Traffic, jam.

The 2000 movie Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Michael Douglas, made its point impressively: addictive drugs are so ubiquitous that any so-called "War on Drugs" is futile hypocrisy. It suggests, moreover, that addicts can only be rescued from self-destruction one at a time and through heroic interventions by people who love them. The rescue requires one-on-one confrontations with the ghoulish parasites who cultivate and profit from the self-destructive addictions of their "clients."

I know a 19-year-old, let's call him G, and his mother, let's call her M. G came home at 5:30 this morning so incapacitated that he could not pass the threshold of his own front door without falling twice. M asked where he had been and how he had gotten home. G said he was drunk, and that he was sorry. Notice that G never ever admits to being drunk, not even when lying on the floor drooling. So this admission was intended to preempt discovery that he was more than drunk, way out past drunk. When repeatedly pressed, he said that Abdul had dropped him off, and that he hadn't been in anyone's house but had just been in Abdul's car all night.

I'm thinking that Abdul knows that G has a job now, and also knows when payday is. I'm thinking that Abdul calls G on payday and says to him "G, my man! Where you been? I been tryin to chill with you! I'll come pick you up after work!" I'm thinking that Abdul lays it on thick and flatters G, whose self-esteem responds to this fraudulent campaign. I'm thinking that Abdul is looking to help G graduate to greater thrills, greater debts, and greater dependency on Abdul.

Abdul lives on Voorhees Avenue in Buffalo. If any of you know him, tell him M is looking for him. And looking for his mother. And tell the bitch she needs to watch herself. Abdul's phone number is (716) 949-5046.

Last week, Adam S. woke M up when he called G's cell phone at 4:00 am and then came to the house and began vociferously demanding money. M summoned G and told him that Adam S. was not ever welcome in the house and that he had to leave. G denied that there had been a conversation about money, but M knows what she heard. Adam S. lives in the 300 block of Capen Boulevard in Amherst, the safest town in America . His mom is a bigwig at a local school -- in the very school system which convinced G that he was a loser. But winners that they all are, even the S family is living on borrowed time.

We all know the figures for the economic impact of this university or that hospital or the prized local industry on their host economies. I would like the winners to tell me what is the economic impact of the addictive drug trade on our local and national economy, and in particular, what part of their retirement portfolio is derived from this industry. I would like the winners to observe that the gateway to addictive drugs is not the demon pot, but rather cigarettes and beer, in which they own stock. I would like to see the entertainment industry take note that addictive drugs are so essential to our economic survival that to indulge in them is not to revolt against society, but rather to become a substantial contributor to the capitalist system. I would like the winners to grasp that to enable their success, the capitalist system enslaves the big losers to back-breaking and stultifying jobs, makes them vulnerable to the seductions of shrewdly calculated advertising, and exploits this vulnerability by charging usurious credit card interest rates. Best of all, the winners own and profit from the very gesture of defiance of the enslaved, who imagine that they are stickin it to the man by smokin pot on the job or getting dead drunk every night. To portray these lapses as funky counter-cultural is an unconscionable marketing ploy. You are not stickin it to the man. The man makes more from your drinking and smoking than he does from your labor in his sweatshop.

Whatever enhancement to their sound system these entrepreneurs have "earned" at G's expense, Abdul and Adam S. are merely expendable cogs in this vast hideous machinery. They too are trapped. And the more they succeed by victimizing kids like G, the more precarious their own existence becomes. They too succumbed to someone older and smoother who made them feel important. But that being said, M will not be thinking political philosophy when next she sees them. If it is a question of her son's well-being or theirs, she is unlikely to hesitate.

The great humbler

In the early days of the "October surprise" snow storm, Buffalo residents exulted in the wonderful community spirit of cooperation and self-help. Mayor Brown gloated over the normalcy of crime statistics, and residents asserted to national media reporters that here, there was no looting or violence.

Unfortunately for all this sanctimony, Buffalo residents get just as cranky as anyone else at delayed or incompetent relief efforts. There were reports of citizens pelting utility trucks with snowballs and other projectiles, hoping perhaps that such persuasive behavior would lead to an early restoration of electricity. Looting broke out, and in addition to whatever staples were seized by the parents of hungry children, other essentials were stolen: burglars took $10,000 worth of polo shirts from O'Connell Lucas Chelf, including 150 Lacoste shirts; thieves took jackets, jeans, cigars, watches, and $400 cash from Sabri Supply Shop; and -- my personal favorite -- someone broke the front window at the Rent-A-Center at 1445 Kensington Avenue and made off with a video game valued at $750. The story of just how, exactly, the video game comes to be valued at $750 will explain why this particular burglary is low on my list of crimes to solve.

