Triangle Factory Fire and Unions

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGERY.

Sunday, the BF took me along on a tour of Lower East Side sites associated with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. March 25th was the 100th anniversary of the fire, in which 146 sweatshop workers, mostly young immigrant girls, lost their lives. The fire began on the 8th floor, and the workers on that floor and the management on the 10th floor mostly managed to escape, but no one alerted the workers on the 9th floor. When the flames began coming in the windows and up through the floor, the 9th floor workers were trapped. The elevator cables had melted in the heat, as had the bolts holding outside fire escape together. Panicked workers ran for the stairs, but the fire door had been chained shut by the factory owners, who didn't want girls "pilfering" thread and fabric from the factory. Those who didn't burn inside jumped to their deaths out the windows; the ladders on the fire trucks of the time only went up 6 stories and no one could reach them. Many girls jumped in groups, holding hands while they fell.


Every year on the anniversary of the fire, people chalk the names of the victims on the sidewalks in front of the factory and in front of nearby tenement buildings in the East Village and Lower East Side, where manyof the workers lived. The tour took us past a few of those buildings, and also to the sites of early labor union meeting places, which is of particular interest to me right now because I'm a union member.

This is the first time in my working life that I'm in a union, and I'm digging it. It gives me old-guy cred in case I want to go bowling or to the Staten Island Gun Club, and more importantly, it connects me to those brave women in the early labor movements who were trying to change the horrible working conditions in sweatshops like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The history of women in the labor movement gives me that swooping-heart, tears-in-your-eyes, fuck-yeah-feminism feeling whenever I think about it. I'm glad to be a part of it.

Not a lot of American workers are in unions anymore, which is kind of a shame. Most of us define ourselves by our jobs, and if you can feel that you're part of something bigger than yourself, then you feel a whole helluva lot better about that paper pushing. You feel working-girl pride instead of wage-slave ennui.

This one's for the shirtwaist girls. You are remembered.

I understand daylight savings time

Certain tirades of mine are seasonal. Twice a year, when daylight savings time kicks in, I set up some poor undeserving coworker or friend with my usual lead: "What exactly is daylight savings time for?"

It helps that no one actually knows the answer to this question. Most will mumble something about farmers. The fools.

"Oh yeah?" says I, I says, "Every single farmer that I've ever known gets up with the sun and goes to bed with the sun, regardless of what the clock says. So why the hell do they need daylights savings time?"

Hawaii doesn't do daylight savings time. We're so close to the equator that there really isn't much difference between summer and winter in terms of daylight. Maybe an hour difference, if that. So half the year Hawaii is six hours behind Brooklyn, and the other half of the year it's five hours behind. I remember it really used to mess with my TV viewing. They were always switching what time my stories came on!

So twice a year I bitched about daylight savings time. My script didn't change. It was like Dick Clark's New Years special.

Daylight savings time was on Sunday. We had to move all the clocks an hour forward, so it was a little hard for me to get up this morning (compounded by my nightmare about Mr. Spock turning into a crazed ape-man and trying to punch through the windows of my car while I honked the horn to summon the rest of the away team--G-d, I'm such a massive nerd). But after work this evening, I went grocery shopping and kept thinking to myself, "It's so light out. The sun is still up. What madness is this?" Self replied, "Daylight savings time, moppet [that's what we call ourselves in here]. You get an extra hour of sunlight in the evening because you got up an hour earlier."

The flash of insight was as bright as the sun on Atlantic Avenue. I get it now. All us 9-to-5ers get extra daylight for afternoon activities and I don't have to schlep the groceries home in the dark. Thanks, daylight savings time!

Seriously though, it has nothing to do with the damn farmers. See above.

New York's Bravest, also Nerdiest

Not five minutes ago, the New York Fire Department came to my door. I'd heard the crackling of their radios and assumed that the cops were visiting for whatever reason--they visited about two months ago when my next door neighbor's elderly father had a freakout and broke the street-facing window of his apartment by hurling a hammer through it--you know, usual New York stuff. I didn't pay it any mind until I heard that sharp, official ratatat on my door.

"Just a second!" I called, yanking off my fuzzy bedroom slippers and throwing them under the couch, because nothing makes you feel more vulnerable in the face of authority than being caught in your slippies. At least I was still rocking my office hair and jewelry. I also did a quick check for illegal materials before I opened the door. I don't know why. Instinct, I suppose.

But it wasn't a cop--it was a fireman in full uniform, oxygen tank, axe, boots, helmet, the works. I immediately began to simper, helplessly, against my will, in the presence of this alpha male, this golden god among base clay mortals. Is there anything more heroic than a fireman? (Batman doesn't count, though it pains me to admit it. He's not real.)

"Hi! Is there anything wrong? Should I evacuate?"

