Around 8:46 on the bright, cool morning of September 11, 2001, our house shook as a jet roared low and close, heading south. Then I heard a loud, dull “thump” that sounded like a bomb exploding underwater. What could that be? I thought. A military exercise?
That’s exactly what it was, for the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked America that day. Nobody knew that in those harrowing first moments. When, in the twenty years since, did we begin to question the blood and treasure we kept spending in response? And how could we have imagined, in their wake, that the next people to attack America would be Americans?
Minutes later on that morning, someone rang our buzzer from the front door down below. One of the men on his way to work on our apartment renovation said frantically, “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” I ran downstairs and followed Stephen Famelos a half block to Bleecker Street. We turned west to Seventh Avenue and joined a gathering crowd at the southwest corner of Bleecker and Seventh. Everyone was looking south. Flames licked out from a big scar near the top of the Trade Center’s North Tower.
I ran home again. Barbara was getting dressed and on the radio, excited voices were talking about what I had just seen. It was a Tuesday morning, a mayoral primary election day, and we were going to vote before she left for work at WWOR-TV across the river in New Jersey. Now she called her station and said she was going to the scene. “I need your help,” she told me.
I had on cargo shorts and a T-shirt. I slung a bag of her gear across one shoulder and slipped into flip-flops when we got downstairs.
We walked downtown on Seventh Avenue, the binoculars around my neck banging on my chest. Smoke drifted east from the scarred building against the clear sky. I’ve wondered why I didn’t take a camera. We had analog cameras then. Thinking back on what we saw, I wouldn’t want to look at it again.
We crossed Canal Street. Now we walked against streams of people heading north, away from the towers. No one else was walking south, but we heard sirens of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances. We could only see the North Tower; we didn’t know another plane had flown into the South Tower.
The police were starting to close off access to the area around the towers, but Barbara showed her press card and we went through. We got to Vesey Street, just a half a block from the North Tower. Some off-duty police detectives ran up and joined us. Ninety-nine stories overhead, a commercial jet’s nose was buried in the building. Its tail jutted from the broken wall. Binoculars to my eyes, I saw people trapped above it by the flames below waving shirts and towels from shattered windows to get rescuers’ attention.
As we watched they began to fall. Or to jump. The heat from the burning jet fuel must have been unbearable. It forced these men and women to decide how they would die. Some chose not to die alone. They left the tower holding hands, plummeting to certain death but grasping another human being to the very end. Maybe there was some comfort in those last seconds. I hope so.
A roar started. We couldn’t tell from where. It grew and one of the detectives yelled, “Run, she’s coming down!” We ran north toward Barclay Street, me trailing in my stupid flip-flops, as the debris and dust of the collapsing South Tower burst around the corner and billowed toward us.
From that point we retreated north. We stopped at a McDonald’s on Church Street while Barbara tried to call her station. Shreds of paper filled the air and drifted down onto the streets. The North Tower still stood and we thought the danger was behind us. Phone and cell service was all dead, so we kept on north.
We were at Chambers Street when the North Tower fell. It went straight down, fell into itself, 110 stories disappearing from the sky leaving nothing but a mushroom cloud of smoke and then, in its wake, more billows of paper shreds dancing and falling like gray snow.
After the 9/11 Attack, Image Lestine
All around us, men and women watched with their hands on their mouths and tears in their eyes. We all felt, I believe, some mixture of anger and dread. We had watched people die whose only sin was to go to work that morning. We were alive. What would happen next? What of our city? What of our lives?
Barbara Nevins Taylor 9/11 Screenshot
Barbara joined a TV truck from Fox 5, WNYW, her channel’s sister station, at Broome Street and immediately took a microphone and went to work. I went home and watched TV coverage that showed the destruction over and over, here, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field where airplane passengers had taken the plane back from highjackers and crashed it.
In the days to come, we lived in isolation south of 14th Street for some time. Barbara walked to Christopher Street and the West Side Highway every morning, where all the TV trucks were lined up along what came to be known as Point Thank You. Volunteers from all over the country passed the trucks as they walked south. They came to help clear rubble or deliver water and food to the workers at Ground Zero. They brought their rescue dogs, but there were no survivors to be rescued.
9/11 twenty years later. These days in New York are a lot like THAT day — cloudless blue skies, the first touch of fall in the air. Memorial pools now occupy the footprints of the towers. Water pours down their sides and disappears into square drains at the center. Names of the people who died, the office workers, the fire and police officers whose instincts propelled them head-first toward the danger and now away from it, those names are carved into the walls surrounding the two pools. A new tower stands defiantly against the sky.
America just this summer left Afghanistan, the country where the 9/11 hijackers were allowed to train. The rulers who allowed it are back in power. Elena Ferrante writes in My Brilliant Friend, “. . . they thought that what happened before was past and, in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it . . .”
We should never forget September 11 nor, despite the memorial and the victims’ names enshrined there, should we put a stone on top of it. The future we have built in our ignorance and nonchalance doesn’t want us to live quietly. That’s the main thing we have to remember.
I received the Moderna COVID booster shot at a CVS Pharmacy on Friday afternoon, September 3, 2021. Great. I was a little dizzy but I waited a bit and felt fine.
Pharmacist Rafin Islam gave me the COVID booster and I didn’t feel a thing.
I rode my bike to the gym and I was elated. I felt protected from the delta variant.
But then at 8 p.m., we watched CNN and heard that the FDA wasn’t ready to approve the Moderna booster because Moderna had not provided enough data. My high shriveled away to nothing.
My husband Nick Taylor got his Pfizer booster the same day at another CVS Pharmacy and the news for him was better. The Pfizer dose was likely to win FDA approval very soon.
So what did getting the Moderna booster six months after I got my second shot mean? Was there something wrong with Moderna and would I and the others who got the booster get sick? Why didn’t the company provide the data in a timely way? And why had the CDC said, in August, that it was giving conditional approval for some people for the Moderna booster? The CDC website said, “CDC recommends the additional dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine be administered at least four weeks after a second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.”
In other words, the CDC had recommended booster shots that the FDA had not yet approved. The incessant talk about the booster was incredibly confusing. I’m an information provider, and even so I wished the people talking and writing about the COVID booster would shut up unless they could clearly explain why the FDA was holding up approval. Everything they said added another layer of confusion.
I should say here, that because of my exposure to the air on 9/11 my lungs probably can not withstand a COVID attack of any kind. I had two small cancerous tumors removed from my left lung and my right lung has flecks of what doctors call “ground glass.”
Barbara Nevins Taylor 9/11 Screenshot
That’s why I listened-up when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on August 18, said in a news release, “Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death could diminish in the months ahead, especially among those who are at higher risk or were vaccinated during the earlier phases of the vaccination rollout. For that reason, we conclude that a booster shot will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”
There was no news about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because that came months after the first vaccines were given. We’re waiting.
The White House said it would begin the booster roll-out on September 20th. They wanted to coordinate it to avoid the chaos that resulted with the first vaccines because the Trump administration had no plan.
Nearly 1 million people didn’t wait for September 20. We forged ahead and got the vaccine because we had hit the five and six month mark after our second shots. Israeli scientists suggest that five months protection against the delta variant was the most to expect from the Pfizer vaccine.
This time it was easy. The COVID booster was available at our local pharmacies and we made appointments.
But on Sunday September 5 White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told Dana Bash on CNN, “No one is going to get boosters until the FDA says they are approved, until a CDC advisory committee makes a recommendation.”
