“HAZARDOUS TRAVEL ADVISORY IN NEW YORK CITY; PUBLIC SCHOOLS WILL BE OPEN TODAY”

By Nicholas Stix

That was the bottom-of-the-screen banner on New York City’s ABC Eyewitness News at 8:57 this morning.

That about says it all. It’s dangerous for adults to travel on the city’s streets, but they should endanger their kids by putting them on school or city buses, or driving them to school. (Doesn’t unnecessarily endangering the welfare of one’s child make one guilty of child neglect?)

Mayor Bill de Blah-Blah-Blah (Wilhelm-de Blasio) and his schools chancellor Carmen Farina have contempt for New York City’s children and their parents (or at least, the white and Asian kids and parents). As far as de Blah-Blah-Blah and Farina are concerned, the public schools are daycare centers for unwed black and Hispanic mothers, which provide their children with hot breakfasts and lunches (with dinners coming up next).

All suburban schools surrounding New York City are closed today. All New York City private schools are closed today. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared another state of emergency, which automatically entails all New Jersey schools shutting down.

According to Google, the current New York City temperature is 29 degrees, but Google asserts that the wind is only 11 miles per hour, which is completely wrong. I can hear it whipping utside my window, in the Grat Library at the Stix family redoubt, Xanadu. About half-an-hour ago, WPIX’ Linda Church had the wind pegged at 35 MPH at Queens’ LaGuardia airport, which is probably what it also is in my neck of the woods, in the Rockaways, one of the city’s windiest locations. That makes the wind chill factor somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees. (ABC’s Bill Evans said 15 degrees for the city as a whole). The snow is coming down two inches per hour (Church), and the wind and slush factor are getting worse, as the school day wears on.

And yet, I was going to take my son to school this morning. He’d already missed seven or eight days—I’ve lost track. One day the schools were actually closed (I wasn’t going to take him, anyway), three or four other days, I kept him home because of blizzards or sub-zero wind chills; one day he was sick; one day I was sick; and on February 7, as usual, the city broke the law, by refusing to provide my son with his free yellow school bus; three or four straight city bus drivers on our route played hooky; and taxis were unavailable (“15 to 20 minutes,” which translates from dispatcher-speak as “forever”).

So, I figure, I have to take him today. The Boss is afraid that although he’s an A student, he’ll get left back, or have to attend summer school, due to having too many absences.

So, I’m in the bathroom, having showered and shaved, and get a time check from my son: It’s 7:31.

Are you dressed, with your shoes on?

“Yeah, Dad,” he calls out.

I emerge, and see that he’s wearing his pajamas.

His mother was off, and she’d told him not to get ready, but for once, she was right.

Even when New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency, de Blah-Blah-Blah and Farina kept the schools open, with Farina arguing that children had to get a hot lunch. When I was a kid, hardly anyone got a hot lunch at school. Most of us brought sandwiches from home, you know, that our mothers had made us. But making breakfasts and lunches for their children is beneath the dignity of New York City’s aristocratic, unwed black and Hispanic mothers.