I Read The News Today Oh Boy

I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas
I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag
I was schooled with a strap right across my back
But it's all right now, in fact it's a gas - "Jumping Jack Flash", The Stones 1968
 

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all - "A Day In The Life", Lennon-McCartney 1967

I was leaving for work. About to walk to the bus stop on Second Avenue just down from 93rd Street. People were gathered, bunched together, and looking up up up into the sky. Like people in a Superman comic strip. I recognized one of our doormen in the crowd.

"What's going on?" I asked. He told me a man was threatening to jump. I followed the gazes of the huddled New Yorkers. And saw him. On the ledge of the fortieth floor of the skyscraper opposite. Saw him jump.

He seemed to take forever, arms flailing, body turning, as he sailed down. I remembered seeing people jumping from the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11. But on the television screen. Falling people,  filmed against that bright blue New York September sky. But this time I there was no TV screen between me and the man as I watched him fall in real-time.

I could see his clothes, his hair, his shoes. I stood transfixed, and turned away just had there was a loud thud as he hit the ground.

People have been edgy here in New York. It's the news;  the same for everyone throughout the world. Gaza, Israel, ISIS, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, the Ukraine. The tens of thousands of children on the US side of the Texas border with Mexico,  trying to stay in America, making their way here on the top of freight trains, across rivers, dodging drug dealers' bullets. Tended to by good Samaritans, and entitled to their "day in court".  Some will stay.  Until then they are "undocumented immigrants".

Meanwhile our Australian government is freaking out about 157 Tamil asylum seekers who tried to get to Australia by boat - asking India to take them!  You've gotta be kidding! How many people are there in India and how few people live in Australia?

I try to take my mind off it all and to do something frivolous. But it is something almost obscene in light of world events. I decide to buy a "little black handbag". I  google images and eventually find one I like. 



Proenza-Schouler Bl;ack Bag $1,600

I post it on Facebook.

The Princess answers, "That's not a little black bag... That's a bloody suitcase lololol."

Which gets me wondering. All my New York friends (all four of them!) have big handbags. All New York women have them. I check them out on the Streets of Manhattan. Yep, I'm right.

Reading the New York Times online I see that Bill Cunningham - New York's  fashion street photographer proves me right.

Here are some of those big-bag carrying women of New York. Look at them. And if you can, forget what has been a horrifying July 2014.