The local paper for the Upper er East Side THE SUBSTITUTE TEACHER WHO RAPS < Q&A, P.21
WEEK OF JULY
9-15 2015
PARSING THE CRIME STATS NEWS June was the safest for the city in more than 20 years, despite some crime increases on the U.E.S. BY HARRISON STEVEN CADE
Does New York City feel safer? According to the NYPD, it should. The department said that the month of June was the safest for the city since 1994, as major felonies fell across the board.
THE TROUBLE WITH TECHNOLOGY SENIOR LIVING BY MARCIA EPSTEIN
My two sons-in-law have what I call their “magic machines.” Actually, they are just iPhones or the latest incarnation thereof. But when they look up the nearest Starbucks, take fabulous pictures or talk about their newest apps, I am awed. As for me, I have a flip phone. Remember those? Only a few years ago, flip phones were cool, new, the thing to have. Now, my children laugh at me. But wait, it’s a new flip, and I now have unlimited texting (the old way), a few
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picture taking capabilities, and….. well, not much more. But I only pay $32 a month, and now I can reach my daughters, who only respond to text messages. When they’re in the mood. (But that’s another story.) I also have an old wall phone at home, the kind with the squiggly cord. I hear better on it. What can I tell you? Anyway, technology is moving so fast, who can keep up with it? When I was nine years old, I wanted to write stories. My mother bought me an instructional booklet, and sat me down at the Underwood typewriter in the den. I typed on that big old thing with its manual return car-
riage for years. In high school, I took typing because I was already good at it. In the middle of the year, the class got one electric typewriter, kept in the back of the room. We all took turns getting used to it. During my work years, I used carbon paper and Wite-Out. It was really exciting when my office got the new typewriter with Correcto tape. Then came the mainframe computer, and the instruction booklet as big as a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I remember crying. Although I progressed through the years through Ms-Dos to Word Perfect to Microsoft Word, I am most definitely not a techie and none of this came easy. I polled my friends at the JCC on 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Most of them have flip phones. A few
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton held a press conference on July 1, in part to trumpet the numbers and in part to reassure New Yorkers that, going into the summer, the department is ready. The NYPD as announced a summer staff-up program, which involved the participation of over 300 formerly desked members of the NYPD in high-crime precincts. Bratton said the additions were aiming at dealing
CONTINUED ON PAGE 17 have no phone, and a very few have smart phones. My friend Ann’s son gave her a smart phone. In fact, he insisted on it, saying she definitely needed one. It lies unused in her drawer, while her flip travels with her. My friend Edna says she has a smart phone, but she’s a dumb user. Most of us agree that all we need is to be able to call and be called. The rest is for the young folks. Most of my friends also have computers, but a few don’t. One tried a tablet and went to the Apple Store on West 67th Street. The noise and crowds chased her out, and she soon returned the tablet. Not having any kind of computer shocks even me. I have my six-year-
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Our Take THE VISIT OF POPE FRANCIS New Yorkers like to think they have been everywhere and done everything. We’re a hard group to impress. The pending visit of Pope Francis to the city in September is an exception. The pope’s focus on income inequality and on environmental concerns strike a particular nerve in this city. In addition, the closure of Catholic parishes around town has created deep fissures that the Vatican, and local Catholic leaders, are hoping the pope’s visit will heal. Indeed, one of the planned stops on the pope’s Sept. 24-26 tour is an East Harlem school that had been part of a church closed by the diocese. The late Edward Cardinal Egan shuttered the church, prompting parishioners to stage a sit-in and resulting in the arrest of six people. That was in 2007. This year, protesters again returned to Catholic churches across the city, after the diocese targeted more for closing. Those protests proved largely fruitless, with the majority of the closures still on track. The pope will be hoping to close that chapter during his visit. Line up for your tickets now.
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