By Laura Day

Holidays are supposed to be a time when families unite, when you are reminded of your childhood or revisit the memories of yourself over the years. Some may be spending this time alone or far from home. But no matter where you are or who you are with, the holidays provide you with a unique opportunity to heal the inner patterns and relationships that have been obstructing your life and hindering your dreams.

This high holiday energy allows us to easily connect to others and it can be expediently, powerfully and positively directed. As you become aware of your intuition and the links you share with one another in a tangible way, you also become aware of its power to change old connections. By revisiting your old relationships, you can change the persistent patterns that have had you running the same unsatisfying maze over and over again in your life.

How to Move Forward with Your Family:

Take a moment to replay in your head the arguments you always have with your family. Now, resolve them in your head. Let those around you do all the old dances and find a place to go in yourself where you do not need to respond. Often, a full-body sense of what you are creating in your life helps. Intuition does not give up once you commit to change. Use breath as a tool to center yourself instead of reacting in destructive or self-destructive ways.

All change takes discipline. Try redirecting your attention when someone pushes your buttons. You may even be able to plant the seeds for a new relationship and a new family dynamic. Practice compassion so that you can send real warmth to those around you even if you have issues with them.

Even if you are alone, the holidays tend to bring up these familial patterns. Do the same exercises you would if you were with your family and reach out to someone as the person you have chosen to become now. It is good to find groups gathering in your area that allow you to connect your dreams to the dreams of others.

A public holiday is a time when you can send your goals out into the world. Scientific research has demonstrated that others perceive what you think and feel, even at a distance. Try it by sending a warm connection to someone you care about. Use your thoughts in a conscious, powerful and directed manner to create the changes you desire. When your thoughts wander to a hurtful place, refocus them on the dialogs you want to send to the people you want to send them to.

Holidays also represent time markers. You may think of where you were last Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving before that and even 30 Thanksgivings before that! Yet in ways this does a disservice by undermining the power of accepting the moment as it is.

In 30 years of teaching, I have seen people turn their lives around in a moment. Really being someone you like attracts a life you like. Be active in engaging with your own miracle. You may be very pleased and surprised at what comes back your way.

Simple Steps You Can Take Over the Holidays:

Holidays are a powerful time to “run the experiment” of success. If you are ready to change, get started with these steps today. Using the field of energy that we share, I send you love and blessings as you reach for your dreams.

—Focus on what you want in your life, not on what you don’t want.

—Write down your goals. Document change. Review this every day. You will see how powerful you are at creating your own life and having an effect on the lives of those around you.

—Take one small action to forward each goal before the holidays begin.

—Use your positive memory files to create thoughts. Practice being in them when you need
a boost.

—Commit to having conversations with people you want to meet. Refuse to rehash negative conversations from the past.

—Practice being the new you without being defensive when people treat you like the old you.

—Try to tell at least one other person about your goals. Having a witness makes something sacred, powerful and real in your life.

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New York Times best-selling author Laura Day has spent three decades helping individuals, organizations and companies use their innate intuitive abilities to create change in their lives. Her new book is How to Rule the World from Your Couch (Simon & Schuster). She has a free mini-workshop 7-8 p.m., Nov. 22 at Barnes & Noble Tribeca.

By Kait Remenaric

As all of us New York singletons know, flying solo in this city is no walk in Central Park. None of us move to the Big Apple to find and conquer true love, but rather to have successful careers and fabulous social lives with the best pizza and shopping in the world to ease our stress and hangovers all along the way.

So after having recently gone through a break-up (and by recent I mean last week), and before jumping back into the abysmal dating pool of Manhattan (which was time and again murkier than the East River itself), I thought it most important to determine the key elements of a successful relationship—especially considering that I had clearly just failed at having one. So I sat in front of my laptop in the Starbucks on 81st and York and attempted to make a list of the fundamental building blocks to lasting love in a city that never sleeps, overworks and drinks ’til the sun comes up. As I repeatedly hit backspace, I realized that it all came down to one thing—expectations.

