The High Death-toll of American Traffic

Earlier this year, my wife witnessed a pedestrian being hit by a car on our city street in Maryland. It wasn’t tragic and no-one got badly hurt but the event was in some ways enlightening. There’s a four-way crossing with a bit complicated arrangement for the traffic lights. There’s a moment when all lights are red, both for cars and pedestrians, from all directions. This gives pedestrians the temptation to start crossing just when one of the lights for cars turns green. This is what happened this time around, too: a mother with a young daughter made the wrong decision to start crossing just when the driver saw it was her turn. The driver was in hospital scrubs, perhaps a doctor on her way to work, given that she was driving a Mercedes. She bumped lightly into the mother who fell, but quickly got up. Nevertheless, the police arrived a few minutes later. 

The New York Times did a widely publicized study a couple of months back about pedestrian deaths in the USA going up. They found that in 1980, pedestrian deaths in the US started to decline sharply, but three decades later this trend was reversed and has been going up since then. In this respect, the US is bucking the international trend of declining accidents involving pedestrians.

When it comes to overall traffic deaths (not only pedestrians), deaths per capita and per distance driven are highest in Africa. However, the US is an anomaly when it comes to advanced industrial societies. In the US, there were 12.9 traffic deaths per 100,000 people. This compares unfavorably with all European countries (e.g., in the UK, the number is 2.9; in Finland 3.8; in France 5.0; and in Sweden only 2.2), Australia (4.1) and Japan (2.5). Now, especially if you’re American, you would retort that Americans drive more. But the ratio remains even if compared with distances driven: USA 8.3 deaths per 1 billion vehicle-kilometers vs. 5.2 in Australia, 5.1 in Finland, 5.8 in France, 4.4 in Japan, 3.3 in Sweden, and 3.8 in the UK. By any measure, thus, traffic is more deadly in the US than in peer countries.

In 2021, 7,300 pedestrians died in the USA, three-quarters of them at nighttime. The NYT article put forth a number of reasons why this was happening. One reason is that speed limits on local roads in the US are often higher than in other countries. Another obvious one is that American infrastructure was built for cars, as opposed to countries where cities predate cars. NYT also suggests that US laws and cultural norms don’t penalize dangerous driving.

An important factor identified by the Times reporter, which also coincides perfectly with the timing of increased pedestrian deaths about 15 years ago, is the prevalence of smartphones. In the same period, car dashboards and control systems have become more complicated, especially with the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles. Both of these factors mean that drivers can become quite distracted fiddling with their electronic screens. I might add to the technological factor that cars have also become more quiet making their approach less obvious to pedestrians.

Each of these reasons is a likely partial explanation. I’d like to focus on the cultural dimension.

The Times article points out that there has been a geographical and demographic shift where more people have moved to the sunbelt in the south where urbanization came later and roads and cities were built particularly for cars. Data show that in the older cities (like New York City or Chicago), pedestrian deaths have actually fallen but they have risen steeply in suburbs where sidewalks and public transit options are lacking. This is combined with the “suburbanization of poverty” whereby poorer people and immigrants often have been pushed out from city centers and have to walk along big roads to get to work. They also often have to walk during dark hours when they are hard to spot.

A friend of mine lives in a Virginia suburb not far from the capital. Their community is intersected by a big road on which speeds are often quite fast. As there is perhaps a kilometer between the traffic lights where pedestrians can cross, the residents petitioned the county to establish another pedestrian crossing between the two existing ones. The county sheriff didn’t allow this on the grounds that it would “encourage risky behavior by pedestrians.” Crossing the street on foot in one’s own neighborhood to reach shops and services is considered too risky and inconveniencing drivers.

But even in urban areas like ours where sidewalks exist and walking is common, the general mindset is that cars go first. Might makes right. This is the polar opposite of how things are seen in Europe where pedestrians in cities always have the right of way. I remember decades ago when I was attending driving school in Helsinki, I got slammed by the instructor for the fact that I only slowed down to let a pedestrian cross the road, instead of stopping fully. (That is another difference: In the US, few people ever go to driving school. They just learn with an older family member, then go to the department of motor vehicles and take a multiple choice test. Consequently, many drivers never internalize the rules of traffic.) Irrespective of the speed limit, in places like Finland the authorities judge that your situational speed was too high if you were not able to stop before hitting a pedestrian. You will get fined for that. Here it is not so. Cars drive fast, are hard and heavy, and therefore you have to give them way.

There’s a traffic rule that is uniquely American: the right to make a right turn against a red light. I’ve heard men say how great this is because it gives so much flexibility and reduces wait times. However, the rule is widely abused and few drivers remember that it still means that you’ll first have to stop at the red light to see whether there’s anyone coming from the left. Instead, people often just turn into the middle of a stream of cars forcing others to give way, as if it were the birth right of the person coming from behind the red light. At busy intersections there are “no turn on red” signs and even traffic light arrows that turn red, but these have little or no impact on many drivers. Needless to say, if there’s a pedestrian or a biker with the right of way, such drivers couldn’t be bothered to watch out for them. A former biking colleague of mine has been knocked over at least twice by drivers who didn’t recognize the equal rights of a bicycle on the street.

