The public advocate calls on the administration to find alternate solutions for struggling schools

By Public Advocate Bill de Blasio

If something is broken – fix it. Sadly, Mayor Bloomberg adheres to a different philosophy where our city’s education system is concerned. The Administration’s default response to struggling schools has been to close them, without first investing enough time and resources into turning them around. And instead of laying out a thoughtful plan for multiple schools to share facilities in the same building when they “co-locate,” the Administration turns a cold shoulder to community input. Clearly, we need a new approach for our city’s one million students.

There is a time and place to close a troubled school. But that should not be treated as an end goal in itself, nor an accomplishment to boast about. When all other options are exhausted, it should be the last resort. In 2011, the Department of Education (DOE) proposed for Canarsie’s P.S. 114 to be phased out. Yet the unwavering voices of students, parents and teachers of P.S. 114 were eventually heard, and the DOE resolved to work on lifting the school back up. Collaborating with community members like this – and really listening – should serve as a prerequisite for potential school closings. Too many of the schools doomed for closure have not been given the tools to improve, or the time to apply them.

Students at low-performing schools need the most support. But the Administration constantly misses the opportunity to pinpoint troubled schools, invest in them and turn them around. Too often, the Administration opts for the easier route, which is ultimately school closure. DOE’s policies have actually amplified the core problems that contribute to chronic poor performance. Adding more high-need students to poorly resourced and already underperforming schools is just one example. The end result? Performance results for our highest-need students have hardly budged, and educational disparity continues to besiege our city.

We see the same heavy-handedness in the way the City often shoehorns charter schools into existing public schools, without a well-considered strategy for both institutions to thrive. Co-location can be – and has been – successful in this city. Students at four high schools in the Brandeis Educational Complex, on the Upper West Side, learned beautifully side-by-side – until the DOE squeezed a charter elementary school into the building, despite staunch resistance from the school community. Successful sharing of space and resources can only be carried out through meticulous planning and input from all key stakeholders – students, parents, teachers, administrators, community activists and education advocates. Instead, the DOE has alienated school communities by neglecting their input and depriving them of a venue for meaningful engagement on educational policy.

As a public school parent, I know the difference of being involved in your children’s education can make in their academic success and self-confidence. That’s personal to me, and that priority is reflected in the recommendations my office put forth in 2010 to modify Educational Impact Statements and boost parental engagement. But the Administration failed to take our recommendations on community involvement and use of physical space seriously, resulting in a co-location process that is consistently divisive and poorly attuned to the physical demands of mutually-sited school communities.

That’s why, following Mayor Bloomberg’s latest announcement on school closures, I called on the Administration to freeze school closures and co-locations for the rest of the Mayor’s term. Until we can offer a comprehensive, community-driven plan for co-locations and school turnaround, I urge you to join me in pressuring the mayor to put a one-year moratorium on these divisive tactics. After years of disruption instead of progress, inequity instead of opportunity, haste instead of prudence. Enough is enough.

By Kristine Keller

It started out like any other weekend. The downtown streets were chockablock with hipsters sporting ironic T-shirts and enduring long waits for a dinner table at Rubirosa. The pulse of downtown throbbed so loudly I could hear it from my fifth-floor walk-up. And then, a flat line. An abrupt horizontal strip on the city’s electrocardiogram. A slow and steady storm by the sweetly deceiving name of Sandy would turn lower Manhattan’s lights black, snatching the city’s voice and unleashing a string of catastrophic events in its wake. Lower Manhattan’s streets looked like a post-apocalyptic universe where the only sounds to be heard were the hushed whispers of trees rustling and the light footsteps of confused residents searching for a candle-lit bodega serving hot coffee.

Though it’s easy to forget a natural disaster’s impact once the shards of broken glass are swept away and refueled taxis frenetically beep their way down Houston again, the stressful aftermath of such an event can leave many feeling beaten and broken. I was young when Hurricane Andrew tore my Miami home away from every side like a film set dismantling after the director calls “cut!” But I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when we returned after a safe evacuation only to find our beloved home and possessions destroyed. I’ll always remember her rivulets of tears that formed after finding the water-stained pages of her father’s first published psychology manuscript ripped into shreds. It’s stories like these that have sparked attention from researchers following the stress of a natural disaster. In recent years, research has been devoted to cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a direct result of natural disasters. For those in the hard-hit Northeast and mid-Atlantic, PTSD may be a harrowing consequence.