I had been dating Oliver for almost six months and was crazy about him. It had been all too long since I had connected with a man on so many different levels—from sexually and emotionally to even more trivial matters such as ice cream flavor preference and movie genre predilection. The time we spent together was fabulous, but it was the time we spent apart that took us down the wrong way on a one-way street.

Lost among introducing him to my family, attending each other’s work happy hours and exchanging our apartment keys was the fact that we had failed to address what we were looking for in the relationship that we had formed. Then, a change in my work schedule resulted in us seeing less of each other, which led to separate social lives and one too many ignored calls while he was out drinking with his friends. I was suddenly deemed demanding in his eyes, yet neglected in mine.

My efforts, consisting of countless cab rides to Murray Hill, Haagen-Dazs in the freezer for after work, notes around the apartment and home-cooked meals, were met with excuses of stress at work, lack of time for his friends and less time for himself. This being fed to a girl with only two free nights a week, the red flags were raised and the relationship quickly came to an end.

I was hurt and confused, questioning where I went wrong in our relationship. I allowed myself one night of overindulging with a bottle of Jameson, burdened my friends with an emotional breakdown and cried myself to sleep with David Gray belting out “Real Love” until 3:30 a.m., much to my neighbors’ dismay. The next morning I woke up hungover and puffy-eyed to realize that I didn’t go wrong anywhere.

My expectations were quite simple, actually. I wanted to be with a man who looked forward to our time together, a man who would be more than willing to step outside of a bar and speak with me for even just five minutes. I didn’t want to be an obligation. I wanted to be a fabulous addition to someone’s life, as I would want them to be to mine. I wanted a man who would appreciate my small but thoughtful gestures and would gladly reciprocate without thinking twice. So I came to realize that any relationship based on unmet expectations and clouded with excuses would never last—and more importantly, I shouldn’t have to lower my great expectations to meet Oliver’s, or anyone’s, lack of expectations.

As Charles Dickens wrote in Great Expectations, “I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul…” While I didn’t move to New York to find real love, I was hoping to find it along the way. Until I find an Oliver with just as great expectations as mine, it was back to the happy hour circuit with my girlfriends. Who needs Haagen-Dazs in Murray Hill when there’s cheap beer and single men to meet on the Upper East Side, anyway?
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Kait Remenaric drinks, dates and dwells on the Upper East Side.

By Noah E. Gotbaum

As is well known, the entirety of Community School District 3—stretching from Lincoln Center to Central Harlem—faces a serious schools overcrowding crisis. In 2010, District 3 had two of the top 10 most overcrowded school zones in the city, with eight of its nine public elementary schools on the Upper West Side operating at or above capacity. While the crisis is projected to severely impact every one of the District’s 32 elementary and middle schools within the next 24 months, the epicenter of the problem lies between the West 60s and 80s, just north of the planned Riverside Center project.

This is not a coincidence. For years, Extell and other developers have marketed our public schools as an amenity, pouring kids into our schools up and down District 3, without taking any responsibility for the overflow or providing a single new seat. A direct result of this development—most prominently including Extell’s Riverside South project—has been severe overcrowding throughout our district.

Sadly, the developers’ partners in driving this overcrowding have been the New York City Department of Education and its Schools Construction Authority. The DOE and the SCA have been unable or unwilling to recognize simple demographics for years, consistently overstating capacity and underestimating demand for our schools in an effort to ignore the problem. In 2006, they failed to take up the option for a developer-provided new school site at Riverside South, just as the numbers were beginning to take off. In 2008 they recommended increasing the size of the P.S. 87 district for the 2010/2011 school year; the next year, that district became the most overcrowded school zone in the city. And last year—while steadfastly refusing to recognize any overcrowding in D3 in every planning document and public statement—they were forced to open the new elementary school P.S. 452 at the 11th hour after the parents’ demographic projections and protests were proven out by enrollment numbers. But rather than invest any dollars in new construction, the DOE opened P.S. 452 in an already overcrowded M.S. 44 building on West 77th Street, mortgaging the District’s sorely needed middle-school seats.

During these overcrowding discussions, and our exposé of massive future overcrowding, the DOE constantly cited the safety valve of a large new school to be built by Extell as part of Riverside Center. But only a few short months later we are left to ask, “Where is that school?” and, as important, “Who is going to pay for it?”