I remember years ago when living in Brooklyn, NY – another urban area with proper sidewalks where people walk everywhere – I was walking home from the subway. I was crossing at a zebra crossing in the same direction I was walking when a car turned right and almost hit me. The driver, a young white hipster-looking fellow, screamed at me from his window: “Watch out! If I wasn’t paying attention, you’d be dead.” I guess I should be happy that he was paying attention while speeding through a city block in his metal box (even if it was a Mini).

Another factor also identified by the NYT research is that Americans drive extraordinarily large vehicles and that their size has been steadily growing in the past 15 years. As cars get larger and heavier they also become far deadlier to those they hit. Furthermore, they have longer brake distances and are harder to handle. Even in the city where there can be no need for such a large vehicle, I often observe soccer moms driving a massive Chevy Suburban or Ford Expedition. It’s often hard to even detect a small lady from the cockpit of the truck.

In 2023, the list of best selling cars, trucks and SUVs in the USA was topped by three massive trucks: Ford F-series, Chevy Silverado and Dodge Ram pickup (weighing between 1,800 and 3,100 kg). In Finland, in contrast, the top-3 the year before were Toyota Yaris, Toyota Corolla and Toyota RAV4; the two first ones being small compact cars (489-710 kg). A friend of mine who moved back to the Netherlands from Washington, DC, decided to sell his Prius because in his country it was considered unnecessarily large.

I claim that this trend towards larger and larger vehicles is also culturally determined. It sits well with the American image of a frontier man or woman, ploughing his own way forward irrespective of what or who comes in their way.

At the risk of stereotyping, there are certain kinds of drivers that may be more aggressive than average. One category consists of people driving luxury vehicles, possibly because such persons may feel entitled or just want to show off. There is some evidence for this. A research team supported by the Academy of Finland found that there are two types of people who drive what they called “high-status” cars: disagreeable men and conscientious people. (Their research was published in the peer reviewed International Journal of Psychology with subtle title, Not only assholes drive Mercedes.)  Even after controlling for wealth, these two characteristics stood out in statistically significant form. The researchers, led by Prof. Jan Erik Lönnqvist, concluded that “certain personality traits, such as low agreeableness, may be associated with both unethical driving behaviour and with driving a high-status car.”

This research is in a way confirmed in a 2023 report by a Finnish insurance company that found that BMWs and Audis top the list of cars that are involved in traffic accidents in Finland, with over 20% more accidents compared with other car brands. When it comes to collissions with animals (Finland has a lot of deer and other wildlife right outside of cities), BMWs are the unfortunate leaders, while Audis come second in this dubious list with 15% less collisions.

I also suspect a general American characteristic, which may be a trait stemming all the way from the kinds of immigrants this country attracted hundreds of years ago. The Europeans who voluntarily moved to the New Continent were not a random selection of Europeans. No, there was a preselection of people who were individualistic risk takers seeking their fortunes on the new frontier. While many were forced to leave due to food shortages caused by bad harvest, many were escaping established hierarchies back home, some being misfits in the more staid European societies. Even today, the USA is known for its emphasis on individual action and a me-first attitude. This may have produced many good things along the way, but when it comes to traffic behavior it does not emphasize safety. In fact, incidents of aggression, even road rage are a regular feature when driving in the States.

This cultural trait also makes Americans overall a very impatient lot. Drivers feel certain of their own rights. Bikers think that traffic rules don’t apply to them, so they seldom stop at red lights and feel free to ride against the traffic on one-way streets or jump on the sidewalk when convenient. For most pedestrians, it seems to be psychologically impossible to wait for the light to turn green. This impatience and sense of entitlement appears to have been the cause of the accident that my wife witnessed, when a mother and daughter ran against the red light just as an impatient driver stepped on the gas.

Tokyo to New York @ Spectrum, June 2, 2013

On this hot and muggy first Sunday of the summer I took myself across the Williamsburg Bridge to Lower East Side to cool down with contemporary music. As I was early, I took a walk around the block. On the next block on Orchard Street there was a street fair with many stalls selling food and other stuff. All of the many bars had their fronts open and thirsty customers were sitting with their beer mugs observing the procession of scantily clad denizens on the street.

At Spectrum on Ludlow Street the atmosphere was much more subdued. A couple of dozen people had gathered in the long and dark living room where a stage was established at the far end. The side walls were lined with bookshelves. On the right side, they were filled with books; the left side was covered by thousands of CDs. I sat down on a comfortable black sofa next to the CDs and took a long sip of the aloe mango juice I had bought on the street. The occasion was a concert—Tokyo to New York—displaying new music by Japanese and American composers. The performance featured music by more than 20 contemporary composers ranging in age from early-20s to mid-80s. There were three musicians—Thomas Piercy, Mika Tanaka and Elizabeth Brown—performing on Western and Japanese instruments. The secret behind the darkness in the room turned out to be that the music was combined with a show of photographs arranged by Christina Boers projected on the back wall.