The prize for the most creative criminal activity goes to scam artists who went door-to-door in Erie County claiming to be Federal Emergency Management Agency contractors negotiating debris removal and collecting a deposit from homeowners. County officials reacted to this news with what is surely a contender for this year's Golden Understatement Trophy: "FEMA representatives do not go door to door."

Indeed they do not. What FEMA officials do is land at the airport, jump into the waiting cars of the embattled Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds (named by Republican Governor Pataki as point man for the region's FEMA appeal), speed off to Williamsville and Lancaster to tour the damaged golf courses and day spas, all without so much as a by your leave from the Buffalo mayor. Ah, every day a reason to love them more!

The perennially law-abiding professoriate channelled its frustrations into poetry. Latinist Neil Coffee inaugurated a storm-related haiku series:

fridge stands wide open
only condiments remain
mustard and ketchup.

fickle bucket truck
driven far from Ohio
what will entice you?

My basement is a site of devastation and mourning, for it is not clear that its most precious contents can be rescued. Sears will deliver a new clothes dryer tomorrow, but there's no replacing Reham's tiny pink and white leather oxfords, Ghazi's luxurious baby-sized terry-cloth bathrobe; a pink sundress; the overalls Ghazi was wearing when he petted the goat. And the favorite toy, Big Bird, revived just as Reham turns 21. The moments preserved in these objects risk dying with them. It is not a matter of learning to let go of material objects, but rather of losing the moments that constitute a life.





Of the several local personalities assigned to the weather sub-speciality of infotainment, the one who actually takes it seriously is Don Paul, the WIVB-TV meteorologist who has held court every winter for 22 years. But when he failed to call this storm, his morale inspired concern. "I feel upset with myself," he confessed. "I'm very disappointed in my work." He added: "Nature is the great humbler."

I had my own humbling encounter yesterday afternoon, on my bike, when an errant storm-related branch suddenly attacked my front wheel and arrested its rotation, utterly without regard for the considerable momentum of the rest of the bike and its passenger. The accident happened so quickly that it's hard to reconstruct anything, but I imagine it looked something like this, only much faster, and without the satisfaction of being able to hit anyone with a stick:



I landed face-first on the concrete, and was quite stunned for several minutes. I called out for help; drivers had seen me land on the shoulder of the busy road, a bike on top of me and one foot caught in the chain. No one stopped, but as they all sped past, they peered curiously into their rear-view mirrors, hoping for a little gore. The people living in the closest house came out and called an ambulance. They also called Reham, who was at work just a block away at Bocce's. "Ya mutha has been in an accident, and she has blood coming from her mouth." Later, when Reham recovered from hearing this news in this way, she had a pizza sent to the family.

The EMTs said I had a broken nose and possibly other bad things, so they strapped me to a board and hauled me to Erie County Medical Center's ER, which seemed quite a competent operation. I confessed to the EMTs and the Amherst policeman that the indifferent motorists had shaken my faith in human nature. "Don't get me started on human nature," replied the cop. My mood improved when I met my ER doctor, Markintosh Barthelemy from Haiti by way of Jersey, who smalltalked in French as he checked for a concussion or broken vertebrae. "T'as bien fait de mettre le casque," he said approvingly. Yep, without that dorky helmet, this could have been worse than humbling. I'm renting myself out now to local parents who want to impress helmet values on their cool children.

My students had a hard time concentrating on part III of "Un coeur simple" -- surely nine of the most beautifully written pages in the history of language -- because their professor looked so strange. Tomorrow I may wear a Halloween mask, just to be rid of the distraction.

Moi before:


Moi after:


There's no way around it, though. Despite the loss of a bike, a strange exhaustion, soreness all over, bruises and cuts and a face too swollen to wear goggles just yet, I sure do feel lucky. Not pretty, just lucky. And humble. Maybe I'll go find Don Paul at a bar.

The novelty wears off.

