lock the front door

The White House’s new security plan: Lock the front door

every time i see a headline like this i wish i worked at the new york post.  it has to be fun . . . .   seriously though, if the peeps in dc need some high level security tips, i suggest they just spend the week in nyc during the general assembly – which happens to be this week.

i’ve been out sniper seeking with my zoom lens since saturday and haven’t seen 1 sniper.  these guys are good.

i’m not sure what the mission of these people is, but they are scattered about the sidewalks near the united nations building.  they look like they have bombs strapped all over themselves and i have to believe this would  effectively keep people from trying to break in to the white house.

they do not like having their pictures taken either.

another effective tactic used by the diplomats to keep people away, is extreme noise.  i’m sure they do it on purpose so it must have something to do with their country’s security operations.  wherever a foreign diplomat decides to go, he is preceded by and followed by, an entourage of black suburbans with lights flashing and very loud sirens.  this goes on all day long.  entourages en route to the u.n. for morning meetings, entourages at lunchtime, entourages escorting their diplomat back to the hotel after daily sessions, and entourages chauffeuring diplomats all around town for dinner and nightly entertainment – all with excruciatingly loud sirens.  i believe the strategy here is simple sleep deprivation.  i know because i live just 3 blocks up first avenue from the united nations and i am just too tired to consider jumping the fence and breaking in the front door.

during the week of the general assembly there is no parking either.  every street in the neighborhood is lined with signs like this:

if you live between 40th and 55th streets from the east river over to third avenue, you may not be able to go home if there happens to be a diplomat having a meeting, a meal or a cocktail on your street.  on each corner are stationed between 6 – 12 very young rookie cops, whose mission it is to question people to death and check i.d.’s before letting them step foot onto their own block to go home after a long day at work.  i’ve noticed that if you are 20 something, female and beautiful, the young rookie cops will hold you up for twice the amount of time than they detain others.  just an observation that probably has nothing to do with security.

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 I am thankful the most important key in history was invented. It’s not the key to your house, your car, your boat, your safety deposit box, your bike lock or your private community. It’s the key to order, sanity, and peace of mind. The key is ‘Delete.’
 ~ Elayne Boosler

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nj exit 12, bear left!

after spending a good part of the summer in upstate ny, i saw a lot of wildlife, much different than the wildlife i see in the city. the one thing i was hoping to see and didn’t, was a bear.  and i really wanted to see a bear.

i’ve been spending time at my friend diane’s house in nj. she lives on 6 acres in the woods and her yard backs up to 40 more acres of wooded land. the other night around 9:00 pm, while relaxing in the living room with diane, her friend richie and her daughter, i thought i heard a car door close.  when i asked if anyone else heard it, diane and her daughter instantly jumped up and yelled, “bear!”   wasting no time, they ran to the garage and opened and closed the electronic doors to make noise which they hoped would scare the bear away.

while diane and katie were busy attempting to scare an unseen bear from the driveway, i opened the sliding glass doors in the kitchen and stepped out along the side of the house.  assuming the bear had taken off into the woods, i was looking straight ahead into the woods and calling for the bear.  i really wanted to see a bear.   so that you have a clear perspective, here is the layout:

 

hoping to get a close up photo of the bear that i was still not convinced existed, i was holding my camera (which you may not be able to tell from the above rendering).  i called for the bear several times before seeing a dark shadow moving slightly up in the woods to my right just a little bit.

i wondered, if that’s the shadow, where is the actual bear creating the shadow?  i looked harder into the woods, squinting and trying to focus into the dark woods.  knowing that i was very close to this shadow and presumably, the bear, my body seemed to go into “survival” mode without the help of my brain because i became extremely nervous and began to get a bit shaky, but continued to watch the slow moving shadow 20′ away and call for the bear.  i could hear diane screaming, “close the door! close the door!”   when her words registered in my mind, i thought of the possibility that the bear had not run into the woods, but was still around the corner from me right in the driveway.  this prompted me to look to my right at which point i realized the bear was in fact not in the driveway, but standing approximately 12 feet to the right of me.

 

this was by far the biggest bear in america.  rather than looking into the camera as he appears to be in this picture (that i lifted off the internet for obvious reasons), he was actually staring straight at me.  eyeball to eyeball.  his head was at least one foot higher than mine (i am 5′ 4″ tall).  he was just standing there staring at me the whole time i had been calling him!  i have seen a wild bear once before and i have never, ever, seen such a behemoth creature in all my life.  at a speed rivaling usain bolt, i flew into the house.  

it took the rest of the evening for all of us to calm down enough to switch subjects and think about anything else.  diane had seen this same bear before and was relieved to know that now someone else had witnessed this particular guy, as she always thought that the people she told about ‘big bear,’  thought she may be exaggerating about his size.  he was easily 900 lbs  and the size of a small car. 

as you can probably imagine, it was a little nerve racking for me to take ivan out after dark from then on.  for the next couple of nights we stayed close to the house.  diane had her spot lights replaced and now the side yard can be lit up like wrigley field.  

last night i turned on every light outside and let ivan out to relieve himself around 8:30.  as i waited for ivan to finish up, i thought i heard some rustling in the bushes just about 10 feet away from me.  it wasn’t loud and i thought it was probably just the cat, but  i interrupted ivan midstream,  and yelled for him to get into the house, just in case. when i came inside, i asked diane if the cat was out, to which she answered, “no.”  

i went into the kitchen and opened the blinds covering the sliding glass doors to see if anything would appear from the bushes.  in the small grass area between the kitchen and the woods was a bear sauntering by and looking directly into the kitchen.  he looked to be about 500 lbs.  when the screaming began, he walked slowly into the woods . . .

( photoshopped bear walking by diane’s kitchen window – again, i missed the photo op, but this is what it looked like)

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i never understand why people are afraid of the city.  really, it’s a much less dangerous place to be.

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“Adopt the pace of nature:  her secret is patience.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson