Friday, October 13, 2006

City Jitters

I write this from the 35th floor lobby of the Mandarin hotel on Central Park’s West Side. What a plush hotel, on one of the nation’s greatest parks.

It’s interesting to be here now. Let me quickly share a story from yesterday. Many New Yorkers still seem jittery after the Upper East Side plane crash Wednesday. On the shuttle in-bound from La Guardia we were about to enter the Queens-Midtown Tunnel which spits out a few blocks south of the UN. We were waiting to pay a toll when there was sudden “BOOM!” The concussion shook the van I was riding in. I along with the other Super Shuttle passengers, almost in unison, began asking “what was that?” People stopped in neighboring lanes began whipping their heads around. The episode became even more jarring when our native New York driver exclaimed “that was pretty crazy!” As we inched closer to the toll, I noticed a NYPD or Port Authority officer standing by calmly. A colleague walked up beside him, and the two began laughing. ‘False alarm,’ I thought to myself, though nonetheless a testament to the nervousness that seems ever present in this city.

Meanwhile cross-town, the United Nations Security Council could vote tomorrow on a resolution regarding North Korea. There are some very major implications there and I’ll share a few thoughts on how the story has been covered so far.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad that is the reality of world we live in today

Unknown said...

If you said why you are in New York, I didn't catch it. Whatever the reason, I know that you must be enjoying that hotel. When I attended a CBS afilliate's news seminar in the seventies, the network treated us to a dinner on the top floor of one of those elite hotels overlooking the park. I was very impressed.
The thing I remember most about that dinner was the conversation at our table. One of the network guys was discussing who he thought the Democrats would nominate for president. He left out Jimmy Carter. Well, this Georgia boy quickly pointed that out. He responded by saying Carter didn't have a chance. Guess who got nominated and elected.
After the election, I was talking with Zeke Segal, the CBS southern bureau chief in Atlanta, about it. He said that he had tried to tell the fellows in New York that Carter was definately an important player, but they just blew him off. He said, "When I heard him talking to crowds with his very simple message of ' will never lie to you, because I believe the American people deserve a president who is just as honest as they are,' I knew he was saying what they wanted to hear, and I knew he could go all the way. In New York, they just didn't think he was strong enough to make it. They just didn't understand him. I noticed that behind that smile of his he had steely eyes."