We're now five days out from when the first slobbery flakes started kissing our trees. There is nothing gloomier than watching the proud resistance of these quiet neighbors as they finally succomb to the burden of the ice, or to the chainsaws of the debris removal crews. Even as they are dismembered and cut down, they are still parading the most vivid colors. It is exceedingly anthropomorphic, yet altogether unavoidable, to view them as tragic victims of a terrible cataclysm. We have no rituals to mourn their disappearance.







Humans too have perished in this misfortune. Two elderly people died from carbon monoxide fumes produced by the gas generators they were running inside their homes and garages. James Moulin died on Friday, cleaning off his driveway, when a tree broke apart and fell on him. He had been a faithful morning swimmer, a gentle and playful man. He was not driven to exercise, had no agenda of self-improvement. He was oblivious to the striving of swimmers in adjacent lanes, never studying their moves or straining to compete. He saw me once in the weight room, rearranging all the dumbbells so I could put mine in their proper place, and he asked bemusedly if I would care to come over and arrange his socks drawer. He had no interest in our team. He just enjoyed being in the water. He would swim a few dozen graceful laps, and then let himself sink down to the bottom and bob back up a few times, blowing bubbles. He would leave at 7:21. He swam for no reason other than to please himself. On the day he died, his wife had warned him not to stand under the precariously dangling branch. She thought it "madness" to shovel snow which a thaw would clear in a day. But Jim took pride in the appearance of his home, she said, and he insisted.

Although nervous about the sounds of cracking branches, [Mrs. Moulin] enjoyed their time together doing the chore. "It was a beautiful morning," she said. "We were just about done. We had a little snowball war, and he won." The two were alone. "One of those timeless days," she said Saturday. "We were not looking at the clock, not going anywhere. We had a blessed morning." Then, the tree branch broke. (Buffalo News, October 15, 2006)

Jim was a painter by trade, and his pride or perfectionism may be at fault -- it is true that our virtues are as fatal as our vices --, but I suspect that cleaning the driveway was a pretext. The atmosphere on Friday exerted an irresistible appeal, one that any sensualist would indulge. Heavy snow was falling, yet the air was warm. Thunder cracked sharply; branches snapped and dropped silently to the deadened streets. Lightening appeared not as a bolt but as a sudden aura, all around. I surrendered to this seduction, on the flimsy rationalization that even though snow was still falling, it would be useful, it would be helpful, to begin cleaning up. "Because it's beautiful," these days, never seems like reason enough.

 

The material toll of the storm and its aftermath has not yet been calculated, says Governor Pataki. Even if no dollar value is assigned to the trees, the cost of the flood to homeowners and small businessmen is at least in the tens of millions. There is much dithering among officials, and probably fine-tuned calculations about how much federal aid to bother sending to a county which always votes Democratic. I filed an initial report with my homeowners agent today, and thought about what color trailer I'd get if FEMA decided to cover my losses. These seem to include the four basement appliances: furnace, hot water heater, washer and dryer, plus the fence around the backyard. Some of these can be salvaged, in theory, but tonight I notice that the sump pump sounds like it's about to fail, having been running continuously for the past 48 hours. If the pump goes down, the water level will climb rapidly, and then I'd say all bets are off.



Objects of some sentimental value were in plastic storage bins on the floor of the basement. These being narrower at the bottom than the top, and the objects themselves being lighter than water, they were overturned. Toys and clothes from the kids' infancy were soaked.



Miss Whiteside, head counselor of Camp Marymount, used to refuse to be photographed, saying, "If you need a picture to remember me by, you don't need to remember me." This is an occasion to practice detachment. It doesn't come easy.

Morale has been otherwise good. Much of today, the first day back for students, staff, and faculty, was spent exchanging war stories. It appears that I was the hardest hit in our department, though not everyone was on campus today and some may have fared worse. The "haves" generally tended to help the "have-nots" : Amy G. and the Brokaws ran a bath house and laundromat for friends and neighbors, and José Agudelo shared his electricity and food with Callodine and Springville folks. I am pretending to keep a list of those who have not suffered. Rather odd trivia is being adduced -- in earnest, alas -- as evidence of hardship.

