Don’t tell the governor, but some of his MTA contract workers are still showing up to a job here in Brooklyn. I had been cursing them from my window for over a year as they tore up my street and never seemed closer to completing construction. But now they feel like my last connection to a normalcy that I know is gone.
For months I grumbled about them. Now I worry. I think of what they are doing when they get home; are they protecting themselves and their families? I’ve gone from being aware of them as irritants to acknowledging they have lives of their own that matter to them as much as mine does to me. So here we are now, stuck in our apartments with our awareness–acknowledgment meters totally out of whack. We are forced to spend every day literally thinking about how and what the other 8 million New Yorkers are doing. We’ve shifted from tolerant awareness to overwhelming acknowledgment of how many are dying and how we might impact one another, most bleakly by passing on the virus or using up the last remaining ventilator.
This became painfully clear to me when I rode my bike 12 miles from Brooklyn through Manhattan to shop for supplies for my mother. I was one of the few white guys at her Whole Foods, where more than two thirds of the shoppers were staff—almost all of whom were African American or Spanish-speaking—filling online orders. As the glove-wearing cashier tallied up my order, I was aghast when she touched her face. The second time she did it, I quietly said, “You touched your face.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: WebMD - 🏆 709. / 51 Read more »
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »
Source: CNN - 🏆 4. / 95 Read more »
Source: TMZ - 🏆 379. / 59 Read more »
Source: ELLE Magazine (US) - 🏆 472. / 51 Read more »
Source: ELLE Magazine (US) - 🏆 472. / 51 Read more »