Unfortunately, instead of pushing for the needs of the community and demanding that the developer return some of the huge benefit it has received from our district’s public schools, the DOE and the city have sided with the developer and left our kids and community out in the cold. The DOE’s Memorandum of Understanding with the developer for a 75,000-square-foot school will at best only accommodate the students living within the new Riverside Center project, and won’t begin to address the area’s larger overcrowding issues. Worse, the DOE/Extell MOU only requires Extell to pay for the new school’s walls and floors, leaving the rest of us to foot the bill for what will essentially be a private school for the developer.

Is this fair? Is this representative of want the community wants? And just whose needs are the DOE and the city representing in this process when they propose to give away hundreds of millions in land use benefits to the developer and then not only fail to demand fair school investment in return, but in fact give the developer additional taxpayer benefits in the form of a new school?

It’s time to stop kicking the education can down the road. It’s time to stop saying we prioritize education, and then force parents and the community to demand even the most basic accommodations by the city, the DOE and the development community for our kids.

Community District Education Council 3 joins Community Board 7, Borough President Stringer, State Senator Tom Duane, Council Member Gale Brewer and others in demanding that the city and developer begin to do their part to meet our Community’s education needs:

First: Building the entire 150,000-square-foot school our community needs must be a requirement for any approval of this project.

Second: The school must be among the first buildings built in the project.

Third: The school must be fully paid for by the developer.

We urge the City Planning Commission, and Council Member Brewer’s colleagues in the City Council, to demand these changes as well. And to leave no doubt that they, as we, are willing to stand up for our children and our community.
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Noah E. Gotbaum is president of Community District Education Council 3.

By Scott M. Stringer

For anyone who spends time on the streets of Manhattan, the congestion in our bike lanes has become a familiar sight: Cars and buses block the lanes for minutes at a time, sometimes longer. When motorists open their doors without checking for oncoming bikes, collisions can injure passengers and riders alike.

Pedestrians also clog the lanes, even as cyclists approach. And bike riders contribute to the problem by riding the wrong way in designated lanes.

I am a big supporter of bike lanes. They enrich our environment and boost the quality of life and health of New York City residents. But misuse by all parties, including motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, is undermining their success.

That’s why, in response to numerous complaints by constituents, my office recently conducted an unprecedented survey of bike lanes in Manhattan. We found more than 1,700 abuses at 11 separate sites, based on observations by my staff during morning and evening rush hours over three days in October.

On the Upper West Side we found motor vehicles and pedestrians repeatedly blocking lanes, misuse of the lanes by city vehicles, cyclists riding on the sidewalk and other safety hazards. Over three one-hour observation periods, surveyors noted 156 total infractions at 94th Street and Columbus Avenue. Of those, 116 were motor vehicles and pedestrians. Surveyors also observed a DOT vehicle parked in the bike lane for an entire hour and an unmarked police vehicle in an apparent non-emergency situation cutting through protected bike lanes, to circumvent traffic stopped by a red light.

For the Upper West Side community and the rest of our city, the bottom line is clear: We need to develop a bicycle-friendly culture where New Yorkers respect the bike lane and clear the path.

The Department of Transportation has done a great job in creating bike lanes. But we need to make sure they are working properly, so they can be enjoyed in all of our neighborhoods. My office has made the following recommendations:

• Increase enforcement against motorists who drive in or obstruct bike lanes. This was the most significant and prevalent threat to bike lanes found in our study. During our survey, we observed 275 motor vehicle blockages in bike lanes, but only two summonses were issued.
• Provide enhanced street signage for cyclists, pedestrians and vehicles. In particular, the Department of Transportation should provide signs that warn riders against cycling the wrong way in bike lanes.
• Taxi Cab Public Awareness Campaign on Dooring. Dooring, the act of hitting a cyclist with an open car door, is a serious threat to bicyclist and passenger safety. The Taxi and Limousine Commission should launch a campaign to educate drivers and the public about the problem.
• Reserve parking spots for deliveries along commercial streets to discourage potential bike lane blockages. This would help reduce a serious cause of obstructions in many Manhattan bike lanes.
• Increase the frequency of Bike Boxes along bike routes. Cyclists often report that for their own safety they must get a head start on motor vehicles at red lights. DOT, in response, has created Bike Boxes that give riders a safe place while waiting for traffic signals to change. We need more of them.
• Where appropriate, DOT should develop bike lanes that reduce the mixing of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.