Come on. It was like a throwback to the Trump era of lies and double-talk. We thought that was over. Again, nearly 1 million, according to the CDC, received the booster.
On the same Sunday morning, the straightest COVID talker, Dr. Anthony Fauci, weighed in on CBS’s Face The Nation.
He told Weija Jang that he expected the Pfizer booster would be approved by September 20, and Moderna would follow. He said, “Looks like Pfizer has their data in, likely would meet the deadline. We hope that Moderna would also be able to do it so we could do it simultaneously, but if not, we’ll do it sequentially. So the bottom line is very likely, at least part of the plan will be implemented, but ultimately the entire plan will be. “
We appreciate the fact they want to follow the science and are waiting for the FDA to review the data from Pfizer and Moderna. But the vaccine is available and they pointed out that it was okay for people who were immune-compromised to get the vaccine before the big rollout.
Now there is a lot of vaccine out there and a lot is going to waste. NBC News reported that states have thrown away 15.1 million doses since March. People who are eligible should get the first, second and third shots, if they are safe. We want to end this COVID nightmare and it’s clear from the data that if we are unvaccinated more people will get sick and more people will die. 153, 246 people contracted COVID during the past seven days and that’s up 4.9 percent from the same time last year, according to the CDC. The New York Times reports that U.S. is averaging more than 1500 deaths a day for the first time since March.
In the meantime, Moderna needs to provide the data that is acceptable to the FDA about the booster. Those of us who received the third dose, and those who need it should know where we stand. In a news release on September 1 Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna, said, “We will continue to generate data and transparently share to support governments and regulators as they make evidence-based decisions regarding future vaccination strategies.”
Please hurry up.
Oh, and side-effects from the Modern booster: I was very achy and tired the next day. By the middle of the second day, I felt like myself.
The Nags Head beach on North Carolina’s Outer Banks stretches for eleven glorious miles. Early-rising tourists catch the sunrise over the Atlantic.
Early morning on the Nags Head beach.
Walkers and runners and their dogs dodge the surf along the water’s edge. As the sun gets high beachgoers cluster on the sand with umbrellas and beach chairs. Now and then you see anglers casting lures out past the surf,
but the sunbathers outnumber them by far. It’s easy to forget that these islands were a commercial fishing culture long before the tourists came to town.
One morning at the end of July, though, we met three men determined to bring the fishery back to the Nags Head beach. We found them busily arranging a big green net that they would attach to the back of a blue pickup truck. There was not a boat in sight. Did they expect to find fish in the sand?
Rigging the net on the beach.
Jake Griffin, the thirty-year-old managing the effort, explained that using a truck for fishing on the beach wouldn’t be permitted today, but his family had fished here for generations and when rules changed their commercial fishing license grandfathered them in.
Jake Griffin
The setup grew clearer as we watched. I worked on a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico back in my college days, and know that a shrimp trawler has a mast with two outriggers. Cables spool out from each of the outriggers as the nets fall behind the moving boat, and “doors” at the net attachment points open each net’s mouth as water pressure pushes them apart. Jake and his friends Ben Brown and Bobby Boyd were trying to rig a trawling net to do what Jake called tow hauling or haul seining. Their trawling net had one foot on land and just one door in the water.
The net for “tow haul” seining
We noticed that the pickup’s tires were softened to give it traction in the sand. The net door lay in the pickup bed. It was a rectangle of three wood slats bolted to cross pieces, about six feet long by three feet wide. Its four-point chain attachment linked in turn to a cable that would reel out of the truck bed. Jake and his friends stood over the door, hammering here, drilling there, trying to find the adjustment that would set it at the correct angle to the water. As Jake put it, “The angle has to be enough to open (the net) about 80 to 100 yards, but not be too ‘rank’ and create too much strain against the truck.”
Water pressure on this door is supposed to open the net.
But it’s a hard adjustment. The water pressure pushes the door to open the net, but — Jake again — “the drag from the net through the water wants to change the angle of the door by pulling on the tail end of the door.” That straightens the door and keeps it from opening the net.
After a few minutes, they were ready to make a trial run.
Jake took the wheel and eased the truck forward. Bobby floated the door through the surf, the net trailing behind. When the lines were tight Jake accelerated slowly down the beach, heading south. But the net didn’t open more than thirty feet or so. It trailed out behind in water too shallow, too bare of fish. Jake went a quarter mile and stopped. The men pulled the net back onto the beach.
The truck pulling the unopened net.
Afterwards, Jake was philosophical. “It’s a new trial, a new challenge for somebody who fishes like myself,” he said, stroking his sun-bleached blond beard. “Trying to learn something and always improve, that’s what makes our fisheries better, and that’s what we’re working on here now.”
“You’ve got to catch a lot of fish,” said Jake’s father Charlie Griffin, a tournament fishing champion. “You catch twelve pompano, that’s dinner. You’d make more money working for twelve or fifteen bucks an hour at a Seven-Eleven. But if he can get the net to pull off the beach and pull it down the beach a mile or two, he’ll catch a bunch of fish. Right now he’s just trying to get it figured out.”
Two weeks later, Jake told us in an email that he still didn’t have it figured out. “We haven’t got it perfected yet but certainly closer, haha,” he wrote. “A lot of tinkering and adjusting.”
When we saw them, he and his partners were working under the strict gaze of local law enforcement making sure they didn’t break the rules that give “pedestrians, swimmers and bathers” right-of-way over vehicles operated on the beach. “They watch us like a hawk,” he wrote, “because it’s a fishery that the public can see and be part of.”
But they’ll keep working. To create a new fishery that recalls dory seining off the beach that existed seventy-five years ago, to restore a vanished part of the Outer Banks and a link to his family’s past, Jake said it would be worth it.
I had a big birthday in July and wanted to do something special. Nick and I thought we might go to Mallorca to study Spanish, enjoy the water, sail, and explore the island’s beauty. But in May I checked the COVID information. Spain’s vaccination rate was just 18 percent then, and Mallorca had its first case of the Delta variant.
Cala Aguila, Mallorca. Photo by Lapping via Pixabay. Creative Commons License
So that was out. Onward to Plan B.
City College of New York (CCNY) offered an online Spanish course in June. It crammed fourteen weeks into four, and we dived in as auditors. It was great, but we still wanted to travel. I told Nick I needed water, sun, and boating, in a place that was safe that we hadn’t visited before, to enjoy my birthday celebration.
I remembered Chincoteague, a sliver of land off the eastern shore of Virginia.
We hadn’t visited, but passed the turn-off many times as we headed down the Delmarva peninsula on U.S. 13 on our way to stay with friends at the beach in Nags Head, North Carolina. We read about the wild ponies and the sprawling oyster beds and that made it seem like the place to go. A five-hour drive from New York City, it crooked a finger at us and said, “Come on down.”
Nick Googled and found Fish Tales Fishing Charters. Jan picked up the phone when he called. She’s the booker and wife of Captain Pete Wallace, whom the Chincoteague vacation guide calls, “Chincoteague’s longest running charter boat captain.” Jan explained that because of COVID the company wasn’t mixing groups of people and that was fine for us.
Fish Tales “everything trip” cost $276 for four hours. That meant we could spend the time fishing, clamming and crabbing, or just sightseeing. Clamming, though, demanded low tide. On my birthday, that meant a 1 p.m. start, and that would give us a leisurely morning. “Bring socks,” Jan told him. “Or if you forget we’ll give you some.” We would learn why when we got there.
