Grave Concerns
Today’s newspaper is sure to make one consider some grave options. First, there’s Hunter S. Thompson, who, before blasting himself away on Sunday, left instructions to have his cremated remains blasted from a cannon. Second, is the far more grim news that the New York City medical examiner’s office has given up identifying the remains of 1,161 victims whose bodies could not be identified or were never recovered from the World Trade Center attack.
Many families of victims have delayed holding services, awaiting discovery of all or part of their loved ones. Others have buried partial remains only to have more parts discovered later.
This post is not meant to take anything away from those families’ grief, or from their desire to mark the lives of the ones they lost. I just don’t understand the need that people feel to have a proper funeral.
If I had a spiritual bone in my body, I would describe myself as a secular humanist, but I don’t, so I’d rather be defined by my lack of beliefs and simply call myself an atheist. As such, I just don’t feel any sense of proprietorship over my body once I’m dead. I don’t feel a need for a proper burial, and I don’t really understand why anybody else would feel the need either.
Cemeteries are pretty. I like to walk around Maple Grove Cemetery, with its well-kept lawns, shady trees, curious tombstones and squirrels, ducks and turtles. Don’t call me morbid. As I’m fond of pointing out to my friends, cemeteries were the first urban parks in the early industrial era. Civic leaders found the idea of people having picnics in cemeteries to be a little distasteful and so parks like Boston’s Public Garden and New York’s Central Park were created.
Most cemeteries aren’t even as pretty as Maple Grove. They’re less historical, less ornate; just big lawns punctuated with concrete slabs. It just seems like a terrible use of real estate, and I don’t want any part.
Consider this my Last Will and Testament. When I die, take my organs (the liver will likely be of no use to anyone, but the lungs are clean), cremate my remains and spread my ashes over the Meadow Lake (the former “Lagoon of Nations” of the World’s Fair) in Flushing Meadows.
If anyone feels the need for a physical marker to remember me (What, I ain’t memorable enough as it is?), be creative! For example, I received a fundraising call from Queens College a few weeks ago. Donors who give at least a certain amount will be memorialized with a brick near Powdermaker Hall. Now, that’s what I consider a fitting marker. Not only would it take up very little space (which is still be utilized for a worthwhile purpose), but it would support a worthy public institution that has benefitted me and in which I truly believe. Moreover, I couldn’t think of better company than the Freedom Ride martyrs Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner.
Shit In, Shit Out
Harvard President Lawrence Summers is sunk. He’s catching a lot of hell from his faculty and students over some stupid remarks that he made, by way of explaining Harvard’s gender imbalance in the sciences, that suggested that women aren’t as good as men at math and science. The controversy hasn’t let up, and as Summer’s character has been debated in the national press have come repeated complaints of his bullying and autocratic style, and constant reminders of how he chased Cornell West away to Princeton. It’s over for Summers. I’ve seen this movie before.
In my Junior year at Queens College, we brought down our president. Allen Lee Sessoms was appointed in 1995. He was Queens College’s first black president, one of the minority administrators appointed by Giuliani and Pataki in order to dismantle the hallmarks of the CUNY system and kick out thousands of minority students.
Sessoms wanted to break Queens College away from CUNY and make the college its own university, catering to middle class students from Long Island and out of state. He wanted to build dormitories in order to attract these students. He staked his reputation on a state-of-the-art AIDS research center. And he was a vocal supporter of Guiliani’s campaign to repeal CUNY’s 150-year tradition of open admissions (which meant that high school graduates from New York City’s public schools were guaranteed admission to CUNY; if they didn’t meet academic standards, they would have to take remedial courses to catch up, but could study at the university anyway).
