New York City Life Now is the springtime of our discontent 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
Now is the springtime of our discontent 先日、気分転換のつもりでセントラルパークを散歩していた筆者。高いがけの上に差し掛かったところで、「早まっちゃだめだ」と叫ぶ男性の声が。単なる冗談だろうと受け流しましたが、不安要因ばかりの近ごろのニューヨークを考えると、男性は本気で筆者が飛び降り自殺すると思ったのかもしれません。

It's spring in New York, and the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing and all that, but the city feels worried and distracted.

One morning last week, to escape my own worries for a while, I went for a walk in Central Park, and wound up on an outcropping of rock on the park's western edge. There was a sheer drop, of maybe 30 or 40 feet (9 or 12 meters) to the street below. A fellow in a truck saw me and yelled, "Don't jump!" I assumed he was being a wise guy, and I waved back. But who knows? There' s plenty to be anxious about these days, so perhaps he was genuinely worried that I was thinking of taking a leap. It's been that kind of spring in New York.

So just what is there to worry about? To begin with, there's the weather. Spring always has changeable weather, I'll admit, but the swings in weather this year have been disconcerting. There were snow showers one week, bikini weather the next, and then snow again in the following week.

And this follows the mildest winter ever recorded in records that go back to 1869. In fact, it hardly deserves to be called a winter: There was only one measurable snowfall, and that snow melted in a day.

On top of this, there has been an extended drought that has left the city's reservoirs at worrisomely low levels. The New York Times reports reservoir levels daily, and I, being the sort that worries about these things, see that today we are at 66 percent of capacity, with normal for this time of year being 99 percent. Last week I drove past a reservoir upstate — the city's water is upstate rainwater — and it looked like a big, empty pit with a puddle of water in the middle.

We've already moved from the "drought warning" stage — public fountains are dry, and you won't get water at restaurants unless you ask for it — to the "drought emergency" stage — no washing cars, watering lawns.

With extreme swings in temperature, vanishing winters and drought, Greenpeace volunteers are out in force these days, with their tales of global warming.

The other type of catastrophe on New Yorkers' minds, of course, is the next terrorist attack. Many people seem convinced that the next major attack will be a dirty bomb, set off in southern Manhattan. It is a surprisingly common topic in casual conversations, and an acquaintance of mine cited this possibility as a major reason for his decision to leave the city.

Another popular scenario is an attack on the nuclear power plant north of the city. There are others who argue that poisoning the city's reservoirs would be the most effective strike, and still others who point out that the city's subway system would be ideal for dispersing anthrax.

In any event, the media have been discussing various terrorist scenarios in very specific detail that I am sure would be quite helpful for any potential terrorists. And the increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East leads many to think that New York, the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, is certainly targeted.

So we've got impending environmental catastrophe and terrorist disaster to keep us up at night. On top of that, though, New York has some more mundane but more immediate worries, namely, money trouble.

Mayor Bloomberg, anticipating a $5 billion (¥650 billion) — that is billion with a b, shortfall — announced deep, across-the-board cuts in services. Schools, fire, police Eevery department is getting its budget slashed. Howls of protest have arisen in every quarter.

Mayor Bloomberg shrugs his shoulders. "Those are the numbers," he says. "This is the truth." He expects the deficits to widen over the next few years.

In any event, the turnaround has been stunning. Just a year ago, the city was flush; now its finances are in their worst shape since the dark days of the 1970s when the city was virtually bankrupt. Those were the days of broken subways, filthy streets, abandoned parks, crumbling schools and rising crime. The question on everyone's mind now is, just how bad will things get?

April 15 was tax day, the Knicks and Rangers ended terrible seasons, the Yankees' new star was booed in his home debut, Wall Street is tanking, no one cares that it was Earth Day — I could go on and on about all we've had to worry about in spring.

Ah well, if there is any bright side to all this, here it is: If things get bad enough, real estate prices in Manhattan will finally drop, and I'll be able to afford a place that is big enough for my family to live in. At least, it's something to hope for.

Shukan ST: May 10, 2002

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