The question was bloody simple and getting the answer seemed simple enough but after lets just say--a "few" tries--I finally came up with the right answer. Makes me wonder if I'm going bloody blind. Anyhow, here's the question. I'm curious to see how you do...

How many times does the letter F appear in the statement below?

FANNY FILINGER WAS OF THE IMPRESSION THAT EIGHTY-SIX YEARS OF HISTORY SHOW THAT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE IN EVERY CASE OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

I've always wondered...with the threat of terrorism still overshadowing the US and the New York City subway system targeted, as reported several times by officials for a terrorist strike, why the subway system has not been beefed up with wireless technology so people can get connected underground in the case of such an attack.

But even before the recent unfortunate events of September 11th, I've wondered and I'm sure many New Yorkers and visitors to the city have too, with Europe, Japan, China and other countries leading the way in wireless technology in that their subway systems are all wirelessly equipped, why New York City dubbed among other terms "The Capital of the World" is left behind in that respect.

I know, having read an article somewhere, that New Yorkers have lately sought out the subway as a place of refuge away from cellphone toting New Yorkers who are constantly, I believe the aricle said, "yakking on the phone." But to my mind it just doesn't make sense why a plan to digitally wire the underground is not in the works, at least not that I know of.

How many times I've felt trapped underground New York waiting for a train and just wishing I could reach out and touch someone on the outside world just to keep from being bored, or to forget at least for a little while that I am hot and sticky and miserable down there...I've fallen asleep a couple of times too and ended up way out of range from my destination stop. Times like those I wish I could indeed call someone.

It doesn't matter to me about the poll I heard about which resulted in most New Yorkers (I believe 54%), not wanting to have cellphone access in the subway (to the 45% who do), because the subway gives the 54% folks, an excuse to tell their employers that they're late for work and what not. I just think New York underground should get wired and it seems to me that "yakking" on the phone is a small price to pay in case (God-Forbid!) another attack so people can reach out and connect to their loved ones and friends.

I had occassion today to re-read Virginia Woolf's famous 1924 essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown , in which Woolf boldly proclaimed to the world that sometime around the month of December 1910 that human character underwent a profound change. Relationships had changed as Woolf saw it, those between "masters and servants, husbands and wives [and] parents and children."

The rigid boundaries defining these relationships had collapsed, but other boundaries were also being compromised, those defining religion, politics and even literature. For Woolf, December 1910 saw human character being transformed and for her the virus of change was Modernism and Modernism's carrier was none other than WOMAN.

This new woman had come to infect and take over the pre-existing feminine form of the day. She was a figure representing multiple races and served as the point at which new ways of being, acting, thinking, living and seeing would emerge. Woolf clearly suggests in other novels such as { To the Lighthouse } that this new woman whom she poses in the form of Lily Briscoe, did not seek knowledge. Rather, she was more interested in unity.

I wondered while reading the essay today if this woman is still in existence today in whole or in part or whether another type of feminine form has completely replaced her. My own answer to the self-posed question is that the woman of 1910, albeit more independent than her former peers has long been pushed to the curb.

Today we see a new kind of woman. I am one of these; one, more endowed with a strong sense of self, more demanding of her rights, more outspoken, more prone to defiance when told to follow the norm in order to follow what works for her, more angry and frustrated perhaps, but one who seeks to forge a life out for herself on her own terms.

This new woman operates in the post-modernist sense. She accepts that differences are a part of life and that to fight it would ruin her. This new woman has toppled the one whom Virginia Woolf saw emerge in 1910. She understands that the shadow of the past still lingers where it concerns race and gender; that which tries to seperate her from her peers and that which keeps on trying to place her in a subordinate position to men Today, this woman is the dominant feminine form for she has learned through a long hard struggle to embrace and I daresay, promote difference.