No more pennies for thoughts

It was not a tasteless April Fool's Day joke, there was almost no media coverage, and the shock value of hideous events upsets people less these days than would the news that a small glass of fruit juice is no longer included in their local diner's breakfast specials. 

But during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, affluent gun fetishists and other "sniper tourists" paid $90,000 to go on "human safaris,” with live ammunition, to mow down civilians just for sport. The recreational guerillas hailed from numerous Western European nations, according to a Nov. 12 New York Post story.

It's not clear how the participants were selected. Was there a lottery?  Was there an open season to enroll, like an application for an insurance policy?  Perhaps a waiting list?  

Maybe their model was Amon Goth, commandant of the World War II concentration camp where the movie “Schindler's List” was set. For his amusement, Goth would shoot Jews from his balcony as though they were clay pigeons. As a coming-of-age gift to his daughter, she got her own rifle to pick off "subhumans.” They enjoyed the challenge of long-distance targets.

Assuming the Post is accurate, will the International Criminal Court be interested in indicting these junketeers, or will they exempt them, like they do the  genocidal dilettantes in a couple of African nations, who maintain their good standing in the atrocity caucuses of general assemblies of international organizations whose charters affirm human rights?

Slaughter as an exercise-related hobby was not the only devalued story last week. A creation that had been in uninterrupted circulation since Marie Antoinette was beheaded during the French Revolution in 1793, has also passed from the scene, and it too was hardly noted.

After 232 years, on Nov. 12 at noon, the last copper penny was minted. 

Imagine all the transactions that have taken place and the events that have transpired since the inaugural cent was cast. Given all that's happening, it's only logical that the "lucky penny" be retired. 

Not enough luck in the world anymore for minting.

The folks in the government who did the calculations claim that $56 million will be saved annually by consigning the penny to oblivion. They probably were paid more to do the math. 

Will the expense they spared be used to offset part of the cost for government's shredders of secret documents?

That last penny will become a collector's item and exponentially increase in value overnight. It's likely already surpassed the worth of the Honus Wagner baseball card, being already dearer to many legislators, executives and activists than the Constitution.

Speaking of money, you can bet your bottom dollar that during the remaining Adams-Mamdani transition period and the departure of the term-limited speaker of the City Council Adrienne Adams, there is much last-ditch legacy monument building and perhaps a bit of grandstanding and stage-managed optics to promote durable reputational hygiene. 

Sometimes one is best known or most appreciated, for one's "last hurrah.” The B-HEARD program reformation may be a case in point.

The FDNY's emergency medical technicians (EMTs) will no longer be part of the teams that respond to some 911 mental health calls. The police have already been excluded for several years following deaths that in some cases resulted from miscalculations, overreactions and needless escalations during confrontations. 

Social workers will respond when the NYC Health + Hospitals' 911 dispatchers determine that individuals are not dangers to others or themselves. That sounds sensible, but the current training of these dispatchers does not equip them with sufficient judgement to make such high-stakes, immediate professional assessments. 

That must be corrected as a prerequisite.

Mayor-elect Mamdani's plan to expand the teams to include coached and proficient peers who have themselves recovered from similar conditions is an excellent idea, as hospital treatment programs for mental illness and substance abuse can attest. No amount of law enforcement authority and weaponry can substitute for a person who has endured a similar journey. 

Again, the level of preparation and oversight is critical. 

The case of 18-year-old Bronx resident Saniyah Cheatham cries out. She died by suicide in an NYPD cell last July after reportedly having been observed in severe distress, telling the officers that she would kill herself. Her family alleges she was left in the cell with a sweater she used to hang herself. According to a court filing, surveillance video was operational and there was  no intervention to render her aid.

This case is pending, and I don't mean to prejudge it. But clearly there are lessons to be learned and systems coordinated.

When television anchors report stories like these, it gives them a chance to showcase skills from 15 minutes of acting lessons about how to appear on camera: they furrow their brows, move their heads from side to side, put on their best look of disbelief, adjust their tone of voice, whilst making sure every strand of hair is in place as they make their makeup artist proud.

And then they move on to fluff. And so shall I,  but with gravity.

Council Member Keith Powers introduced a bill (Intro. 1471) that would amend the city's health codes to provide vaccinations, spaying and neutering services for feral cats whose presence would become legal in bodegas, where they famously know better how to dispatch rodents than do the czars of City Hall. According to Bodega Cats of New York, over 13,000 people signed a petition in support of the bill.

Dogs as service animals are widely accepted. "K-9" units are widely used in airports and elsewhere to detect agricultural products that are banned for health or economic reasons. They have saved innumerable lives by sniffing out narcotics and unexploded bombs, and  even stayed on the job during the government shutdown without getting paid  or barking a grievance.

Cats won't do that, but they'll keep vermin at bay, and their inscrutable charm will put customers into a purchasing mood, which will enrich proprietors.

Back in 2012, digging in a parking lot near Leicester in England, the skeleton of King Richard III was found and identified through DNA testing matching a living descendant thousands of miles away. Nobody knew where he had been contemptuously and unceremoniously discarded after a bloody battle in 1485, but nature kept track of him. His DNA as a king was no more unique than the most anonymous and forgotten of us.

With this in mind, let's be better stewards of our own destinies and respecters of the immortality of others. 

Our American flags flew at half-staff from Nov. 3 until the 20th, in memory of the late Dick Cheney, the former Vice President, who jumped the queue to get a heart transplant, and was the hawk extraordinaire of the "weapons of mass destruction" hoax in the early years of the millennium.

For at least one of those days, the flag should have been lowered for Saniyah Cheatham. More than a symbol. A person.