"A 44-year-old New York City man contracted inhalation anthrax last week from working with untreated animal hides in the first naturally occurring case of the illness in the United States in 30 years, officials announced yesterday. […]"Vado Diomande, a drummer and dancer, collapsed after a performance in Pennsylvania and was hospitalized there last Thursday. On Tuesday, after blood tests confirmed the presence of anthrax, Pennsylvania authorities alerted New York City officials. Yesterday morning, federal authorities concluded definitively that Mr. Diomande had inhalation anthrax.
"About 5 p.m. yesterday, federal agents, police officers, firefighters and other city workers surrounded Mr. Diomande's apartment building at 31 Downing Street in the West Village of Manhattan and the warehouse at 2 Prince Street, near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, where he used animal skins to make drums for his dance troupe and for other musicians.
"Mr. Diomande's fifth-floor apartment was sealed. Residents on the first four floors were allowed to enter the building. […]
"At 8:30 p.m., Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said the tests at both the apartment building and the warehouse were complete and showed no evidence that anthrax had been produced there. Outside Mr. Diomande's apartment building, city health officials distributed fliers saying the residents were not `at risk for anthrax,' but federal officials said they were actively investigating whether any of the hides were passed along to others. […]
"Mr. Diomande, who is conscious and cooperating with investigators, remained in fair condition last night in the intensive-care unit at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa.
"Mayor Bloomberg and officials in Pennsylvania said the chain of events leading to Mr. Diomande's illness began on Dec. 21, when he returned from a two-week trip to Ivory Coast. There, he obtained raw animal hides to bring home with him, the mayor said.
"A city official who is close to the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case said Mr. Diomande arrived at Kennedy International Airport with four goat skins and took them in suitcases directly to his studio in Brooklyn. The skins were probably never taken to his Manhattan apartment, the official said.
"Officials with the United States Department of Agriculture said no animals or animal products are allowed into the country from Africa. Customs officials said agents generally questioned anyone trying to import animal skins and seized any untanned or partially tanned hides.
"A relative disputed the officials' account.
"`I think the officials are confused,' said a brother-in-law, Alexander Harman, 43, a computer animator in Jersey City. `He is not importing, by hand, this quantity of skins. I've always understood that he buys them from local distributors, and I am positive that he does not carry skins through customs himself. They are heavy, and he goes through sometimes 100 in a month. He's only made two trips to Africa in the last 14 years.' […]
"Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I. field office in New York City, said there was no indication that the skins were smuggled into the country. […]"
–"New York City man has inhalation anthrax, officials say," by Sewell Chan, New York Times, 23 February 2006
Do those monster cranes silhouetted against the Jersey sunset between the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island belong to Port Newark? Dunno what else they could signal, but till I check a harbor chart I can't say for sure. What I do know is that wherever Port Newark is it's too damn close to New York City to gamble with security. (This snap, 3 October 2005, from the Battery Park City promenade near South Cove–next door to the WTC site.)
The great anthrax hysteria of October 2001 skipped downtown Manhattan. We'd just watched the twin towers collapse from our streets, roofs, and windows, in real time, with our own eyes, not on tv. If you'd kept your wits then, now you should go to pieces over a media-churned scare? Judith Runamok, target? That sealed my skepticism. Not 20/20 hindsight–she was highly suspect long before she started shilling WMD for Butch and his buddies. People investing thousands in gasmasks and prescription antidote were of the class, as far as I could tell, who read, write, edit, and publish the NYT Style section. Privileged airheads.
So a friend visiting from D.C. that October perplexed me with symptoms of uptown-scale anthrax panic. Maybe because he wasn't an eyewitness to the Pentagon hit? Who can say. Whatever, he was the only soul I ever talked to who had any interest in the subject.
Not only because we already have a pretty good idea where the spores came from, in the current–genuinely worrisome–anthrax incident one's first concern must be the victim's speedy recovery; 25 February radio reports from the hospital don't sound good. His misfortune is terrible and stands on its own as such. So don't infer I'm indifferent to his suffering or wish to dehumanize him into some convenient cosmic instrument when I make this purely personal aside:
31 Downing Street–mentioned in the quote as the victim's residence (the five-story building–center–in the snap, 24 February 2006)–is a couple of blocks from my house. I pass it a few times a week; the short street is a visually engaging, convenient shortcut. I'm perhaps more aware of 31 than I might be because a friend lived for decades in a small rent-controlled apartment there.
The live-in owner took her to court and got a dubious ruling that–absent financial resources to pursue an appeal (woefully typical of the aging supposed rich-bitches monopolizing purportedly palatial rent-controlled digs)–put her on the street. Thus forced out of the city, she settled upstate. The issue? Despite repeated clean bills from the Board of Health: birds she kept in her apartment that the owner claimed were a health hazard.
