State of the Nation

Or at least the city. I'm getting off the subway at 59th St. today, and some woman asks me to carry her backpack up the stairs for her. She looked like any one of a million average working people in NY (albeit like an average working person quite capable of carrying a backpack which couldn't have weighed more than 4 pounds). I did it, because I'm a good guy. I was slightly annoyed, which is normal for a New Yorker. More than that, though, I was thinking about whether I might be carrying a bomb. Really - the woman looked not at all like a "terr'ist" (though she might have been perspiring a bit), but I'm there wondering a) am I gonna blow up and b) am I leaving my fingerprints on something that's going to blow up a whole bunch of other people? If there are no posts for a while, somebody please come looking for me at Gitmo.