Dear Mr. Fanelli,

I saw your picture in the 79th street station. You said you’d be interested in any comments I might have on the condition of the station Mr. Fanelli, there is a lot of debris in the 79th street station that makes it unpleasant to wait in for more than a few minutes. The station could use a paint job and maybe new speakers so you could understand the delay announcements that are always being broadcast. Mr. Fanelli—there are a lot of people sleeping in the 79th street station & it makes me sad to think they have no home to go to. Mr. Fanelli, do you think you could find a more comfortable place for them to rest? It’s pretty noisy in the subway, especially all those express trains hurtling through every few minutes, anyway when the trains are in service. I have to admit, Mr. Fanelli, I think the 79th street station’s in pretty bad shape & sometimes at night as I toss in my bed I think the world’s not doing too good either, & I wonder what’s going to happen, where we’re headed, if we’re headed anywhere, if we even have heads. Mr. Fanelli, do you think if we could just start with the 79th street station & do what we could with that then maybe we could, you know, I guess, move on from there? Mr. Fanelli, when I saw your picture & the sign asking for suggestions I thought, if you really wanted to get to the bottom of what’s wrong then maybe it was my job to write to you: Maybe you’ve never been inside the 79th street station because you’re so busy managing the 72nd street & 66th street stations, maybe you don’t know the problems we have at 79th—I mean the dirt & frequent delays & the feeling of total misery that pervades the place. Mr. Fanelli, are you reading this far in the letter or do you get so many letters every day that you don’t have time to give each one the close attention it desires? Or am I the only person who’s taken up your invitation to get in touch & you just don’t have enough experience to know how to respond? I’m sorry I can’t get your attention Mr. Fanelli because I really believe if you ask for comments then you ought to be willing to act on them—even if ought is too big a word to throw around at this point. Mr. Fanelli I hope you won’t think I’m rude if I ask you a personal question. Do you get out of the office much? Do you go to the movies or do you prefer sports—or maybe quiet evenings at a local restaurant? Do you read much, Mr. Fanelli? I don’t mean just Gibbons and like that, but philosophy— have you read much Hanna Arendt or do you prefer a more ideological perspective? I think if I understood where you are coming from, Mr. Fanelli, I could write to you more cogently, more persuasively. Mr. Fanelli, do you get out of the city at all—I mean like up to Bear Mountain or out to Montauk? I mean do you notice how unpleasant the air is in the 79th street station—that we could use some cooling or air-filtering system down there? Mr. Fanelli, do you think it’s possible we could get together and talk about these things in person? There are a few other points I’d like to go over with you if I could get the chance. Things I’d like to talk to you about but that I’d be reluctant to put down on paper. Mr. Fanelli, I haven’t been feeling very good lately and I thought meeting with you face to face might change my mood, might put me into a new frame of mind. Maybe we could have lunch? Or maybe after work? Think about it, Mr. Fanelli.