As a little girl my uncle Murray Robin took me, my sister and our cousins clamming in the Great South Bay on the south shore of Long Island near his home. I loved it, and that made Chincoteague even more appealing. We set out the day before my birthday and The Venice Sketchbook on Audible kept us entertained as we traveled through New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. We turned off U.S. 13 onto Route 175, passed a naval air station and a forest of satellite dishes at the Wallops Island NASA facility.
This gives you an idea of the terrain. NASA Photo. Public Domain.
Our road weariness melted away once we hit the causeway to Chincoteague.
Wallops Island and Chincoteague Bay,
The vista opened to a wide bay dotted with sandbars and low marshy grassland.
Chincoteague Bay, Photo by Rob Shawley, Creative Commons License
The flat landmass made us feel as though we had reached the end of the earth and that was okay. We drove onto Chincoteague and found our hotel, the Comfort Suites, on the bay. There are a few hotels on Chincoteague, as well as motels and bed-and-breakfasts. We chose the Comfort Suites because it offered a room with a terrace that overlooked the bay.
Before there were chain hotels the low marshland hinted at what Rachel Carson wrote about for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1947. She explained the importance of the island and its 37-mile-long neighbor, Assateague.
Drawing Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Assateague, a barrier island that protects Chincoteague and Wallops islands from the Atlantic, became a National Wildlife Refuge in 1943. The idea, Carson wrote, was to permanently protect a flyway in the mid-Atlantic for water fowl and other migrating birds. The Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge covers a third of Assateague Island in Virginia with a portion on the Maryland side of the island.
Carson described the island from a birds-eye view. She wrote, “Seen from the air, as the migrating waterfowl coming in from the north must see it, its eastern border is a wide ribbon of sand that curves around in a long arc at the southern end of the island to form a nearly enclosed harbor. Back from the beach the sand mounts into low dunes, and the hills of sand are little by little bound and restrained by the beach grasses and the low, succulent, sand-loving dune plants. As the vegetation increases, the dunes fall away into salt marshes, bordering the bay.”
Chincoteague itself is another story. The Native American Assateague tribe used the 9.3 mile long island for fishing, farming, and hunting. In 1608, the English claimed it as part of the Jamestown Colony and English settlers used it to raise crops and graze livestock.
It wasn’t until the 1800s that people actually began to live on the island as well as farm and fish. Oysters thrived in its shallows, potatoes grew on land, both businesses thrived and found markets in New York and elsewhere in the north. The trade became so profitable that Chincoteague refused, by a vote of 138 to 2, to secede from the Union during the Civil War.
Today small houses and shops line narrow streets close to the town center. Larger homes hidden in pine woods and marsh grass line the bays on the northwest and south sides of the island. Fast food and ice cream shops and family entertainment places run along Maddox Boulevard, the road that leads to Assateague. We gave it a pass on our late afternoon walk and headed down the quiet Main Street.
The one- and two-story buildings make the town feel peaceful and old-fashioned. But that changed when we walked to the water’s edge and spotted an outdoor bar. Don’s Seafood Restaurant was booked up inside, but a covered dining area on the dock seemed like a perfect place to have a drink.
We hoped outdoor dining here would be safe.
The lively unmasked crowd at the bar kept us away but we found a place at a picnic table looking out to the bay and waited for a table for dinner.
Close but far enough away from others.We enjoyed cocktails on Chincoteague Bay. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
When we got a spot at a table, it seemed safely far from others.
Nick kept his mask on his wrist just in case.
We ordered some oysters on the half shell to start, followed by some blackened flounder. To our surprise the oysters came in foil inside a cardboard box. “Wait, ” I said to the server. “We’re not taking out. We’re eating here.”
“That’s the way it comes,” she said, and we looked at each other and laughed.
Oysters come in a brown paper box when you eat outside at Don’s in Chincoteague.
We learned from our server Laura that all the food came to the outside bar this way. She pointed out that disaster loomed if servers had to carry trays loaded with stuff from the main restaurant across the gravel parking lot. At her suggestion we bought a bottle of Sauvignon blanc inside and brought it outside to enjoy in plastic cups with the paper-packaged meal we ate with plastic forks. The oysters tasted briny and had a nice tang. The fresh flounder came off a local fisherman’s boat and the chef dusted it with hot paprika and cayenne and other blackening spices. A few hush puppies on the side gave the meal an added Southern taste.
Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
On my birthday morning, we woke up to watch the birds fly across the bay and set out to explore.
The wild ponies beckoned. It was the day of the annual pony roundup and we hoped to catch a glimpse of the horses.
Wild ponies graze on seagrass and berries.
The National Park Service calls the ponies feral animals and that means they are the wild descendants of horses that had been domesticated at one time.
Locals tell a couple of stories about how the ponies landed on Assateague Island. One story says that the horses survived an ancient shipwreck off the Virginia coast but no records confirm that. The other, more probable story, has it that horses were brought out to Assateague in the 17th century by owners who wanted to avoid taxes on livestock. The horses then went wild and lived on sea grass and berries.
Wild Pony on Assateague, NASA Photo by Margaret Landis. Public Domain.
The horses have their own organizational scheme. They divided themselves up into bands of two to twelve and each band has a home range on the island. But the National Park Service limits the size of the adult herd to 150 to protect other wildlife and island natural resources.
Horses are herded across the water to Chincoteague. Photo by Bonnie Gruenberg. Creative Commons License. /caption]
That’s where the pony roundup comes in. On the Virginia side of the island, the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company owns and manages the horses. The last week of July, they round up the horses and swim them from Assateague to Chincoteague for the “Pony Penning” festival. The next day they hold an auction and sell off the foals and the money supports the fire company.
[caption id="attachment_47068" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Ponies get herded to corrals and are auctioned off. Photo by Leonard J. De Francisci. Creative Commons License.
Since COVID the auctions have been online, but the roundup continues. We saw penned ponies and one in particular was furious.
We also explored a little of Assateague.
Beach heather and low shrubs grow with more than two different types of grass in the marsh. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com/caption]
[caption id="attachment_47064" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] The adult snowy egret has black legs and yellow feet. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Most tourists seemed to come for the beach, which is long and quite beautiful.
This photo from the National Park Service captures a particularly lovely spot without people.
On the day we visited many came early.
We wanted to explore more but ran out of time. We picked up boxed lunches of shrimp salad sandwiches from Captain Zack’s seafood shack and headed to the marina.
Captain Zack’s tells customers they make everything to order. So best to call ahead.
Boat Captain Chris Milliron and his mate Ben Pavlik greeted us with the news that they were both fully vaccinated against COVID. We liked them immediately.
We took this photo after we got to know them.
Chris gave us a safety rundown and warned we would be riding into the waves. We had a great bumpy ride with cool spray pinging our faces and for a few seconds I wondered if seasickness would be part of my birthday celebration. But then I reminded myself to keep my eyes on the horizon. All was well as he steered the boat to a spot were other fisherman had caught flounder earlier in the day.
Nick wrote a book about fishing, Bass Wars, grew up in Florida and knows a little about fishing. Me, not so much. But I like the idea of it. Ben set me up with the rod, and of course, I held it the wrong way. No one bothered to tell me that for a quite bit.
I laughed all day.
Ben explained that we wanted our sinkers and hooks to hit the bottom because that’s where we would find flounder. Sea trout, kingfish, croaker and spot also swim in the shallows of Chincoteague Bay in the summer. I tried to coax the fish to my line as I let it out and felt the slight bump as it hit bottom. It seemed promising. But the fish didn’t bite.