Nearly two thirds of Americans will experience trauma in their lifespan, and following a natural disaster, PTSD is the most common mental psychopathology experienced. The symptoms of PTSD, as recognized by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), begin anywhere from right after the traumatic event to months or sometimes years later. For storm victims, symptoms of PTSD might include re-experiencing the traumatic event in the form of memories, dreams or fantasies so vivid, patients might think they are actually reliving the traumatic incident. Those affected might also eschew activities that remind them of the tragedy. This could mean avoiding restaurants visited the night before the storm and abstaining from other activities once deemed pleasurable. Feeling detached, hyper-aroused or unable to concentrate are also salient symptoms of disaster PTSD. Anyone exhibiting PTSD symptoms for longer than one month should visit a trained medical clinician for a fully formed treatment plan.

Psychologists emphasize that those who believe they are capable of overcoming severe stress are more inclined to recover than those who believe they exercise zero control over life’s negative events. Luckily several organizations are working diligently to rebuild storm-torn communities. It will take time to recover, but New Yorkers are known for strength, grit and resilience, and it’s this power that we must be sure to constantly restore.

Kristine Keller received her master’s in psychology from New York University. She currently works at Vanity Fair.

“Obama won, but he’s got no mandate,” said Charles Krauthammer. That may be the dumbest thing I’ve seen all day. And I read Trump’s tweets.

— Touré (@Toure) November 7, 2012

Some pointed out that winning both the electoral and popular vote does, in fact, signal a mandate.

Since Obama won almost all the swing states, and we somehow elected them our deciders, shouldn’t that be considered a mandate?

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) November 7, 2012

And some rightfully called attention to the fact that the more times you say “mandate” out loud, the less sure you are of the definition.

Everyone is wondering if Obama got a mandate. If he wants one, he should just ask Biden to a movie or something.

— Justin Robinson (@JustinSRobinson) November 7, 2012

Which brings us to the question, what is a mandate, and does Obama have one? I prefer not to answer that question, because I’m really tired of the word mandate. Instead, let’s just all agree that despite whatever grumblings Republicans will put forth in the next days/weeks/months, Obama won the election, and shockingly, that’s the only thing he needs in order to, you know, be the president. (I won’t even go into all the Democratic, progressive candidates who won their Senate races, or the marriage equality measures that passed in three states, or the legalization of marijuana, or the fact that voters have affirmed that “legitimate rape” is not a thing.)

If we’re going to get all into-the-weeds about it, the last true mandate given to a president, it could be argued, was to President Reagan over Walter Mondale in 1984, when the incumbent Republican beat his challenger with 58.8 percent of the popular vote. Bush the First won his election with 53.4 percent of the popular vote, then Clinton won with 43 percent and then again with 49.2 percent. And THEN, Gore won the popular vote with 48.4 percent, and Bush STILL got to be president with only 47.9 (one might call that a nega-mandate). He nudged the needle a bit to win 50.7 percent to Kerry’s 48.3 percent in 2004, which inspired many a Republican pundit to declare that Bush had scored a mandate at the time. Obama won his first election with 52.9 percent, and according to Nate Silver, Chief Numerical Witch of the U.S.A., has received 50.8 percent of the popular vote, to Mitt Romney’s 48.3, in yesterday’s election.

Numbers! Do they make a mandate? I don’t know! The fact is, Obama won re-election and will now proceed to carry out his agenda. You can like that or not like it, but arguing about a mandate doesn’t change that fact. Now can we please stop talking about it and let the man go back to leading the country? If he needs it, he can totally have my mandate, if I ever find it under this mess of papers on my desk.

