August 2004 Archives

On some cool people's advice, I did a bit of investigation on how to take the best scenic photos for Maui (leaving in four days, WOO!), and bought an adapter and polarizing filter for my Powershot G3 camera. I have a lens. I always said I wouldn't get a lens. I guess it's a filter, not a lens, but it's an attachy thing, and now I feel all photographer-like, like I should be crawling behind houses or underneath four-leaf clovers for the best shots while turning my lens - no, filter! - so it makes the thickest color differentiation.

Unfortunately I won't be crawling anywhere, because I've thrown my back out to Mars or something. I'm ALWAYS so careful when I lift things, but as I always suspected, newspapers will be the end of me. I had to recycle a load up to my knees, and bent over to pick some up the wrong way, and boom, back, gone, ow, pain.

After 10 days of hobbling around like an old woman and stinking out my office with my pot of Icy Hot (like Bengay), I finally went to the doctor. I had to wait two and a half hours before he felt my spine and said, "Here's a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, one for muscle relaxation, don't operate heavy machinery, see you if you're not better!"

The really pain-in-the-butt thing about all this is that on Friday I'll be on a plane for 13 hours, to Maui. Sitting for more than 15 minutes is excruciating, I must walk up and down the office to stretch it out. Now I'll be doing this on the plane and annoying the hell out of EVERYONE. The good news is the muscle relaxant might also knock me out, so yay, sleep on plane. My doc also wrote a note asking the airlines to upgrade me if possible so I have a little more room not only for the back but for the pacing, though he says it never works. Fingers crossed.

My new filter is cool. It comes in a little plastic case and works the same way sunglasses filter light through to your eyes. It's constructed with tiny tiny directional slats or something, because the color in the lens changes when you turn it. So the blue sky gets more blue, and the colors are just generally enhanced. It was recommended to me by Dave Tonnes, who took this stunning picture in Oahu. I was looking for pictures taken with my series camera on Hawaii, because I'm concerned about low light, sunsets, etc - all the most beautiful aspects of Hawaii scenery spelled danger on my digicam, or at least I thought they did. Kristin said she does most of that stuff on Photoshop, which is true, you can, but I always feel more comfortable doing the best I can with the shot and using the computer to enhance if necessary - it's complicated to apply changes in Photoshop just to select areas, I feel, and sometimes blanket changes make things weird or grainy or whatever. That's probably just my neuroses; all K's pics always come out so beautiful.

Look at me, talking like I know what I'm talking about. I don't. It's just fun. But I am going to be moving this blog onto Movable Type and then will make a nice photo album from Hawaii last year and Hawaii this year! So, I'm all sorts of psyched about getting great shots. This year instead of spikin' it down the Hana Highway I'm going to go a bit slower and visit some historic as well as scenic spots. My doc recommends against going in the ocean with my back (too cold, unpredicatble surfaces, both bad for back), so that solves my problem of leaving the camera on the beach or rocks while I dip (can't leave it in rental car - if anyone sees it in Maui they will definitely break the window for it. An Islander told me it was "what's mine is yours" mentality. Mentality! I call it theft!).

Anyway, what I need most of all is a few days basking in warmth and relaxation. These firefighters' sex scandal is not doing much for my blood pressure either.

Last night I sat with a grieving family, the relatives of 5-year-old Muhmadul Huq, who died after a GMC box truck smashed into him and his pregnant mother.

His mother's okay, and so is his new little sister, who doctors retrieved from her mother's stomach. Emma Huq is two-and-a-half pounds but expected to make it.

The family leaned on each other, and cried a little, and watched as their children gamboled around, and waited for Rashadel to come back from the hospital. They themselves left the hospital at about 11 and Uman Kulsum, Muhmadul's mother, was still asking for her son. Doctors had told her he died early in the morning, but she kept stirring from naps and demanding he be brought to her.

It wasn't originally my story; I was covering for a friend's shift and was sent out to try and find the father and get a picture of the son to run with our article. Our article said that Rashadel had gone back to work yesterday; a street vendor who sells shish kabobs in Times Square, perhaps it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine that he couldn't miss a day of work even in the face of such tragedy. It caused pause when I read it, and made snappy copy to be sure, but didn't exactly ring true. Still, the reporter swore that's what the father had said, and despite there being six different spellings of his wife's last name (apparently in Bangladesh cultuure the woman does not give up her last name when she marries), the reporter also swore up and down that the father had spelled out the last name and the way he had it in the story was correct.

So, I thought we were on a fool's mission. The photographer and I walked to the car miserably, not wanting to find this guy even if we had the keys to his apartment - who wants to bother a grieving father on the night after his son's death? "Hi, how are you, sorry to bother you when your five year old son has died and all, but could you possibly do us a big favor and get us a picture of him? We swear we're not really vultures, we just play them on TV."

