New York City Life Cable comfort By Bob Yampolsky	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
ケーブルテレビの楽しみ 昨年9月11日の同時多発テロが人々に与えた衝撃は大変なものでした。6ヵ月以上が過ぎた今、一ニューヨーカーである筆者の生活にもその影響で変化が起きています。何が変わったかというと、実は…。（The Talk OF New York は今月から New York City Life とタイトルを変え、都市生活の随想としてスタートします）

I was trying to think of the ways that I was personally affected by the events of Sept. 11. This is what I came up with.

I had a client who had offices in the World Trade Center. He was trapped in an elevator for 45 minutes, but made it out alive. He owed me $1,000 (¥134,000) for a job I did for him, but I told him that I would not send an invoice.

For a few weeks, when the wind blew from the south, I could taste the smoke and dust.

For a month or so, I was in a state of high emotion.

I've had to suffer a disrupted subway service. The line I ride, the 1, used to stop right at the World Trade Center.

But I think the most substantial way that I've been affected is this: My television reception suddenly got a lot worse. Many of the signals I received used to be broadcast from the top of the World Trade Center.

I'm not trying to be flippant about what is obviously a very serious and very sad matter. Thousands of people died. Tens of thousands more were directly affected, either through the loss of loved ones, the loss of a job or the trauma from witnessing (as friends of mine did) people jumping from the flames.

But for me, the fact is this: My television reception, which hadn't been all that great to begin with, became almost non-existent. For a while, this was fine. It meant I didn't watch the news, and thus did not see the clips of the planes crashing into the towers over and over again. I didn't waste time watching sports. My kids spent less time in front of the boob tube.

After a while, though, well, the Olympics were coming up, baseball season would be starting, and my wife was getting tired of squinting when she watched the weather report, so we went ahead and did what many New Yorkers in the same position have done since Sept. 11: We went ahead and got Cable.

So that is the way that I have been most affected, personally, by the events of Sept. 11: I've been forced to go and get cable TV.

If you must know, I signed up for standard cable service. Standard cable service ($42 <¥5,628> a month) is one step above basic service ($26 <¥3,484> a month), meaning that I get several dozen fascinating channels (CNN, a cooking channel, a women's channel, a children's channel, a shopping channel, a home repair channel, a history channel, a cartoon channel, MTV, etc.) that I have not yet, alas, had time to explore, though I did manage to catch, in a fit of channel surfing the other night, the tail end of Ryori-no-Tetsujin (The Iron Chef, dubbed in English). I do not have premium cable (an extra $10 <¥1,340> or $20 <¥2,680>), meaning that I do not get "Sex and the City," or "The Sopranos," or any other cutting-edge televisions shows, nor do I get to see first-run movies.

If I paid 30 more dollars a month, I could get NHK around the clock. As it is, I get an hour of Japanese programming a night. There is a program called "Ai-nori," which seems quite sophisticated, but unfortunately I have not had the time to watch it seriously.

Sitting down to a dinner of steak and potatoes, I reach for the sour cream. There, on the top of the package, along with "best when used by" date, are the words, "God Bless America."

Driving along the West Side Highway I see a huge billboard on which a fashion designer declares, "Red, White and Blue is the new black." Stepping into a subway car, I see that all the ads are for something called "Project Liberty." The ads say, "New York Needs Us Strong: Coping after Sept. 11," and "It's normal to feel anxious following 9-11. If you're feeling anxious and need help, call 1-800-LIFENET."

And looking out from my window this evening, over the tops of the buildings, I can see a tower of blue light. There are actually two towers of light, but from my vantage they look like one. This is the "Tribute of Light," two shafts of brilliant blue laser light near the grounds of the World Trade Center. They were first lit on March 11, the six-month anniversary of 9-11. They are a temporary memorial to the World Trade Center.

It is very pretty and touching, but what I like most about it is that it is temporary.

The point I wanted to make, as I started writing this thing, before I got distracted by cable, is that everything is pretty normal here in New York, even though sometimes it seems as if the rest of the country still wants to treat us like victims. Most of us have moved on from Sept. 11. I don't mean to say we've forgotten it — that would be impossible — but most New Yorkers have stopped feeling like victims. Sept. 11 was awful, but we've gotten up, dusted ourselves off, and otten on with our regular New York City lives. And that is why this column has the name that it does.

Shukan ST: April 12, 2002

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