We were gratified to receive two emails in our inbox this morning. One was from our Asian correspondent, D. H. Friendly, who alerted us to an update in his Hanoi journal. This short and amusing piece details the pitfalls of trying to learn a new language late in life, particularly one as devilishly tricky as Vietnamese. Of course the story ends with Holmes propositioning some innocent female (which of his stories doesn't?), but it is a good read nonetheless. You can read the entire thing here.

The other mail came from J. Bones Moskowitz, who quickly jotted down these thoughts after arriving late at work (a not uncommon occurrence, we believe).

"I woke up at 5:00 this morning and played with my son for over an hour. Contrary to what you might think, waking up at 5:00 does not insure that I will get to work on time--quite the opposite. Inevitably I fall asleep again at 7:00 or so, having passed the boy off to his mother and told myself I was just taking a quick refresher. I wake up two hours later, at 9:00, far more exhausted and disoriented than I was at 5:00, and attempt to go through my morning ritual. My son, in the meantime, has had another nap, and is near bursting with energy, which he has recently learned to express through a series of high pitched and surprisingly resonant screams. His tone expresses neither anger nor joy--he is experimenting with volume, I think, and his yelling is monotone, and, alas, not at all cute (it's the first time I've ever had to say that about him). He's always been a very amiable baby, but it's obvious his relative placidity up to this point was merely the process of storing up his noise.

Anyway, that's not actually what I wanted to write about. I stumbled out of my in-laws' apartment (we were staying on the Upper West Side last night) and made my way down to the 96th street subway stop to find the 7th avenue line was completely shut down. There were several fire trucks parked on Broadway with their lights flashing, and a line of policemen stood in front of the station entrance directing people to the C stop three avenues away. It looked very much like an Operation Atlas job (for those not in the know, Operation Atlas is the name of the NYC anti-terrorism force). I asked one of the cops what had happened, and he said "Fire" in an automatic way. A woman next to me asked how many stations were closed and he said "The entire 7th avenue line," with a trace of annoyance. I asked him when the fire had started and that seemed to trip him up. "Uh, I don't know," he said uncertainly, "I guess around 9:00."

I immediately resolved to take the cross town bus and catch the 6 train downtown, which was better for me anyway, as it would let me out half a block from work. I crossed Broadway to the bus stop, where a crowd of people were already waiting, but as the bus pulled up an EMS guy jumped out of his truck and banged angrily on the driver side window. "Keep moving! Keep moving!" he yelled and we all watched astounded as the bus pulled away without opening its doors. Only one person reacted, a frizzy haired woman who started screaming at the EMS guy with the relish of a seasoned New Yorker taking an authority figure to task. "Why? Why?" she bellowed, and the EMS guy shot back "Because it's blocking traffic!" as if it was the most absurd question he'd ever been asked. "But you told us to take the cross-town bus!" she countered, gesturing emphatically with her hand to include the cops, medical and fire department personnel in a general indictment of incompetence. "It will block emergency service vehicles!" the EMS guy spat back. "What if all the people hurt down there need ambulances?" I didn't hear any more of the conversation, because, like most of the people there, I had started running towards Amsterdam, hoping to catch the bus when it stopped there.

Fortunately, there was already a line at the next stop, and so we were all able to get a space. By now I was fairly paranoid, wondering if this was just your run-of-the-mill track fire or an elaborate plot to blow up American commuters. Just then I noticed an older woman in a head covering and sun glasses, holding a big canvas bag in front of her and looking fixedly downward with a serene countenance. I remembered reading about suicide bombers in Israel, and how they always seemed happy and smiling right before they blew themselves up. I stared at her for a while with dread, then (I'm ashamed to admit) I started trying to position myself so as to keep the maximum number of people between the two of us. I figured I'd let some strangers shield me from the main blast and take my chances scampering out the window when the worst was over. Despicable, really, but that's how my mind was working. Of course, she wasn't a suicide bomber: she got off at the same stop as me, lugging a folded-up baby stroller and followed by her daughter, who was holding the small child at whom the grandmother had been beaming the whole time.

I caught the down town 6 and figured my day was settling into its normal routine. Then I noticed a young black man pacing up and down the car, who seemed to be confronting people, or at the very least talking to himself in the loud, disassociated way of the truly berserk. I had my headphones on at this point, and was listening to a recording of "The Pickwick Papers," but I turned the sound down in order to suss out the situation. To my surprise, he turned out to be a preacher, or at least an enthusiastic Christian trying to convert his fellow sinners. But he must have been new at it, because he had neither the over-brimming good cheer of someone delivering the Good News, nor the blood-and-thunder authority of someone prophesying about the Last Judgment. He talked about Jesus in a slightly pissed off way, reminding us that the Lord was the only thing we could truly rely on, but saying it in the same kind of tone he might have used to tell us to fuck off. He hesitated a couple of times, and then imperfectly quoted scripture. He hadn't yet learned the trick of proselytizing with absolute faith while completely ignoring the reaction of his audience. I got the sense that if someone had rolled their eyes at him, he would have gotten offended, rather than laughing off the obtuseness of a non-believer. He got off after a few stops and I silently wished him well and hoped he could gain some confidence in his sermonizing. I felt very charitable, all in all.

I wasn't expecting to witness any more strange behavior but almost immediately a young, balding guy sat down next to me, and started avidly reading the paper. That in itself is quite normal. But a few minutes later five German tourists in track suits entered the train and stood over us, talking among themselves, and the guy next to me looked up abruptly and regarded them with a look of hatred on his face. After a few moments I heard him say to one of the tourists "Are you German? I hope you know that Germany is the source of all the evil in this world." The tourist looked down at him blankly. "More evil has come from that country than any other place in the world!" he said with rising vehemence. I looked up at the tourists, but plainly they didn't understand. They looked down on the man--not with the cool Aryan superiority of scientists regarding a slug in a Petri dish, but with the bafflement of people who thought they were just minding their own business. "Nothing good ever came out of Germany!" said the man with a sneer, and snapped his head back down to his paper. Now, I'm no great fan of the Germans, but I thought this was uncalled for. I considered pointing out to him that Austria is clearly more evil than Germany, as it had produced both Hitler and linzer torte. Germany, on the other hand, was responsible for Beethoven, Yiddish and Elke Sommer (wait, maybe she was Swedish). At any rate, those tourists weren't doing anything wrong, and didn't deserve to have their country so contemptuously slagged off.

The train pulled in to 33rd street and we all alighted on the platform. The German-hating fellow had to brush by one of the tourists and he looked like he was going to spit on the pavement in disgust. As I emerged into the sunlight on Park and 32nd, I saw a black guy and an Indian guy arguing in front of one of those pushcart coffee-and-donut stands and I thought about how much I loved New York."