The first segment of the concert started with a solo piece ‘Mienai Sakebigoe’ on hichiriki written and performed by Piercy. This moved on to a piece by Masatora Goya, ‘Toro Nagashi’, which had Tanaka join the hichriki, playing delicate ornaments on the piano. Hichiriki, a Japanese double reed instrument used traditionally in ancient gagaku court music, has a flexible pitch and a nasal sound vaguely reminiscent of oboe. With Piercy switching to clarinet, the duo performed a U.S. premier of a piece by Akira Uchida, the soothing and hauntingly beautiful ‘New Moon’. This part of the concert ended with a hectic piece by Katsuhiro Oguri called ‘Movement 2012’ (also a U.S. premier, like several of the tunes following), depicting the chaos of New York City traffic. The photographs that accompanied it were on the same topic. The first theme of the piece culminated in a climax with a long high tone from the clarinet matching a photograph of a black man showing an equally piercing middle finger. This launched Tanaka into an atonal boogie on the piano, which appealed to my jazz sensibilities.

After the duo finished their frantic performance, Elizabeth Brown followed with a shakuhachi solo from her own Isle Royale suite. This one was ‘Loons’, a serene piece of beautiful work for the vertical bamboo flute.

The second segment of the concert featured eleven short pieces by as many composers drawn from a series of more than 50 commissioned one-minute works under the title ‘Nihon no Shiten’. The composers were Armando Ayala, Greg Bartholomew, John Bilotta, Andy Cohen, Douglas DaSilva, Andrew Davis, Jim Fox, Michael Frazier, Nina Sinakova, Daniel J. Thompson and David Wolfson. They varied between lyrical and quirky.

Another interlude followed with Brown playing another part of her bird-themed suite, ‘Black-throated blue warbler’. I have heard her play parts of the suite before in an earlier concert and can appreciate the beauty of the nature-inspired music that utilizes the unique timbre of the bamboo. The shakuhachi is a difficult instrument (Elizabeth and I talked about it briefly before the concert agreeing that it made the Western flute feel simple and straightforward) but she has established a beautiful sound and command of the instrument.

The final part of the concert started with Mika Tanaka playing her own solo composition, ‘In the Garden’, a lovely but not a radical tune. Then followed five duo pieces:  ‘YUU’ by Yohei Kurihara, ‘Sketch from Japan’ by Kazushi Iwaoka, ‘You’ by Mieko Ishii, ‘Old Men Waltz’ by Yoshihiko Banno, and ‘Space’ by Kyoko Yamaguchi. I particularly enjoyed Iwaoka’s ‘Sketch’, which utilized alternately Japanese and Western scales seamlessly contrasting the two modes. ‘Old Men Waltz’, a melancholy atmospheric piece was to me one of the high points of the afternoon. Its theme referred to the inevitability of old men waltzing away from the scene, making way to younger men; an inevitability understood by both the young and the old.

The final piece of the concert, ‘Amalgam – A’ by Hifumi Shimoyama was very interesting because it brought together shakuhachi, clarinet and piano producing very unique, surprising tonalities. Piercy explained how he had visited Shimoyama at his home in Tokyo. The composer lives in a modern high rise. When you enter his apartment, to the left is a highly modern, stylish living space, while on the right you enter into a traditional Japanese abode. This dichotomy is also evident in his music.

Meanwhile, on the sweltering street the Lower East Side was alive. Although the sun was not yet setting, there were lines to venues with live music of a different variety as I headed towards the subway on Delancey. I was glad that I had cooled off the afternoon at the Spectrum where I had been both stimulated and calmed down.

Shooting America

On Friday, 14th of December 2012, a young gunman walked into Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and proceeded to shoot and kill 26 people, including 20 children in the ages of 6 and 7 years. This horrific incident was one of the worst mass murders even in the violent history of America. Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t entirely isolated. In fact, this was the third incident of a similar kind to take place in the United States just in 2012. These recent cases include the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, on the 20th of July 2012, in which twelve people were killed and 58 injured; and the shooting at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on August 5, in which a white supremacist killed six people, possibly mistaking the Sikhs for Muslims. Six of the worst mass shootings in America have taken place since 2007.

Could this finally be a turning point—the straw that broke the camel’s back, in the words of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California—in the American attitude towards gun violence? There are signs of outrage that seem unprecedented; after all, the horror of the slaughter of these little children is just too painful, too hard even to imagine. But don’t hold your breath.

There is much focus on the mental health of the shooter and on providing increased security in schools. This is understandable. However, I do not see this primarily as a mental health issue. This is not meant to belittle the importance of psychological factors or to deny the importance of mental illness as an explanatory factor. America’s mental health care system is clearly broken and there seem to be extraordinarily many sick people who turn to violence. However, there are crazy people everywhere, but in most other places they can be stopped before they are able to commit mass murder. Just recently, a Chinese nutcase attacked a school in his own country. Armed only with a knife, he was able to injure a number of people but not to kill anyone before he was apprehended.

