February 27, 2008

• Both Sides Now

  
   

  
  I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
  From up and down, and still somehow
  It’s cloud illusions I recall
  I really don’t know clouds at all.
  I’ve looked at life from both sides now
  From win and lose and still somehow
  It’s life’s illusions I recall
  I really don’t know life at all.
  
  

  I didn’t understand the metaphors in this song when I was a kid, but as an adult I really appreciate its genius.  Speaking of clouds, I’m getting pretty good at taking photos out of my sun roof while driving 80 mph on the freeway!  Check out these shots of clouds I took yesterday morning:
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  While I’m on the subject of “both sides”, has anyone been following the John White story out of Long Island?  Calvin Trillin just wrote a fascinating piece in the New Yorker magazine if you’re interested.  Otherwise, here’s a synopsis from NPR.
  
  

  Late in 2007, John White of Miller Place, N.Y., was convicted of manslaughter.

  Whiteis African-American. Miller Place is a largely white community on Long Island, 60 miles from New York City. White commutes daily to the city for work.

  The story of how he shot Daniel “Dano” Cicciaro Jr., a white teenager, in front of the Whites’ spacious suburban house was all over the news in December — how White claimed it was accidental and how Cicciaro’s friends and family thought it was murder.

  Calvin Trillin, the author of an article in The New Yorker about the case, says the story illustrates how profoundly segregated a community such as Miller Place really is.

  Miller Place is 0.4 percent black, and a recent study concluded that Long Island is “the single most segregated suburban community in the United States,” Trillin says.

  “People saw what had happened completely differently according to what race they were. Some white people,including Dano’s parents, were outraged that John White wasn’t indicted for murder. And some supporters of White thought that if the races had been reversed — if it had been a white homeowner and four hostilet eenagers yelling at him — there wouldn’t have been any charge at all,”he says.

  Trillin discusses the events that led a group of white teenagers, including Cicciaro, to drive to the Whites’ house late on an August evening in 2006 and threaten White and his youngest son, Aaron, the shooting and its aftermath.

  White is appealing the guilty verdict and is awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for March 19.

  
  

  From the New Yorker:

  What happened at the foot of the driveway at 40 Independence Way that hot August night in 2006 took less than three minutes. The police later managed to time it precisely, using a surveillance camera that points directly at the street from a house a couple of doors to the north. The readout on the surveillance tape said that it was 23:06:11 when two cars whizzed by going south, toward the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. At 23:09:06, the first car passed back in front of the camera, going north. A minute later, a second car passed in the same direction. In the back seat of that second car—a black Mustang Cobra convertible—was a seventeen-year-old boy named Daniel Cicciaro, Jr.,known to his friends as Dano. He was unconscious and bleeding profusely. He had been shot through the cheek. A .32-calibre bullet was lodged in his head.  Read more…

  
  
  
  

   

  • 4:14 am
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