Chris and Ben make a living taking tourists fishing in the summer, and duck hunting in the winter. When the Chincoteague season is over, Chris travels back to his home base in Detroit and takes fishermen out on the lakes in Michigan. In the winter he leads duck hunting groups off of Chincoteague So these guys know the water and wanted satisfied clients.
But for us, the fishing was really an excuse to be here getting slightly wet and salty and basking in the sweet air. I loved being on the water in the middle of the beautiful, fragile ecosystem. The small boat gave us an eye level view of grassy waterfowl hideaways and the nooks and crannies where small animals wandered. It also gave a chance to begin to understand the way the wind, and water shape and reshape the islands and inlets
This NASA photo gives you some idea of what the area looks like.
Chris steered the boat under the causeway up into Mosquito Creek to see if we would have better luck. He told us the local history about a minor Civil War battle near the inlet, but we still didn’t catch fish.
Flounder ignored our hooks.
But as we sat in the creek bordered by marsh grass, Navy E-2c Hawkeye surveillance planes flew overhead. It felt slightly surreal. Teams of pilots in the Hawkeyes went round and round bumping in mock landings on a runway nearby and taking off again. They were practicing aircraft carrier landings.
That morning we had met a group of pilots staying at our hotel and they explained that they did repeated rotations, changing positions in the plane and taking turns piloting after the runway bump. “Is it fun?” I asked after they explained. “Yes,” they said in unison and we all laughed.
But where were our fish? Chris moved us into another inlet and still nothing. Finally, he suggested that we take a break and go clamming at Tom’s Cove off of Assateague.
When the tide pulls back at Tom’s Cove it leaves an expanse of mud that beckons clammers. That’s where the socks came in. You may remember that we were told to bring socks. Chris and Ben suggested we used the cheap socks they had and we hopped out of the boat into the water and tromped into the mud. We laughed, scrambled for balance and slithered through the mud. Our toes and feet sunk down and we tried to move them around to feel for the big Quahog clams that live here. By the time Chris suggested we try one more fishing spot, our hands and legs were covered in mud.
We tried to leave the mud behind.
We had a bucket of almost two dozen clams and I began to think about how to cook them.
Chris had learned from his boss that fish were biting off the hook of Assateague Island.
Nick caught a keeper.
And sure enough the fish finally answered our calls. I caught spot fish and croaker all too small to keep. But Nick landed a kingfish and it felt like a victory for us all.
By the time we left the dock that afternoon, Ben had cleaned and filleted the kingfish and washed the clams so that everything was ready to cook. It was a perfect day. That night we celebrated at Bill’s Prime Seafood and Steak. We enjoyed more local flounder, crab cakes and hush puppies. It wasn’t Mallorca. But the all-American water big birthday was special enough.
In the 1980s Leona Helmsley styled herself as the queen of New York real estate. She posed for ads for the Helmsley hotels wearing an evening dress and sometimes a tiara on her short dark hair. “60 Minutes” profiled her luxurious lifestyle and featured Dunnellen Hall, the 21-room mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she and her husband Harry lived part-time. In the city, the Helmsleys lived in a penthouse at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park. Their world came crashing down in 1988 when then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani and New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams brought indictments against them for tax evasion. A jury found Leona Helmsley guilty and she served 19 months in prison.
Helmsley ads sell on ebay for $7.99.
The indictment of Allen Weisselberg and Trump Organization companies echoes the Helmsley case. Weisselberg, the organization’s chief financial officer, is charged with evading taxes on nearly $2 million in compensation. Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office allege that Weisselberg received fringe benefits that really were like salary payments and that he didn’t report them. The indictment charges he failed to pay taxes on a leased Mercedes, a rent-free apartment paid for by the Trump Organization and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
Look back to 1988 when a similar case played out, in federal court in Manhattan, against Leona Helmsley and two of her top employees. She and Harry had charged their Connecticut mansion as a business expense against their commercial properties. They added other extravagances to their business expenses, including a $1 million marble dance floor above the swimming pool, a $130,000 stereo system, a $45,000 silver clock, $500,000 worth of jade objects and a $210,000 card table. Helmsley even claimed her underwear as a business expense.
Barbara Nevins Taylor outside federal court in 1988 at the Leona Helmsley trial.
I was at the trial when a maid who worked at the Greenwich mansion told the court that Leona Helmsley talked with her about taxes. Elizabeth Baum testified that she and Helmsley were talking and she said, “You must pay a lot of taxes.” Baum recalled Helmsley’s reply: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
Harry Helmsley was also charged in the indictment, but because he suffered from dementia his case was separated from hers and he never stood trial. Donald Trump feuded with the Helmsleys about real estate and taxes. He called Leona “. . . a disgrace to humanity” in a letter he wrote to her before her trial began in 1989. He told Harry Helmsley in a separate note, “You are a great man who has been tarnished by, in my opinion, the actions of Leona.”
Leona hated Trump. She mocked him in private chats with reporters during breaks in the trial. When she was convicted that December, the trial judge chalked her conduct up to “naked greed [and] the arrogant belief that you were above the law.”
Now it’s 2021 and the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer face charges of “sweeping and audacious” tax fraud over 15 years. Trump himself isn’t charged, at least not yet, but he must be hearing echoes of the Helmsley case.
Johnny Mills sat in the darkened front room of his small frame house outside of Sylva, North Carolina. A bandage covered a side of his face where a rash from shingles made him wince with pain. We asked if he wanted us to come back another time, but he said, “No. Work on those roads rescued me and my family and I might as well talk about it now.” It was November 2002, and we were researching American-Made, my history of the Works Progress Administration. As he talked the clock rolled back over sixty years.
Sylva and Jackson County, in the western North Carolina mountains, were firmly Democratic in 1938. FDR’s New Deal was attacking the Depression and his jobs program, the Works Progress Administration, was easing unemployment that reached 25 percent before he took office five years earlier. Mills was a Republican and he feared WPA jobs weren’t meant for him. But his wife Shirley was due to deliver their first child and he needed money for a doctor.
Mills didn’t call it infrastructure. People barely used the word back then. But his experience shows that government projects can fill public needs, help individuals, and bridge ideological gaps all at the same time. It’s a reminder that the divisions that time and again rip Americans apart start with politicians, not the people.
When Mills went to apply, he found to his surprise that politics didn’t dictate his success. The county supervisor was a Democrat, but he approved Mills’ application. “He was a good fellow,” Mills said. “He’d lived up in the mountains and he knew how it was. He wanted to be fair.”
Mills went to work on a WPA road construction crew. Rural North Carolina in the 1930s faced yawning infrastructure shortfalls. Local and county roads were rarely paved, or even graveled. Jackson County, for example, had just half a mile of paving in its 351 miles of road that weren’t state or federal. Commerce suffered. Farmers sank into mud holes trying to drive their crops to town. Impassible roads meant market shelves stood empty. That’s why farm-to-market roads were a major thrust of the WPA’s rural road construction in North Carolina and throughout the country.
Johnny Mills began his day around four in the morning, carrying a lantern to the barn to milk his single cow. Then after Shirley cooked breakfast and packed his lunch, he walked a mile to a main road where a state truck picked him up for the drive to the day’s job site. The crew worked hard. They dug road paths along hillsides, cleared woods, cleaned ditches, and crushed rock into gravel. They made $44 a month. Mills used some of his money to pay the doctor who attended Shirley when she delivered their daughter Patricia at home in April 1938.
