BAGHDAD-ON-THE-HUDSON

New Yorkers got a taste of what William Sydney Porter meant when he called their town Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. "There's more poetry in a block of New York," said Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, "than in 20 daisied lanes." Last night during the great Northeastern blackout of '03, he could have said "than in all the lights of the city." 

If the city's friendliness under duress wasn't poetry, it was something like it. People who rarely talked to each other before sat on their front stoops chatting by candlelight. It could have been the turn of the 20th century. Let's make an annual holiday of it. Keep the electricity running, but set aside one day of the year to turn off the lights across North America.

Postscript: ABC did not air last night's scheduled Rwanda segment about Fredrick. I don't know whether the blackout was the reason. That would be a good guess, though. I'll let you know when the segment is re-scheduled. If you were able to tune in and were disappointed, I'd say, "Sorry for the inconvenience." But given the circumstances, inconvenience sounds ridiculous.