This week, I’ve resumed listening to Teach Yourself Dutch on my daily walks — which I have also resumed, on a minimum-of-twice-weekly schedule. I had taken a few walks in August with my pop shuffle (see “Endless Summer“), and I expect to take a few more, but the arduous business of learning foreign languages is what autumn is all about, at least for cosmopolitan intellectuals such as myself. French is the language that I ought to know, but Nederlands is the language that I wish I could speak, because I think that it is my homeland language. I have not given up on the idea that I might find myself living in Amsterdam someday. Everybody in Amsterdam speaks English, but I would not let that get in the way. Angenaam kennis te maken!

So I walked over to the river and what did I see, but this Coast Guard vessel (pictured, above and below, left — the lower image is simply a detail) parked in the middle of the East River. It was that what-d’you-call-it moment when the tides aren’t running one way or the other. It took me a while (I am not the brightest bulb in the box) to realize that the ship was there to guard against terrorists who might want to launch a bazooka at the United Nations headquarters from their Chris Craft. Then I really paid attention.

The players are all in the crop. The Coast Guard vessel, stately and off to one side, guarding against Iranian aircraft carriers — or maybe French ones. I understand that. The large ship’s disinclination to engage in the contretemps that bothered the smaller boats was right out of Ms Gaskell, or perhaps early Trollope. It was hard not to think of dogs. Sniffing. Just look!

The police boat (blue hull) steamed up, as it were, from downtown to have a look. For a while, it flashed its overhead light, just like a cruiser pulling you over. But it accomplished nothing. It was the grey and orange slip (another Coast Guard vessel, I hope) that finally, after I really can’t tell you how many feints and false resolutions, sent the white pleasure craft on its merry way down the East Channel. Young people deciding whether to have sex for the first time cannot have been more tentative than these sailors. 

And I thought: let’s just let them blow us up. It would be better than this nonsense. If we have to park idiots out on the East River to deal with other idiots who know that they oughtn’t to be cruising down Moon River while the UN is in session — well, clearly, these guys are not going to protect us from the brains who could blow us all up in a trice. 

Make no mistake: I admire the Coast Guard vessel (the Ridley) for staying out of whatever was going on over there — which, for all I know, was a confab between a security officer and his brother-in-law — hostile, but not Orange Alert.  But I’ve been reading Chris Wickham on the Dark Ages, and learning that when security becomes our most important product, you might as well give up and ask the Taliban in.   

On the way home, I stopped in at Gristede’s to pick up a few things for dinner, but, as always happens when I go off-shopping list, I found when I got home that I’d have to go out again. This time, I went to the Food Emporium, which is in the building, facing Second Avenue. When I turned the corner, I almost fainted. The row of lovely Bradford pear trees were gone. I knew, right away, why: to make way for the construction of the 86th Street Station of the Second Avenue subway. But it was another example of heavy-handed violation of the fabric of civil society, and even less necessary than protecting the United Nations from rogue pleasure craft. I’m still heartbroken; I probably won’t see those trees again in my lifetime.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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