Lest We Forget

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in the eighth grade at William Paca Middle School. I recall some of my teacher's names, which subjects they taught, and which period I took said subject in. For example, first period was Social Studies, Mr Skipp taught English second period, Mr. Governali taught Spanish, and Mr. Murray taught Science. What I don't remember is if it was the third or fourth period, what the subject was, and who was teaching the class, the moment I first heard.

Towards the end of the period, the instructor informed the class about the plane that flew into one of the Twin Towers. About the "fires" as he put it at the Pentagon in Washington, and the second plane that crashed into the other Tower in New York City admist the chaos. Clearly, it brought the rest of the school day to a crawl as information started to mount, even calling off all after-school activities, including the study period. I don't remember exactly when I heard about the towers falling, or even if I didn't learn about it until I got home.

What is clear is just how much of an impact that day had, and yet life still went on. Broadway shows went dark and the NFL actually cancelled their games in light of the tragedy. Still, school was on the next day, and we all worked at pressing forward despite the distress that we as a nation felt.

On Past Errors in Judgement...

Last Fall, to usher in the start of the new TV Season I did a series of posts and commentaries about each of the broadcast networks. Or rather...I started on it, and never completed. I only wrote an introduction, also mentioning the CW and three pieces, one each on NBC, FOX and ABC.

To be honest, I really didn't take much advantage of this blog since starting it a year ago, upon my graduation from college. Upon putting more thought into why, I can summarize the overall problem in two main points. Firstly, I don't seem to have enough drive to actually write. It obviously puts a block on anything remotely related to progress, and it feels like something that can change with the flick of a lightswitch. But, I at least now understand that there's a gradual process to fixing it. And secondly, I never seem to know what to write, what I want to talk about, or how I want to say it. On the bright side, in understanding this point I can start to improve on the first. The process of actually writing on this blog initiates with thought, or rather motivating myself to think. It all starts to come to form when I realize what I want to write.

And after that point, I can motivate myself to actually do so.

With that in consideration, I realize that aside from not taking up enough initiative, the biggest mistake I made last fall was overwhelming myself. The last post I wrote was about the FOX network, and I had too much to write. As a major animation nerd, I naturally gravitate towards their Sunday night schedule with hits like The Simpsons and Family Guy and thusly, I have plentiful investment in and a whirlwind of opinions stemming from them. I was going to cover the Sunday lineup as a separate entry, but lost track of it. Eventually too much time passed, the topic lost relevance, and the writings stopped there.

The other basic error on my part was setting the bar too high. Looking back, this is sort of why I overwhelmed myself in the first place. I tried to cover the networks in general and overextended myself, unsuitably and pretentiously approaching this topic like I was a professional, when I am not. And to reiterate my prior point, I didn't think about what to write or rather what specifically to cover. What resulted was several articles that were all over the place.

But now, I can honestly say that I feel a sense of accomplishment approaching this issue, mulling it over, and coming to these realizations. I do not expect to completely undo the mistakes of the past, or even gloss over them. All I intend to do is start to try harder in the future.

The TV season is about to close and the upfronts are drawing near. As such, I have come up with a few ideas to write about that just might make up for the way I cut myself off on last fall's posts. Such writing would cover TV again, talking about specific comedies I've followed during the season, along with the two dramas I can say I've consistently tuned in for (that would be NBC's Chuck and ABC's Castle). And it would in a sense, sum up the season in a nutshell.

An...Interesting New Years Story

First off, I apologize for not updating this blog as often as I should, and especially for not completing that "Fall TV Preview". To all five of you reading this blog, I would like to say it was lazy and inconsiderate of me. As a New Year's Resolution, I would like to update this blog more often and write more stories to share with the world. Furthermore, I would also like to refine my capabilities writing each of these entries, more than anything else working harder to be more concise at it.

That said, I would like to start by telling a fairly personal story. This happened to me and my home town today, beginning with a gas leak behind our neighborhood department store, Kohl's. What followed that was the consequence of the streets that surrounded the store, including the main streets of Shirley, NY getting shut down as our local leaders try and tend to the situation.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was having to deal with government head on. Of course, we all know how it rolls - We must rely on those people to survive, but they absolutely suck at their job.

Anyway, my father and I had to go get groceries this morning. Because two of our local supermarkets (Pathmark and Stop & Shop) were on the main streets of our town, they were closed. So we settled on going out of town for it, deciding that King Kullen was just going to be crowded and driving to the Stop & Shop in Medford. We picked up a few items that would allow us to entertain family visiting for Christmas celebrations, delayed by last week's blizzard.

Now, we drove along Smith Road, and passed the expected roadblock at Montauk Highway to a surprisingly traffic-free drive. But, when we got to Horseblock Road, there was another roadblock. We were allowed to pass that leaving our hometown, but when we returned, they wouldn't allow us to pass back through.

WHAT. THE. HELL?!?!

We really couldn't get back home the way we came. Why on Earth did that roadblock let cars out of Shirley, but not letting cars back in? For that matter, why on Earth was that roadblock there in the first place? There was another at Smith Road to keep drivers from getting into the area with the gas leak, so what was the point? Why couldn't that one just redirect traffic coming East around the gas leak? Sure, the traffic load would have been heavy, but it would have made more sense than just confusing and aggravating commuters the way they did.

My father seriously had to work his way around a labyrinth of back streets just to get home. We had to drive west to Bellport, go up Station Road to the Long Island Expressway, and drive down Moriches-Middle Island Road back to the peninsula. A couple of hours later, we drove back up to pick up my Godmother in Yaphank, and found the situation only got worse. The roadblock was still there, but now there was another one on Horseblock right over Sunrise Highway. That made even less sense.

Sometimes, our local government clearly has no idea what it's doing, and the way this procedure was handled is a powerful example of such.

Still, it was worth it to work around this sort of debacle, as I rode with my Godmother back down to Shirley. She lives over in Nassau County, and so I directed her to the right streets back to my house. I actually wrote the original draft of this story as I was riding with her.

After all, with last weekend's Post-Christmas blizzard, my family was blocked from coming when they initially wanted to. Why should we let human incompetence do the same thing nature pulled off easily?