The clean-up and power restoration have been largely provided by crews from ten neighboring states and Canada. The guys who rolled down Springville on Sunday were greeted as liberators. Their rig was marked Central New York, and they said they were from Poughkeepsie. When I thanked them for being here to help, they said, "There's no place we'd rather be than Buffalo." Now, this isn't a remark one hears every day, so I had to spend some time thinking about it. What I think they guys from Poughkeepsie meant was that they were pleased to have a chance to repay the favor. I can imagine that the crews from Buffalo have done us proud many times in the past, helping out people all over the state. And unlike crews from certain other locales, who hold their nose when they cross the Hudson, the guys from Buffalo are probably pleased, even excited, to take a road trip.



The Spectrum published a special storm edition, and their editorial criticized the administration's response to the crisis. Admittedly the President of the university was overseas when the storm hit, and true, his entire administration is from the West Coast, where no one practices snow emergencies. Still, wouldn't Bill Greiner have been happy to explain how you close down the campus? "The university's administration and emergency response officials were caught sleeping," wrote the Spectrum. "Although it is too late for this storm, let's hope they learn from their mistakes so that the next inevitable Buffalo snowstorm doesn't catch them napping once again." The frustration of the students matches that of the faculty and staff: those who teach early on Friday morning had no idea whether to report or not, and the so-called "emergency hotline" was not updated until a full day into the crisis. We needed to know on Thursday night that the campus was closed on Friday.

Or as I thought that night, UB2020 is all well and good, but who's planning for UB tomorrow morning?

Emergency preparedness

Visitors to this blog, alert news-savvy readers that you both are, will already have heard via the media that Buffalo has been smacked by a humongous lake effect snow storm. NPR says that two feet of snow fell overnight, and that there are some 380,000 homes and business without power. Local estimates for the restoration of power have us sitting in our cold dark houses for about a week.

The authorities do not expect campers to be happy with this timetable, for on the news last night, says empowered colleague Colleen, they showed a press conference featuring NY Governor George Pataki (R) and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown (D), both speaking effusively about "excellent interagency cooperation" during this emergency. Now, Colleen ran a refugee shelter for the Red Cross during Hurricane Katrina, and she knows what these words mean. When the officials say, as they did at the press conference, "Everyone knows their job!", this is because they cannot confidently assert that anyone is actually doing the job he knows is his.



People whose lives have been seriously disrupted will find it hard to be forgiving, but I am not in that class. By the end of the week, perhaps, my broken fence, flooding basement, dry swimsuit and stinking refrigerator will have been promoted in my imagination to "hardships," but reality checks are all around me. Hell, if I had stir-crazy young children, I'd consider myself a martyr.

What made this Friday the 13th storm so bad was that, again as Colleen observed, the leaves were still on the trees. So the heavy wet snow stuck to them, and the wind took down enormous 100-year-old trees very quickly. Power restoration will require not only removing all the boughs which are currently weighing down power lines, but also those which are essentially detached from the trunk but whose menace is hard to see. We could ask our governments to develop better plans for October snow storms, and why not, September and August snow storms, but it may be that this particular nexus of circumstances is unlikely to repeat itself.



Reham and her friend Aimee and I walked up to Tops University Plaza, which was running on generator power. The coolers did not seem to be on, and the store was barely lit. The manager was standing at the door in his leather Buffalo Sabres jacket, telling customers to remove their backpacks. The cash registers were staffed by people from every department. The line stretched back to the back of the store. Our cashier was a middle-aged Russian immigrant who probably lives in the nearby Princeton apartments. She didn't know the produce codes, so Reham gave them to her. (Not that many of our purchases came from produce, I confess.) I stayed on to bag for her for a couple of hours.




What was clear in the store and out in the streets was that folks around here have grown accustomed to being thrust into emergency situations. Buffalo people know not to wait by the phone for interagency cooperation to bring them a solution. There is an unbelievable reflex reaction to sudden hardship, and by the end of the day, neighbors had cleared trees from the streets themselves, plowed out each other's driveways, cleaned debris, set up make-shift neighborhood micro-shelters, and just generally done all the things we like to think a community does, but which our highly prized autonomy normally obscures.

So yeah. I need to grind coffee beans, and I really need to do laundry, and a refrigerator would be nice. I could imagine being wretched in another few days. But for now, and speaking again just for my tiny corner, the inconvenience is outweighed by the privilege of being reminded of the good things neighbors are capable of.