When the Bar Association released a study on the open admissions debate in October of 1999, it included this passage:
New York State Education Law 6201, of course, does place a limit on the mission autonomy of the constituent institutions of CUNY. We were,
therefore, somewhat surprised to hear Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms, the President of Queens College, say that Queens is really more of a SUNY college, a “regional” university, than a part of CUNY, with almost half of its undergraduate student body coming from Nassau and Suffolk Counties rather than from the City of New York. Indeed, Queens College draws more heavily from Long Island than from the four boroughs other than Queens. Whatever the merits such an institution might have, this clearly does not fit within the statutory mission of CUNY to serve the New York City urban community and to give access to those who might otherwise be denied a higher education. Dr. Sessoms, however, believes that the key to increased funding is to build a strong connection with the middle class. He said that “the only people who benefit from open admissions are poor people and poor people don’t vote.”With respect to raising standards, Dr. Sessoms was quite blunt in stating his view that excellence is largely to be measured by the achievement levels of the incoming students rather than a value added measure of raising the achievement of those less prepared at the outset: “[Expletive] in, [expletive] out. If you take in [expletive] and turnout [expletive] that is slightly more literate, you’re still left with [expletive].” He said that he was out to build Queens into a great University and the concept of “value-added” as a measure of excellence would not indicate to him that Queens is a great University. Dr. Sessoms has thus made explicit what may well be a large part of the unspoken reasoning behind the proposed Amendment, at least by some of its more vocal proponents in the political arena, i.e. , that standards and excellence can only be raised by reducing access to the urban population for whom CUNY was created and maintained.
The expletive was “shit.” He was calling us “shit.” It took a few weeks after the report’s publication for it to get circulated much on campus, but when it did, boy, was Sessoms in trouble. The teacher’s union was after him. The student groups were after him.
This is from a pamphlet that my own Young People’s Socialist League distributed:
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As the controversy raged, Sessoms sealed his fate by publicly guaranteeing that he had secured funding for his AIDS center. When the deadline for producing the money came and went, he had to admit that he was bluffing. His reputation couldn’t recover, and he announced that he would not seek re-appointment at the end of his first five-year term. Sessoms was gone by the end of the semester.
Summers, like Sessoms, is attempting to change the structure of the university he leads, seeking greater centralization of the university’s mostly-autonomous schools. This means that he came in to the university facing powerful, entrenched opposition. Such arrogance as he displayed is so unwise, it betrays a greater character flaw. Summers better start thinking of how he will finesse his exit, since it seems doubtful that he can change his ways and win back his campus. Allen Sessoms never tried to apologize for the “Shit in, shit out” controversy. He could read the writing on the wall. It was time to leave.
A Letter to the Editor, Re: Wal-Mart
The news that the UFCW had organized a Wal-Mart store in Quebec was hailed as a real breakthrough in some quarters of the labor movement. Quebec has a card-check authorization law, which means the union merely has to present union cards that represent a majority of the workers in the bargaining unit in order to be certified. This avoids the bruising, months-long anti-union campaigns that employers like Wal-Mart engage in when unions in the U.S. petition the NLRB for a union election. Quebec also has a right to a first contract under law. In the U.S., many companies “recognize” the union but never agree to a contract, which leaves the union dead in the water.
So, of course, with favorable laws like that (which, by the way, there’s nothing stopping New York or other so-called “blue states” from enacting similar laws), Quebec was recognized as a weak spot for corporations like Wal-Mart, where unions could get a foot in the door and then leverage those properties in tougher fights in other parts of the world. Predictably, Wal-Mart closed the store.
Below is a letter to the editor of Newsday.
February 11, 2005
Letters Editor
Newsday
235 Pinelawn Road
Melville, NY 11747-4250
To the Editor:
Wal-Mart’s decision to close a store in Quebec where workers had recently voted to form a union should be a cautionary tale for Queens. Wal-Mart’s claim that union demands would have made the store unprofitable is an obvious lie. The contract was to be settled by an impartial arbitrator who would never have imposed terms that would force the store out of business.
