Geography Lessons Needed at WNYC
There's many a story of born-and-bred Manhattanites who have little conception of the world around them. If it's a question of how to get to there from here and you can't get there on the 4 train, then why bother?
This became apparent yesterday while listening to Janet Babbin do the local news at 7 p.m. on public radio station WNYC. Babbin read an item about what was the apparent suicide of Mary Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s estranged wife. We were told that Kennedy's body was found at the family home upstate.
Turns out upstate was in the hamlet of Bedford in Westchester County, which is immediately north of the city after you leave the Bronx. Upstate? Well, yes, as it's up from WNYC's studios in West Soho.
But nobody who lives in Westcheser, including me, thinks they live in upstate, even those in the county's northern reaches, which includes comparatively bucolic Bedford. If you can get to midtown in an hour with no traffic than you're not upstate. You're merely in the suburbs, where many WNYC members reside.
If I truly lived upstate, then I wouldn't have been able to hear Babbin tell me where I don't live. But she should come visit, especially during the summer when everybody escapes the city, er, Manhattan.
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