In this latest case in Connecticut, the assailant was in the possession of three advanced pieces of weaponry: Glock and Sig Sauer handguns and an AR-15 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. He used this firepower to enter the school and then to kill the kids and their teachers. It is worth noting that apparently he had acquired access to these guns from his mother (who was the first victim of his killing spree), a gun enthusiast.

What surprises me is that so relatively few Americans have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that access to high-powered firearms itself is a threat. While a few people like Feinstein and Dan Gross of the anti-gun violence Brady Campaign have systematically brought the issue of stronger gun control up, the debate still seems to be up in the air. Although most pro-gun politicians have had the sense of laying low since Friday’s tragedy, a number of gun activists, sensing a threat to their God-given right to carry any weapon, have again decided that attack is the best defense. People like John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, has been seen on a number of TV talk shows peddling his claim that everywhere where stricter gun controls have been effected, murder rates have gone up (would someone please look at the statistics behind this implausible claim). Citing the Aurora example, Lott asserts that the shooter actually chose that particular movie theatre because it didn’t allow guns. There were other theatres closer to the murderer’s home but, Lott implies, there might have been armed people there who would have returned the fire, so the shooter was afraid of attacking them. Just imagine a gunfight in a crowded and dark movie theatre.

Another creep, Philip Van Cleave, president of the sinister sounding Virginia Citizens Defense League, actually had the temerity to tell Washington Post on Sunday after the Newtown massacre that guns are fun. Defending the people’s wish to own semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 (implicated in the three latest massacres mentioned above), he was quoted by the newspaper as saying: “I could ask you why should anyone want a Ferrari? [Bushmasters] are absolutely a blast to shoot with. They’re fast. They’re accurate. … Guns are fun, and some of them are much more cool than others.” Apart from the stunning insensitivity, Van Cleave’s views may not be that rare amongst Americans.

Who exactly Lott, Van Cleave and their ilk envision could have been better armed to fight back in the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown is not clear to me. The young teachers who died with their students? Or perhaps the children themselves? Employing armed guards and arming teachers or movie goers or citizens in general so that they can return fire when a deranged person starts shooting at them is such a dystopian vision that few of us I imagine would cherish. And would all of us really want to be trained in handling guns?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe many Americans do see this as a desirable way of protecting oneself and one’s liberties. After all, this is a country where large groups of people arm themselves in preparation against a takeover by the socialists in the Federal Government (or even—gasp!—the United Nations) . It would seem inevitable that an even larger number of people walking and driving around with concealed weapons would result in those guns being used when things heat up in, say, a traffic jam or a supermarket line. And the risk of innocent bystanders getting hurt in these altercations seems high.

This happened on Friday, August 24, 2012, when a man shot his former co-worker near Empire State Building in Manhattan. The police killed the assailant immediately following the incident, in the process injuring eight innocent bystanders with ricocheting bullets—and remember, these were highly trained law enforcement officers who are experts in handling firearms.

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” has long been the rallying call of the supporters of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful pro-gun lobby. Regretfully, that’s just not true. There will always be nuts who want to kill people. However, their ability to do so is significantly increased by the availability of guns. Later the same evening, the brother of the Empire State Building victim was interviewed by CNN. His opinion: Don’t turn this into a referendum on firearms; if the killer hadn’t had a gun, he could have used a “baseball bat or whatever.” Perhaps so. People who are inclined to commit premeditated murder do find a way to do so. A baseball bat would do the trick, but it just might be more difficult to carry it concealed to the spot, then un-shield it rapidly when the intended victim is in sight, and to wield it to his head—all on a crowded city street. The intended victim might have a higher chance of escape, too, when he sees the batter approaching. In this particular case, the victim was also physically larger than the assailant, which might have made a difference in a fight without guns.

A more important point is that premeditated murder is, by definition, usually targeted towards a specific individual against whom the would-be murderer bears a grudge. Such murders occur in all countries.

There are two very obvious cases where the availability of guns does create a much larger hazard. One, as we have seen, is indiscriminate mass murder by a lunatic. An individual’s ability to massacre a large number of people is directly correlated with the availability of guns, especially powerful assault weapons. In this year’s cases, the madmen’s ability to kill was multiplied by the availability of such automatic weapons, with clips holding more than 100 rounds of ammunition reducing the need to reload. Such weapons and clips have no legitimate use in private hands, as they are by no stretch of imagination needed for hunting or target practice. Their only purpose is to enable the killing of as many people as possible in close combat.

The other case, which so obviously speaks against having guns around is that the majority of killings in the US happen between family members and people who know each other. Only a small fraction of these are premeditated murders. Most are either accidents (every year many people shoot themselves or their dear ones accidentally when fondling their beloved guns) or happen when arguments—between spouses, friends or colleagues—heat up and a loaded gun happens to be handy. Guns kill people, even when people don’t intend to do so.

