains cease to function. But they don't die. They "pass away."

"Pass away" was once the preferred euphemism of aging morticians with round wire-framed glasses and gray suits. At some point, people started turning into smarmy insipid morticians.

It doesn't hurt less to hear "passed away" or "passed."

The grim fact is that grief and sadness aren't assuaged by euphemism. Often enough, euphemism belittles that grief.

We are supposed to be sad when someone we love dies. We are supposed to grieve. It's ok. It's ok to talk about it, too. It's ok to grieve in your own way. And, it's ok to call it what it is.

Integrity

Lawrence Pitts is my hero.

He writes columns about the necessary integrity of journalists. He's not shy about pointing out that bloggers, post-ers, tweeters (twits) and other random people who see themselves as journalists are just random people who erroneously see themselves as journalists.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Journalism is a craft more than a profession. It may even be a calling. It's not a hobby. It's not something you do in your spare time. And it's not something you do without even a nod to ethics.

Thou shalt not ambush. Thou shalt not lie. Thous shalt not impersonate someone. These are basic rules no real journalist would ever think of violating. The denizens of the blogosphere don't seem to think at all.

Students?

So the City University of New York and its Community College are inundated with students who need remedial help.

NYC isn't alone in this problem. A shocking (at least to those of us who learned something in high school) number of young people who graduate high school don't seem to have high school skills. Some of them barely have elementary school skills.

I'm sure there are myriad culprits, including social promotion, overcrowded classes, language barriers, lack of motivation, learning disabilities. . .But the point is not everyone SHOULD go to college. Who's telling these kids they should be in college.

Why are they even walking through the door.

In high school, there used to be college prep, business and general courses. Kids who weren't going to college took classes that would help them get jobs. Granted there are fewer jobs now that don't require a college education, but still, there are tech schools and apprenticeships and if a kid can't make it in college he or she should take advantage of those. If even half of the kids who don't qualify for college don't actually go, that would save the schools enormous aggravation and lots of money.

As for them not being ready in the first place, that's fodder for another blog.

Profiling

I discovered something fascinating about Facebook.

No, I'm not going to talk about the privacy (or lack thereof) thing, or how Mark Zuckerberg plans on taking over the world -- and probably will.

I'm talking about the "edit profile" pages where it asks for your interests, which is fine, but it keeps asking who you enjoy doing things with -- like I only enjoy playing tennis with one person or horseback riding on one horse??

It even asks who you like to read with. Really? Sure, with a cat on my lap, but you don't exactly read WITH someone. I guess Facebook's creators think if you are on Facebook it's because you just can't stand to be alone.