"Nah, we got a call about a gas leak. Smells like paint though." He peered into my apartment. "Is that Mystery Science Theater 3000?"

I'm watching an MST3K episode and it was paused on my monitor when I opened the door to my new soul mate. "Yes. Yes it is." And there's room on this couch for two if you leave the axe outside, big boy.

"What episode?"

"Lost Continent. I haven't seen it before."

"Niccce." Yes. He stuck the 'c.' Thank the lords of Asgard I stashed those slippies.

Then a troupe of them came clomping down the stairs with another girl in her pajamas and office hair, only she still had her bedroom slippers on. She was saying, "They've been doing construction in hat apartment all month, I guess they just painted, but it seriously smelled like gas."

In my mind, I thought, Bitch, don't box block me, I've got this one on my hook. "Is everything okay, then?" I asked, attention on me, attention on me.

"Yeah, it's fine, just keep your windows open. Have a good one." I will now, good sir. I will now.

He wasn't even that pretty-looking, really, I guess I'm just a sucker for a guy who rescues people from burning buildings and probably has the Rebel Alliance theme from Star Wars running through his head while doing so.

Of Masons and Moon Launches

For the long President's Day weekend, the BF and I went to stay with his brother, Big Scientist, at his new apartment in Washington, D.C. I always like taking a little trip on the train, though the tracks from NYC to DC take you through a pretty awful part of the country. Baltimore, for instance--I haven't seen such a shitheap of a city since I was in Lima, Peru in 1992. We're talking the worst kind of dilapidation you can get without bombs. Philadelphia wasn't much better. I guess that's the thing about neighborhoods on the wrong side of the tracks: you see them when you ride the train.

But DC is always nice to visit. Readers may recall my last visit to Washington DC for the National Postmaster's Convention in 2009. I have this idea in my head that DC is a cold, gray place because I keep going there in late winter/early spring, even though I'm sure it has other, much prettier seasons. At least there are very few crowds when you go in the middle of February.

The first night we were there, BS and his GF took us out for seafood and then to see the Oscar-nominated animated shorts. I pushed hard for the animated shorts rather than the live action shorts, because the live action shorts are always terribly depressing and there's usually at least one film about the Holocaust. The animated films always put you in a much better mood. One short was about a mouse looking for a nut in the forest, and I'm pretty sure I remember reading the picture book when I was a wee grom (The Gruffalo, does anyone else remember that?). And Pixar's stuff is, as always, delightful, though I'm hoping their entry "Day and Night" loses this year to a lovely Australian entry called "The Lost Thing," which was soft and quiet and hopeful and included giant octopus/hermit crab inside a red tin can. And there was one terribly depressing short that began with a dead goat and ended with a dead mother. Thanks, Germany.

The next day, the BF and I went to the Air and Space Museum so we could be astronauts. It was awesome, though my neck hurt from looking up at all the planes, satellites, and rockets hanging from the ceiling.

We had lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is widely regarded as the best museum for eating on the mall. The food stations are regional, so we had tacos at the Mesoamerican section. Runners-up included salmon at the Pacific Northwest station, and buffalo burgers in the Midwest section. And I saw an outrigger canoe.

Our last day, President's Day, was a bit rainy and cold. BF said that he wanted to tour the Big F*cking Thing we'd seen in the car the day before, when we were going to the grocery store. It looked a bit like a pyramid on top of a tower, and the BF said something to the effect of, "Look at that Big F*cking Thing! Can we go inside?" An Internet search and a phone call confirmed that it was the George Washington Memorial Masonic Lodge, and one can, indeed, go inside for a tour. At first we thought that we were going to be the only people going, but it being President's Day, there was actually a fair-sized group of about 20.

We learned a lot about George Washington and the Freemasons that day, but I'm going to share my favorite little factoid. First, some background: The Freemasons is a fraternity--a gentlemen's club--of men who want to improve their minds, bodies, and spirits. One in five men in Washington's day was a Freemason; today it's more like 1 in 200, but they're still an active organization worldwide, especially in their charitable offshoots, like the Shriners. Lots of notable dudes were and are Freemasons, including 4 US presidents, and...

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, also known as the guys who landed on the moon.

See how this whole trip is tying together?

Those three men happen to be Master Freemasons. To set up a new Freemason Lodge, all you need are three Master Masons to open and close a meeting in the new lodge location. So, during the Apollo 11 space launch, the three astronauts established the first and only extra-terrestrial Freemason Lodge. If you're a Mason, you can join the so-called Moon Lodge, and go to their party every year in Texas.

So, this is what I gained from my trip to the nation's capital: a burning desire to know why someone hasn't yet made an off-off Broadway musical called "Masons in Space!"