In the December 2012 issue of The Atlantic, that appeared on newsstands just before the Connecticut massacre, Jeffrey Goldberg argues that it is too late to install any further gun controls in America. There are already some 280-300 million guns owned by private citizens in America and each year this number is increased by more than 4 million. These are of course stupendous figures, given that the total population of the USA is just around 311 million. I have recently heard that slightly less than half of American adults own a gun. Simple arithmetic thus implies that these people have multiple guns at home. Goldberg draws the conclusions that it would be impossible anymore to regulate the situation through democratic means and, therefore, it would be better to give more guns to law-abiding citizens so that they can defend themselves. This is a saddening view, although it does have a certain logic. Yet, by the same logic it would be futile to attempt to address any similar issue that involves an advanced situation, including nuclear disarmament. His solution would also bring back the Wild West in which disputes were settled with six-shooters.

Except that in the Wild West, guns were quite strictly controlled in towns where the sheriff made sure that gunslingers would check their weapons at the gate. Joe Klein in Time magazine (August 6, 2012) outlined how this free-for-all guns-galore is not an American tradition or what the Founding Fathers expected. Rather it’s a result of a concerted advocacy effort by all kinds of right-wing groups since the 1970s to overturn gun control legislation. In 1993, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, legislation was passed to ban assault weapons, but that too was let expire a decade later.

Of all industrialized countries, the United States has by far the largest amount of guns per capita: 88.8 firearms per 100 people. This is far more than the 54.8 in the second most gun-heavy country in the world, Yemen. America has some 5% of the world’s population but, depending on the estimate, up to half of the world’s firearms in the hands of private citizens. Topping the list with Yemen, which many consider en route to becoming a failed state and which now is the principal host of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, should not be an accolade most Americans would want. Still a large number of Americans seem to be perfectly content with it.

Unfortunately, my own country of origin, Finland, is number 4 on the list (the third place goes to Switzerland, where most men who have served in the army have a rifle in their closet). Why Finland, the seemingly tranquil Nordic country known for its peace-making efforts on the world scene? I suppose the reasons are something similar to those that would be applicable to America, too: a macho culture of rugged individualists. There, too, men go on rampage shooting people.

Another factor that militates against gun control in America is (you guessed it) money. There is a lot of money involved in gun sales and they are not limited to domestic sales, as if the 4 million guns sold in the US annually wouldn’t be enough. Mexico’s drug war is largely fought with American guns: it is estimated that 80% of the guns confiscated from Mexican gangs have been bought legally in the US.

In the American political system, lobbyists for special interest groups play a central role. Politicians find it hard to go against the lobbyist if they want to stay in power. According to the Time article by Joe Klein, NRA has funded a total of US$18.9 million to political parties and candidates running for federal office since 1990. Of this amount, 82% has gone to the Republicans. The New York Times columnist Charles Blow has calculated that the NRA’s financial contributions to politicians in Washington are 4,100 times larger than those by the largest anti-gun organization, the Brady Campaign.

When culture, tradition, corporate interests and money come together, it will be a tough job to go against them and change things when it comes to the prevalence of guns and the ensuing gun violence. This is the reason for my pessimism, but I do hope that I am proven wrong. Perhaps, in the unspeakable tragedy of the Sandy Hook elementary school, there lies a seed of hope for some modest reform. If nothing more, it would seem reasonable to start by banning semi-automatic assault weapons and clips containing tens or hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Sandy farewell

Monday, 29 October 2012

On Monday morning New York City is closed down. I’m staying at home as my office, like most others, has been forced shut. Without transportation it would anyway be impossible to get to Manhattan. It doesn’t look too bad outside, though. It’s grey and the rain is falling, but it all looks rather calm. The wind comes in gusts that violently shake the trees outside. Some leaves have already turned yellow and are flying off like wet rags.

By noon the situation is starting to look more serious. According to the reports, the storm has been moving faster than anticipated and therefore has arrived earlier than expected. Its power has intensified. There’s by now no doubt this’ll be the worst storm to hit New York since the 1938 hurricane. The TV shows images from Atlantic City, NJ. The famous boardwalk and the casinos are being pounded by heavy winds and the waves from the open ocean are splashing forcefully onto the shore. I remember my brother has a vacation property on the Brigantine Island not far from Atlantic City. I also remember it faces the ocean. There’s only the sandy beach and a narrow street between the building and the Atlantic. In good weather, the location is lovely.

I correspond with my colleague Chona who lives in New Jersey. She is lamenting the pictures of her beloved Jersey Shore being eaten up by the waves. The TV meteorologist explains how New York City is squeezed in between New Jersey and Long Island, which means that in an Atlantic storm situation like today, the water has only one way to go: inland towards the city via the inlets. Therefore, the storm surge forecast for New York harbour is grim.

The most threatening situation starts unfolding in mid-afternoon on the west side of Manhattan. A crane on a high-rise construction site on the 7^th Avenue at 57^th Street has collapsed and is hanging upside-down at the height of the 90^th floor above the city. There is no way to stabilize it, so it’ll be pure luck if it stays up and doesn’t fly smashing into neighbouring buildings and onto the street.