As it was all we had was the address of this guy's apartment building, in the most populated area of Staten Island, so chances were slim anyway. His name, as it was spelled in our already-filed story, was not on the apartment building directory. The door had slid shut behind the last person to go into the building and I did not want to go back so quickly. So I pushed a buzzer. No answer. And another. And another. Finally a person who apparently had no concern for security answered my buzz with one of his own and let us into the building.

We knocked on doors. No answer. No idea. Didn't know him. Who? What happened? Finally someone said, "That's right, he lives in 5M. I'll come up with you and knock."

But no one was in 5M. The friendly guide led us to 5K, to Rashadel's friends' house.

There were kids everywhere, poking out between this couple's legs and running around in the background. It was 10 p.m. They smiled so nicely, and explained that Rashadel had gone to live at his cousin's, and gave us the number where we could reach them and the address of another apartment building.

We called the number. No answer. We went to the apartment building. The name again is not on the directory. There have to be at least 50 apartments in the building. I picked one - 209 - and push. We're let right in, and the guy in 209 handily explained that there was a couple from Bangladesh just down the hall.

Not thinking there was any way we could have found them, we walked down the hall. Sure enough the spicy smell of Indian food and the sound of running children was coming from the door. We knocked, they opened, and let us in.

Rashadel was still at the hospital but all his cousins had flown in from Toronto and Ottawa. They showed us pictures and spoke of Hamza, the nickname they all used for the poor dead child. They spoke in hushed voices, while two-year-old Fayad ran around oblivious, a wide smile on his face because his whole family had gathered. Six-year-old Dinah kept telling us that her cousin was dead, but the matter-of-factness in her tone said she had no more understanding of the word dead than anybody had of how this could happen.

We sat in their living room and I had to ask them if we could take pictures of them sitting there, while they grieved. They didn’t mind at all. We sat there and they arranged to send us more pictures. They told us everything about what was happening at the hospital, as if it wasn't going to appear in print the next day. The whole time I made sure my press pass was hanging from my neck, just to be sure they knew who I was and where I was from, as if my saying it forty-six times wasn't enough.

As it turned out, Rashadel hadn't gone to work that day, and the man who was next to Rashadel when he supposedly told the reporter that's what he was doing was also in the living room, vehemently denying that any such thing had been said. The shish kabob cart was in storage and Rashadel had spent the entire day at his wife's bedside, as she heard the horrible news and continued denying its truth. They corrected the spelling of her first and last name for me. They corrected a lot of things.

This family, who was so open and welcoming, almost had their story grievously mistold in our pages. It horrified me to think of how many errors we don't catch, because we generally don't have the time to speak to 16 neighbors in the aim of finding the family.

I left last night feeling like I'd at least saved the paper from error and this family from losing, on top of everything else, the truth about Hamza, who liked to watch "Shrek" and catch rabbits in the park.

This morning my great-uncle died. He was a Captain in the NYPD, a man of high integrity and large love. They took him off life support two days ago, but he clung on. He died with his whole family around him. His family will shortly come to my house, where they will sit shiva for a week in the Jewish tradition. People will come in, and talk, and offer condolences, and comfort the living. The cultures aren't so different. We welcome in those who can help. And those who get the story wrong...well, they really aren't helping at all.

I'm not a cat person. I'm not a cat person because cats tend not to like me, or to make me sneeze, or to leave their hair on me so that I have allergies for weeks.

Puck, who passed away yesterday, did all of these things. But I loved Puck.

I loved how insistent he was about being pet, how if he wanted love you had no choice but to give it to him. If you didn't, he kept you up all night. He'd walk over the keys or right over your face if he had to. When he was through being pet, he got up and walked away. If you annoyed him he batted you.

I loved that I could rub his tummy, but if I tried to do it a certain way he'd gnaw on my fingers instead. I loved his personality, which was at turns affectionate, inquisitive and aloof. He tried to eat my titanium computer. He tried to drink from the toilet.

If you were not Meg but very lucky or he was just in a good mood, he'd curl up next to you and lay there without needing more affection or attention. I liked that the best. Sometimes on Friday mornings, I would just be sleeping after Meg went to work, and I'd wake up to his triangular face staring right at me. It was never jarring. He would have already climbed right onto my chest and lain there waiting for me to wake up. I would scratch his ears and he'd turn his head so that I was scratching the best spot. Then he'd disappear under the bed and you'd never know he was there.

Meg is feeling like she didn't do enough for him. But I saw her dance with him, I saw her coo with him, I saw her hug and pet and feed and worry and play and smack around and nuzzle and love him. I saw him respond to her voice, and I saw him seek her out. I saw him happy when she came in the door and I saw him pissed that she had left. She would pet him absently with one hand and he'd stretch out blissfully under it.

My dog is nearing the end of her life, and the last few weeks have been rough; we sit expecting it, wondering if we should help it along, wishing it would just happen quickly so she didn't suffer. And during this time I've comforted myself with what I know: that my dog is loved and had a good life.

I can say the same for Puck.