Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Life in New York: Snarky Letter to New York City Transit

NOTE:  This is a real letter that I actually wrote and mailed to the New York City MTA.  Yes, I had the nerve to do this!

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Rear End of Standing New York Subway Rider Facing Sitting
Passenger Taking This Picture
May 21, 2016

MTA New York City Transit
(NAME OF PERSON)
President
2 Broadway
New York, NY 10004

Dear (NAME OF PERSON):

First, let me say that I have been riding the New York City subways for many years, and I usually manage to get from one place to another without anything more than the usual aggravations, such as no available seats, squealy brakes and baby carriages in the doorways.

This afternoon was another story.  Trying to get around the city on a weekend can be an adventure.  My trip this afternoon was a prime example.  Unfortunately, this was one transportation adventure that I would have preferred not to have on a Saturday afternoon or any other time.

Under ordinary circumstances, a trip from the AMC Loews theater on 68th Street to my home in The Bronx involves nothing more than getting on an IRT No. 1 train and staying on it until I get to 231st Street.  This afternoon, the last stop on that train was 137th Street, and we all had to get off and wait for a shuttle bus.

When the shuttle buses came – two of them, one right after another – I found out that they only went as far as 168th Street.  I asked one of the TA employees who were there how to get to 231st Street, and was told that I would have to get off the bus at 168th Street, take an A train to 207th Street, then take another bus the rest of the way.

If you have been following this, you realize that this meant taking two (2) trains and two (2) really slow buses for a trip that should only be a short jaunt on the IRT No. 1.

The thought of going through all that just to take what should be an easy trip made this senior citizen go, “ACK!”  I decided, instead, to take the shuttle bus to 168th Street, then take an Uber car home from there.  I have attached the receipt that Uber emailed to me.  Taking the Uber increased the cost of my trip by $17.25 plus the tip I gave to the driver.  (Insert angry emoticon here.)

I realize that it is necessary to do repair work on our train tracks and in the stations, and that it is better to do as much of that as possible on weekends, to avoid causing problems for people who ride the trains to work.  I also realize that this means occasional disruptions in weekend service.

Today’s situation, however, was ridiculous.

I suggest that the next time the TA has to do extensive track work on the IRT No. 1 on a weekend, that you at least provide shuttle bus service all the way to the Van Cortlandt Park stop at 242nd Street, which is the last stop on the No. 1 train.  That is not ideal, but it’s better than having to take 2 trains and 2 buses to get from Lincoln Center to The Bronx.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Kathy Minicozzi


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

I Am NOT a Senior; I Am Merely Eligible for Senior Discounts!

For years, I have lived in a state of self-induced denial, in which I have refused to believe I was getting older.  Yes, there was that pesky arthritis in my knees.  My balance wasn’t great.  My hair was turning into what my hairdresser kept insisting was a fabulous shade of gray.  My hearing was gradually getting worse.  I took so much medicine every day that I felt like a walking pharmacy.  So what?  I still felt like a 20-year-old inside, and everyone was saying that 60 was the new 40, which made me, at most, middle-aged.  I could deal with being middle-aged.

For years, I resisted joining my local senior center.  My Italian grandmother, who lived into her 90s, used to go to her senior center a lot.  I loved my grandmother very much, but the idea that I, myself, might profit from a senior center never entered my brain.  I saw them as places for white-haired 90 year-olds.  I had a way to go yet before reaching THAT milestone.

No, this isn't me.  She looks like she's enjoying herself, though.

This year I turned 70.  To most people, that means I am now old.  To me, it just means I have hit the new 50, which is still smack into middle age.  I refuse to leave middle age until I am good and ready, or until I die of old age, whichever comes first.

At 65, I became eligible for senior discounts.  This is a holdover from the days when almost everyone retired at 65.  Most people still retire by their late 60s, but more and more people are still working full-time.  I was working full-time up until a few months ago, and the only reason I am not STILL working full-time is because I was laid off.  I turned 70 a few months ago, so maybe it’s about time.  I still want to work, but at something I actually like to do.  That’s a whole other story for another essay.

If I meet someone like this at the senior center,
I will be content.
My book Opera for People Who Don’t Like It was published back in October, and I thought it would be great to give a reading/book signing at one of the local senior centers.  In the process of talking about this with their activities director, it occurred to me that they had some nice stuff at that center.  I found out that most of it was free of charge to members.  This included exercise classes, art and craft classes, writing workshops, lectures, first-run movies (every Wednesday), trips and really cheap lunches.  I decided that it was silly not to take advantage of these things, so I took out a membership, which also turned out to be free of charge.

I can also ride the New York City buses and subways at a considerable discount.  I don’t mind taking advantage of that, either.

So here I am, a 70 year-old middle aged woman, taking free belly dancing, yoga and meditation classes and getting caught up with some of the movies that I don’t get to see in my local AMC Loews.  (Yes, I go to movies, usually on Saturday mornings with a group of friends, all of them younger than I am.  I am becoming a real lover of action movies in IMAX 3D.  I didn’t think I would ever say that.)