Around 4 pm Governor Andrew Cuomo holds another press conference flanked by NYFD and other emergency personnel. A troop of National Guardsmen dressed in camouflage uniforms stands guard behind them. There is a life-threatening situation on Fire Island, a thin barrier island off Long Island. Fourteen people who refused to obey the mandatory evacuation order last night had to be rescued today. Having spent some good summer vacation time on the island, I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to face a hurricane on that thin sliver of sand in the Atlantic. In the process a rescue vehicle has been lost. Luckily there were no personnel losses. Cuomo quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accused people who refused to leave of being selfish, putting others at peril. The emergency chief tells in no uncertain terms that the window to evacuate is rapidly closing. Sandy is now expected to make landfall around 18:00, which will coincide with the peak of the tide coming in. When that happens, it won’t be possible to get out of the islands that surround New York City.

I also correspond with my other colleague Indran who lives high up in one of the high-rises on the East River waterfront in Manhattan. It is Zone A, but the building complex is very solid and the water would anyway never reach that high up, so he had chosen not to evacuate. He and his family moved here from South Africa only earlier this year. They are awed by the storm which they can observe through rattling windows from a vantage point tens of stories above sea level.

Our building is faring well, too. We stay in our warm apartment and enjoy the food we stocked up on before the storm: steaks and asparagus for lunch, followed by coffee ice cream; grilled chicken and salad for dinner. Do we normally eat this well? Nowa sleeps through much of her first hurricane. I go down to the basement, which looks dry—so far. 

Around the time of the landfall, I venture out briefly to snap these photographs. From the balcony the southwestern sky looks menacing. On the street side, the large trees are bending with the gale force winds. Luckily, the rain remains surprisingly moderate.

In early evening, the communications start to falter. The cable network on which our building depends on for the Internet, TV and telephone landline goes dark. The elevator also becomes unsafe to use. We’re cut off from information and communications. Well almost, as Yoko’s iPhone can still send and receive messages (my older model went blank). Some neighbours in the building report water leaking from their a/c vents. Apparently, water is also starting to gather in the basement.

Around 21:30, Yoko reads on the iPhone that Sandy is no longer a hurricane. The National Hurricane Centre has reclassified it because it “has continued to lose tropical characteristics”—no wonder at these latitudes. It doesn’t mean that its power is waning. Sustained winds of more than 120 km per hour remain. The wind and rain continue late into the night.

Tuesday, 30 October

We survived the storm with minor personal inconvenience. In the morning the winds are still high and there are heavy showers. At the JFK airport, top wind speeds recorded were 127 kph. Our cable service is restored and we never experienced a power outage. Not everyone was equally lucky. The storm left some 7 million people in 11 states and the District of Columbia without power. In New York, power outages are widespread and currently 1.8 million people are without power. In the New York University Langone Medical Centre even the back-up generator system failed. Some 260 patients, including four newborn babies, had to be evacuated.

ConEdison, the power utility, made a statement that this is the biggest storm-related problem in the company’s history. A representative couldn’t give a timetable for fixing the problems but suggested it may take a week to fully restore the service. It's going to be a cold and dark week for those affected. 

The initial reports by the police talk about seven Sandy-related deaths in the city, but there is no information about how these happened. The national death toll from Sandy is currently put at 16. According to news reports, more than 80 homes have burned down to the ground in a fire in Breezy Point, Queens, due to electric fires. One can imagine insurance companies studying the hurricane causes in the policies for loopholes to avoid payment to the home owners. A building in Chelsea collapsed partially because of the wind. The crane in Midtown West is still hanging there, but the situation remains dangerous and the police have evacuated buildings in the neighbourhood.

There is massive flooding around the city. The National Hurricane Centre recorded storm surges of up to 3.8 metres in Kings Point. The storm surge in southern Manhattan’s Battery at 4.3 metres, was the highest ever on record, beating that caused by Hurricane Dana in 1960. In the South Street Seaport waves with a height of 9 metres were measured. Residents on Staten Island report that they have never seen anything like this. Coney Island waterfront is still inaccessible even to eager reporters. Streets look like rivers with cars floating on them. Cars have been crushed under felled trees. One car spontaneously combusted in a fireball, possibly caused by salt water getting into its battery. A huge tanker has washed ashore on Staten Island.

Reports are coming in and are being updated as more information becomes available. The economic impact has not yet been assessed.

The system-wide shutdown of mass transit—both local and long distance trains, subways, buses, ferries—continues. Seven subway tunnels are severely flooded. One can only imagine the hordes of rats sprinting across the debris in the deluge. Apparently MTA had managed to get all subway cars on higher ground in anticipation of the storm, so the trains have been spared damage. MTA calculates it’ll take four days to pump out the water from the tunnels. The rain continues to fall.

It seems that we’ll spend some more time indoors.

Waiting for Sandy

Sunday evening, October 28^th

Sandy is again a hurricane. Having already once been downgraded into a tropical storm, Sandy is back as Category 1 hurricane—and it’s heading north along the Atlantic coast. The storm system is slow-moving and massive, ranging some 1,200 km across. The eye is still far out on the Atlantic off the Carolina coast some 800 km from New York, but despite the distance, the winds are picking up even here in Brooklyn. The rain is starting to fall and the Rockaway shore is already getting soaked. The hurricane is calculated to make landfall well south of New York tomorrow night and is expected to pass the metropolitan area south-southwest from here across the garden state of New Jersey.