Finally, I urge DOT to conduct regular surveys such as the one by my office, so we can have a more reliable source of information whether our bikes lanes are working properly.

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Scott M. Stringer is an Upper West Side resident and Manhattan Borough President.

By Daniel Meltzer

The historic televised “Great Debates” between presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John Kennedy took place in the fall of 1960. Many of you surely saw them on TV at the time. I saw one of them at even closer range. I was there.

As a young page for ABC Television, just starting out in my broadcasting career, I was present in the network’s cavernous Studio One on West 66th Street in Manhattan before and during the fourth debate. Although it was a half-century ago, it remains an event vividly etched upon my memory.

The two candidates stood behind lecterns at a carefully measured distance apart, as agreed upon by both camps. I stood only a few feet away from them.

Each had arrived by limousine hours in advance. Their cars were driven up the building’s loading ramp and on to the floor of the studio. (In a former life, it had been a riding academy for equestrians.)

Nixon, already heavily made-up to conceal his jowls and five o’clock shadow, hustled silent and grim-faced with his wife Pat past the waiting reporters corralled behind a velvet cord in the studio. Kennedy, accompanied by a very pregnant Jackie and their daughter Caroline, walked straight to the cord to shake hands with and greet several reporters by name, as well as the stagehands. He and his brother Robert had both been to our studios during the campaign for interviews on the Sunday talk show, Issues and Answers.

The candidates spent the hours before airtime with their entourages in identical two-room in-studio cottages designed and constructed specifically for the occasion. Each cabin was thoughtfully designed, fully furnished, wood-paneled and carpeted, equipped with working bathrooms and individually controlled air-conditioning. The exteriors were equally well-appointed: wooden siding, faux windows, latticework with faux vines, roofs, “plantings” and picket fences surrounding both cottages, separated enough from each other to prevent eavesdropping from one upon the other. The dismantling and destruction of both cottages began immediately after the debate ended and the candidates had left the building. There was another show loading in the next morning and the “set” had to be struck.

The debate itself was a clear “win” for Kennedy, as they like to say in the business. He seemed well prepared, relaxed and articulate, his easy smile a clincher for many fence sitters, I imagined. Nixon, still nervous and, hard as he tried, looking a bit angry and perhaps resentful at having to be on camera, under the hot lights, with an opponent possessing a smoother tongue, seemingly easy command of the issues and “movie star looks” to boot. The camera “liked” Kennedy, as we say. It had a hard time just getting to know Nixon.

Aside from my impressions of both candidates from their entrances and their demeanors, I was further alienated from Nixon after one of his aides sent me out to get coffee and a carton of cigarettes from the local drug store, took his change when I returned, and didn’t tip me. I would soon cast my first vote in a presidential election. If I had been undecided before that day, I had no doubt now about whose lever to pull.
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Daniel Meltzer is a playwright, an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and former senior writer and editor for CBS News.

By Jeff Nichols

I took a job at a company that professed to being a “premium” dog-walking service. The company only walked one or two dogs at a time and their website implied that the ratio was a healthy alternative to “mass group” walks. Who would disagree? We’ve all seen those huge packs of dogs waiting to add yet another canine to the pack. And there never seems to be a lot, if any, exercise taking place. Rather, one guy seems to hold 10 to 12 dogs, while another guy disappears into a building to pick up yet another, then they all walk to the next building. The best you can do with group dog-walks is file it under the old “better than nothing” mantra.

In my mind, I had a clear mental image of myself walking well-groomed, thoroughbred golden retrievers (or possibly Hungarian Vizslas) down Fifth and Park avenues, scoffing at those big packs of dogs. Plus, with only one or two dogs, people might accidentally mistake me for the owner. No one would suspect me of being some poor schlep having to pick up dog poop for a buck. (Actually, in many cases, dog walkers in NYC get the last laugh; several make six figure incomes).

