Living in a city such as New York requires a certain degree of grace under fire and disappointment. Each and every day brings with it an additional letdown that is routinely tallied-up as symptomatic of big city life, then resignedly accepted by the majority of its jaded inhabitants and gradually forgotten (or absorbed). Almost anything could happen whether through neglect or incompetence or sheer inevitability beyond each sunrise (and usually does) and one must maintain a sense of humor when “castles burn” or risk intense despair.
There was a time in this city (perhaps imaginary) when “creepie-crawly” things, such as roaches, and “furry little things,” such as rats and mice, were famously and popularly confined to the more sordid regions of town. As if there existed an instinctive caste observance amongst the city’s vermin population (not including the two-legged kind, of course) that areas such as upper-Manhattan were off-limits to them. Even during NYC’s 1970s recession, when most of this city was in the midst of financial collapse amid the squalor to prove it, would anyone expect to find such things as mice in Lincoln Center. Those expectations are now dampened.
Coming on the heels of the NYC Department of Health finding mice in F.A.O. Schwartz on Fifth Avenue, one of the world’s most opulent toy stores, the department also detected mice at the Metropolitan Opera, one of the world’s most opulent opera houses. During an April 9 inspection, “evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas” were found. The Met wasn’t served with a violation notice because it had only 13 violation points (15 points are required in New York for a notice to be served…they have 2 points to go!!!).
Yahoo News further reports that: “The nation’s largest musical organization also was cited for ‘food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service’ “……”On March 28, the department said the Met had ‘plumbing not properly installed or maintained; anti-siphonage or backflow prevention device not provided where required; equipment or floor not properly drained; sewage disposal system in disrepair or not functioning properly.’ ”
In the words of Neil Young, “It’s only castles burning.” Besides, it could’ve been rats and I’m sure that they’re just around the corner.
Souce: Yahoo! News: news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_…
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Posted by 
GrayFoxDown, filed under Big Apple Sauce. Date: May 29, 2008, 6:39 am |
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
“…one must maintain a sense of humor when “castles burn” or risk intense despair.”
Absolutely. And thank you for helping us maintain this sense of humor. Without it, I would most certainly fall into despair.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Thanks, Suzanne. Another incident of a “castle burning” occurred last Saturday morning when this computer was attacked by a virus. It completely crashed and burned and, with support from Dell, we had to move our usernames/administration to another partition–virtually starting anew. Most of our data couldn’t be saved (by the way, CARBONITE is a joke)…including months of work on my novel. Steffie and I just had to get away (especially from this computer) for a spell, so we passed the last few days in Niagara Falls…….But more on this later.