Although New York will likely not be hit directly, the expectation is that the city will receive its share of rain and wind. In fact, the biggest threats would appear to stem from wind and the associated storm surge. The rainfall on Monday-Tuesday is expected to be just 50-120 mm—enough to give us a good washing, but not huge in historical terms. However, by noon tomorrow, the winds are expected to blow at 80 km per hour, with gusts going up to 112 km per hour. That’s strong enough to fell trees and power lines and to throw leisure boats off the East River on the banks.

This afternoon we walked down from our house to Bedford Avenue and the main shopping area of Williamsburg to get supplies so that our daughter Nowa would be able to ride out her first hurricane in comfort. It should have been no surprise, but we were still taken aback at seeing how many others had had the same idea. There were crowds of people in all shops and at least three dozen people were queuing on the pavement outside our favourite supermarket. Two bouncers were admitting people in an orderly manner, so that inside the store things didn’t get too chaotic. After a brief wait we were able to stock up with enough of bottled water and cooking ingredients should we be unable to shop for a few days.  It is interesting to note the types of items that people buy in these kinds of situations. Apart from bottled water, the first things to go seem to include canned tuna. This I noticed 14 months ago when we were bracing for Hurricane Irene, and could reconfirm today. As we headed back home, we could feel the humidity condensing in the cool wind.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been visible in the media today assuring people of the state of preparedness. All public transportation—subway, local trains, buses, ferries—will be shutting down tonight. The area airports—JFK, La Guardia and Newark—have also instructed flights to be directed elsewhere and  Amtrak trains will be avoiding New York’s Penn Station. The bridges and tunnels connecting the five Boroughs may be closed up to avoid accidents caused by heavy winds or flooding. New York will be cut off from the world.

The decisive Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of all vulnerable low-lying areas on the coastline by 7 pm tonight. Zone A—which includes most of the shores of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—may be facing huge storm surges. The forecast at this time is mostly 1-2 m above normal—high in its own right—but some areas around East and Hudson Rivers—and especially Long Island Sound—may face a storm surge of up to 1.8-3.3 metres. It’s almost full moon, which worsens the effects as the tides are naturally high at this time.

While the city hurricane shelters are slowly filling up, many citizens are also planning on challenging the evacuation orders and riding out the storm. The local TV station NY1 sometime ago broadcast a report from the Rockaways where some of the 130,000 people living there were gathering for hurricane parties. A somewhat wobbly gentleman declared firmly through a nearly toothless grin that he would not leave his home of 35 years: “The captain must go down with his ship!” True to his style, Mayor Bloomberg justifies the mandatory evacuations, not because of his concern for the stubborn residents, but because their intransigence may eventually put rescue personnel at risk if they need to go out to salvage foolhardy partyers from storm hit areas. He also made a decision to shut down elevators and hot water in public housing—many tall high-rises—to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators and other mishaps if and when there are power failures.

This is not the first time New York City will experience a hurricane, although they certainly are not regular events. By definition, hurricanes are tropical storms, and New York is far from tropical, as anyone having spent a winter here would attest. However, just last year, in August 2011, the city was hit by another hurricane, Irene. It was the first since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The one before that had been Agnes in 1972. Whether this repeat just a year later would be any indication of intensified storm activity linked with climate change is of course impossible to tell. Two events in a row don’t provide any statistically significant trend. The most destructive hurricane that New York has had to deal with in modern times took place in 1938 when the eye of a Category 3 storm passed straight through Long Island killing ten people. Damage from Irene last year stayed quite limited, although much of Lower Manhattan—the Financial District and the Battery—were severely flooded. Even then, the Far Rockaways took the brunt of the storm that damaged the piers and boardwalks there. Here in Williamsburg, the visible damage was limited to some flooded basements and a few felled trees (see the photos from the aftermath of Irene).

 

Sandy is different, though. It’s been termed ‘storm of a generation’ to reach this far up on the East Coast. Last week, it already killed at least 60 people and caused large-scale homelessness in the Caribbean. President Barack Obama has just signed an emergency declaration for New York State in anticipation of Sandy’s arrival.

For now, we are tucked in comfortably in our apartment in Williamsburg. We are close to East River, but just outside of Zone A by virtue of our building standing on a small knoll. It will not prevent the winds from rocking the windows here on the 4^th floor or preventing flooding in the basement storage areas. But all the plants have been moved inside from the balconies. We expect to stay safe and dry, although the thick clouds hide the full moon and the wind is increasingly throwing raindrops our way..

Lotus Position @ Somethin’ Jazz, 11 August 2012

Obama is a crowd magnet, for sure, but I was surprised to see a line on the sidewalk as Yoko and I arrived in front of Somethin’ Jazz on 52^nd Street on this late Saturday afternoon. After all, this was Akihito Obama, a Japanese shakuhachi player. Almost everyone in the queue was Japanese and I saw Satoru Steve Kobayashi, the owner of the club, checking names in a list in his hand. Luckily, I had made a reservation online earlier in the day. Clearly, this was going to be a cultural event. When we entered the pleasant club space it was crowded and we could see familiar faces belonging to well-known musicologists, academics and people into Japanese culture as well as some from the Japanese consulate in New York.