I was quick to find out that “premium” was a euphemism. Or rather, a distortion of the word. In this case, “premium” meant I would be walking dogs that no one in their right mind would go near!

The finicky, belligerent, passive-aggressive, the hyper, the co-dependent and yes, the vicious. Most of the dogs that I was assigned were denied from the pack walks because of “temperament issues.” Or the fact that they were simply too big.

The fist dog that I was assigned was a beautiful Rhodesian ridgeback. I was told to pick the dog up at a woman’s office in Midtown. As we know, most dog breeds have certain distinctive character traits. Over the years, I have walked at least five Ridgebacks, and it seems like they are the same dog every time. They are lovely, gentle dogs, but they simply will not leave their owners if the owner is in the house. A lot of dogs are like that, but all ridgebacks are this way. The office, all women, had to help me push the big boy to the elevator. I felt like I had to come across as professional in front of the women (I think they were architects), like I had gone through this very scenario before.

Once I was on the first floor, the 120-pound ridgeback become dead weight and wouldn’t get off the elevator. The massive dog would not budge; the doormen snickered, or at least I thought they did. Apparently the doormen and maintenance people had seen this before.

I pushed and prodded the beast out of the elevator and down two full blocks before he decided to walk on his own. The walk back was so easy that it made it all worth it.

I was assigned several dogs that were simply huge. There were the obligatory Great Danes, massive demonic-looking (but sweet) Rottweilers, Weimaraners and, of course, Saint Bernards.

But the biggest dog that I ever walked was an Irish wolfhound that weighed 200 pounds and was 5 feet tall. The dog was nice, except, as one might imagine, that its BM’s were roughly the size that a Clydesdale would produce.

Generally, I had no problem picking up dog poop, and in this case I clung to the mantra that all dogs have dignity. This mantra went out the window in the rare case of diarrhea.

Of all the dogs that I ever walked during my stint as a “premium” walker, one German shorthaired pointer was simply too much to handle. Until the owner intervened a month later, no one had told me I shouldn’t bring the dog to the park. The pointer would take off after squirrels at the slightest provocation. This became apparent on our second run when a squirrel caught his view. I ran to keep up with the dog, but the leash gave way. I stood ineptly, as the dog ran from the East 79th Street entrance down to 72nd Street. I was resigned to the fact that this massive dog was going to be pummeled by a cab, but finally the dog slowed and a reluctant pedestrian grabbed the leash.

Perhaps if I had not just witnessed a horrendous pitbull attack a month before I took the job, I would have not have been so apprehensive when I was instructed to pick up two pitbulls and walk them together. The address was just off Central Park West (mostly weimaraner, golden retriever and black lab country), and as soon as the key entered the lock, I heard thunderous barking.

Once inside, I was faced with two solid blocks of muscle. At the same time, a certain eeriness pulled my attention to the gothic apartment with its 15-foot ceilings and museum feel. It was clear by the chewed furniture and dog toys littering the floor that the pets ruled the apartment.

I was certain I was going to be mauled. Would the office really put me into a scenario where I could be ripped apart by pitbulls, and was this by any definition “premium”?

As turns out, one dog was completely benign and loving; the other was sweet but scared. The situation was resolved when the owner, a waif of a woman who worked close by, came home and instantly put the collars on the now submissive dogs.

At the end of each walk, dog walkers leave a note as to how the walk went. In the beginning, I rambled about every nuance of the walk. But then I realized that all the owner cared about is whether the dog went number two. It didn’t matter how much you bonded with the dog—if it didn’t go number two, you were not worth your salt as a dog walker and you would replaced. Even in the dog-walking industry, the pressure is on: One must produce!
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Jeff Nichols is a resident on the Upper West Side.

By Jim Gerace

In these uncertain economic times, it is critical that our lawmakers in Albany make good decisions that promote jobs, investment and innovation. Wise public policy decisions are those that encourage job creation and investment in communities throughout by helping to grow the state’s “innovation economy.”