The experience silenced for him what was, even then, a popular Republican talking point. Conservatives called the New Deal socialist. They said the WPA put people into make-work jobs of little value, or boondoggles as they were called. Mills disagreed: “When people talked about [us] leaning on the shovel, well, we did a whole lot of work. And a whole lot of hard work. There was some that thought you was on relief, but I know I was working for money when I was doing that. It wasn’t no different than no other job. You earned the money. It was for the needy people Good people, they can’t always help hard times, tough luck. I always figured I tried to make a living for my family. And it was a help to us.”
Today’s North Carolina politicians in Washington are now solidly Republican. But they might heed this echo from the past. The New Deal work of the WPA and other job programs brought America’s infrastructure from the 19th century into the 20th. Today, two decades after it began, we need to move into the 21st. Polls tell us most Americans want transportation, technology, and human infrastructure to match today’s real needs. And they want the jobs that will result. Johnny Mills went bipartisan in 1938.
Representative Madison Cawthorne, who represents Sylva and western North Carolina, should rethink his vote earlier this year, when he sided with other House Republicans against funding programs that could improve the communities he represents. Senators Richard Burr, Tom Tillis and Republicans in other states also should consider putting partisan ideology behind. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t sink into potholed roads or be unable to sign on to the internet in the states that won’t get funds. Ordinary Americans will have those problems, when instead they could be driving on smooth roads, crossing new bridges, and enjoying rural broadband access that connects them to the world.
I volunteered to make calls for a friend running for a city office and it surprised me when people actually answered the phone and wanted to talk. I found it even more surprising when regular voters said they felt confused about ranked choice voting. That made me realize we definitely need more information out there.
More than 73 percent of voters in 2019 approved ranked choice voting in a ballot referendum. The idea was to get rid of expensive runoff elections when one candidate did not get over 40 percent of the vote.
Voting in Soho. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
So here we are confused about ranked choice voting and a lot of us wonder how we’ll work it out.
Thebasics of ranked choice votinggo like this:
1. You choose your favorite candidate as your number one.
2. You then choose four other candidates in order of preference.
3. In the first round of counting, the candidate with least number of votes gets eliminated. If your top candidate is eliminated your vote goes to your second choice or the highest ranking person on your ballot.
If by some miracle over 50 percent of us have the same idea on the first round, the person with more than 50 percent of the vote wins. But if that doesn’t happen, a computerized process run by the New York City Board of Elections will keep reallocating votes to eliminate those with fewest votes.
It’s too bad that we have to rely on the famously inefficient city elections board, which should have been reformed decades ago. But that’s where we are and it’s still important to vote because we will have a sea change in city government. The mayor, all fifty-one city council seats, the public advocate, the comptroller, the borough presidents and district attorneys are all up for election.
Race for Mayor
Nine of the thirteen Democrats running for mayor have the financial support that put them in the major debates. They include alphabetically:
Eric Adams
Shaun Donovan
Kathryn Garcia
Raymond McGuire
Dianne Morales
Scott Stringer
Maya Wiley
Andrew Yang
On the Republican side:
Fernando Mateo
Curtis Sliwa
Race for Public Advocate
If the mayor leaves office, the public advocate becomes mayor until a special election.
Theo Chino Tavarez
Anthony Herbert, Sr.
Jumaane Williams
Race for Comptroller
The comptroller keeps track of the city’s money, trusts and pension.
Brian Benjamin
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera
Zachary Iscol
Corey Johnson
Brad Lander
Terri Liftin
Alex K. Pan
Kevin Parker
Rashima Patel
David Weprin
You can find your city council candidates through NYCVotes, created by the New York City Campaign Finance Board. It’s the independent agency that watches over elections. You can also find information on NYCVotes about all the candidates including the borough presidents and the district attorneys.
In 1979, I sat at a long table in a law office in a white frame house in Marietta, Georgia with J.B. Stoner. I was there to interview the racist, anti-semitic founder of the National States Rights Party about some aspect of his campaign for governor. I’d interviewed Stoner before, for WAGA-TV, and he always had us set up in front of the big flag with the Nazi thunderbolt behind him. We talked easily while the photographer got the equipment ready. I planned tough questions, but kept it light before we got started. After a few minutes, Stoner cocked his head and said, “You know, you are pretty nice for a Jew-lady.”
The comment took my breath away. Stoner with his bristly hair and clip-on bowtie might have seemed like a cartoon character, but he wasn’t. As a teenager he resurrected a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the 1950s he was suspected in a string of bombings and attacks against Jews and Blacks in the South. He was indicted in 1963 for obstruction of justice and trying to stop integration in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1969 he represented James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray’s brother Jerry became Stoner’s bodyguard, always hovering nearby. He was there at my interview with Stoner standing slightly to the right. Stoner lost that 1979 governor’s race and a year later Stoner was convicted for the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Over many years in Georgia, this hateful racist got air time and newspaper coverage and was a fixture in the vocal right wing of North Georgia politics. Sound familiar?
Racist J.B. Stoner speaking with right wing Congressman Larry McDonald behind him. Photo by Eddie Hunter.
Stoner died in 2005 and I haven’t worked in Georgia since the early ’80s. But when I hear Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene talk, it sounds like I’m back in that little room in Marietta.
Taylor Greene’s 14th Congressional District runs just west of Marietta and north to the Tennessee line near Chattanooga. It’s hard to believe that so much of J.B. Stoner seems to linger in the north Georgia air and is reflected in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rhetoric.
Take a couple of lines from a notorious Stoner commercial using the N word during his unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 1974. Stoner sued to require TV stations to run the commercial under the Fairness Doctrine, even though the Federal Communications Commission had a long-standing ban against using the word.
Stoner won. Here’s some of what he said: “I am the only candidate for United States Senator who is for the white people. I am the only candidate who is against integration. All of the other candidates are race mixers to one degree or another.” Stoner lost that race to Sam Nunn. But you get the idea.
Back to Marjorie Taylor Greene. In Facebook videos she said, “There is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now,” referring to Congresswomen Ilan Omar and Rashida Talib. She said Black people are “held slaves to the Democratic Party” and called the philanthropist George Soros, a Jewish, holocaust survivor, a Nazi.
Her latest plan to form an Anglo-Saxon caucus, reported by Punchbowl, makes her seem even more like Stoner’s heir.
Taylor Greene apparently scrapped the idea of the caucus after Republican leaders criticized it. Yet she remains a voice that may skirt overt racism, but echoes an ugly past. Too bad we’re not over it.
Majorie Taylor Greene is now a fundraising machine. She raised $3.2 million dollars during the first three months of 2021, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC)
One good thing. The AJC’s Jim Galloway reported that Stoner’s house in Marietta now is owned by an oral surgeon who leased the basement to the Cobb County Democratic Party. Active members include Blacks and Jews.
When will it end? I admit it: I am weary of hiding from COVID and I’m struggling like millions of others to see the sunny side. I feel lucky that my husband Nick and I got the second shot. We want the bells to ring and the sun to shine and the world to turn and a great new day to begin.
We want to expand our lives and love New York to the fullest. We want to travel again, visit beautiful places and eat delicious food with friends in restaurants. The IFC movie theater around the corner is re-opening. Lincoln Center plans outdoor events. Indoor dining in New York is back at 35 percent capacity. You can catch the Knicks and Nets in person. Dare we indulge?
We haven’t had a meal inside or on the street outside a restaurant since the beginning of March 2020. We see friends and family only on Zoom and FaceTime. I teach and interact with my students and colleagues on Zoom. I’ve added a few things that some might consider dangerous. I ride the subway to Chinatown for a one-on-one Tai Chi class. I get my hair done, and go to a salon for pedicures. I wash my hands so many times a day that manicures seem useless.