The musicians entered the stage and Obama, a thin unassuming young man, explained how this was a very important event for him: his first concert in New York! He further explained how in Japan he usually talks a lot during concerts, but he has seen that musicians in New York don’t do so, so he will follow their example.

He started the concert with an atmospheric shakuhachi improvisation which the drummer, Akira Horikoshi, soon joined. The sound of the bamboo flute was thick and breathy setting the stage for an almost mystical atmosphere. Switching to a shorter version of the flute, Obama played a minyo (Japanese folk tune) –like piece that led to an imaginative improvisation backed by Horikoshi’s drumming. Obama bent the tones of the flute so that the impression was almost like of a rubber band stretching, still playing perfectly in tune. The shakuhachi has only five finger holes forcing the player to find the right pitch by a variety of techniques that include covering the holes partly and in different combinations and changing the way you blow. Unlike with the Western flute, playing the shakuhachi involves changing your embouchure, changing the position of the flute, and even twisting your neck in a specific way called kubifuri. All these techniques contribute to the almost magical sound of the ancient instrument.

Akihito Obama started like virtually all shakuhachi players have, studying the traditional shakuhachi music created in the Buddhist temples and by the mendicant Zen Buddhist monks, komuso, hundreds of years ago and reaching its current shape during the Edo period (1600-1868). Obama is, however, more known for his own style of music that incorporates influences from jazz and electronic music. This was the first time we heard his music.

The Japanese masters were joined by a local addition, Brooklynite Joe Harrison on guitar. The next piece was a slow and beautiful tune, which Horikoshi accompanied on brushes. Harrison played a crisp solo, which Yoko classified as fusion-like, somewhat disapprovingly. This was followed by a very thoughtful piece in which Obama’s thick shakuhachi intertwined with a countermelody played by the guitar, leading to an effect-filled guitar solo that intensifying with Horikoshi beating his drums with mallets. After a mallet solo, the music calmed with Obama switching back to his longer flute. The last number of the first set contained an angular, somewhat atonal melody and some nice electronics work by Harrison.

I got the impression that Joe Harrison was a new addition to the group, which would explain that he was at times slightly stiff in his playing. And I could see him reading the music in a concentrated manner during several of the pieces. My impression is backed by the fact that the Somethin’ Jazz website announcing the concert listed Obama and Horikoshi, but continued “Someone – piano or guitar or bass.”

At the beginning of the second set Obama resumed talking. He said that Joe had told him to speak, but that he was nervous because his English teacher was in the audience. Needless to say, this brought out laughter from the crowd. Obviously, an American with similar command of Japanese – or any other foreign language for that matter – would not shy away from showing his proficiency. But the Japanese are modest and decent people and humility is a virtue, unlike in this country of brash and shameless self-promotion.

The second set introduced a special guest, Japanese singer Emme. The first piece Tsuki was about the moon. Obama introduced the sweet melody with the shakuhachi. It was then taken over by a solo voice and finally completed as a lovely shakuhachi-voice duet. Next came a lullaby for adults, Oyasumi, which Emme sang exquisitely accompanied by the guitar and bells. Obama’s playing was wonderful as he produced beautiful bird twitter like effects on the bamboo flute, reminiscent of the shakuhachi classic Tsuru no sugomori or ‘Nesting cranes.’ As the song evolved it developed rhythmic complexity but remained soft and soothing. Continuing on the lullaby theme, Obama pleaded with the audience, “please don’t sleep.” There was no risk of that during the beautiful, rather intense waltz that Horikoshi and Obama, wielding again the smaller flute, introduced and that made Emme dance before her singing part started. Joe Harrison had switched to an acoustic guitar and the song had almost Irish atmosphere, while Emme’s singing was tinted with shimauta-colourings from the southern Japanese islands.

The two final numbers of the concert returned to the trio format and demonstrated some of the most powerful shakuhachi of the evening. Obama masters the difficult instrument in such a way that his playing is never showy. Although he possesses a tremendous technique, he doesn’t draw attention to it: the focus is always on the music and the musicality (this is a sign of mature artistry, as was the case with Miles Davis or John Coltrane, post-Giant Steps). Harrison had also settled in and played a very good and inventive slide solo. The last piece was the most commanding of the evening, and the only one on which Horikoshi resorted to more conventional jazz drumming with sticks on cymbals. It involved some strong shakuhachi and electric guitar as the tempo was ramped up before the ending.

As the applause died, Obama highlighted another difference between Tokyo and New York. Here, there would be two other acts following tonight and so there was no time for playing any further. Indeed, the next band and some of its most eager followers were already waiting in the back of the room as we streamed out. It would be a challenge for them to create equally original and inspiring music and to fill the house with an equally dedicated audience.