Bad News Smiles
To the Editor:
Like Bette Dewing (“Olympian Principles for Everyday Life,” Aug. 2), I don’t buy smiling when hearts are breaking—including when you’re breaking them. If you don’t want to pick a fight, don’t deliver bad news with a smile. You might think you’re softening the blow, but the hearer might see your smile as meaning “I’m pleased to be displeasing you.”
—Alan R. Brown

Big Business Quality
To the Editor:
Regarding the column “Small Business Is Best, Except When It’s Not” (June 28), I have some comments.
This article is unfair to small businesses. Every problem Mr. Moore describes has happened to me in chain stores/large businesses as well as to many people that I know.
Duane Reade has more issues to complain about as far as customer service and quality. Barnes & Noble’s staff is known for a lack of knowledge about books.
Your paper needs to balance this article with the other side of the story.
—Name Withheld

The test run spanning June and July on the service road at Second Avenue between East 33rd and 30th streets was a positive addition to the neigborhood where I have lived since 1985.

People in this area are starved for a nice place to sit in open air that is not private property. The trees offered cool shade, and everyone was polite and largely well-meaning as they enjoyed this lovely place for two summer months. The Doe Fund kept the area spotlessly clean and pleasant. I enjoyed seeing them come into Starbucks each morning and evening after their work duties; they were very polite and courteous to all.

As you know, this area fronts the Kips Bay Towers complex, and I understand there was considerable resistance from some of the real estate professionals who deal in those properties, but in fact, I should think that this lovely pedestrian plaza compliments any potential financial value over which these people might be concerned.

I recall one Kips Bay Towers resident was quoted in Our Town as saying, “We’re against it! Who will sit there but homeless people. It’s very sad.” With lovely fresh breezes coming off the ocean via the East River and the lovely shade trees, this is the best-kept summer secret!

Please bring it back immediately—not a year from now or never.

—Virginia Hooper

“Hey, you have a really great apartment!” would ordinarily be a very nice thing to hear. But when this particular sentence is uttered by a shirtless stranger leaning out of a window directly across the airshaft from your apartment, that is a whole other thing.

This is what happened to me one day when I was washing my kitchen window; I had the window pane swiveled all the way inward and the screen all the way up, and consequently I was very visible. “You sure work late,” the man added, calling out across the 20 feet that separated our buildings and smiling in a discomfiting manner. “You must be the hardest-working woman in the city.”  It took me a second to realize the implication—that he had been watching me.  A lot. (I do tend to write rather late, but ew.)

However, besides the obvious Peeping Tom “ick” factor, there was another basic transgression involved here. This man had broken the unwritten law most New Yorkers live by; he had destroyed the illusion of privacy that is necessary for our peace of mind.

Since we are almost always surrounded by people, we erect make-believe walls and pretend we are not seeing and hearing all that we do. This is a social contract we have all more or less agreed to. For instance, it is certainly easy to see what the person sitting next to you on the subway is reading, but for the most part you do not comment on it, lest you break into the little “transit cocoon” he has created. People all around us are having personal conversations we pretend not to hear (and which they pretend not to know we can hear)—in lines, on buses, in restaurants, in stores. We have to play the game or the walls will come tumbling down. If every person chimed in to our conversations every time we were on the phone walking down the street, we would lose our minds.

Of course,  often we feel drawn into strangers’ conversations when we see commonality—such as when we see someone carrying a program to a play we have just come from. I approve of engaging with strangers; but when it’s fairly obvious the person is trying to be private (for instance, if she is in her own home, thank you very much!) that is something that needs to be respected.  When we are in public, it’s often more acceptable. There is a certain amount of “mingling” we expect when we are in a situation together with strangers.

It’s when you are not anonymous—and when you are trapped, as you are in the workplace—that this crossing of boundaries can be especially problematic.

People really need their boundaries at the office. I have a friend who works in a newly redesigned office space, where the emphasis of the layout is on openness.  There are cubicles with low partitions in the center and glass offices along the walls.  Not only can people sometimes see and hear what is going on inside the glass offices, but also voices throughout the floor seem to carry. So much so that one woman who works in a cubicle—who talks somewhat loudly on the phone—complained of co-workers stationed way over on the other side of the room repeatedly coming up to comment on, or offer help regarding, phone calls she had made. These co-workers did not say, “Sorry, but I could not help overhearing you needed this report”; they just said, “Here’s the info you need.” Now the woman feels that everyone is listening to every word she says, and it is affecting her work.

Cubicles have been the corporate norm for years. But many companies are now configuring their workspaces to be even more “open”—to offer better “flow” and more light. This seems to be the trend. In fact, most new designs—whether they are office innovations or website revamps—seem to reflect the increased connectivity of our modern world, and the decrease in privacy. This means we need our “fake” boundaries more than ever.