Happy VD

Work is often unintentionally funny. You have to be so chaste and polite and careful to conceal what a true bastard of a human being you really are that sometimes weird stuff slips under your radar. You'll say something like, "Happy VD!" on Valentines Day and won't realize how dirty and strangely appropriate that is until it's already out there and you can't take it back.

I didn't say that, by the way. It seems like something I'd say, but I can't take credit for it. I just recognized the phenom and took quiet pleasure in the joy of knowing that it happens to other people, and not just me.

New Glasses!

I bring my sunglasses to work every day, because even when a cruel, indifferent G-d is raining his icy wrath upon us from above, the light from the office's floor-to-ceiling windows can get a little intense, and no one's allowed to put up curtains or shades because eff you, that's why! My sunglasses came with a nice, roomy glasses case, big enough to fit both my regular glasses and my sunglasses. They nest together like tender lovers when I'm in my yoga class. I like doing my yoga in a gentle, fuzzy haze of blurred faces and diminished depth perception.

But after last week's class, I opened my glasses case and found that the sunglasses had done a Pac-Man on the regular glasses and engulfed their slim metal frames--waaka waaka waaka--they were broken beyond repair.

I've worn glasses since I was four years old. They are a very big part of my identity. Sure, I flirted with contacts, everyone did in the late nineties, even people who didn't need them and just wanted to look like Marilyn Manson, but ultimately my laziness won over my vanity and I just went back to the specs. Why mess with what works, right? Also, I had eye surgery when I was fifteen, and contacts irritated the stitches on my corneas. Take a moment to enjoy that tactile image.

The point being, new glasses time is a very important moment in the life of a glasses-wearer. I'd had my glasses for almost four years; I got them right before I moved to New York, the last time I was fully employed and had health insurance. They were blue Guess glasses, metal, rectangular, with a little design cut away in the frame, my big girl glasses that replaced the glasses I got when I entered college, which replaced my high school glasses. You can see how this works: major life change=new glasses

Fortunately, with me being a gainfully employed, fully functioning member of society again, I have proper health insurance. Major life change often coincides with a change in health insurance situation. On Monday, I took the morning off work and toddled down to my friendly neighborhood optometrist for new glasses--new New York glasses!

Doctor was a great old Jewish guy who told me that the doctors had done an exceptional job on my eye surgery, and that the Brooklyn Dodgers got their name because trolley cars used to run all through Brooklyn, but the tracks were in the middle of the road, so when you got off the trolley, you had to dodge traffic to get to the sidewalk. Great guy. He liked me a lot. I picked my frames and was ready to go back to work and squint at my computer for a week or so until the lenses could be made, but wait! They'd have them ready in about an hour and a half. Did I mind waiting?

Let me tell you something about ordering glasses in Hawaii. Again, I've been doing this since I was four. I have certain expectations, one of which is that the frames will have to be shipped four islands over to get fitted with the proper lenses, and because one of my eyes is near-sighted and the other is far-sighted, they are rather difficult specimens, so I will get the glasses when I get them and be damned happy for it. I have never in my life received an eye exam and new glasses on the same day.

Lots of things surprised me when I moved to New York: the crowds, the difficulty of mastering the subway, the lack of alleyways for Spider-Man to change into his costume. But I don't think I was ever so shocked as when I picked up my new glasses less than two hours after my exam. It was like crapping in an outhouse all your life and suddenly discovering one of those fancy Japanese toilets that plays nature sounds to cover up the shameful sound of your tinkles. It's civilization, baby, and it rocks!

Now I'm in the stage of new glassesness where my new prescription is so much better than my old one that the clarity of the objects around me actually makes me nauseous. That pleasant fuzziness that haloed everything on Friday was completely gone by Monday, replaced by the raw, unadulturated scream of reality. And those shadows in the corners of my apartment? Dust bunnies. Clumps of filth.

Who comes in here and makes this mess while I'm gone?

Cold Wet American Winter

We're getting another 6 to 8 inches of snow today here in New York. The officemates are speculating that as soon as we can't see the main campus from our windows, we should all just go home. Manhattan already disappeared in the cloud of white, as did the dome of the Greek Orthodox church in Williamsburg, about a mile north of us. The Big Boss is blaming me. He says I brought it here from the islands.

This is easily the worst of the three winters I've experienced in New York. Normally it doesn't snow this much. We get one, maybe two big messes dumped on us a season. This will be the sixth or maybe even seventh big mess, and that doesn't count all the days that it's been snowing but not sticking. I'm starting to feel a bit like Benicio Del Toro in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when he tries to open the salt shaker of cocaine while speeding through the desert in an open convertible and it all blows away in the wind.

"Did you see what GOD just did to us, man?"

I wonder if anyone is surfing down in Jersey today.