Month: November 2012

Forget, for a moment, that there are still thousands of New Yorkers without power, and even more who are have no heat or hot water in housing developments.  Forget that the governor is starting a commission to go after the power companies for criminal neglect. Forget that the MTA has told people who rely on them for transportation on a monthly level that they will see no extension or refunds for the time the system was shut down.  If you can, ignore the fact that there are still thousands of New Yorkers without basic needs for life, dependent on the good will of others.

Below is an actual e-mail sent to anyone who works in the law division for NYC.  All non-exempt NYC employees who couldn’t get to work or a shelter during the Hurricane now have to use vacation days for those days, or they get docked pay.  The city is being _generous_ enough to advance people future vacation, in the case that they do not have one.

The Mayor’s signature is not on that email,  but he is the one making this decision, ultimately.  It is unconscionable to ask hard working New Yorkers who couldn’t get to work or a shelter due to weather AND an MTA shutdown that they should be giving their time back to the city.

~~~~~~

From: Higgins, Malachy [mailto:mhiggins@law.nyc.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 12:46 PM
Cc: *ALL SUPPORT MANAGERS
Subject: Timesheet for the week ending 11/03/2012 – Hurricane Sandy – Handscan/Webclock Users ONLY

To All Support Users ONLY,

This email is regarding how to record your time and leave information for the week ending 11/03/2012. 

Please use your annual leave for the week of 10/29/12 to 11/03/12 in the following instances:

  • If you were unable to:
    • report to work at either your permanent location or one of our other locations or,
    • to a shelter in your community or,
    • reported to a shelter but were turned away and returned home.
  • The reason for this Annual Leave is Other Usage, this leave is located on the left side navigation bar and requires two levels of approval – your approver and Timekeeping.   
  • If you do not have annual leave and would like to have annual leave advanced for Hurricane Sandy event ONLY, please send an email requesting an advance of your annual leave to Kathy Bryan via email, copying your Division Chief . 
  • However, if you were pre-scheduled for annual leave during the week of 11/03/12, you must use your annual leave.  If you were also sick during this time, please record accordingly.

Recording Volunteer hours for week ending 11/03/12 and onward  

For all employees who reported to a shelter and were able to volunteer, the hours will be noted on your timesheet.  You would have received an orange colored timecard – “NYC City of New York Emergency Response Staff (ERS)” from the shelter to record the hours.  Make a copy of the timecard and send the original to Timekeeping via email, fax or interoffice.  Timekeeping will make the change to your schedule for the day/s that you volunteered.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Kathy Bryan and Timekeeping via email.   

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, — My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent to blow up King and Parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below to prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d with a dark lantern and lighted match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.

A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.

Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.

Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

I just had the fastest commute of my life. I made it from Hamilton Heights to Brooklyn Heights in 22 minutes. This was, in part, due to the fact that I managed to drive from 34th to the Brooklyn Bridge never once tapping my breaks aside from when I crossed the West Side Highway.  Though on some level, shooting 50mph down  dark stretch of road normally snarled with cars, cops, and trucks was surreally exhilarating, it was also nauseatingly eye-opening.  All the images I’ve been seeing secondhand came home in a visceral wave. Driving throughower Manhattan left me feeling like a tomb robber, skulking about a dark and forbidden place, waiting for something horrible to happen.  It was not until I turned on to Broadway, and was faced with the flashing cavalcade of the NYPD ‘security stop’ at Fulton station that it dawned on me just how dark it was beyond the glowing cone of my headlamps.

I have written a lot about NYC over the years – flights of fancy, poems, and odd lots of experiences lurking at the periphery of dawn. Never have I seen her like this. I feel like I was witness to a compound fracture, but the break starts in midtown and travels the remaining length of the island, rather than a femur or shin. To those living downtown, as I once did, my morbid moment of self-realization is two drops of pee in a roiling cauldron of a pisspot, but that connection was sobering. Strength and resilience – hell, maybe even stubbornness have seen New Yorkers through worse, but rarely, and even more rarely with the wounds so garish and laid bare. My heart goes out to the populace of the city which will never quite be the same again. For all our concrete and macadam, copper and steel, wireless and fiber optics, we really aren’t much more than a colony of fleas precariously colonized in the mane of Nature, gambling on our survival through the next big itch.