I almost always put my blinds down when it gets dark, but I certainly don’t want to be aware of hiding from a specific neighbor. I don’t want to know who is living across the airshaft.  I don’t want to know about his life, I don’t want him to know about mine.

Togetherness is wonderful.  But a feeling of privacy is essential.  So you close your eyes and ears, and I’ll close mine.

Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Her latest book is a novel, Etiquette for the End of the World. You can contact her at JeanneMartinet.com.

Their selfishness literally seeps through the vents into our apartments.

Oh, sure, I believe people have a legal right to smoke in their homes—if they keep their smoke within the confines of their apartments.

That rarely happens. So let’s think about a great big new in-the-apartment smoking ban. At least in my building.

Granted, I’m cranky. My clothes smell like I’ve been clubbing in the 1980s. Is there a vent in my closet that I don’t know about? Beyond my space, I noticed a few minutes ago while in the laundry room that the odor there shifts from that Tide smell to the building workers’ cigarettes.

There will be no cessation in the smoking debate in this town. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently unveiled the latest front in what amounts to his administrative war. He wants city apartment buildings officially to go on record as to whether smoking is permitted in all indoor and outdoor locations, including—here’s the fun part—inside apartments.

Some smokers are horrified their mayor is reaching into their apartments. Not me. I’m thrilled that rude behavior hostile to my health is finally up for debate. These days, I like the idea of a building where nobody is smoking, not even the scuzzy-looking people by the front door. Those folks always seem like they walked out of The Grapes of Wrath. These untouchables seem so displaced that I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

Mostly, these days, I feel sorry for me. Cause I cannot even figure out where the smoke is coming from. Granted, I’m not alone. The building management sent out an announcement last month about the issue. “Many neighbors have voiced concerns over the smoke that comes through the vents, doorways and windows of neighbors who smoke cigarettes,” the flier said. “Secondhand smoke is extremely dangerous for asthmatics, the elderly and especially young children.”

Oh, asthma. Did I mention I was diagnosed with asthma after a couple of years in my building? Anyway, the building flier had three tips for residents: Smoke outside of the building; use a “smokeless ashtray,” something I’m skeptical about, especially since the jerks in my building are not buying them; or “quit—that’s the healthiest option for everyone.”

Critics, citing Bloomberg’s no-smoking policy in restaurants and bars and now parks, say he’s creating a nanny state. All I know is that I like breathing again. The mayor deserves credit for being largely ahead of his time on these issues. It only takes a visit to a city without these policies for a non-smoker to appreciate Nanny Bloomberg anew.

I get that there is another side to this issue, but there’s so much smoke in my apartment that I cannot see it clearly.

Oh, and not to sound old-fashioned, I’m not thrilled with the marijuana smoke, either. Or, more specifically, the incense on my floor that’s doing a lame-ass job of covering up the marijuana smoke.

Sorry, smokers, but at least I admit to the ugly stuff in the recesses of my mind. Earlier today I was walking on West 38th Street. Strolling behind a smoker in an ugly jacket (he evidently spends his dough on cigs and not clothes) as the awful smell wafted back toward my nostrils and lungs, I actually began to wonder whether even that awful little moment should be legal. Why should this dude be able to smoke on a busy sidewalk? I want fresh air, or the nearest possible approximation offered in this big town.

This is real life, not an episode of Mad Men.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and also on Twitter
(@cmoorenyc).

The name Etan Patz conjures up so much for so many in New York City.

If you’re under 30, it is likely to draw a blank stare, but for many others it’s different, particularly if you were growing up in the city around 1979, when Patz, a 6-year-old Soho boy, disappeared on his first solo trip to school.

“Mom used to say, ‘You’ll end up like Etan Patz and no one will ever see you again’ when I walked too far ahead in NYC as a kid,’” @AlexSalta wrote on Twitter last week. “It worked.”

Patz was a trending topic this week and last as investigators went back to a Soho basement to dig for clues with a new suspect in the case. It’s the kind of story that grips you every time it resurfaces, although it probably didn’t change behaviors as much as people think.

Peggy Schneider, naturally, was thinking about Patz this week, since she was in middle school in Manhattan when the boy disappeared—but then again, she thinks about Patz and his parents a lot.

