A Year Under the Gun
Yesterday, the Jersey Journal reported this in one article:
There were 50 homicides in Hudson County in 2005, the most since 1989. Thirty-nine of those homicides happened in Jersey City — the highest city total since 1982.
Page 4 of 6
Plunging into Death
Two Jersey City police officers, Shawn Carson and Robert Nguyen, were killed on Christmas night when they were called to the Lincoln Highway Bridge over the Hackensack River to help set up road flares to protect drivers from motoring off the middle of a unique “vertical-lift” bridge that had its safety features disabled by a truck crash two days earlier.
Repairs would take two weeks of intensive construction so during that time police officers were called in to shield the public from the dangers of the bridge as it was raised for boat traffic. Some call this kind of bridge an “elevator bridge” because the center of the bridge rises straight up into the sky to allow boat traffic to flow below. Maritime law requires preference be given to commerce boats over motorists. The bridge is raised only at the radio request of boats and not on a predictable schedule. There are no angled ramps to indicate the bridge deck is no longer fit for cars and trucks — the middle of the bridge just disappears up into thin air.
Shoes on a Wire
In the urban core, especially Jersey City, if you’re looking to score drugs, you look up, not down, and when you see this hanging above you:
Google Sitemaps Clicks
Here are the top search query click-throughs (people searched for these terms and then actually clicked on an Urban Semiotic post title return to read it) for your favorite Urban Semiotic blog as provided by Google Sitemaps:
Girl or Woman
If you are female, which term do you prefer if you had to be labeled by one of these words: “Girl” or “Woman” or “Female” or doesn’t it matter?
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln I was educated, roughly and roundly, by certain forces in the English Department that one must never call a female a “girl” if she has had her period — how one determines if menstruation has happened or not was never explained — and the correct term for the rest of her life was “woman” but never “lady” because “lady” was an Olde Englishe synonym for “bitch.”
Ladies and gentlemen rightly translated to the modern ear, I was told, as Bitches and gentlemen and it was an unfortunate, but culturally accepted, put-down of women who fought to advance their self-worth beyond being seen merely as property.
Sacramento Reloaded
We have been out of Sacramento for 24 hours now so it’s time to look back and share some impressions while they are fresh and of the mind and not the memory. Flying into Sacramento is like diving into a miles long patchwork of streams and parcels of farmland.
You feel like you’re landing in a pasture when your plane touches down. There is no doubt this part of California thrives on agriculture and living from the land. This Sacramento Reloaded post generally deals with experiences within a 30 minute walking radius of the Sheraton Grand hotel in four directions of the wind.
1. Everything closes at 5pm. Good luck finding an open deli or a Starbucks or a restaurant if you’re thirsty or hungry at 5:01pm. On the East Coast we are used to the 24-Hour Deli and eating and drinking joints that close at 2:00am and open again at 5:00am. Our hotel only served food in their restaurant from 6:30am-2:00pm and from 5:30pm-9:00pm. If you were hungry in the afternoon you were on your own! We are used to hotels having eating places open for 24 hours a day.
2. Janna noticed the children in Sacramento are more fearful than those in New York City and Jersey City. Sacramento children walk in fear of strangers and they make too much eye contact that reveals their terror. On the East Coast, children do not worry if you’re a local or a tourist — is there a difference? — they just go along with their business and don’t bother looking you in the eye unless you cause them trouble and then they stare you down eye-to-eye to send terror into your being! Sacramento children appear more vulnerable and unnerved by the unfamiliar than their East Coast peers.
Back into the Beast
I am currently flying high above you as I leave Sacramento behind and head back into the belly of Jersey City.
I will check in here again with you when I am safe back on the ground.
Chlamydia and the White Van
If you could look at a similar Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Map of New Jersey counties that charts Chlamydia infections, you would see intensive clusters centered in urban centers and around major hospitals and few infections in wealthy counties.
Chlamydia is a curable sexually transmitted infection (STI), which is caused by bacteria called Chlamydia trachomatis. You can get genital chlamydial infection during oral, vaginal, or anal sexual contact with an infected partner.
It can cause serious problems in men and women, such as penile discharge and infertility respectively, as well as in newborn babies of infected mothers. Chlamydia is one of the most widespread bacterial STIs in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 3 million people are infected each year.
Good News on the Avian Flu
Quest Diagnostics, headquartered in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, is the largest clinical lab in the United States and they have created a new screening test to detect the Avian Flu.
That means we now have a rapid way to find out if a person is sick with “regular flu” or the more deadly Avian Flu. The test uses gene based screening that will identify the H5N1 strain of Influenza A virus (the Avian Flu) via respiratory (lungs, breathing, etc.) samples from sputum (spit, mucus, etc.), swabs and bronchial washes.
A Killer Hiding in Plain Sight
My recent report on the Jersey City killing of a family turned yesterday when the alleged killer was arrested three miles away. He slit his wrists the day he murdered his sister and two of her children, and then checked himself into Cabrini Green Medical Center in New York City under an assumed name for a “suicide watch.”
A multi-state manhunt over the last month turned up nothing. I’ve claimed here before the criminal mind is a kind of genius that, if turned around, could inherit strength and goodness into the world but first we have to find a way to stop that mind from murdering through its genius.
You must be logged in to post a comment.