Nick plays tennis a couple of times a week and rides the subway. We shop at our local markets and delis. We pick up meals or have them delivered. But that’s it.
So it’s two weeks and counting since we got the second shot. Now what? The vaccine should have kicked in to protect us against COVID, but the new variants seem scary. In January at a CNN town hall, Dr. Fauci said the CDC was likely to come up with new guidance on what people who received the second shot could do.
“It is not a good idea to travel. Period. We don’t want people to think that other public health recommendations don’t apply,” Dr. Fauci said. He went on to say,
“Getting vaccinated does not say, now I have a free pass to travel. Nor does it say that I have a free pass to put aside all of the public health measures that we talk about all of the time.”
Here’s why. The vaccines are not 100 percent effective. The Pfizer vaccine is 95 percent effective. Modern 94. 5 percent and Johnson & Johnson, 85 percent effective. The risk of getting the virus is small, but it is still possible to get sick. That means if you are older or are in a high-risk group, the all-clear hasn’t sounded yet.
“Even after getting the COVID-19 vaccine, you should still:
Wear a well-fitting mask that covers your nose and mouth when around others
Stay at least 6 feet away from others
Avoid crowds
Avoid poorly ventilated spaces
Wash your hands often.”
We can do all that. But we want to do so much more.
When my 91-year-old friend Carol Kitman told me a month ago that she and her husband couldn’t get appointments for the COVID vaccine in New Jersey, I offered to help. I figured that I could navigate the New Jersey websites for them and check a couple of times every day until something opened up. Foolish me. Quick on the uptake New Jerseyans had booked all of the COVID vaccine appointments. It was like getting a ticket to a Springsteen concert.
Carol and Marvin, a critic, writer and humorist, and also a 91-year-old, had registered on the New Jersey Vaccine Scheduling System. But their options in Bergen County, where they live, were limited and I registered them at two hospitals, a pharmacy and a medical group that has several locations. But every site pointed out that they had limited supplies of the vaccine and that it might be a long wait.
I tried other counties. But some would not accept people from out of the county. About a week into this, Marvin learned from his friend, cartoonist Mort Gerberg (my cousin), that he was eligible to get the vaccine at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. He made an appointment quickly. “Marvin got an appointment on February 1. That’s my birthday,” Carol said, her voice heavy with resignation and irony. “What am I going to do?”
Marvin Kitman getting the COVID vaccine at the VA Medical Center in New Jersey. Photo by Carol Kitman.
I kept at it. I wrote to the mayor in the town where she lives, and finally reached out to someone in Governor Phil Murphy’s press office. He said he couldn’t help, but did pass my request on to the state health department. A few days later Carol received a call. “Got a call from a lady in Trenton who said I am on a ‘watch list.’ Fingers crossed,” Carol emailed.” I told her to thank the governor’s office if this came through. Two days later, the woman called me and asked if I had Carol’s information to help set up an appointment. “Sure,” I said. “I have it all.”
She got someone else from the health department on the phone. He was on the scheduling website. “We have openings at 11:30 and 12:45 in Elizabeth tomorrow, Monday February 8,” he said. He took Carol’s birthdate, address, email and phone. While he was putting in the data, the appointments disappeared. Another appointment showed up that week for February 11 at 12:30. “Great,” I said. I thanked them over and over. I was so excited. I emailed Carol and she received a confirmation from the state within minutes.
“Hello Carol Kitman, Your appointment to receive your COVID-19 vaccine is confirmed. Please bring this email with you to your appointment and make sure that the code below (black square image) and your appointment ID are accessible on your phone or visible on a printed copy.”
Carol called, “Thank you. I really don’t know how to thank you enough,” she said. “Thank me after you get the vaccine,” I replied. My hesitation to accept praise was correct. The night before she was scheduled to go to Elizabeth, she received an email from the New Jersey Department of Health.
“Now what?” Carol emailed.
I called and texted the woman in Trenton. She apologized and explained that their computer program was double-booking and they had to straighten it out. She would try again next week.
The same day, Governor Murphy announced that Rite-Aid pharmacies would have 7500 doses. When we tried all the appointments were booked.
On January 14, I drove from Manhattan to East New York to Rossi Pharmacy to get the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I imagined that I’d find a big independent pharmacy and made a mental list of the over-the-counter things I needed.
But I found a small store on Eastern Parkway where plexiglass separated the pharmacy staff, its medical supplies and the few over-the-counter products from the public waiting area.
Governor Cuomo promised to make sure the vaccine is distributed equitably to neighborhoods of color and East New York qualifies. Yet the two people who got the vaccine before me were white and they came from the suburbs.
A woman from Long Beach, Long Island, walked out as I headed in. “I found it on the internet,” she told me. The next person, Paul Epstein, traveled from Oceanside, Long Island. “My wife went on the internet and there wasn’t anything available in a 70-mile radius. So my son looked at 100 miles and found this,” he said. Google Maps says it’s only about 16 miles on the Belt Parkway from Oceanside to East New York.
That’s geographically. But culturally, the neighborhood with its squat brick buildings is a million miles from the suburbs.
Seconds after I arrived, the young supervising pharmacist, Ambar Keluskar, slid the paperwork to me through a slot. It repeated some of the screening questions that I had filled out online the day before.
When I told him that I was writing about the experience, he explained that he was trying to get more local people in: “I feel really bad about it. People who know how to use the internet got the appointments. I’m trying to call some of our regular customers to make appointments. But we are playing catch-up.”
Rossi Pharmacy and others on the state list to administer the vaccine didn’t find out in advance that the state had opened the vaccine category to people over 65. Governor Cuomo hurriedly announced it on the morning of January 12 because the CDC told states to do it.
People, including me, immediately began to scramble to find appointments At first when I went down the list and contacted the pharmacy, I was told the state hadn’t notified them that 65-plus were eligible. But they took my contact information, and a few hours later, pharmacist Keluskar called to say the state updated the information and he felt free to give me an appointment.
“We didn’t have any operational guidance,” he said. “It feels so weird that they had months to plan for it and it feels like it is some disaster.”
Getting the vaccine was efficient and relatively painless. I sat in a spotless area with white curtains separating three chairs.
Mia Yu preparing the COVID-19 vaccine for injection at the Rossi Pharmacy. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Another pharmacist, Mia Yu, injected me and stuck a bandage on my arm. She asked me to wait in the chair or in my car for 15 minutes to make sure that I didn’t have a reaction. And that was that.
My husband Nick Taylor got his vaccine the day before and it was also efficient. But it is not so easy for millions of other people to get the vaccine. Friends told us stories of calling and scrolling and calling again and again until they found open spots. One couple made appointments online at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s hub on St. Anne’s Avenue in the South Bronx. Another friend got an appointment at a facility in Harlem and her husband registered for the city hub at Adlai Stevenson High School in the Northeast Bronx.
One friend said he couldn’t find an appointment within a 250-mile radius. Another complained that pharmacists told her that they were only on the state list because they gave the flu vaccine. Although she lives in Manhattan, she finally landed an appointment in the Bronx.
And Governor Cuomo keeps warning that the supply of vaccine is smaller than the number of people — 7.1 million — who now qualify to get a shot. The state only received 300,000 doses a week since the distribution began. Next week it will drop to 250,000.
The governor said, “Overall, 74 percent of vaccine delivery is in arms.” A CDC chart shows the distribution of the vaccine in New York state and the doses left to be administered.