“I can still see his smiling face; I have probably thought about it once a month for my entire life,” she said in a phone interview.

Her friend was Patz’ babysitter, so she had a personal connection, but even that was not enough to change her habits. She still traveled the city on her own as a young teen.

So did I and most of my friends. The city was less safe in the ’80s, yet many parents then were much less protective than they are now.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of mileage a few years ago when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone, and has since expanded the column into a movement to promote raising “Free-Range Kids.” Her column would never have drawn the uproar 30 years ago that it did in 2008.

I was a few years older than Skenazy’s son when I began riding the subway with a friend, but around the 3rd grade, I began walking to school alone—of course, that simply involved crossing a street that my parents could see from our window. My friends and I would play ball after school with other neighborhood kids, and we managed to do it without refs or adult supervision.

Still, I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to the concrete “field,” and I know things will be different when my son reaches the age when we have to start making these impossible decisions. There is a lot to be said for letting kids figure it out for themselves, but the rub is deciding when to do it and how much to let go.

Schneider’s youngest sister, Zoe, 40, is a year older than Patz would be today. She doesn’t remember being reigned in much growing up, but somewhere between then and now, city parents began tightening the leashes for better and, perhaps, for worse.

She may be more tapped into this generation of New Yorkers than anyone; she is the organizer of Magic Garden, a large monthly party for people who grew up in the city, giving them a chance to meet people who don’t ask, “What was that like?”

She used to come home late at night from babysitting gigs when she was young, but her immediate neighborhood in Tudor City was shielded from cars. Now in Harlem, she said “it is really scary” to think about her children someday walking by themselves near so much traffic.

“Babysitting at age 9 is crazy, but it was what it was,” she said. “It all worked out and everyone made it through.”

Not that parents didn’t worry quietly. Mine are fuzzy about how Patz affected their thinking, but my mother does remember me taking the train to high school in the Bronx. It wasn’t all that long after Patz disappeared.

“I always say I spent four years looking out the window,” she told me.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him @JoshRogersNYC.

Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction.

It can be a wonderful thing—that phone call that comes like a wish fulfilled when you don’t have plans, you don’t feel like working and you are deep in the doldrums. Suddenly, there is a friend’s voice saying, “I have tickets to a show tonight, are you by any chance free?” And voilà! Your evening is transformed into something enjoyable and unforeseen.

Last-minute invites—especially when they involve theatrical performances— are often things to be greatly appreciated. However, if you have a friend who only calls you at the last minute, you may not appreciate it so much. (“In about 45 minutes, I’m going to see this movie I’ve been wanting to see; want to go with me?” or “I’m sitting at this bar not far from you, why don’t you come out and join me?”) The people who are guilty of this kind of invite may call themselves free spirits, but is it really devilmay-care behavior or just devilish?

Sometimes, the last-minute invite is really what it sounds like, from someone to whom you are a last-minute consideration. Now, I want to be clear: I know many people who live and die by the relaxed, never-know-what-I-am-going-to-be-doing-tomorrow social credo. There are also those rather enviable people I meet who are members of a small but solid “crew” of friends, so that they don’t have to bother to make plans; their social life, while it may be a bit predictable, just happens automatically—albeit with the same six or eight people.

However, I think most New Yorkers over a certain age (30) and under a certain age (75) are busy enough that keeping a calendar is essential; indeed, most people I know are booked up at least several weeks in advance. They are juggling social lives with work commitments and family commitments, so if you really want to see them, you usually have to make plans with them way beforehand.

But there can be good reasons for a last-minute invitation. It can mean you simply did not anticipate you were going to have this particular hour or two of leisure time. It can mean you just got tickets to something unexpectedly. It can mean that someone else cancelled you at the last minute.

Obviously, there is a difference between a last-minute invitation to a movie and one to the opera. If a friend is going to take me to the Met because someone just dropped 10th row center orchestra tickets into his lap, he can call me as late as he wants and I’ll be delighted. But it doesn’t really matter what the last-minute invite is for, as long as it is not this friend’s standard MO and as long as it is proffered the right way.

