Sunday edition: "...feather duster tomorrow"

Feeling really reflective #104

Sorry for the delay I was leaning into my shortened week and celebrating Thanksgiving!

Last week I wrote about the struggle non-profits are having with getting paid all of the money owed to them by the city. Some are owed millions, or tens of millions — some are threatening layoffs or struggling to make payroll.

I wrote about this issue earlier in the year, but not only did things not improve, they worsened.

Mayor Eric Adams said there’s nothing wrong, and that things are better than ever. But of the nearly a dozen people I spoke with directly — and from the peopleI heard from after publication — things are actually worse than ever. “It’s definitely the worst it’s ever been,” one person told me. City councilmembers have spoken about the persistent issues, highlighting how much the city relies on nonprofits to provider crucial services.

“The root causes of these delays are manifold, but they all point to systemic inefficiencies within New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ administration,” Councilmembers Justin Brannan and Althea Stevens wrote. “They stem from a range of bureaucratic bottlenecks, including contract registration backlogs, staffing shortages at city agencies, issues with the city’s digital procurement system and invoicing complications.

You can read the full story here.

A few other stories from THE CITY during the short holiday week:

More drones!
A federal judge pushes for receiver takeover of Rikers Island.
Another sobering look at the state’s legal cannabis program.
An update soon for the Floyd Bennet migrant shelter?

Other interesting stories

Cuomo’s def thinking about running and wants everyone to know [WSJ]
Another person is running for mayor but he wasn’t serious about the potential straw donation he admitted to [POLITICO]
There’s still so much I want to know about the stowaway [NYT]

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Tomorrow marks the 44th anniversary of the rape and murder of four missionaries in El Salvador, including Sister Maura Clarke, the daughter of Irish immigrants who grew up in Rockaway Beach. She went to the same elementary school and high school as I did, her smiling face on the walls of buildings for a lot of my life. As a kid we knew she was killed in a vague sense, but it wasn’t until years later I learned that the United States was directly involved in backing the national guard members that killed her.

I learned a lot about the sisters first from the book “The Same Fate as the Poor” but then, more significantly, from Eileen Markey’s “A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura,” which details the life of Sister Maura. She was inspired by injustice, by her parents’s talk of the martyrs who died for a free Ireland, and she felt called to join the Maryknoll sisters. Markey’s book presents her as a whole person; she felt fear and confusion, even fell in love with a priest but never acted on it. She remained devoted to the least fortunate and the vow she made, dying because of it. There is a push to make her a saint.

While we did not learn about our country’s foreign policy decisions in high school, there is one lesson that has stayed with me fore more than 20 years later. My Christian Morality teacher, Mrs. Farrell, assigned us to read a letter by Sister Ita Ford, a Brooklyn native who wrote back home to her niece for her 16th birthday. It was months before she was killed and left in the ditch with Sister Maura. Our assignment was to find the lesson in it. What did it mean to us, the same age as this girl at the time living not too far from us? I think about this

Brooklyn is not passing through the drama of El Salvador, but some things hold true wherever one is, and at whatever age. What I'm saying is, I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you...something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for...something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be -- that's for you to find, to choose, to love.

And, while we are so fixated on death!

Lou Carnesecca died yesterday, a month and change shy of 100. His obituary in The Athletic captured why so many New Yorkers connected with him, whether they followed the team closely or not — and seemed to capture my own thoughts and feelings on New York City authenticity:

A native New Yorker who believed the city had all he needed to build a winner, Carnesecca trumpeted the city’s parochialism for all it was worth. St. John’s was New York’s team, playing in New York’s basketball epicenter, Madison Square Garden, and Carnesecca served as the perfect showman. Animated on the sidelines and a colorful quote in the newspapers, he endeared himself to a town that suffers neither fools nor phonies because he was real.

Former Johnnies coach Joe Lapchick also shared wisdom with Carnesecca that he then shared with everyone. It’s a good reminder for anyone who ever feels too high on the horse, or as Lapchick put it, “geniuses” who thought they were better than other people.

From The Torch:

As they left a banquet one night, Lapchick turned to Carnesecca. “Here,” he said. “Take this and put it in your wallet. Carry it with you all the time and when you think you’re pretty smart, read it.”

To this day, the 92-year-old still carries the card with him.

“Peacock today, feather duster tomorrow.”

Feather duster tomorrow! Thanks for reading!