I'm a big believer in karma coming around in this lifetime to bite the butts of people who richly deserve it. I've wallowed in schadenfreud watching it happen again and again and in the most unexpected ways. Setting aside other grave considerations for the moment, I'm deeply satisfied that karma–in the form of an animal-related problem that this time is both real and well-publicized (radio reports on 25 February say that authorities have found anthrax spores in the apartment)–has again done exactly what I trust it to do. Would you want to rent in that building?
<Update, 26 February: This afternoon an errand took me the entire two-block length of Downing Street, and for the first time I saw something unusual, an NYPD van parked on the sidewalk in front of 31, cop in driver's seat reading a paper. Next pass, 28 February, PD van–Sixth Precinct (that's local)–again on sidewalk.>
OK, that said, where the heck was Customs when my neighbor brought those hides into the U.S.? That is, or should be, the central public issue–right up there in the security column with ports and New Orleans' disgracefully ongoing crisis. The NYT did follow up 24 February on U.S. Customs and Border Protection–as a Metro piece: "Where tracking anthrax begins with the honor system." … Metro?!? The honor system?!? Unreal.
No reason whatever to expect the White House nitwits who didn't take terrorism seriously until those attacks and have treated it seriously since only as a way to scare voters and shift public funds to corporate supporters, to suddenly start to secure ports or detect anthrax–or god knows what else we don't know about yet–before it takes a taxi from the airport.
As for administration and Islamist accusations that the ports uproar betrays bias, get over it. You want to talk about anti-Islamic bias? Despite his pious rhetoric, Butch's Iraq misadventure is more than enough. Let the Muslims terrorists kill each other there so they don't get us here (or something to that effect)? If you hadn't noticed, ignorant American support for the war erodes more every day. Muslim friends, neighbors, merchants, and co-workers contribute no less–or more–than the rest of us to the sum of our tasty multicultural stew. The uproar isn't about Islamists, it's about stopping a country with a shady record on terrorism before it starts running U.S. ports–most immediately the port across the river from where the World Trade Center used to be.
Here's wishing Vado Diomande strength to go on fighting the good fight. A heartbreaking clip on tv news tonight showed him dancing joyously with his troupe–near those damned drums–just hours before he collapsed.
The handsome vessel sailing toward the cranes, literally into the sunset, is the Shearwater, day-chartering out of the BPC North Cove–distinctive as the only Marconi-rigged schooner I know that plies the Upper Harbor in a small wind-driven forest of picturesque gaff-riggers. The owner, according to a piece Jerry Tallmer wrote for Downtown Express, is the son of a couple I knew before they were parents when we were neighboring Fire Island squatters–a long story I'll get into if he and I ever chance to meet. (Snap, also 3 October 2005 from the Battery Park City promenade near South Cove.)
< Update, 3 March> The house on Downing
Street was center-ring of a somber circus yesterday.
One of life's little unjustices is that my friend
upstate–once accused of being a threat to the
building's safety–didn't get to see it all.
From a big white tent set up out front in the blockaded
street, uniformed men and an imposing fleet of hazmat
decontamination equipment from around the Northeast
radiated a block in each direction. Figures in moonsuits
entered 31, blue PortaPotties squatted on the sidewalk
next door, and the New York Times sent a reporter: "Federal workers decontaminate anthrax victim's home,"
by Sewell Chan and Colin Moynihan, NYT, 3 March 2006.
Lucky for me, the ever-reliable Villager filled in local
detail, and dismay, quite nicely–"Anthrax
drums up scare, as Village man is stricken,"
by Lincoln Anderson, The Villager, 1-7 March 2006–'cause
I got no closer than the construction site on the other
side of Bedford Street–formerly the bar known as Dodges.
Left quickly to go home to grab the Canon; I really wanted
to post snapshots here. Once home, with freezing rain
steady at 32 degrees out there and a hot wifi node
indoors, comfort conquered good intentions. The Times
said workers finished the job last night.
The weather was only frigid today, and sunny,
but–witness the PortaPotties and struck police
barricades–anything worth seeing had returned
to base. I guess life at 31 will return to normal
except in one apartment on the top floor, but it
seems unlikely anything will ever really be the same.
The Times implies Vado Diomande's prospects for
recovery are looking up.
Saturday, 25 February 2006
< Update, 24 June 2006 An otherwise cheerful
report a couple of weeks ago (print NYDaily News; I
forgot to look up the url) on Diomande's exuberant
first public performance since his dance with death
mentioned in passing that he'd lost his West Village
apartment. What a surprise [dripping sarcasm] was my
knee-jerk reaction. A subsequent Villager interview with Diomande and his wife
makes me glad I didn't post what I wrote. Maybe a
karmic drama actually enlightened the building's owner.
The whole experience must have been pretty unnerving
for everyone who lived in that building. Hope Diomande
lands new digs where he's as happy as my friend is in
the house she bought upstate–a story less rosy than
that makes it sound–after getting evicted over an
animal-related issue from the same West Village building. >