Always preface the last-minute invite with: “I’m sorry, I know it’s last minute.” If you have an extra ticket to something, it is always gratis for the other person. If the person is not available, you must say something like, “Oh, I figured you might not be free at the last minute. Let’s make another plan right now for when you are available.” This says to the person, “I’m not just trying to fill my evening, I do really care about seeing you.” Once in a while, you’ll come across a person who feels entitled and expects everyone to be at their beck and call.

This person will call at the last minute to get together and, if you are not free, is extremely annoyed. This attitude obviously adds injury to insult. There are also rare instances when someone may invite you at the last minute because they feel obligated for some reason; they want to get credit for inviting you but they don’t really want you to come and are actually hoping you won’t be free. (Beware the party invitation that arrives the morning of the day of the party.) Of course, habitual last-minute social planning can be a corollary of intimacy.

With your best friends, there is never any problem with a spur-of-the-moment plan, because if you are NOT free at the last minute, it’s no big deal; you will see the person again soon enough. I know I tend to be a “Martinet” about matters of social protocol; I do insist that we need to behave with as much courtesy to each other as we can. But when all is said and done, I would not want a life without the possibility of a last-minute invite. It’s nice to know that your day can change in the blink of an iPhone.

Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Her latest book is a novel, Etiquette for the End of the World. You can contact her at JeanneMartinet.com.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan.

by Christopher Moore

I hate to write about it. I even hate to think about it. But the question comes to me, usually after the door shuts. I wait for the movement. I look up, seeking the little illuminated sign to tell me where I am and where I’m going. There’s a tiny, ugly pause.

After the little surge starts, I’m grateful, especially when I’ve quickly and unpleasantly confronted the question, if only in my own mind: What happens when my elevator luck runs out?

I ponder the matter anxiously when I’m alone in an elevator. Or when I’m reading a newspaper or watching a TV news report, like the ones last week about how the average number of elevator inspections done by the city’s Department of Buildings has decreased dramatically during the past four years. That particular tidbit came after the awful death last December in Midtown of Suzanne Hart, a 41-year-old who died while trying to board an elevator.

News is when the everyday turns horrific. I’ve spent enough time in a newsroom to know that much. What happened in the Hart case could have happened to any of us. Such accidents also hit home because elevators remain such a part of our urban culture and common experience.

Responding to last week’s report, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer issued one of his ever-present press releases. This one wasn’t bad. He recommended carving the Department of Buildings into two parts: the Department of Buildings, which would deal with development, and a new Office of Inspections to handle the inspections. Whether a bureaucratic shift is needed or not, it’s clear New Yorkers need their elevators to be tested and as secure as possible.

In my building, the elevators are a relatively social experience. In those confined spaces, I’ve had better, albeit brief, conversations with strangers than I used to have with some of my best friends in New Jersey. Maybe it’s knowing that the chat will be short. We get right to the point. When somebody asks how things are going, the answers tend to be shockingly and refreshingly real. We’ve talked about the weather in there, yes, but we’ve also covered the pain of unemployment, the challenges of teaching college students who went to bad high schools, presidential primaries and the ongoing balancing act of a decent romantic relationship.

Sometimes I wonder, does this happen in other buildings? Granted, even in our building, elevator passengers have an annoying habit of wanting to stop at other floors. Still, having those people around keeps me from worrying about when the good elevators
might go bad. My basic understanding of science is pathetic enough for me to consider
the elevator’s operation to be, basically, magic. So I go through much of my time on the elevator wondering exactly when things will go wrong.

Sure, I go through life that way, too. When it comes to the elevator, though, I tend not to tell anyone. The questions running through my mind seem so clearly nuts. Like…Should I have my cell phone with me every time I get on the elevator? If this thing stops, how long will it be before I get out of here? Should I have used the restroom before I got on? Would it be worse to be stuck here alone or with that crazy lady with the red hair I have never liked?

I’m crazy, but not alone. Last week, I read exactly what to do when an elevator is plummeting. The piece must have been in the Science Times section of the
New York Times, since it’s the answer to a question I never would have asked— Science Times specializes in such cases.

The bottom-line advice this time was: lie down, as flat as possible, with your back
on the floor. This strikes me as unrealistic. In a plummeting elevator, I’m going to be fairly busy screaming.
Christopher Moore is a writer living
in Manhattan. He’s available by email
at ccmnj@aol.com and is on Twitter (@cmoorenyc).