New York’s innovation economy is based on our strengths—a well-educated work force, a strong higher education sector, a commitment to research and innovation, and a robust telecommunications infrastructure. These assets are the key to our success in the global economy today and for our children in the years to come, because they facilitate growth in emerging arenas.

Unfortunately, some lawmakers in Albany have lost sight of the need for investment in the telecommunications infrastructure, such as broadband. They are pushing a bill, inspired by outdated economic theories, which would require some telecommunications companies to turn over 40 percent of their New York-based infrastructure to the government if they are ever sold or decide to merge with another company.

This bill would severely hurt Verizon, New York’s leading provider of broadband infrastructure, by, in effect, imposing a 40 percent tax on the proceeds of telecommunications company business deals. This is 1970s regulation policy run amuck.

This bill would also hurt New York’s economy. It would impose a huge obstacle to anyone who wants to invest in the state’s telecommunications infrastructure. Would you invest in a broadband company if you knew that the government might swoop in and grab nearly half of your investment? Most people would not.

Verizon is a part of New York’s innovation economy, and its network is part of the fabric of New York. We want to help the state grow and succeed, and to create high-paying, quality jobs. Statistics show the average salary of an individual who works in the innovation economy is more than double that of an individual who works in the non-innovation economy. These jobs also have a higher “multiplier effect” than the non-innovation economy, meaning that for every job that is created in the innovation economy, 3.5 jobs are created overall, compared to 1.7 jobs in the non-innovation economy.

New York has the tools to succeed in a number of key innovative industries—strong educational institutions focusing on life sciences, clean technology and nanotechnology. We also rank among the nation’s leaders in science and engineering, patent development and alternative energy use.

But if we undermine our commitment to a robust telecommunications infrastructure, then we undermine the innovation economy.

Rather than help grow New York’s innovation economy, this bill will stifle it. We can’t afford to make this mistake.

We need to encourage Albany, especially the State Senate, to focus on economic growth and building on our strengths. Broadband investment is an essential component of a successful 21st-century economy.

Imposing a 40 percent tax on the companies that want to invest in New York is simply not the way to encourage investment in our broadband infrastructure. It is a giant step backwards, not the way to grow New York’s innovation economy.
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Jim Gerace is president of Verizon’s New York region.

By Fredricka R. Maister

I have a secret. I am a New Yorker whose home has been infested with bedbugs. I have not actually seen the blood-sucking critters, but I have a collection of their bites on my arms and legs and the itching that keeps me awake at night.

My bedbug saga began a few weeks ago at work, when I became aware of red welts on my arms and a line of bites on my ankle.

“Would you look at these bites?” I said to my colleagues as I grabbed a Band-Aid to cover the bloody bite I had inadvertently scratched.

I assumed my welts were allergic reactions to mosquitoes until I showed them to a nurse friend a few days later.

“Those look like bedbug bites,” she said. “Check it out on the Internet.”

It took me a day to muster the courage to go online to confirm her suspicions. Once I saw the pictures of bedbug bites—my ankle bites even conformed to the configuration typical of bedbugs—and read the personal accounts of human bedbug suffering, I knew I was in trouble. But where could I, an obsessive-compulsive when it comes to cleanliness, have been exposed to bedbugs?

I hadn’t shopped at Abercrombie or Hollister, which had recently closed their doors due to bedbug infestations. Had a bedbug taken up residence on my clothing at work? Were bedbugs in the walls of my apartment building?

I have since learned—I now know more about bedbug culture than I ever cared to—that you could brush up against someone in the subway, bring a bedbug home and in no time have an infestation.

When I found more bite marks, I slept in jeans and long sleeves in the 90-degree heat. Even with the air-conditioner turned at full blast, I found myself sweating profusely. Who could sleep!

In panic mode, I informed the management office of my upscale building. The day after I alerted them, two inspectors came to my apartment. Their visual inspection did not detect any bedbugs. Then they brought in the bedbug-sniffing beagle that gravitated to an electrical outlet near my bed.