But Cuomo has repeatedly warned there is not enough for everyone who needs it. He criticized the federal government for opening up the eligibility to people over 65. “If you increase the eligibility and you don’t increase the supply, you have a very complicated situation,” he said.
Some may look to hospitals to get the vaccine. That’s a mistake. The governor wants hospitals to focus on healthcare workers. He asked unions and police and fire departments to vaccinate their frontline workers.
Urgent care centers, independent medical groups, pharmacies and the city hubs will provide vaccine when they have it to people over 65 and the rest of those eligible.
There is apparently enough vaccine for the second dose. Cuomo said, “When we do the distribution, we make sure that there is the second dose. If the facility gives you the first dose they have to schedule you for the second dosage. Don’t worry about it.”
But the numbers are slightly confusing because it looks like New York City still has a lot of vaccine waiting unused. This chart comes from the New York City Health Department.
This may be because the city-owned hospitals have not used all of their vaccine. The chief of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, Mitchell Katz, said that 30 percent of hospital workers don’t want the vaccine because they distrust it, or because they have had COVID. But the city says every healthcare worker who wants it, got it. So where does that vaccine go?
In the meantime, I’m grateful to have received the vaccine and in four weeks, I’ll return to Brooklyn for my second dose. Pharmacist Keluskar told me he plans to call the state to see if they can help get more local people registered on his list, or if he can reserve spots for local people. My conscience about being an interloper eased slightly as I was leaving. An African-American family arrived, with three adults who had appointments to get their shots.
I worried that my COVID-19 vaccination scheduled for this morning at New York’s Javits Center would be an all-day endurance test. Fearing the worst, I loaded a good book and a writing pad into a shoulder bag and headed for the subway. I arrived a few minutes before my 9:15 appointment and — Wow! I was amazed at the efficiency of the COVID-19 vaccine delivery system at the Javits Center.
The Javits Center is huge, but signs gave clear guidance where to enter. Inside, guided by New York National Guardspeople in camouflage, I went to an intake desk where I showed a photo ID and the appointment ticket I was emailed after I made my reservation online through the New York State Department of Health website.
Then, again directed by several of what looked to be scores of National Guard guides, I followed arrows and distancing decals from one room to another before ending up in a long room with desks spaced along the aisles. Here, a worker confirmed my birth date and asked some of the same screening questions I’d answered to register online.
After that, I was on my feet again and following more Guard directions — left here, see that Guard member, follow her — and soon I was in the room to get my shot.
I was pointed to a tall nurse in braids wearing a mask and eye shield and blue latex gloves. Her name was Katrina Culberson and she was a traveler, a nurse who went where she was needed. Katrina was from Saginaw, Michigan, and this was her first time in New York. She was staying in New Jersey for the moment, because she’d driven from Saginaw and hadn’t realized that parking in the city might be difficult.
Katrina asked for my “non-dominant arm.” I’d had the sense to wear a short-sleeved T-shirt, so I took my sweater off and propped my left arm on the table. Seconds later, it was done.
A data entry person named Bibi sitting at a computer recorded that Nick Taylor of Zip code 10014 had had Pfizer shot No. 1. With that I was off to follow more arrows and National Guard directions to an area where I’d sit for 15 minutes in case I had a bad reaction. Along the way a Guardsman handed me a sticker.
After 15 minutes I still felt fine. It was around 9:40 at that point and I’d been in the building a little more than half an hour. But one more line awaited me. Both COVID-19 vaccinations, Pfizer‘s and Moderna‘s, are two-shot protocols. The next line led to counters where you’d make an appointment for your second shot. This took another half-hour, but around 10:15 I was headed for the exit with an appointment to come back to the Javits Center on the morning of Feb. 5.
Compliments are in order here. The National Guard soldiers were courteous and cheerful. Katrina, the nurse from Saginaw, was too. New York Department of Health workers helping to guide and organize the throngs were a model of efficiency. Whether that would last all day long, who knows? Katrina told me she’d given between 25 and 40 shots on Wednesday, her first day, and had heard that around 1,400 shots in all had been administered. Lines were longer and moved slower later in the day. Still, in a city that invented the word “gridlock,” having the first COVID-19 shot in my arm and the experience of getting it were a relief and, for what it was, a pleasure.
At about 10:45 a.m. on January 12, I learned that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo opened the COVID vaccine to people over 65 and those with underlying conditions. Wow, that’s great! I thought. But during the next couple of hours, I found out how frustrating trying to find an appointment to get the COVID vaccine will be for many, many New Yorkers.
The new rule means that 7 million New Yorkers are eligible to get a vaccine when the state gets only 300,000 vaccine doses a week. And we all need two. The governor made the move, but he wasn’t happy about it. He said, “The federal government didn’t give us an additional allocation. That’s 300,000 per week. How do you effectively serve 7 million people, all of whom are now eligible, without any priority?”
But I scrambled and made a mad dash to find a place where I could get the COVID vaccine. The New York State Health Department website screens you to see if you are eligible. If you pass the first hurdle, you move on to the locator based on your zip code.
The Javits Center came up first in my list and that was great. It had openings in January and my husband Nick, who is 75 and was eligible in the second group, got an appointment there right away. But when I tried today to sign up for an appointment, the site crashed over and over and over again.
I began calling the urgent care offices and pharmacies listed on the website. Lines were busy, or voice messages said they were only giving the vaccine to healthcare workers, police officers, firefighters, some teachers and other public employees who deal with the public.
I tried the few websites listed. One urgent care outfit asked for my credit card. I clicked out because the vaccine is free and they should not have asked.
I continued down the list the Health Department provided. A pharmacy in Chinatown put me on their waiting list with 200 people in front me. A pharmacy in East New York, Brooklyn hadn’t gotten the signal from the health department that the pool of eligible people had been expanded. But they took my name and information.
Two-and-half hours later, I got a call from the Brooklyn pharmacy. They received the guidance and had appointments for Thursday, January 14. I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when I get the vaccine on Thursday.
But, I really feel for everyone who is not as persistent as I am — I had the time, many people don’t — and should still be getting the COVID vaccine. This system is not fair.
If you live long enough, you’ll turn 75 years old someday. I reached that milestone last November, but I wasn’t really happy about it until this morning. Today was my first day of eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine, and I made an appointment to get my first shot on Thursday, Jan. 14 between 9:15 and 9:30 a.m.
Ultimately it was pretty easy. But I had to find the right access point to the vaccination system that exists in New York City. Some of the phone numbers provided by the New York City Health and Mental Hygiene Department weren’t helpful. I started early in the morning on the first day my age group opened. The numbers led to health centers or urgent care locations that were closed, or messages hadn’t been updated to mention the new eligibles in Phase 1b. If you can, it’s probably better to go online to sign up for a vaccination.
While I was looking through the Health Department list, I got an email from a tennis buddy from my Monday night group. He said, “Go to this site. Fill out info. I just signed up online for a shot at the Javits Center on January 14.”
When I logged on around 8:30 a.m. I first had to answer questions to confirm that I was eligible. Once I passed that hurdle by supplying my birthdate along with personal and contact information, more questions screened me for potential dangers: did I have COVID symptoms, was I on blood thinners, or had I suffered reactions to vaccinations in the past. At the end there were 13 appointments available in my time window and I got one of them. A registration ticket arrived via both email and text message.
Two of my tennis partners will be there at the same time. But early in the afternoon, I wanted to see if a site closer to my Greenwich Village home would have an appointment.