Wal-Mart’s long history of union-busting is well-documented. The company harasses, intimidates and fires workers who stand up for their rights. It breaks the law with impunity. In China, it cuts dirty deals with the government. And if all of this doesn’t work, and the workers still succeed in forming a union, Wal-Mart pulls up stakes and leaves.
Why then should citizens of Queens allow Wal-Mart to build a new store in Rego Park? After they put all of our favorite small businesses out of business, after they dump untold fortunes into lobbying against fair wage, benefits and rights bills in our City Council, and after their workers inevitably seek union representation, Wal-Mart is just going to close this store. We’ve seen this movie before. Let’s rewrite the first act and prevent Wal-Mart from ever poisoning our community.
Yours,
Shaun Richman
Trainspotting
I don’t know when or how I became a trainspotter. I just find myself walking through the older neighborhood to my south, Richmond Hill, to clear my head and wait for the odd train to pass by.
Richmond Hill was established in the late-19th century to be “country homes” for New York commuters. Eventually, the rest of the city grew out around the neighborhood, which simply became a part of New York City, although a distinctive part. The neighborhood has grand architecture, including its own Carnegie Library, a landmark RKO movie palace and lots of faded glory Victorian mansions. In the heart of the neighborhood is a dead train station.
The LIRR’s Montauk train line snakes through the neighborhood. It’s an overpass at Lefferts Blvd. that ducks under the elevated J train. It’s a dead end of many residential blocks. It’s two lonely non-electrified tracks that wind through a valley in Forest Park.
The train line’s western terminus is Hunter Point Avenue in Long Island City, where commuters ride ferries to Wall Street or Midtown. It’s not the most convenient commute. When the MTA closed the Richmond Hill station in 1998, only seven commuters rode it daily. Still, those seven people must have found it to be a quicker way to get to work than the Kew Gardens station eight blocks to the north, which zips passengers to Penn Station in under 20 minutes. Or else they just found it to be a more scenic route.
The official justification for the closing was that the behemoth double decker diesel trains that the MTA introduced that year were too high for the station’s antique platforms. The LIRR scaled back service on the line to just four trains every week day; two head towards Hunters Point Avenue in the morning rush, and two head back to Montauk in the pm.
The rarity of these trains is what makes them so interesting. Watching the train go by at a quarter after five is like being comforted by some ancient ritual. You don’t really know who rides that train or why, but you know that it will glide by again tomorrow at the same time. Sometimes I forget what time it is and I’m delighted to watch the train pass below me in the park, a modern marvel of a train chugging along on tracks that use centuries-old technology, zipping through a forest that’s been here longer than humanity.
A lot of people in the community want the whole train line shut down. They feel it’s too exposed, too dangerous for their kids. It is curious that the MTA would keep a train line in functional operation for just four commuter trains a day. Some people think they keep it running for the handful of factories and warehouses that still use the tracks to ship via freight. (I saw one such freight train today, and it was a special treat, coming, as it did, with no announced schedule.) Other people think they keep it around “just in case.”
Train infrastructure is expensive and difficult to set up; preservation of what’s already been set up just seems wise. Indeed, one of the many projects that the MTA has on its wish list is a new main line for the LIRR. Most trains that go to Penn Station pass through the same congested section of track in New York City (you know, the station stops that make Long Islanders grumble about slowing their commute: “…making stops at Woodside, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Jamaica; change at Jamaica for the train to…”). The congestion will just get worse when the LIRR finally begins service to the east side’s Grand Central Station.
That being the case, the old Montauk line makes a likely candidate for a new main line. One of the most expensive elements of creating a new train line is the cost of right of way, but here in the Montauk line the LIRR has miles and miles of scenic right of way, owned in full.
If modernized, electrified and expanded, the train tracks will lose some of their charm and I doubt I would remain a trainspotter for trains that zip through every 15 minutes. But faded glory is only interesting for imagining what was. I’d rather see rejuvenation through a return to full-service commuter transportation and new affordable housing and commercial development.