With that “unconfirmed alert,” another professional exterminated that area. In two weeks the bedbug team would inspect again. When the beagle and his handlers reinspected, they found a few bloodied bugs embedded in the seam of the box spring. I was told to discard the box spring and mattress.

My apartment has now been fully exterminated. I am living among heaps of plastic bags filled with the contents of my closets, each item steamed or run through the dryer at the highest setting to eradicate any bedbugs. I am sleeping on an air mattress until the return of the beagle to confirm that my apartment is bedbug-free.

Only then will I buy a new mattress—encased in protective covers, of course.

I am encouraged by New York City’s recently announced offensive campaign to deal with the increasing bedbug menace. The creation of an online portal to provide information on how to prevent and treat infestations as well as a task force headed by a “Bedbug Czar” are welcome initiatives in confronting what is fast becoming an epidemic/pandemic.

We citizens must also do our part. We need to emerge from our denial and recognize that we are all vulnerable: Bedbugs are equal opportunity invaders.

We can take practical steps, such as checking our mattresses and box springs, immediately alerting the owners of our residences and workplaces if we suspect the presence of bedbugs, properly covering or discarding mattresses (I’ve seen far too many unwrapped mattresses on the street lately), etc.

Dermatologists should be more adept at diagnosing insect bites. A dermatologist told me, “I really don’t think those are bedbug bites”; a friend’s dermatologist biopsied her bedbug bite.

Moreover, we need to get beyond the stigma and secrecy surrounding bedbugs by “bringing them out of the mattress” and into the public’s awareness. To that end, I am adding my address to the Bedbug Registry and publicly admitting, “I’ve got bedbugs.”
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Fredricka R. Maister is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. She can be reached at fmaister@yahoo.com.

By Jeanne Martinet

When the doorknob came off in my hand, I couldn’t understand what had happened. It was as if I had been shaking a friend’s hand and had somehow pulled it completely out of its socket, like a scene from a horror film. After the initial shock, I felt incredibly stupid. I had known that the knob was loose; it had been loose for months, but I had put off doing anything about it.

I stood there with the detached knob in my hand. Panic started to take hold—mostly, I confess, because I was experiencing, on a fairly urgent level, the call of nature (having just woken up), and it was sinking in that I was stuck inside my bedroom with the bathroom on the other side of the door.

“Don’t get hysterical, just use your head,” I told myself. I took a deep breath, and slowly, gingerly, attempted to reattach the doorknob to the scant 3/4 of an inch length of spindle that was protruding from the doorknob hole. (The spindle is the square rod that connects the two knobs. You can see that I am now an expert.)

This proved to be a mistake; it slid backwards, threatening to fall out the other side. Cursing, I took the knob back off and grabbed onto the spindle with my left hand. I tried turning it with my fingertips, but the piece that was sticking out was too short to get a good grip.

At that instant I realized the fix I was in.

There was no phone in the room; my cell was charging on the hall table. What was I going to do? How would I ever get out? Would I be found weeks later with a brass doorknob in my lifeless hand?

Since I couldn’t open the door, my only course of action seemed to be to call out the window and hope that a stranger, in one of the dozens of apartments lining my inner courtyard, would come to my aid.

But would anyone listen? We boundary-conscious New Yorkers are pretty good at ignoring the outside world when we’re at home. We learn to tune out people’s loud moments of temper, frustration and other passions.

A lot of people scream out their windows when they are mad, or drunk, or both. It’s no wonder most of us are a bit suspicious when someone we don’t know yells something out there. Is the person unbalanced? Dangerous? Trying to scam us in some way?

And exactly what should I say? I could go with the traditional, and yell, “Help!” But this seemed too extreme for my situation. The last thing I wanted was to make anyone think I was seriously hurt or being attacked, and then have the police breaking down my door.

Also, I would have to give my address, which might be audible to hundreds of people. (I could see it now, the whole thing would be Tweeted: Woman in apt on Upper West Side, NYC, trapped in bdrm, yelling out window. If u want to know who this idiot is, her address is_____.)

What if I were to calmly, but loudly, call out, “Excuse me? Is anyone able to hear this? I’m sorry to bother you but I’ve been accidentally trapped in my bedroom—can you make a call for me?”