I clicked on a RITE AID location on Hudson Street about 2 p.m. to see if they had slots available. It was closer, and would have been more convenient. The site told me that 4847 users were in line ahead of me, and that the appointment line was “paused.”
If you want to know if you are in group 1b, we have the list below.
Who Can Get the COVID Vaccine in the second wave — Phase 1 b
Phase 1b:
As of Monday, January 11
People 75 and older
Grocery Workers
First Responders and Support Staff for First Responder Agencies
Fire Service
State Fire Service, including firefighters and investigators (professional and volunteer)
Local Fire Services, including firefighters and investigators (professional and volunteer)
Police and Investigations
State Police, including Troopers
State Park Police, DEC Police, Forest Rangers
SUNY Police
Sheriffs’ Offices
County Police Departments and Police Districts
City, Town and Village Police Departments
Transit of other Public Authority Police Departments
State Field Investigations, including Department of Motor Vehicles, State Commission of Correction, Justice Center, Department of Financial Services, Inspector General, Department of Tax and Finance, Office of Children and Family Services and State Liquor Authority
Public Safety Communications
Emergency Communication and Public Safety Answering Point Personnel, including dispatchers and technicians
Other Sworn and Civilian Personnel
Court Officers
Other Police or Peace Officers
Support of Civilian Staff for any of the above services, agencies or facilities
Corrections
State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Personnel, including correction and parole officers
Local Correctional Facilities, including correction officers
Local Probation Departments, including probation officers
State Juvenile Detention and Rehabilitation Facilities
Local Juvenile Detention and Rehabilitation Facilities
P-12 Schools, College and Child Care
P-12 school or school district faculty or staff (includes all teachers, substitute teachers, student teachers, school administrators, paraprofessional staff and support staff including bus drivers)
Contractors working in a P-12 school or school district (including contracted bus drivers)
In-person college instructors
Licensed, registered, approved or legally exempt group child care
Licensed, registered, approved or legally exempt group child care providers
Employees or support staff of licensed or registered child care setting
Licensed, registered, approved or legally exempt child care providers
Public Transit
Airline and airport employees
Passenger railroad employees
Subway and mass transit employees (MTA, LIRR, Metro North, NYC Transit, Upstate Transit)
Ferry employees
Port Authority employees
Public bus employees
Homeless Shelters
People living in a homeless shelter where sleeping, bathing or eating accommodations must be shared with people who are not part of their household
People working (paid or unpaid) in a homeless shelter where sleeping, bathing or eating accommodations must be shared by people who are not part of the same household, in a position where there is potential for interaction with shelter residents
More 1 b Eligibility
Likely starting February 2021
Other frontline essential workers (to be determined by New York State)
Other at-risk groups (to be determined by New York State)
AND THEN
Phase 1c:
Likely starting March-April 2021
Likely includes:
People ages 65 to 74
People with certain underlying health conditions (to be determined by New York State)
All other essential workers (to be determined by New York State)
Phase 2:
Likely starting Summer 2021
All other people
We have friends in Georgia and family in Colorado who’ve already gotten their first COVID vaccine shots. New York is way behind.
But there’s now some good news for New Yorkers waiting to get the COVID vaccine. Registration for the second wave of vaccinations begins on Monday, January 12. You are in this group if you are over 75, have an underlying condition, are a police officer, firefighter, teacher or essential public worker. But that is almost a tease. Because there isn’t enough vaccine, it may take 14 weeks to get an appointment for a shot. And you can’t get vaccinated without an appointment.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state plans to have a network of 3,000 pharmacies and healthcare providers, in a couple weeks, to administer the vaccine. “But none of them will have nearly enough vaccine. The supply is the major problem,” he said.
New York, like other states, gets a proportionate amount of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines from the federal government, based on population. The state receives 300,000 doses a week and for the past month has focused on healthcare workers in hospitals, what it calls the 1a group.
Now it is expanding to its 1b group. This has 4.2 million people, including 1.4 million over 75. You can see how the number of doses available does not meet the need.
The governor promised that every region of the state will get a proportionate amount of vaccine based on the size of the population in the target group. That means a lot of us will be waiting our turn.
Cuomo said, “The Biden Administration is working on accelerating the supply.” But he also warned that many of us will be disappointed because we can’t get the vaccine quickly. He insisted that no one will be able to jump the line, including his mother Mathilde. She qualifies, he said, because she is in the 75-plus group.
The New York State Department of Health website, starting Monday, January 12 , will have information about vaccination sites and how to register. The state wants people to pre-register so that you have a specific appointment. It sounds nicer than waiting in line overnight. But many of us will wait much longer than we would like.
Monday, January 11 is also the day to start checking pharmacy websites to see if you can register. They should be ready to administer the vaccine by Wednesday, January 13.
COVID-19 vaccines are still only available to nursing home residents and front line hospital workers in New York State. Even in that limited sphere, the roll-out is uneven and slow.
About 300,000 vaccine doses have been administered in hospitals and nursing homes. But in New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation facilities, only 12,000 of the 23,000 eligible employees have been vaccinated and the hospitals have received 38,000 doses, according to State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker. In contrast, 99 percent of New York Presbyterian Weil Cornell hospital employees have received the vaccine. Northwell, the largest hospital system in the state, had administered 62 percent of the vaccines that they received as of January 4.
“There needs to be a sense of urgency” by city officials to get hospital workers vaccinated, Zucker said at a January 4, 2021 news conference.
Healthcare workers in hospitals are first in line for the vaccine along with nursing home residents. The nursing home vaccinations also lag, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo.
He blamed the federal government system of vaccinating only a third of the patients and staff at a time at any one facility. The state partnered with a federal government program that contracted with national pharmacy chains and local pharmacies to administer the vaccines. But Cuomo said, “Of about 611 nursing home facilities statewide, about 288 of them have completed the first dose for residents.”
New York plans to speed things up. Cuomo said.”We’ll be sending additional personnel into nursing homes to do the vaccines. Some nursing homes can actually do the injections themselves. If they can, we’re going to go to them and let them do it themselves to further expedite it.”
Frontline workers including police, firefighters, EMTs, medical professionals, bus drivers and subway workers, and older people with medical issues, are next in line after the state and city get the first wave of vaccines competed.
Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to get the city’s vaccinations moving more quickly. He promised a “24-7 effort to get the next wave of people vaccinated.” Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene Dr. Dave Choski said the city is also connecting with small community providers in priority neighborhoods to connect them to available appointments at 16 community health centers and 15 urgent care sites. These are all in addition to the hospital sites that have already begun vaccine operations.
At these new sites, Choski said, “We’ll be ready to welcome newly eligible individuals, such as unaffiliated health care providers who don’t have employer-based access to vaccines. These include not just nurses and doctors, but also phlebotomists, dentists, physical therapists, coroners, funeral workers, and staff at specialty clinics like dialysis centers.” If you are one of those unaffiliated providers, you can find out how to get vaccinated by visiting nyc.gov/covidvaccine.
Fish Tales “everything trip” cost $276 for four hours. That meant we could spend the time fishing, clamming and crabbing, or just sightseeing. Clamming, though, demanded low tide. On my birthday, that meant a 1 p.m. start, and that would give us a leisurely morning. “Bring socks,” Jan told him. “Or if you forget we’ll give you some.” We would learn why when we got there.
Ponies get herded to corrals and are auctioned off. Photo by Leonard J. De Francisci. Creative Commons License.
The adult snowy egret has black legs and yellow feet. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
