​I Know That Woman Who Fell in the Subway

I Know That Woman Who Fell in the Subway

1/30/2019

Malaysia Goodson

I’ve seen her, wheeling her child in the caverns of my home town, going shopping, going to the doctor, who knows.

She was Latina, or maybe Asian, or dark-skinned from the States or Haiti or Africa, or white, but I have seen her, trying to navigate the stairways of hell-on-earth, our subway system.

Every so often, I stop and hold out my arm and gesture: I’ll take the front end.
I mean, what else are we men for, but to lug and lift and load?

They see a grandfather type, offering to help, and they make the decision that I mean no mischief, and they nod in assent, and we improvise a step-by-step ballet on the murderous stairs.

(Update: my friend James Barron in the NYT has reported that the medical examiner can find no major trauma from a fall, so the cause of death may be medical reasons. But as Barron points out, the dialogue continues about the brutal conditions in the subways, under Albany and City Hall. All I can say is, lend a hand once in a while.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/nyregion/mother-falls-down-subway-stairs-death.html

(Recently, at my old stop, 179th St. in Queens, I carried two shopping bags up the stairs, to a bus stop, which gave me the opportunity to drop a few words of Spanish on the lady – “muy pesadas,” very heavy – which got me a smile that lit up my afternoon. No medals; I only do it once in a while, when I have time, and am of a mood.)

They are up against it, these mothers with their infants, these abuelas with their groceries, and most of the time they have no alternative. The subways are primitive, and falling apart, despite the elected public officials who posture and prance but put critical offices in a building in the terrorists’ playbook, who ignore climate warnings and put fancy new stations to collect the coming floods, but ignore the infrastructure and the lack of elevators for those who need them.

The Times says: “Only about a quarter of the subway system’s 472 stations have elevators, and the ones that exist are often out of order.”

Malaysia Goodson, 22, was living in Stamford, Conn., but had come back to the city of her childhood on some errand. Somehow, she tumbled down a flight of stairs while maneuvering a stroller holding her 1-year-old. The daughter is reported to be all right but her mother died.

I’ll try to remember her next time I am in the subway.

For Malaysia Goodson: Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess:”

Marrty Appel

1/30/2019 12:22:51 pm

Bad stuff happens every day in a metropolitan area of 15 million. Sometimes one story jumps out at you and sticks. This is one of them. Heartbreaking. Thanks for writing this so quickly.

George Vecsey

1/30/2019 03:56:45 pm

Marty: Absolutely right. I ride the subway once a week, or so, and can only guess at the realities people are facing. (I've done more than a few subway pieces in recent years, sometimes, clicking off a quick photo.) This poor young woman has so many counterparts....GV

Mendel

1/30/2019 12:27:23 pm

Bravo, George.

Wanted for 2020: more empathy, less everything else.

George Vecsey

1/30/2019 03:59:58 pm

Mendel, that only leads to what will be seen as a partisan or biased or callous response from me: what if the framework is dominated by an individual who does not appear to be capable of normal, human empathy? Then it appears that those who are distressed by this disturbing void are the ones without empathy. GV

Mendel

1/31/2019 02:00:30 am

A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody.
(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath)

Ben Zoma would say: Who is wise? One who learns from every man.
(Ethics of the Fathers 4:1)

Randolph

1/31/2019 06:54:29 am

George,
May you be well, happy and peaceful. Thanks for the nice piece.

This one reminded me of some lines from an old Randy Newman song:
Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

RF

Randolph

1/31/2019 07:14:07 am

George,
I just read your piece on Jackie Robberson in today’s New York Times.
Wonderful ......
RF

Ed Martin link

1/31/2019 10:58:57 am

A rare treat, two lovel GV columns in one day, here and in NYT on Jackie.

I worked with the Architectural Compliance Board in the mid 70s on proving access or appropriate accommodations for people with disabilities in federally assisted projects and programs. The new DC Metro, (read subway for NY types), was a bone of contention, finally settled by a federal court and ordered to be accessible, elevators and escalators—not just some stops.

As a result, women with strollers, people with heart and other conditions, folks with travel bags, grocery wheelies, etc. and, of course wheel chairs, are everywhere.

NYC and other ancient catacombs were to catch up through major renovations and new stations over the years. (Not so much, it seems.)

As to Jackie I wrote on Inside Venice Florida, FB as I shared your column, “One of the best, George Vecsey writes on one of the best, Jackie Robinson.”

George Vecsey

1/31/2019 11:45:34 am

Thanks to good friends for your comments.
Mendel, great that you find contemporary resonance from the Joads!
Randy, I find relevant song lyrics pop up more all the time. Iris DeMent's : "No Time to Cry" keeps me going when lousy things happen.
Ed, the DC Metro seems like a plaything compared to the NYC labyrinth. My favorite line goes to Shady Grove. (I hear the Chieftains playing that song, when I walk onto that platform.)
The NYC subway deteriorates by the month -- I am still a subway guy despite living in the suburbs. Funny how these Great Men like Giuliani, Bloomberg and now DiBlasio (with disdainful aid from Cuomo) all dabble at leadership and then lust for higher office. They can't fix basic things for constituents. Hell, we got one of them (sociopathic and illiterate, in his case) right now.
Thanks for your impact on the DC Metro.
GV

Gene Palumboe

2/1/2019 02:48:14 pm

I just realized that the earlier comments on George's piece on Jackie Robinson, didn't include the link. Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/sports/baseball-jackie-robinson-integration.html Do check it out. It's very fine.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html