As Yet Untitled

Today is Sunday, 25 March 2007.

On certain dates, I think, “she would have been 38 today”, and similar thoughts.

My father, who died last year a week before his birthday, would have been 83 today.

His birthday is exactly a week before mine.

He was so fortunate to have his birthday fall on the 13th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.

The Triangle Factory was located on the east side of Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. An exemplary sweatshop, where immigrant women worked 60-72 hour weeks for the magnificent sum of $1.50 a week. The stairway doors of the factory, located in the upper floors of the building (8-10), were usually kept locked to bar entry to union organizers.

Of course, they blamed the fire on a woman’s match or cigarette, not the inherently unsafe conditions.

146 women burned to death or jumped to their deaths from the 9th floor.

Each year, a commemoration is held, and a fire truck raises its ladder to the 6th floor, as far as fire truck ladders could then rise.