Then I remembered that the friend who had my spare keys is on my speed dial, and I couldn’t remember his phone number! Was he listed? Would an unseen bystander be willing to go that extra mile and look up a number? It seemed a lot to ask.

Perhaps I should I start with “sorry to bother you”?

The truth is that without visual contact, it’s very hard to get a New Yorker’s attention. And I am not a good yeller. Having lived in this city for many years, I have become a good nagger, a good bargainer and good at talking to strangers. But yelling to unseen hordes?

I decided I really didn’t want to yell out my window, unless it was absolutely necessary.

I steeled myself for one last attempt at saving myself. I reached into a bureau drawer, where I latched onto a cotton handkerchief. Carefully, praying under my breath, I wrapped it around the end of the spindle. The fabric was stiff enough that I got traction, and the door opened.

I sleep with a screwdriver in my bedroom now. And you would not believe how carefully I listen to the sounds coming from nearby apartments.

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Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, lives on the Upper West Side and 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.

By Ian Alterman

Alan Chartock’s piece should be must-reading with respect to the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero (“First Amendment at Stake,” Aug.19). I would like to add some facts to the debate:

Most people opposed to the project say that it is “too close to Ground Zero.” Yet before and since 9/11, there has been an active mosque only four blocks from Ground Zero, and no one ever expressed any opposition to it. As well, the congregation of the imam behind the project outgrew its storefront mosque near Canal Street some time ago, and has been using a portion of the Park Place building ever since. Yet no one expressed any opposition to that either.

Only a fraction of the project will be prayer or worship space; the vast majority of the 13-story building will be taken up by an auditorium, a gymnasium, a pool, offices, exhibition spaces and the like. The Board of Directors will be comprised of Muslims, Christians and Jews. And programming will include multi-cultural and multi-religious courses and exhibitions. It will essentially be the Islamic equivalent of the Jewish Community Center or 92nd Street Y.

There will be no domes, minarets or other obvious Islamic architectural elements. The building will look like a fairly plain office building. Thus, most people visiting the memorial and new buildings will not even know it is there.

I would also like to add three comments.

First, the broad-brush claim that Muslims build mosques to mark triumphs is not historically accurate. Although it is true that in some cases conquering Muslims did build mosques, this should not be surprising. In fact, the Old Testament is replete with cases where the Israelites built temples shortly after they conquered an area. And the Christians did similarly during the Crusades. In all cases, this was far more a practical matter than any sense of triumphalism. With specific respect to the name of the project developer, the Cordoba mosque was actually a nearly completed church that was simply converted into a mosque: It was not “built” by the conquering Muslims.

Second, even if we accept that Ground Zero is somehow “sacred ground,” the proposed project is not on Ground Zero, so it is not “desecrating” it in any way. In fact, the new complex actually being built at Ground Zero is expected to have a commercial element likely to include such things as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Duane Reade and other stores. I would suggest that selling Big Macs and chai lattes on “sacred ground” is a far greater desecration than a nearly invisible Islamic center two blocks away.

Third, most of those opposed to the project consider themselves patriots, and ostensibly support the Constitution—and the troops who fought and died (and continue to do so) to defend and protect that Constitution and the freedoms it provides. Yet many of these same people are all too willing to ignore the Constitution—in this case its provision supporting “the free exercise” of religion—when it is inconvenient. Some counter by saying that although Muslims may have a right to build the project, they should not do so out of “respect” for those who died. One pundit responded to this by saying, “In other words, freedom of religion… should be exercised only if first ratified by a ‘popularity contest.’”

Many Muslims died on 9/11, including in the planes (other than the hijackers), in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon and at Shanksville. And many Muslim first responders (police officers, firefighters, etc.) responded to the attacks—some losing their lives when the towers collapsed. And the vast majority of the world’s one billion Muslims practice their faith privately and quietly; they do not engage in or support violence, and they repudiate the acts of those extremists who participated in the attacks.

In this regard, those opposed to the project are defining an entire religion by the acts of a few. And that is about as un-American as anything I can think of.

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Ian Alterman is a non-denominational protestant minister. He lives on the Upper West Side.