I know I won’t live forever on this planet, but for the time being it’s nice to live as if I still have a whole lifetime ahead of me.

... like these two!

Sunday, May 1, 2016

The (Ir)reverent Churchgoer

Have you ever had an urge to laugh when you are supposed to be quiet, thoughtful and well-behaved?  What about those times when something that is supposed to be serious and solemn goes wrong and, even though it wasn’t funny at the time, it’s hilarious when you think about it later?

Easter Vigil Mass in France.
A great place for things to go wrong, especially for Catholics, is at church, especially during a service that only comes once a year or so.  If that service contains a procession, watch out.  Processions are flubs waiting to happen.

Anything involving large crosses, books, flowers, statues, holy water or incense usually goes without a hitch.  The priests are pros at this.  Altar servers, readers, deacons and Eucharistic ministers just have to carry whatever they are supposed to carry and go where they are told, which usually means the same direction the priests are heading in.  No problem here.

The worst procession destroyers are lit candles and choir members.

Humankind first mastered fire over 1 million years ago.  Fire has enabled us to cook, keep ourselves warm, and make gold jewelry and swords and Crêpes Suzettes and all kinds of stuff.  It also burns everything, including us.  Nobody knows when humans began to make music.  The oldest musical instruments discovered by archaeologists are about 35,000 years old.  People had to sing a cappella before then, I guess.  Approximately 10 percent of our population is tone-deaf, but you don’t have to be Pavarotti to join an amateur church choir.  If you can sing the same pitches as the person standing next to you and hit most of the notes in your voice range, you’re in.


The easiest procession for a choir to demolish is the one that comes at the end of the evening service on Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday to you Episcopalians).  This involves the choir chanting the old hymn Pange Lingua, either in Latin or in English, while processing out of the church and into a smaller church or chapel, often down a flight of stairs.  The choir is followed by the priests, deacons, readers, Eucharistic ministers, altar servers and congregation members.

Have you ever tried to walk down a flight of stairs while reading Latin words in a hymnal and singing at the same time?  If you don’t have to do it, don’t.  In addition, if your voice is the strongest one in the choir, don’t stop singing, even if you are about to tumble down the stairs and land on your face.  If you stop singing, everyone else will stop, too, even if you have warned them ahead of time not to stop singing if you do.  I know this from experience.  Being a former opera singer, I have a voice that can take the paint off the walls in every building within a two-block radius.  At age 70, I also have a hard time keeping my balance on stairwells.  Inevitably, I have to stop singing during the Holy Thursday procession downstairs.  Inevitably, the choir stops singing, too, because nobody else wants to take the lead.  When I start again, they do, too.

That should give me a sense of power, but it doesn’t.  It gives a sense of wanting to shoot all the choir members with paint balls.  You can’t do that in church, though.

See that guy second to the right who is staring at the woman?  He's the one who's tone-deaf.
Last year’s Holy Thursday procession was even more discombobulated.  As usual, I tried to lead the choir out the front door of the church and downstairs.  After I had gotten all the way down the stairs and halfway to the destination, I turned around and noticed that only one or two others had followed me.  I started wildly gesticulating and shouting for people to come.  Somebody went back upstairs, then came back down and told me that we had to go back upstairs because Father K____, the pastor, wanted us to go another way.  We went back upstairs, and there was Father K_____, gesturing and hissing in a stage whisper that we were processing UP THE AISLE instead!  We began the Pange Lingua again, walked up the aisle, turned left, then went through the SIDE door, downstairs and into the smaller basement church.  This would have been fine, except that I was walking right in front of Father K____, who wasn’t prepared for my usual hesitation on the steps and bumped into my back.

AWKWARD!

This year I stayed upstairs and the organist led the choir members in the procession.  By this time the route was established, with the organist being a younger guy who can still run up and down stairs, so everything worked.
Lit candles are rarely dangerous when confined to the people walking down the aisle.  They know to be careful.  If you set a priest on fire, however accidental it might be, you will never live it down.  Like Cain in the Bible, you will carry a mark for the rest of your life, or at least until you move out of the parish.  It gets interesting, though, during services such as the Easter Vigil Mass, where everyone in the church has a candle, and they are lit, one by one.  It’s a really cool sight, because the church is dark when this is going on.

There was a lot of excitement in our church last year, when someone in one of the pews set fire to another congregant’s hair.  Maybe there was a story there, maybe not.  Most likely, the amateur arsonist was just an absent-minded clod.  Nobody was hurt, but it put a damper on the proceedings.

Then there was the time, many years ago, when someone sitting near me during an Easter Vigil Mass dripped candle wax onto my raincoat.  I guess I should have appreciated the effort to improve my wardrobe, but I didn’t.  I was up in the choir loft with the rest of the choir, and I didn’t notice the mess until later, or it would have been a memorable Easter for the soprano section that year.


Tranquility, at last!

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